Re: Entitled Generation Y

[msmerymac]

This blogger was pissed about that article:

tutusandtinyhats.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/itstheeconomystupid/

WHY IS GENERATION Y UNHAPPY? IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID.
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 16, 2013 BY LAURA (DUSTY_ROSE)


If I read one more piece like this, I’m going to scream.

No, my generation isn’t unhappy because we’re entitled special snowflakes who want rainbow-barfing unicorns on our lawns. We’re unhappy because we’re facing crushing student debt, a terrible job market, the downgrading of most stable jobs to contingent work, falling wages, and widening inequality. We’re unhappy because we’re working longer hours for less pay–or getting our hours cut to the point where we can barely survive. We’re unhappy because so few of us have health insurance or paid sick days.

We’re unhappy because we’re coming face to face with the reality that we might never be able to afford to own a home, or have children, or many of the other things we want to do. We’re unhappy because we see our dreams and opportunities vanishing before our eyes. We’re unhappy because we look around and see so many of our friends struggling–so many bright, talented people faced with shitty options. We’re unhappy because we’ve learned first- or secondhand that intelligence and hard work don’t guarantee being able to pay the bills, let alone personal fulfillment.

Not to mention that we live in a world where our government shamelessly spies on us, where corporations have more rights than people, where there’s a mass shooting every few months, where the environment is being destroyed at a stunning and possibly irreversible rate.

Of course, this isn’t to say we’re all unhappy. Happiness is a lot more complicated than jobs and money and ambition. Happiness is also about friends, family, community, art, music, dance, nature. It is entirely possible to find happiness in the midst of suffering and injustice–people always have. There is so much love in our world, so much beauty, so much connection and fierce resistance and hope.

Generational divides, too, are more complicated than many make them out to be. Millenials aren’t a stereotype, and nor are our Boomer parents or our Greatest Generation grandparents–or our Gen X friends, or anyone else who doesn’t fall into the millenial/boomer/gg taxonomy. We are all shaped by our times, by our opportunities, by the social and economic landscapes we navigate–but we’re also so much more than the sum of our years. We’re all human. We all have our struggles and our passions. We all have our stories.



There’s very little I hate more than the idea that people my age are “entitled” for wanting a good life. For wanting meaningful work, a living wage, and benefits. For wanting flowers on our metaphorical lawns.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting flowers on our lawns–in fact, there’s everything right with it. There’s everything right with wanting to, as poet Veronica Shoffstall puts it, “plant your own garden and decorate your own soul.”

There’s nothing wrong with believing that you are special. Special doesn’t mean superior. It doesn’t mean better-than. It means unique, having worth, having something to offer. We all have our own talents, our own important things to share with the world. All of us.

There’s nothing wrong with feeling betrayed by a world that promised us good futures and then gave us late-stage capitalism. There’s nothing wrong with complaining, with speaking truth to power, with saying “this isn’t fair and it isn’t ok.”

In fact, there’s everything right with it.

We all deserve–yes, deserve–to be free from poverty and chronic financial stress. We all deserve good jobs, or financial support if we can’t work. We all deserve health care, freedom from extreme debt, freedom to live our lives. That’s the social contract I believe in, and if that makes me an entitled Gen-Y yuppie, so be it.

[heyjude]

I don't think I'm technically a millennial (1980) but I certainly identify with a lot of millennial frustration and I'm so tired of all the millennial hate. If anything I'm rather excited to see what the millennials are going to do with this country.

[downtoearth]

Why does this blogger gotta be so angry? Man all millennials are so pessimistic.

Actually, I do think more millennials are upset at the condition of the world and I hope that they do a lot to change the environment, political atmosphere, and corporate landscape. It's like a new generation of hippies out to change things for the better and it's about time.

[heyjude]

Sept 17, 2013 15:15:54 GMT -5 @bunnybean said:

Sept 17, 2013 15:03:45 GMT -5 heyjude said:

I don't think I'm technically a millennial (1980) but I certainly identify with a lot of millennial frustration and I'm so tired of all the millennial hate. If anything I'm rather excited to see what the millennials are going to do with this country.

