On fucked Millennials:

[Cain]

Ditto for Portland, except add in the "living in a house with 15 other hippies, making a living at the streetcorner circus".

Which is, compared to some options, downright respectable these days.

I would worry more for the future, but I also remember the hippies all turning into yuppies, after wasting a similar amount of time.

So a few - perhaps enough - will pull their head out.  The rest will make excuses.  I mean, it certainly isn't THEIR fault (which was the point of the whole article).

Yeah, kind of what I got from it was that since it isn't their fault, someone else should fix it.

Ain't gonna happen. I mean, that would be nice and everything, but LOL.

Like I said, the people who have the power don't WANT to fix it, and the older generation who DOES want to fix it is too busy working two minimum-wage jobs to try to keep the roof over their heads and make meals so we don't all end up starving on the street.

SRSLY GUYS, YOU'RE OUR ONLY HOPE. HELP.

One thing I've felt, since the start of the crisis, is that people who might otherwise be drawn to opposing the existing status quo fail to do so because of a lack of a theory of action in regards to the kind of society that should be built in the place of the one existing now ("there is no alternative") and no theory on how to actualise that.

Like Walter Sobchak says, "Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos."

They don't know what they want and they don't know how to get it.  "What do we want?  Uh, things to be nice again.  When do we want it?  Well, today would be nice, but if it doesn't happen, I'll blog really angrily about it for a while."  Hardly a rallying cry for social change.  And figuring out those two things is much harder than whining about it on the interwebs.

[The Johnny]

Fight the power! until we get co-opted.

Give me a piece of the proverbial cake, or kill me.

Or something, whatever.

[LMNO]

I love you guys.

LMNO
--working for the Man, about to get another promotion and raise.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Ditto for Portland, except add in the "living in a house with 15 other hippies, making a living at the streetcorner circus".

Which is, compared to some options, downright respectable these days.

I would worry more for the future, but I also remember the hippies all turning into yuppies, after wasting a similar amount of time.

So a few - perhaps enough - will pull their head out.  The rest will make excuses.  I mean, it certainly isn't THEIR fault (which was the point of the whole article).

Yeah, kind of what I got from it was that since it isn't their fault, someone else should fix it.

Ain't gonna happen. I mean, that would be nice and everything, but LOL.

Like I said, the people who have the power don't WANT to fix it, and the older generation who DOES want to fix it is too busy working two minimum-wage jobs to try to keep the roof over their heads and make meals so we don't all end up starving on the street.

SRSLY GUYS, YOU'RE OUR ONLY HOPE. HELP.

One thing I've felt, since the start of the crisis, is that people who might otherwise be drawn to opposing the existing status quo fail to do so because of a lack of a theory of action in regards to the kind of society that should be built in the place of the one existing now ("there is no alternative") and no theory on how to actualise that.

Like Walter Sobchak says, "Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos."

They don't know what they want and they don't know how to get it.  "What do we want?  Uh, things to be nice again.  When do we want it?  Well, today would be nice, but if it doesn't happen, I'll blog really angrily about it for a while."  Hardly a rallying cry for social change.  And figuring out those two things is much harder than whining about it on the interwebs.

Ahhhh

This makes me think it's time for a charismatic leader to pop up.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I am not sure what such a leader will manifest as. How do you galvanize a generation that was taught that life is fair, everybody wins, it's the thought that counts, etc.?

Yet, not so long before them, my generation was taught...

Oh wait no. The propaganda my generation was fed was all kinds of fucked-up weird hippie psychedelic tragedy. I don't even know how to translate that to something that makes sense. No wonder we're so fucked up in the head.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

This is some shit that I grew up on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kunt9FdnR2I

And here is what Millennials were raised on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbgM5NFXvYY

[Don Coyote]

And here is what Millennials were raised on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbgM5NFXvYY

WHAT IN THE FUCK???

[Cain]

Ahhhh

This makes me think it's time for a charismatic leader to pop up.

Perhaps.  I've been arguing for a while that US political dysfunction will lead to a "man on a horse" scenario, most likely from the ranks of the military.  Europe, of course, has experience of charismatic populists with a dim view of foreigners, and seems determined to prove Hegel's maxim about history (that the only thing we learn from it is that we do not learn from it) right once more (though equally, Marx's view that history repeats itself, second time as farce, may be applicable).

