The commonly defined years of birth for the Millennial generation are between 1982-2001.\u00a0Having been born in January of 1982 I recently realized that I am a proud Millennial.\u00a0I would like to take this time,\u00a0as one of the oldest surviving Millennials to give a brief retrospective of my generation. Please be respectful.<\/p>\n
We\u00a0grew up withe the self-esteem movement. Trophy Kids with participation ribbons. I have several hanging in my yurt, one is from the 4-H club. My mom\u00a0got me the berries from Ralph’s.<\/p>\n
We like the idea of expressing our opinions yet not to the degree of doing a lot of reading about them. That’s not the fun part.<\/p>\n
Having experienced the bank led financial meltdown mid 2000’s, a lot of Millennials have found trouble gaining employment, and maybe lived with our\u00a0coddling parents for a few extra years who might have encouraged us\u00a0to “follow our\u00a0hearts” and major in French Literature.<\/p>\n
Hence\u00a0we’re a generation more obsessed with becoming wealthy than any other, and one of the least likely. Because of this, and also a genuine sense of victimization, our\u00a0generation can\u00a0be described as either disadvantaged\u00a0or wannabe disadvantaged.\u00a0Hence Tupac and Justin Bieber, respectively. Also we shop to look homeless too so that helps the cause.<\/p>\n
We’re\u00a0a generation that wants to be rewarded simply by virtue of self acceptance. We are existentialists who don’t believe in materialism unless it’s something cool.<\/p>\n
We\u00a0want to be rock stars but\u00a0can’t play an instrument or sing. Hence Auto-Tune. American Idol’s 20 second sets. Pretending DJing is a talent.<\/p>\n
We\u00a0want to be actors and filmmakers but don’t want to write anything or act. Hence Keeping Up With The Kardashians.<\/p>\n
We\u00a0want to be rich without having a job. Hence Paris Hilton.<\/p>\n
We want to be professional athletes but also want to drink a lot. Hence, fantasy sports.<\/p>\n
We\u00a0want to express our outrage\u00a0from the comfort of our\u00a0body pillows. Hence Twitter.<\/p>\n
We\u00a0want to end racism and sexism and poverty yet distance ourselves firmly from poor people and bad neighborhoods. Hence Harvard’s complaint forum.<\/p>\n
We\u00a0want freedom of speech, as long as we approve of it first.<\/p>\n
Our activism is in fact so advanced that it often amounts to inaction. Not working out, for example, is how I express my solidarity with the feminist cause of\u00a0body shaming.<\/p>\n
I\u00a0want to fight injustice yet not jeopardize my\u00a0delicate sensibilities. Hence my T-shirt advertising all my Trigger Warnings.<\/p>\n
I\u00a0want you to know I’m\u00a0pro-gay so badly that I\u00a0act coy about being gender fluid and issue mild hints about my possible homosexual tendencies just to put it out there. I also have a business card listing the acceptable gender pronouns you may refer to me as. If you’re speaking Spanish to me, please use the Usted form.<\/p>\n
I’ve actually been lying about my gluten allergy to protest Monsanto, yet if I see a peanut my spleen will explode due to a traumatic experience with legumes.<\/p>\n
I bring my little Yorki everywhere. It’s an anxiety dog. They always give me a hard time in the\u00a0Triage room when I’m passing out my headshots to cheer up the drive-by\u00a0victims.<\/p>\n
I don’t consider myself a hipster, yet I wear pants that look like diapers. I don’t like what other people like. Neither do all my friends. We all like the same things.<\/p>\n
I have a man bun and a ten foot beard which I drape into various brunch buffets because Rumi said something about life giving back or something.<\/p>\n
I go on many great adventures, where I take photos of my salads. My sense of independence is unflinching, and is all documented on a webpage owned by a guy named Zuckerberg.<\/p>\n
So here I beg of you my fellow douchebags, we all know we’re super great, but we can do more. Let’s take life’s issues head on and look at things from a broader\u00a0perspective\u00a0instead of\u00a0merely indulging our own… I’ll be right back to finish this my avocado toast is burning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The commonly defined years of birth for the Millennial generation are between 1982-2001.\u00a0Having been born in January of 1982 I recently realized that I am a proud Millennial.\u00a0I would like to take this time,\u00a0as one of the oldest surviving Millennials to give a brief retrospective of my generation. Please be respectful. We\u00a0grew up withe the …read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1874,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[928,927,926],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2191"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2191"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2199,"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2191\/revisions\/2199"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}