I think you're cusp. I'm 1983, and I definitely don't feel like a Gen Xer (I didn't turn 18 until the 2000s!), so I identify as Gen Y/millenial. And what is with all the hate?! If anything, people should blame these helicopter parents more than the generation themselves!

I think millennial starts in 81.

[Deleted]

This is where i get pissed at the gen Y/millennial hate:

But there's nothing for us to suck up, really. As a rule, our parents did end up much more dedicated to their careers than we have. But as a rule, they were laid off less. They didn't intern or work as independent contractors. They got full medical. They were occasionally permitted to adopt magical unicorn-like money-granting creatures called "pensions." Or, barring that, they accumulated a huger 401K to cash out before the Great Recession, because they saved more. And they saved more because the costs of college, of kid care, of health care, of doing business and staying alive and buying groceries and staying connected, were far less than they are today. They could raise a family on one salary if necessary.

The older generation who are loudest at bitching about the young people were able to have factory (auto worker, for example) jobs that could support a family in a middle class lifestyle comfortably, with only having a high school diploma. They are collecting SS, which our generations will pay into, but never collect upon. There were jobs available. They weren't forced to take out crippling student loan debt to get through college. E.g., my mom was able to work her way through college and truly doesn't understand the need for student loans and doesn't grasp how much the cost of a college education has gone up in 40 years. It just infuriates me.

[NitaX]

Sept 17, 2013 15:17:45 GMT -5 heyjude said:

Sept 17, 2013 15:15:54 GMT -5 @bunnybean said:

I think you're cusp. I'm 1983, and I definitely don't feel like a Gen Xer (I didn't turn 18 until the 2000s!), so I identify as Gen Y/millenial. And what is with all the hate?! If anything, people should blame these helicopter parents more than the generation themselves!

I think millennial starts in 81.

Wiki on Millennials: " Strauss and Howe use 1982 as the Millennials' starting birth year and 2004 as the last birth year."

1980 seems a little bit of a cusp to me. My baby sister was born in 1980 and I think we're rather different generation-wise. I'm a GenX'er (1976).

[ttt]

Yeah the Baby Boomers complain about the Millennials being spoiled and entitled. Guess who raised us??

[AJL]

I don't know where I fall in the whole generation categorization. I was born in Jan. of 1978. I am NOT a Gen Y'er. I think I'm at the very end of Gen X.

[Deleted]

This reminds me that I've been meaning to share this Samsung commercial. Anne just got a super amazing freelance job after college graduation. Even advertising execs know that Millenials aren't going to get a full time salaried job after graduation.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTJDuWb-kR0

[heyjude]

Sept 17, 2013 15:27:04 GMT -5 NitaX said:

Sept 17, 2013 15:17:45 GMT -5 heyjude said:

I think millennial starts in 81.

Wiki on Millennials: " Strauss and Howe use 1982 as the Millennials' starting birth year and 2004 as the last birth year."

1980 seems a little bit of a cusp to me. My baby sister was born in 1980 and I think we're rather different generation-wise. I'm a GenX'er (1976).

See everyone has a different start date. I have seen 1980 other places. Usually it's 81.

I think the rule should be: did you like Nirvana before the suicide or after?

Lol.

[AJL]

Sept 17, 2013 15:33:38 GMT -5 heyjude said:

Sept 17, 2013 15:27:04 GMT -5 NitaX said:

Wiki on Millennials: " Strauss and Howe use 1982 as the Millennials' starting birth year and 2004 as the last birth year."

1980 seems a little bit of a cusp to me. My baby sister was born in 1980 and I think we're rather different generation-wise. I'm a GenX'er (1976).

See everyone has a different start date. I have seen 1980 other places. Usually it's 81.

I think the rule should be: did you like Nirvana before the suicide or after?

Lol.

I was 16 when Kurt Cobain died. I was really upset because I loved Nirvana. Boom! Gen Xer.