[Cain]

It's either that or things go all Baader-Meinhoff and Red Brigades like.   Well, what they were like without the persistent and plausible accusations of covert state support and influence.  Small groups of fanatics who feel cut off from wider society, unable to make changes in a democratic fashion, locked out of a system of wealth and privilege and motivated towards propaganda of the deed in its bloodiest manifestation.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

One way or the other, it's gonna be interesting.

[Golden Applesauce]

I didn't hear any whining in that post (full disclosure: am Millenial, have enjoyed Bors's cartoons in newspapers in the past).
I read it as an explanation to all those crazy old people that our generation isn't any lazier than yours + an alternate justification to millenials that allows them to feel poor and unsuccessful without them also having to buy into the rhetoric that the reason for this is that they're coddled and lazy.

I have never once been told that the world is fair. It was always clearly and explicitly that "The world isn't fair." I really don't understand where people got the impression that Millenials have been brought up that way, because it never fucking happened. The closest we got were implications that hard work always pays off in the end, usually made by people who wanted us to work really hard for no benefit. (The train of thought being that the universe will reward you for your hard work, so the employer doesn't have to? It's never really made sense to me.)

We were that it was absolutely critical to Make Something of Yourself, and also to Follow Your Dreams & Don't Let Anyone Stop You, which can be accomplished by getting a college degree. Not getting a degree basically means that you are human trash, especially in the eyes of older people who successfully followed their dreams by working really hard without a degree to create a world where it's impossible to succeed without a degree, no matter how hard you work, so that we would have the chance to go to college. There are lots of colleges and lots of degrees you can get, and a big federal program which helps you go into debt to help pay banks and football coaches. If you don't want to do that, you can volunteer to go bleed out in a desert somewhere and if you survive with sanity intact they'll graciously allow you into college and the world of success.

And then we did all of those things, and there wasn't enough success to go around. We had the degree which proved we weren't trash, but we were still working the same jobs that last generation didn't require a degree. But nobody wanted to admit that maybe it wasn't worth going $50,000 in debt for a piece of paper, so after taking all of our money they laughed and told us that we had gotten the wrong degree because we were lazy.

Here is a partial list of wrong degrees:
Biology (gj on your degree in a real science, now do grunt lab work at $10-12.50/hr, which is slightly more than the people whose piss you're testing for drugs will make if they pass.)
Business (honestly have no idea what goes into a business degree, but neither do the people who graduated with one so I think I'm okay)
Information Technology (the next Nursing degree. people heard there's money in computers, so colleges lined up to print degrees that looked related while teaching how their profs remember computers working 20 years ago, aka not at all like they work now.)
Journalism (and people complain about how the quality of reporting has gone down the tubes these days...)
Law (the "gold dollar" of degrees. everyone heard that the value of a degree was cheapening, so people rushed the most innately valuable degree. now they're suing colleges for misrepresenting the % of grads who got a job in law. I wish I made that up, because it's hilarious.)
Literature (yeah, that whole "blogging" thing? that's what happens when you teach people to write and then refuse to read what they wrote.)
Mathematics (someone really ought to have noticed when we were spending more money on Math is Useful! posters than on salaries of people with math degrees.)
Physics (you showed us all of those really inspiring stories of astronauts, and then canceled the space program as we were graduating. fuckers.)
Psychology (which way is the rate of mental illness going in this country... ?)

I got a degree in Math, paid off my student loans, and have a job doing web development that I'm happy with. In my case, I got massive scholarships for being in the top 1% of every standardized test I've ever taken and my mom has a lot of good connections in her (now our) industry. I actually thought I was applying for an internship when I got accepted for a full-time junior position. I had been turned down for internships that had a stipend instead of a paycheck before, actually, so I was starting to panic and considering some really crappy jobs when they called me in for an interview. But hey, the system worked out in the end for people in the top (intellectual) 1% so it's not broken.

