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comment by Isherwood
Isherwood  ·  2368 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Rise of the yimbys: the angry millennials with a radical housing solution

I read this thing recently that really stuck with me - social media and the perception of perfection has resulted in lower confidence among millennials. Where ever it was, it was a throw away argument, a stepping stone on the path to a point about millennials in the workplace.

But it did resonate with me. This idea that the world we were brought up seeing was a hyper reality, realer than real, and because our actuality is lame by comparison, we don't have the right to assault the rest of the world with our flawed ideas.

That thought bounces around in my head every time I see a boomer (or now, Xer) explain who we are, what we believe, how we think, and why we act the way we do. When I see these, I feel deep down that the assumptions are mistaken, and someone needs to set them right. But Who Am I to be the one to do the correcting? My articles aren't bouncing around the globe, my voice isn't playing from every car, my video isn't impressed on a million screens. It's better to stay quiet and let the people who know be the ones who speak.

But as I get older and the curtain inches its way back, I see more and more that those unassailable people don't necessarily know more than me, they're just more confident in their knowledge.

I think movements like these yimbys are a counter culture to that feeling of insecurity. These are people who are willing to start a fight and make a fuss for what they think is right. I hope to see more such confidence from my generation, regardless of what the analysts say.





WanderingEng  ·  2368 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    the perception of perfection has resulted in lower confidence among millennials

I'm not a millennial, but this resonates with me, too. One of the things I've learned about myself in the last few years in my mid/late 30s is being adequate at something can be really rewarding.

Isherwood  ·  2368 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I think millennial is a really bad way to group people into cohorts - we consider horoscopes to be a bunch of malarkey, but if you make the grouping years instead of months you're suddenly working with a legitimate categorization.

WanderingEng  ·  2368 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I agree. At best, we can group eras, recognizing there is overlap throughout. I remember talk of the MTV generation, but I was a little too young to be in it. I'm also a little too old to be a millennial; I didn't get my first mobile phone until I was 23, a Nokia something. Economic and local differences further separate people. Was my older sister in the MTV generation when cable TV wasn't even offered in my small town?

Probably a better way is to think of it as opportunities available or denied to people.

weewooweewoo  ·  2368 days ago  ·  link  ·  

My therapist is having me focus on "Good enough is really good" this week. Rationally, it's perfect, but in my day to day, it's so alien.

WanderingEng  ·  2367 days ago  ·  link  ·  

My epiphany came after my first half marathon. My time would best be described as adequate. I finished. But it wasn't my own time that changed my perspective, it was going back to the finish line and watching the other runners. They were ten or twenty minutes after my already "adequate" time. They were so excited to finish. The crowd cheered.

The race winner was probably 50 minutes ahead of me. They might have been home and showered before I finished. But just doing ok was a cause for celebration. The other runners didn't need to win to celebrate, and neither did I.

b_b  ·  2367 days ago  ·  link  ·  

That depends though, doesn't it? When striving to create, "good enough" is essentially failure. Good enough might get you a paycheck, but it won't lead to satisfaction. If you're picking on yourself about relatively trivial things, then by all means stop. But in your work, your meaningful relationships, etc, good enough is far from good enough.

kleinbl00  ·  2368 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The future's already here, it's just isn't very evenly distributed.

- William Gibson

I got my hackles up over you slagging on Xers so I looked up your journalist. You're right, she started working in '93. So... sorry 'bout that. Lemme just say that from my lofty perch over here?

Look. We grew up in the 'boomers' shadow. We're the original shiftless kids. All the slag the 'boomers are throwing at you they stopped throwing at us because we invented the Internet and they had to STFU. And all the slag the Xers are throwing at you is the shit the 'boomers threw at us because they're entitled pricks. They're still not retiring, they're still not downsizing, and by the way they're sending you little shits checks every month so that you can afford to live in the neighborhoods we had to scrape up a downpayment for back in '02.

Y'all got the shaft, no doubt, but you weren't the only ones. There are now three generations that have grown up in the ruin of the Golden Age of Capitalism and I, for one, am not interested in fighting over the scraps (even though financially speaking I'll win).

That ennui you feel isn't a Millennial thing, it's an "I'm closer to 30 than to 10" thing. This movie is now older than Ethan Hawke and Winona Ryder were in this movie.

Isherwood  ·  2368 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I wasn't trying to slag Xers, I very much remember all the shit that used to be talked about them when I was growing up and, even as a child thinking "that's a bit rough".

I was specifically thinking about my work place. It's run by boomers and xers and they're always reading out articles and surveys responses that say who millennials are and how to get them to come to our workplace.

Once a quarter we'll get a millennial report - where a boomer stands in front of a crowd of millennials and tells us what we want in the workplace. The speech comes with a fair amount of "this is what the data says you want and it's more than we got - so be grateful." None of it really resonates with me or with the other people my age, but there's data and old people are wielding it, so Who Am I to say it's not what I actually want?

I get why they do it - they don't want the workforce to age out and we're a confusing group. I'm not admonishing the efforts (half the reason I go along with it is because of the effort - at least they care, right?)

I'm more reflecting on my (and many of my cohort's) tendency to accept the outsider's assessment instead of being confident in my own. It feels like a common crisis for people my age. And I've seen the most passionate among us flare up in harsh rebellion to the assessments. The result is usually some form of radicalism, those who go first seem to go big, but it's still a reaction to the same assessments.

That's not what has me curious. My mom and dad we're Joe and Sue. They always made a point to tell me, against millennial tradition but in accordance with Lutheran, that I am most likely in most ways average. That's simply how it has to be for the math to work. So when I start to feel these discomforts and trepidation, they don't make me feel alienated - they make me wonder how the cohort is going to deal with them.

I wonder how the millennial masses will come to terms with who they are. What personalities will shake out when they realize what shitty yields come from investing in looking cool. What they'll really value when then number and expense of appliances means you really can't have them all. How they'll act when they work for 8 hours, play with their kids for 5, and have 1 glorious 60 minute period left for them to truly be themselves.

It's already happening to the masses in some ways. The industries we're killing, the complaints we're making, the culture we're refusing - they're all the result of a critical mass of completely average people simultaneously thinking to themselves, "no, I don't think that's the way I'll do it."

It's our right, just like it was your right, just like it was our parents' right. I think how we exercise that right as we become functioning adults is going to be fascinating.

steve  ·  2367 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    because we invented the Internet and they had to STFU

In fairness... I think we improved the internet... boomers framed it... we made it usable and brought it to the masses.

OftenBen  ·  2368 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Was not expecting to have two existential crises in one week, thanks jerk :/