[msmerymac]

Sept 17, 2013 15:17:45 GMT -5 heyjude said:

Sept 17, 2013 15:15:54 GMT -5 @bunnybean said:

I think you're cusp. I'm 1983, and I definitely don't feel like a Gen Xer (I didn't turn 18 until the 2000s!), so I identify as Gen Y/millenial. And what is with all the hate?! If anything, people should blame these helicopter parents more than the generation themselves!

I think millennial starts in 81.

That's usually what I see, although I've seen as early as '77-'79 as the last year of Xers. I'm '82, which has always been Gen Y. To further confuse matters, "Gen Y/Millenials" are said to go as late as 1999ish? That always confused me. I mean, I'm lumped into the same generation as kids who were born in the mid-90s, whom I babysat in high school, but not my husband who was born in '74? It seems to me like you have certain cultural touchstones in common with people who are 5-10 years to either side of you, regardless of when you're born and what generation you're lumped into.

[ESF]

As someone born in 77 and who enjoys some millennial humor, I think there are two kinds of millennials.

On the one hand, I get the frustration that many feel over the shit economy and bleak future.  I feel for the people who are stuck, have student loans myself, and no plans to own a house.  I'm weathering a pretty bleak professional situation. 

On the other, I've dealt with some 25 year olds who think their shit doesn't stink, and they make me want to jab forks in my eyes.  These are not people who were just dumped out of college with nothing more than a job at Starbucks and a pipeline from their bank account to Sallie Mae's coffers.  Rather, these are the kids who succeeded.  For example, when I told the new, millennial lawyer in my office that once she finishes a brief, that nobody else needed to review it again, so she could just go ahead and submit the document electronically to the courthouse using the online service, she said that she had a secretary in her last job that did it for her, and suggested I do it instead.  Her response was not, "I've never done this before, will you be around if I have questions?" but actually, "I've always had secretaries do this for me, so it would be great if you could file it."  

She is not in this job because she spent most of 2009 alternating between document review and fits of despair like me, or because she was chewed up and spit out by the shitastic economy like some millennial.    Rather, she possesses a degree from a top 5 school and has several years in big law under her belt.  She chose this job with her eyes wide open, and yet thinks she is above learning how to do secretarial work.  That's the kind of millennial entitlement that I will mock all day long.  She's not the only person under 30 that I know like this, FWIW.

 Maybe there was a subset of Gen-Xers like this too, I don't know, but I like being all kids get off my lawn, and will continue to do so. 

[elleblue]

1) These are weirdly contrived generational categories, too weird for such black-and-white reasoning. I’ve always thought myself more tail-end-of-Gen-X in temperament, age, and outlook. But '77-'79 is a sociologically ambiguous no-man's land, and we typically get lumped in with the millennials, especially when it comes to money matters.

Yes! I'm not quite Gen X, but not Y either. So stop lumping me in with them when you're complaining about some ish. lol

[heyjude]

Sept 17, 2013 15:39:25 GMT -5 ESF said:

As someone born in 77 and who enjoys some millennial humor, I think there are two kinds of millennials.

On the one hand, I get the frustration that many feel over the shit economy and bleak future.  I feel for the people who are stuck, have student loans myself, and no plans to own a house.  I'm weathering a pretty bleak professional situation. 

On the other, I've dealt with some 25 year olds who think their shit doesn't stink, and they make me want to jab forks in my eyes.  These are not people who were just dumped out of college with nothing more than a job at Starbucks and a pipeline from their bank account to Sallie Mae's coffers.  Rather, these are the kids who succeeded.  For example, when I told the new, millennial lawyer in my office that once she finishes a brief, that nobody else needed to review it again, so she could just go ahead and submit the document electronically to the courthouse using the online service, she said that she had a secretary in her last job that did it for her, and suggested I do it instead.  Her response was not, "I've never done this before, will you be around if I have questions?" but actually, "I've always had secretaries do this for me, so it would be great if you could file it."  

She is not in this job because she spent most of 2009 alternating between document review and fits of despair like me, or because she was chewed up and spit out by the shitastic economy like some millennial.    Rather, she possesses a degree from a top 5 school and has several years in big law under her belt.  She chose this job with her eyes wide open, and yet thinks she is above learning how to do secretarial work.  That's the kind of millennial entitlement that I will mock all day long.  She's not the only person under 30 that I know like this, FWIW.

