I’ve come across one question in my life repeatedly: What is a millennial and why is being one so damn bad? If you look it up, a millennial is “a person reaching young adulthood in the early 21st century.” Okay, so I see no inherent problem with that, but the word seems to carry some underlying negative connotation of being lazy, taking things for granted, and basically being a generation that’s “too sensitive”.
In the eyes of our parents, we millennials spend way too much time on the Internet, looking at doggos and borking at all the floofs. Don’t know what that means? You’re definitely not a millennial staring at memes until your eyes bleed and creating new words just for the hell of it.
Recently I was blessed to be added to a ~very exclusive~ Facebook page called “*shakes fist* MILLENNIALS.” It has 16,677 members (and counting) and is a source of pure hilarity in my life. Basically, it’s a page solely dedicated to making fun of the other generations that make fun of us. It is filled with videos, memes and screenshots of tweets. With jokes ranging from adults telling us to “pull up our pants,” (which honestly I haven’t seen any sagging pants in years), to jokes saying that we are the “gayest generation.”
Luckily, as members of the millennial generation, we can poke fun at ourselves and be proud to be the “gayest.” I think we all know that the reality is we are simply a generation that has become more and more open and accepting – depending on where you’re living, of course – so people feel more comfortable coming out. We don’t have more gay people, we just have more acceptance.
So what’s really that bad about being a millennial? What does it actually mean? Sure, it means we stare at our beloved iPhones and Androids for probably way too much time, we chug overly-priced coffee and cheap boxed wine whilst wearing our beards too long and our hair up in a bun, but it also means something incredibly empowering. We don’t care about the things that don’t matter. You want to judge us for our flannels, go for it, because we are a generation thriving off of activism. Yes, we might be a little bit too PC and maybe too sensitive, but if that’s the tradeoff for standing up for our fellow oppressed, then so be it.