{"id":2321,"date":"2016-05-03T14:40:07","date_gmt":"2016-05-03T22:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/?p=2321"},"modified":"2016-05-03T14:40:07","modified_gmt":"2016-05-03T22:40:07","slug":"some-of-the-kids-arent-all-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/?p=2321","title":{"rendered":"(Some Of) The Kids Are(n’t) All Right"},"content":{"rendered":"

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. \u00a0On any given day, walking down a sidewalk, I have to dodge some combination of bicycles, razor scooters, skateboards, motorized<\/em> skateboards, so-called \u201choverboards\u201d that don\u2019t 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<\/em>, not the last fifty feet<\/em>, and that it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026I just now discovered the word Rejuvenile, based on the book of the same name. \u201cKickball, Cartoons, Cupcakes and the Reinvention of the American Grown-Up.\u201d Huh. I don\u2019t mind the cupcake as such, but the cult of obsession around them is a little odd\u2026It 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\u2019re all entering our second childhood\u2026and that\u2019s a good thing? Put me down as a Harrumphing Codger if you must, but I\u2019m 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 \u201cgifted\u201d). I went through eight yards of hell to get to be an adult, and I am not particularly interested in going back\u2026”<\/em><\/p>\n

That was nine years ago<\/em><\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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\u2026rich kids. Same as it ever was.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s 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<\/em>, I was in complete sympathy with Benny – who was obviously being screwed by his bohemian pals who didn\u2019t 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 – \u201cI knew my rent was gonna be due a week ago\/I worked my ass off but I can\u2019t pay it tho\/But I got just enough to get off in this club\/Gonna have a good time before my time is up\u201d rings true when saving that fifty dollars isn\u2019t going to make a dent in three thousand a month<\/em> in rent.<\/p>\n

Maybe that\u2019s<\/em> my beef with Silly Con Valley and the city – it\u2019s not millenials as a cohort, it\u2019s 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\u2019re flooded with youngsters who think Silicon Valley<\/em> on HBO is aspirational instead of satirical. And now you have managers in Utah complaining that people there want to go home<\/a> at the end of the workday and see their kids and have work-life balance. You have to wonder whether the Valley won\u2019t implode in its own lack of perspective or self-awareness – and you have to hope that it\u2019ll happen before everyone, everywhere, decides that everything should run like a startup.<\/p>\n

Because it\u2019s really starting to feel like that\u2019s 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\u2019ll have to work until you\u2019re 70, because after all you should be following your bliss and it\u2019s your own fault if you\u2019re not doing what you love. If this truly is The Way We Live Now, we might be in serious trouble.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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. \u00a0On any given day, walking down a sidewalk, I have to dodge some combination of bicycles, razor scooters, skateboards, motorized skateboards, so-called \u201choverboards\u201d that don\u2019t actually … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “(Some Of) The Kids Are(n’t) All Right”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2321"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}