 Maybe there was a subset of Gen-Xers like this too, I don't know, but I like being all kids get off my lawn, and will continue to do so. 

This all just reads to me like there will be douches in every generation.

[Deleted]

ESF, I would stab someone like her, too.

Then you have the millennial like me who, upon getting my job at the evil firm, took months to realize I could ask the receptionist to mail letters for me because I was so used to doing everything myself and having zero support.  (SEE HOW AWESOME I AM?  OBVIOUSLY!)

I will rail against "kids these days" as much as the next person, particularly with regard to my husband's former students' complete lack of work ethic.

But I do think conflating douchebags with generational entitlement is misplaced. My generation has been, by and large, economically fucked. The more I see objective markers, the more I am convinced of this. But it's not like douchebags aren't from all generations. I mean, at my last job, Voldemort wouldn't even bother to learn how to use Westlaw so he would sometimes email me citations for the sole purpose of me printing out the cases. That strikes me as just about as douchey as your coworker, but he gets to wrap his douchiness up in an "I don't understand computers" old man excuse.

That's all to say that I agree that there are 2 issues.

[taratru]

There’s nothing wrong with complaining, with speaking truth to power, with saying “this isn’t fair and it isn’t ok.”

Yeah, if you follow it up with action or doing something about it.  I think a lot of the millenial/Gen Y hate/mocking comes because the perception is all they do is whine. 

And anecdotally, I'd like to share that I'm an old as dirt Gen-X'er and I'm being crushed by student loan debt and in a job that is stable, but doesn't pay for shit when compared to the education I have, my insurance sucks and is expensive, yet am happy.  Because my happy isn't about what I have, it's about who I am.  I think as a whole, our society has equated happy with what we have, and the millenials/Gen Y are right in the thick of that. 

[cosmos]

My sister (1985) got bitch slapped into reality when she entered the work force. Scoffing at jobs that paid $30-40K.

Now she'd kill for a job, period.

As for the Gen X/Millennial, I'm firmly on the cusp (1980). I listened to both Pearl Jam and Boyz II Men in 1993. ha!

[elleblue]

Sept 17, 2013 15:30:40 GMT -5 AJL said:

I don't know where I fall in the whole generation categorization. I was born in Jan. of 1978. I am NOT a Gen Y'er. I think I'm at the very end of Gen X.

You my friend, like me, are in the no Generation generation. hth

[AJL]

Sept 17, 2013 15:50:48 GMT -5 elleblue said:

Sept 17, 2013 15:30:40 GMT -5 AJL said:

I don't know where I fall in the whole generation categorization. I was born in Jan. of 1978. I am NOT a Gen Y'er. I think I'm at the very end of Gen X.

You my friend, like me, are in the no Generation generation. hth

Then we get to name it. I'm proposing Awesome Generation! or Kick-Ass Generation.

[cattledogkisses]

THANK YOU.

I'm a '86er. I graduated from college in 2008, right into the pit of the recession with gas prices at $4.50/gallon. It was ugly. My age cohort has struggled, and by and large it's NOT because of laziness or entitlement, it's because we were dealt a shit hand of cards.

[ttt]

I was born in 81 so I'm another on the cusp-er.

I will say that the job I got out of collge paid $30something and It felt like ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD to me. The job itself was dull and nobody's dream job but I felt so rich lol.

[wrathofkuus]

Except that Millenials are doing something about it - they're raising questions about how to fix it, brainstorming ideas, and voting based on their conclusions. Kids these days are pretty great, and deserve the Firefly Jaynestown speech.

[wrathofkuus]

And I'm not just saying this because my favorite undergrad just gave me a sloth shirt.

[Deleted]

Also, I'm gonna say that if you don't think a lot of the wealthy WASP men who went to <insert prestigious school here> in decades past weren't entitled little pieces of shit, then I have a bridge to sell you.

