Internet Arguments are Fun

"Each generation is different from the ones past and future. This in of itself is an amazing thing, but the fact that most marketers do not realize this is a sad reality."

This is the observation of something named 'Bret', who works for a marketing concern named InsYght Consulting. I'm starting to see an actual difference between 'Millenials' and other people: torturings of language are viewed as entirely acceptable.
Weird generalizations with no foreseeable provenance, too. What, for instance, is so amazing about differences between generations? Marketing bluster, I suppose, is to blame for this, but come on...

And furthermore, I think it can be said that Millenials seem oddly fond of advertising aimed at it, and fail to find it insulting and silly. I mean, who the fuck links to a company that markets to "teens tweens and millenials" on their blog?

Or this experiment in idiocy and unprovable assertions that is millenialgeneration.org? Fuck, it makes The Journal of Implied Statistics look positively empirical by comparison.

Basically, there seems to be this terrible tendency among those born during a certain time period (more accurately described as 1981-1993 here. I've never liked extending this generation's age all the way back to five years after I was born) to believe their own marketing. They (or again, those who have appointed themselves to speak for them) seem to be making the same high-school-graduation valedictory speech over and over again: we are different, and we care more. We shall achieve more truly good things than anyone ever has, previously, due to our being young and all.
Or, as Dwight Eisenhower once so nicely put it; "Things are more like they are now then they've ever been before." Word, Ike.

So, all this is to back into talking about what we're really talking about: a hoedown at The Stump!

"...The latest quaint saying of a colored servant played a part in the conversation of the well bred, somewhat like that of the latest quaint saying of an amusing child." That's Frederick Lewis Allen, talking about the 1920's. Of course, we've been going to black people for our notions of cool at least since the Gilded Age, while utterly ignoring and actively suppressing them in every substantive way at the same time. However;

"Fist bumps are just another form of high-five. We can even use the word "bling" in a sentence without sounding like we're speaking a foreign language. So, in baby steps, I think it's fair to say that progress is being made."
Okay, for one thing, high-fiving is something I first saw practiced by black football players in the 1980's, and for another, giving five, slapping skin etc. are also things with black origins. But to bother pointing this out is unnecessary. Now everybody does it. Is this anything all that remarkable, indicating a general lessening ancestral race hatred by generations? No: it's a false indicator, pleasing to those who would seek to congratulate themselves and nothing more.

And all people, all generations, all races are responsible for what little has come in the way of progress. Nations, generations and races are arbitrary groupings, and they appeal to people who just need shit to be in groups, I guess. But every time I find myself nearly generalizing about race -inevitably about something that pisses me off- I end up making myself be honest about it and say, shitheads of every race do that. There. Done! Generation X is racially enlightened!

Whatever. In any case, j'read that thing on The Stump? Note that my damn girlfriend got herself into it over there. Note too how several actual racists wander in and shit all over the place. And how an editor gets into it at the end. Somebody's got a boyyy-frieeend...

The actual racist? He says, "I detest rap/hip hop but I like my hardcore rock 'n' roll. I can bang heads with the best of 'em. The comic stereotype of 'white' music as Pat Boone, Carpenters, Muzak, etc. has never had any base in reality. Rock may have distant roots in black music (we all know the blues/Jimmy Page connection) but listening to Iron Maiden, the Cramps, Skrewdriver, you'd be hard pressed to find it."

Skrewdriver? Really? I'm a-gonna go ahead and say it: if you're not a skinhead, you don't listen to that band. Nobody ever claimed they were fantastic musicians, if only you can look past the hate-mongering lyrics. And besides, 'the blues/Jimmy Page connection'? What, are you fourteen? If by 'connection', you mean how the first Led Zeppelin album is basically a Willie Dixon cover album that somehow failed to credit Willie?

No. Moving on. I continue to note no real differences between the generation that calls itself 'millenial' (remember the occasional reference to Gen X as '13th Gen'? What were they counting from?) and everybody else...Except that they can't write very well, and seem to be fond of rehashing the brave-sounding things they heard at their graduation ceremonies.
And that -at least as far as those who actually write as 'millenials', and not as individuals- they seem to think that if they keep spouting the same happy-sounding bullshit over and over, it equates to action.

Pretty soon, they won't be young enough to matter, or be given bylines based on their age. The media's fickle, you see.
But again, the quicker we get past these arbitrary distinctions the better. I mean, the Lost Generation, the Beat Generation (who kinda don't count because both were literary, not all of us), the Baby Boomers (who were probably the first generation to be vain enough to self-identify), what would eventually be called the Greatest Generation (in their personals ads?), the Blank Generation (thank you, Richard Hell), Generation X (thank you...Billy Idol?)...I dunno; it's just a way to sell magazines, ultimately. The wise guy doesn't bother with kindygarden shit like this.