The Convenience of Generational Labeling

I haven’t slept in days. How could anyone sleep? Look at the headlines:

• The millennials are coming
• There are more millennials than baby boomers
• Millennials don’t shop at Victoria’s Secret

Are millennials even a real thing? Microsoft Word puts a red squiggly line under “millennials.” That means they don’t even exist!

“Wait, why did they ask us to stand against the wall and put blindfolds on? OMG! New Biebs dropped!”

We (Generation X, 4 life!) don’t like baby boomers because they’re our parents. They smoked in the car and pretended they weren’t prejudiced but they really were. They fed us the sugar that we now can’t live without, the sugar that will take our toes. They thought coffee from McDonald’s tasted good. These people can’t be trusted.

And now this invading horde of entitled millennial brats is even worse, mostly because many of them are our younger brothers and sisters and wives or spoiled nieces and nephews. They get whatever they want, while we had to eat shoe leather and listen to music on tape through headphones that cut our ears. It’s amazing how much blood flows to your ears, and then out of said ears, when Sony’s 1980s torture devices do their intended business.

In one of the links above, the good people at Goldman Sachs lay out their “thinking” on millennials. My Silicon Valley employer helps us “experience-advantaged” people better engage with this lost and persnickety generation. The media (liberal, conservative, and affiliation-non-specific) all amplify the catcalls about this generation’s every whim and fancy.

Incidentally, there’s no news here. These are young-ish people who act exactly like every group of young-ish people before them. Sure, they have better technology and a more connected world. But that’s how technology works; it gets better and more useful over time. It’s been true of every generation ever, whether rocks were overtaken by spears or scrolls gave way to the printing press.

“Dude, back in my day we didn’t even have slingshots. Now rubber grows on trees. These damn spoiled kids. They’re going to live to be like 17 fingers!”

Much of this debate has been carried out by the unknown blogger, full her/himself of resentment over the mischaracterization of her/his own generation’s stereotypes, not to mention her/his failure as a real writer. I don’t care what people think about me, let alone what they think about another 65 million roughly-my-age people whom I don’t know. Maybe that’s because my age now starts with a four-handle. Per the modern norm, pure solipsism of the blogger drives a few more likes and retweets and we all go on our merry way, ever unenlightened and overstimulated. I’m looking in the mirror as I write this, enjoying the pure irony of my millennial-like actions in spouting off on this topic at all.

Since the ground has been trampled on this topic, I’ll cut to the obvious chase: Generational labels achieve nothing other than the labeling itself, neatly packaging gigantic groups of unique individuals into containers whence they can be more easily judged by others who know nothing about those individuals. Is this progress? Or is this a witch-hunt, forever on generational loop?

It reminds me of Mötley Crüe’s “Home Sweet Home,” with which I once filled both sides of a 60-minute BASF tape using my dope dual-cassette boom box. One power ballad, on loop. For about three years.

In a classic Simpsons Halloween episode, giant advertising mascots come to life and terrorize Springfield. A simple solution solves the problem: Just don’t look. When they’re ignored, they die.

This strategy will work for Trump, and it will work for millennials. Just do it.

Generation X, 4-evah!