[Velar Fricative]

I always thought 1982 was the start of the Milennials, which is when I was born. Dammit if I'm wrong because I liked being a Milennial Elder!

I like that we are finally starting to become a serious voting bloc to compete with the Boomers. Sooner or later, politicians are going to start being forced to pay attention to us instead of the AARP. 2016 will be very interesting.

[Deleted]

Sept 17, 2013 15:39:25 GMT -5 ESF said:

As someone born in 77 and who enjoys some millennial humor, I think there are two kinds of millennials.

On the one hand, I get the frustration that many feel over the shit economy and bleak future.  I feel for the people who are stuck, have student loans myself, and no plans to own a house.  I'm weathering a pretty bleak professional situation. 

On the other, I've dealt with some 25 year olds who think their shit doesn't stink, and they make me want to jab forks in my eyes.  These are not people who were just dumped out of college with nothing more than a job at Starbucks and a pipeline from their bank account to Sallie Mae's coffers.  Rather, these are the kids who succeeded.  For example, when I told the new, millennial lawyer in my office that once she finishes a brief, that nobody else needed to review it again, so she could just go ahead and submit the document electronically to the courthouse using the online service, she said that she had a secretary in her last job that did it for her, and suggested I do it instead.  Her response was not, "I've never done this before, will you be around if I have questions?" but actually, "I've always had secretaries do this for me, so it would be great if you could file it."  

She is not in this job because she spent most of 2009 alternating between document review and fits of despair like me, or because she was chewed up and spit out by the shitastic economy like some millennial.    Rather, she possesses a degree from a top 5 school and has several years in big law under her belt.  She chose this job with her eyes wide open, and yet thinks she is above learning how to do secretarial work.  That's the kind of millennial entitlement that I will mock all day long.  She's not the only person under 30 that I know like this, FWIW.

 Maybe there was a subset of Gen-Xers like this too, I don't know, but I like being all kids get off my lawn, and will continue to do so. 

I think the bolded is the kind of entitlement that gave Generation Y a bad name. 

As for this article and the litany of reasons for millennial unhappiness it lists - well, not much of it applies to only millennials. I mean, does the writer seriously think millennials are the only ones who "live in a world where our government shamelessly spies on us, where corporations have more rights than people, where there’s a mass shooting every few months, where the environment is being destroyed at a stunning and possibly irreversible rate"? Or that the first two paragraphs of complaints aren't shared by Gen Xers?

[ESF]

Sept 17, 2013 16:40:53 GMT -5 @angryharpy said:

Also, I'm gonna say that if you don't think a lot of the wealthy WASP men who went to <insert prestigious school here> in decades past weren't entitled little pieces of shit, then I have a bridge to sell you.

LOL.

I have no doubt those men were spoiled dickheads.  I imagine Mad Men only shows the cusp of what offices with elite grads must have been like back then.

But I also think that while there are douchebags in every generation, I do think there's a slight difference in how that douchebaggery is manifested.  The subset of kids these days who are the fortunate, privileged Millennials have more choices available to them then your 1950s or 1980s Harvard grad.  There's a whole world of finance and consulting that has exploded in riches. The start up culture has made it possible for a recent Stanford grad to be a millionaire by the time they are 24.  There's the competition to get into graduate school, and everything that goes along with the need to pad those applications, like Teach for America, Peace Corps, and other types of "real world experience" that may or may not be real world experience.   From my experience,  the very privileged young people today that I've dealt with often approach situations with the mentality that they chose X job or Y experience over other options, that job or experience should be honored to have them grace their presence.

I don't think that this subset of privileged millennials are more obnoxious or unpleasant than douchebags of yore, just that they are different.  For example, previous generations of douchebags seemed to derive their douchebaggery from the power they hold, the prestige of their degree or job, their gender, their family name, etc, etc.  From my experience, the douchebags of the millenial generation (ie not all millennials, but the privileged ones) seem to find their pride and swagger from the fact that they CHOSE this job or this path, and those around them should be lucky to have them.  When I think millennial entitlement, I think of the "you are lucky to have me, so therefore I am entitled to whatever I want out of this experience" mentality.

