This was originally going to be a post about how Silicon Valley Millenials would rather die than get around solely by the use of their own legs and feet. On any given day, walking down a sidewalk, I have to dodge some combination of bicycles, razor scooters, skateboards, motorized skateboards, so-called “hoverboards” that don’t actually hover for shit, and – in at least one case – a guy with his feet on either side of a single wheel and both hands on the smartphone he was staring at instead of avoiding ramming me. I kind of feel like explaining to these people that the last mile problem is about the last mile, not the last fifty feet, and that it’s the height of dumb shit to ride your bicycle through the automatic doors and into the elevator – but the more I thought about the millenial mobility scooter, the more I drifted back to a very real issue.
“…I just now discovered the word Rejuvenile, based on the book of the same name. “Kickball, Cartoons, Cupcakes and the Reinvention of the American Grown-Up.” Huh. I don’t mind the cupcake as such, but the cult of obsession around them is a little odd…It was bad enough when my generation was tarred as a bunch of slackers en route to skipping right over us so that the children of the baby-boomers could be painted as the Next Big Thing (that would be the generation of Britney, Paris and Lindsey, FYI), but now apparently we’re all entering our second childhood…and that’s a good thing? Put me down as a Harrumphing Codger if you must, but I’m not sure I see the appeal. I spent my whole life desperately waiting for my chronological age to catch up with my mental age (yes, I was one of those poor cursed SOBs who was “gifted”). I went through eight yards of hell to get to be an adult, and I am not particularly interested in going back…”
That was nine years ago on this blog. In the meantime, that generation that rose up on their cupcakes and electric remote-control skateboards to become the darling of brands and marketing has developed an issue that may have been a problem at other times, but has become even more pronounced as a whole: the most affluent subset of the cohort has become the synecdoche of the whole. Or to put it even more bluntly: you may have forgotten Trayvon Martin was a millenial. So was George Zimmerman.
The screwing Generation X took in the wider world has become part and parcel of The Way We Live Now. The labor market is tight, student debt is crippling, the Boomers still aren’t retiring and the American Dream is reduced to being able to pick two out of the three of financial stability, home ownership and children. This is the New Normal, and it blows. And yet, to look at the popular media, the archetype of the generation born in the mid-80s is one of helicopter-parent-enabled affluence, self-absorption, and an inability to cope with the difficulties and tribulations of living in the real world. You know…rich kids. Same as it ever was.
And that’s rather the insidious bit of it: you can now get all the same 90s-style slacker abuse we got while starting even further in the hole in debt. Set against that, Snapchat frivolity seems like the least of reactions; no wonder the push for marijuana legalization is on in earnest. A dozen years ago, when I first saw Rent, I was in complete sympathy with Benny – who was obviously being screwed by his bohemian pals who didn’t have the scratch to pay for an apartment but were somehow downing all the beer and wine at the Life Cafe. Now, I listen to Pitbull and Ne-Yo and nod in approval – “I knew my rent was gonna be due a week ago/I worked my ass off but I can’t pay it tho/But I got just enough to get off in this club/Gonna have a good time before my time is up” rings true when saving that fifty dollars isn’t going to make a dent in three thousand a month in rent.
Maybe that’s my beef with Silly Con Valley and the city – it’s not millenials as a cohort, it’s the fact that we are a disproportionate magnet for the worst among them, just like the Wall Street gold rush in the 1980s with Stanford standing in for Wharton. A generation ago, kids wanted to be Alex P. Keaton despite the fact that he was supposed to be a parody; now we’re flooded with youngsters who think Silicon Valley on HBO is aspirational instead of satirical. And now you have managers in Utah complaining that people there want to go home at the end of the workday and see their kids and have work-life balance. You have to wonder whether the Valley won’t implode in its own lack of perspective or self-awareness – and you have to hope that it’ll happen before everyone, everywhere, decides that everything should run like a startup.
Because it’s really starting to feel like that’s how it ends up. The Boomers get made whole, with pensions and retirement and Social Security from age 65, and everyone who comes after – everyone born after, say, 1965 – has to rely on 401Ks and the long-term mercies of the stock market (and whatever happens with financial planners or doing it yourself) and the presumption that you’ll have to work until you’re 70, because after all you should be following your bliss and it’s your own fault if you’re not doing what you love. If this truly is The Way We Live Now, we might be in serious trouble.
This. All of it. Everything.
I can say this from a number of perspectives: not all Millennials are terrible. But most of them are, and not just the ones in the Valley. We’ve created our own batch in our industry.
I’ll either end up being their old man overlord, or…God help me. God help us all.