Three of my closest friends are living with their parents:
#1 - was living on his own, but he had to move back home to help his disabled sister. This caused him to change colleges, which cost him something like a year of credits which is the only reason he didn't graduate "on time." People don't graduate "on time" anymore. Every time you see a cost for college quoted, multiply by add 30% because our "four year degrees" take five and a half years if you have enough AP credits coming out of high school. And a good number of scholarships only cover the first four years, so that last year and a half is brutal on your bank account.
#2 - earns her own paycheck working retail, which covers food and not really college and none of her medical (she is injury prone.) Transferred colleges I think twice now? Last I heard she was living with her grandmother, and I hope she still is because before that she was living with her parents who are abusive and the reason she is "injury prone." With no health insurance, she can't cover her physical injuries, much less all of her mental ones. Her boyfriend and I had to make her go to the doctor after a concussion that took out her language abilities for a week+ (secondary languages. Her field is Linguistics, and for a while she just absolutely could not remember any words or grammar in any of the three languages she was studying at the time.) Oh, and her retail boss cuts her zero slack for any of this.
#3 - living with his parents, but about to fly back to Japan for study abroad again. Majoring in Japanese and either Neuroscience or Computer Science. Don't really know that much else about his situation, except that he's also transferred schools once and lost a ton of credits that way.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

GA, I can't help but get the sense that you, too, either didn't really read my posts, or completely missed the point.

Maybe I didn't do a good enough job of explaining.

It's not Millennials who are fucked. It's EVERYBODY. You're not special. You're not somehow magically MORE fucked because you're younger.

We're all fucked, TOGETHER.

[Cain]

Also, funnily enough, a recent study (which I sadly cannot find, because I generally dislike generational popsociowankery and so did not save) showed that Generation X will be the most hard hit by the financial crisis when it comes to retirement.

[Golden Applesauce]

GA, I can't help but get the sense that you, too, either didn't really read my posts, or completely missed the point.

Maybe I didn't do a good enough job of explaining.

It's not Millennials who are fucked. It's EVERYBODY. You're not special. You're not somehow magically MORE fucked because you're younger.

We're all fucked, TOGETHER.

I did read your posts, I just didn't happen to be responding to them directly. I was ranting. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

I agree everyone's fucked -- but millennials have been hearing from older folks (not anyone here, just in general) for a long time that "We're fucked because the recession mauled all of our savings and home values and because our jobs all went overseas. You guys don't have any of those problems, the only reason you're fucked is that you screwed up all the chances we gave you by being lazy." It's empowering to be able to admit that you're fucked without also having to believe that it's your fault personally. So, yeah, to an extent Bors is just doing ageist tribal chest-thumping, but it's to counter an even more obnoxious narrative.

I'll admit I'm a little disturbed by the idea that millennials are uniquely in a position to fix things. Not because I think you're wrong, I'm just not sure I want to see how our generation will go about fixing everything. We literally cannot remember a time before George Bush and the entire media lied to us, year-in, year-out, to justify his crazy wars and domestic agenda. Then we (generalizing here) mobilized for Obama, who promised change, and... he kept doing the same thing. There has always been indefinite detention and extraordinary rendition. The Bill of Rights has never been a thing for us. America has always been at war with more Middle Eastern countries than we can name.

And those things have bipartisan support. That's the "moderate" position.

I really, really don't want to see the next generation of extremists. I have a strong suspicion that 40 years from now, history books will remember the Occupy movement as the last time anybody bothered with peaceful protests for a while.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Oh, young people aren't necessarily in a position to fix jack shit. They're just in slightly more of a position to fix something than the tired aging responsibility-burdened generation before them. In other words, whether you fix it or not, nobody else is going to.

BTW, there were a shit ton of similar genX articles, because genX heard all the same accusations. Lazy, expects everything handed to us, and I think the most often-bandied-about word was "Apathetic". I thought all the articles about how we were uniquely shat upon were whiny and special coming from my own generation, too. Then there was the tech bubble, and the tech crash, and then the housing bubble, and the housing crash. Things just seem to get a little worse each time.

And good luck figuring out what to do with all of us genXers as we get older with no property, no savings, no retirement, and no healthcare. If you get lucky we'll all die young of preventable diseases so you won't have to take care of us once you finally get the jobs we're too decrepit to keep.