That's not to say that this privileged subset is worse than privileged subsets that other generations have dealt with, but that I don't think this concept of entitlement is some completely made up thing.  I think it's completely fair to say that it's wrongly been overgeneralized across the entire generation or wrongly used to dismiss the real concerns of legitimately frustrated young people.  But I also get why it's a thing and has taken hold.

[rosebud]

Generation Catalano: The generation stuck between Gen X and the Millennials.
By Doree Shafrir | Posted Monday, Oct. 24, 2011, at 3:22 PM
| Posted Monday, Oct. 24, 2011, at 3:22 PM Slate.com


Generation Catalano

We're not Gen X. We're not Millennials.

Last week in New York magazine, 27-year-old Noreen Malone (a former Slate staffer) wrote that her generation, the Millennials—battered by the economy and yet still somehow convinced that they'll "do better" than their parents—were "hoping for the chance to put on a tie and report to their cubes." In response, Gizmodo writer Mat Honan, who turns 39 this week, posted a screed on his blog that read in part: "Generation X is tired of your sense of entitlement. Generation X also graduated during a recession. It had even shittier jobs … Generation X is used to being fucked over."

I'm older than Noreen but younger than Mat, and neither characterization rang exactly true to me (most demographers place me and my peers at the tail end of Generation X). I was born during Jimmy Carter's presidency, a one-term administration remembered mostly for the Iran hostage crisis, the New York City blackout, and stagflation. The Carter babies—anyone born between his inauguration in January 1977 and Reagan's in January 1981—are now 30 to 34, and, like Carter himself, the weirdly brilliant yet deeply weird born-again Christian peanut farmer, this micro-generation is hard to pin down. We identify with some of Gen X's cynicism and suspicion of authority—watching Pee-Wee Herman proclaim, "I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel," will do that to a kid—but we were too young to claim Singles and Reality Bites and Slacker as our own (though that didn't stop me from buying the soundtracks). And, while the proud alienation of the Gen X worldview doesn't totally sit right, we certainly don't yearn for the Organization Man-like conformity that the Millennials seem to crave.

So, half in jest, I posted on Twitter: "I'm not Gen X and I'm not a Millennial either; I'm some low-birthrate in-between thing. WHO WILL SPEAK FOR ME." To my surprise, replies flooded in: "I was thinking the same thing today. I vote Generation Jem." "Generation I Watched Saved By The Bell during its first run." "I'm born 77, I claim the Xers, just because it's better than the alternative."

But what seemed to be the best moniker for our micro-generation was a editor's suggestion: "Generation Catalano." Jared Leto's Jordan Catalano was a main character in the 1994-95 ABC series My So-Called Life, a show that starred Claire Danes as Angela Chase, a high school sophomore struggling with the thing that teenagers will struggle with as long as there are high schools: who she is. "People are always saying you should be yourself, like yourself is this definite thing, like a toaster. Like you know what it is even,'" she says in a voice-over in a midseason episode. So even though the themes of the show are in many ways timeless, today, My So-Called Life also seems like a time capsule, and not just because of the Scrunchies. There's no texting; Jordan leaves a note for Angela in her locker. There's also no Facebook or instant-messaging or cyberbullying (just regular old bullying). It was a show that most accurately portrayed my high school experience, minus the dating of Jared Leto, in part because it aired while I was actually in high school.

Claire Danes' Angela—and Heathers' Veronica Sawyer and Freaks and Geeks' Lindsay Weir—also fall into a trope of television and film that's an especially apt representation of Generation Catalano (or at least those of us who were white and from the suburbs): the girl who doesn't know where exactly she fits in, because she's smart (full disclosure: the struggle Lindsay has over whether to stay on the Mathletes hit a little too close to home), wants to be popular, and has to leave her old, dorky friends behind. The show or movie's dramatic tension is then largely about her identity crisis as she ping-pongs among different cliques and wrestles with the seemingly monumental decision of whether to stay in on a Friday night and do her calculus homework or go to a keg party in the woods. Yet My So-Called Life and Freaks and Geeks each only made it through one season before being canceled; they failed to resonate with a broader audience.

