Alexandra Petri
By Alexandra Petri
Blanket generalisations are like souffles: easy to make, if you don’t mind watching them collapse spectacularly when someone blows on them. Especially when they concern a whole generation, like most of what is said about Millennials.
I believe a large percentage of what is said about Millennials as a group stems from the fact that they are the generation currently occupying the place that the People Who Write These Things used to hold. Most pieces against the Millennials, as an institution, are written in accordance with the rule that When You Turn Thirty, Something Terrible Always Happens To Popular Music.
Of course the youngest generation is going to the dogs! Instead of delicately cross-stitching their selfies onto large scraps of muslin, they are sending them via their smartphones. Instead of sending their subtweets by semaphore or smoke signal, as we always used to do, they are — well, I won’t go into it, but it needs to stop. We were never like this!
One of Earth’s longest traditions is complaining about the awful things that Today’s Youth are doing. All the way back in 419 BC, Aristophanes’s play “The Clouds” included some complaints about how the younger generation was coming along, such as the memorable lines: “[I]f you follow the fashions of the day, you will be pallid in hue, have narrow shoulders, a narrow chest, a long tongue, small hips and . . . you will know how to spin forth long-winded arguments on law. You will be persuaded also to regard as splendid everything that is shameful and as shameful everything that is honourable; in a word, you will wallow in degeneracy.” Kids these days! They never go outside! They regard as splendid everything that is shameful and as shameful everything that is honourable!
If this kind of thinking can be helped by studies, a new study is out. This study, by a researcher at Emory University, suggests that the worse the national economy when you are between the ages of 18 and 25, the less of a narcissist you’ll be later in life. This holds true even when other factors are accounted for, such as education and sex. “See, this is all for the best,” I can hear the Boomers beginning to argue already.
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By Alexandra Petri
Blanket generalisations are like souffles: easy to make, if you don’t mind watching them collapse spectacularly when someone blows on them. Especially when they concern a whole generation, like most of what is said about Millennials.
I believe a large percentage of what is said about Millennials as a group stems from the fact that they are the generation currently occupying the place that the People Who Write These Things used to hold. Most pieces against the Millennials, as an institution, are written in accordance with the rule that When You Turn Thirty, Something Terrible Always Happens To Popular Music.
Of course the youngest generation is going to the dogs! Instead of delicately cross-stitching their selfies onto large scraps of muslin, they are sending them via their smartphones. Instead of sending their subtweets by semaphore or smoke signal, as we always used to do, they are — well, I won’t go into it, but it needs to stop. We were never like this!
One of Earth’s longest traditions is complaining about the awful things that Today’s Youth are doing. All the way back in 419 BC, Aristophanes’s play “The Clouds” included some complaints about how the younger generation was coming along, such as the memorable lines: “[I]f you follow the fashions of the day, you will be pallid in hue, have narrow shoulders, a narrow chest, a long tongue, small hips and . . . you will know how to spin forth long-winded arguments on law. You will be persuaded also to regard as splendid everything that is shameful and as shameful everything that is honourable; in a word, you will wallow in degeneracy.” Kids these days! They never go outside! They regard as splendid everything that is shameful and as shameful everything that is honourable!
If this kind of thinking can be helped by studies, a new study is out. This study, by a researcher at Emory University, suggests that the worse the national economy when you are between the ages of 18 and 25, the less of a narcissist you’ll be later in life. This holds true even when other factors are accounted for, such as education and sex. “See, this is all for the best,” I can hear the Boomers beginning to argue already.
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