In contrast, the relatively bland main characters on much more successful, Millennial-targeted shows of the late 1990s and early 2000s, like Dawson's Creek, One Tree Hill, and The O.C., presaged the current crop of high school-centric series like Glee, Pretty Little Liars, and Gossip Girl, whose lead characters—much like Millennials themselves—are convinced that it's not just possible, but expected to be pretty, popular, and go to Brown. (My Millennial sister—who was born in 1984, and is now a lawyer—watched Legally Blonde and found much to admire in Elle Woods' equal devotion to her wardrobe and her legal career.) Meanwhile, the post-Millennials seem solely obsessed with fame; hugely popular shows like Hannah Montana and iCarly reinforce the idea that you can be a "regular" kid who's also world-famous.

This urge to define generations is also about a yearning for a collective memory in an increasingly atomized world, at least where my generation is concerned. Indeed, where the Millennials tend to define themselves in terms of the way they live now, people in my cohort find fellowship more in what happened in the past, clinging to cultural totems as though our shared experiences will somehow lead us to better figure out who we are. The Internet is littered with quick-hit nostalgia websites like I'm Remembering, which posts pictures of toys and TV characters and old photos from the '80s and '90s. Certainly, discovering that someone else also had a Cabbage Patch Kid does immediately create a sense of shared history, no matter how superficial. This aligns us more with Gen X, which has also always bonded through nostalgia. Millennials, on the other hand, seem to be always looking forward, imbued with a sense of optimism and hope that to us reads as naive.

In her story, Malone writes that "every generation finds, eventually, a mode of expression that suits it," but perhaps every generation is also granted, eventually, a name that it deserves. Though Douglas Coupland didn't invent the term "Generation X" (that credit goes to the photographer Robert Capa, who used it to describe the generation of kids growing up after World War II), his 1991 book of the same name was what made it apply to this age group. Millennials, on the other hand, have Ad Age to thank for helping define their generation; the advertising trade publication first used the term "Generation Y" in 1993 to characterize the post-Gen X cohort. Later, William Strauss and Neil Howe's 2000 book Millennials Rising would become instrumental in defining this group; in his review of the book for the New York Times, David Brooks noted that "kids have a much more positive attitude toward parents and adult authority figures than earlier cohorts did."

In Generation X, one of the protagonists, Andy, reflects that "we live small lives on the periphery; we are marginalized and there's a great deal in which we choose not to participate." It's no coincidence that Gen X's greatest artistic legacy is probably grunge, which is all about glorifying marginalization and alienation. Millennials, though, have been forced to live lives on the periphery, when they had always expected that they would be at the center. As Malone points out, the Fleet Foxes, led by 25-year-old Robin Pecknold, sing about thinking that they were "special snowflakes" but finding that they are in fact "cogs in some great machinery." In contrast, the most famous musician from Generation Catalano is probably 34-year-old Kanye West, who actually is something of a special snowflake—and at the same time that he has released some of the best music of the last few years (and gotten very rich off of it), he's also been engaged a very public battle with himself. Like West, Generation Catalano is never fully comfortable with its place in the world; we wander away from the periphery and back again.

It's also somehow apt that I would be writing this essay in the first place: In Hebrew, my name means "my generation." As I was working on the essay, I called my mom and asked if she and my dad had deliberately chosen my name because of its meaning. (I was also named after my great-grandmother Dora.) "I didn't want to name you Dora, so we chose Doree. It was just a coincidence that it means 'my generation,' " she told me. The arbitrary nature of this choice, too, seemed fitting. But maybe we're not the only ones who feel unmoored. After explaining the gist of the piece to a 29-year-old friend over email, she responded: "I feel like I'm especially without generation because I'm not quite a Carter baby but not really a Millennial either. … I feel like Noreen, who is only two years younger than me, is of a slightly different generation, which seems crazy! But it feels true." Her email was a classic Generation Catalano move: dancing near the spotlight, and then dancing with herself.

[rosebud]

www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2011/10/generation_catalano_the_generation_stuck_between_gen_x_and_the_m.html