• Facepunch Politics/Thoughts: Are Millennials a product of our society/tech?
    31 replies, posted
I think this video is very thought provoking and i'd like to start a debate on this. Are Millennials and their attitude to life the result of our politics, our societies and technologies? https://www.facebook.com/fearlessmotivationofficial/videos/732114443801770/
Sadly
Are Millennials and their attitude to life the result of our politics, our societies and technologies? Since when has a generation's general attitude not been a factor of these?
Simon Sinek is one of the most insufferable pieces of shit I've ever had the misfortune of listening to. This guy is so fucking beyond out of touch it's ridiculous.
no one was raised with the internet and then suddenly, within a single generation. everyone was raised with the internet.
Can you provide parts of his video and the context that backup your statement? Which parts do you disagree with?
Ontop of this, the economy isn't doing so hot compared to the past. You can't just get a college degree just by working like you could 4 decades ago. You can't just buy a house with what you made from your new educated job. People say the economy is doing good, but how good is it really when so many people are in debt and will never own property? You can't make record profits forever.
Not to mention some of the ludicrous prerequisites for what should be simple jobs. Working as a librarian's assistant? You need a bachelor's for some ungodly reason. That's what my mom experienced when trying to apply as one.
The economy is moving but it's growing in all the wrong areas. I don't know how anyone can say with a straight face we're doing great economically when the middle class has been shrinking for at least a decade and billionaires are now becoming trillionaires.
Literally the entire fucking thing. He paints a ridiculously negative picture of social media & technological innovation, as if cellphones and social media are somehow the sole reason millenials are "lazy". He draws up this depraved image that millenials are essentially junkies hooked on likes and surely this is the big problem! Back in my day, ohh, before the internet! We didn't have no "instant messaging"! Millenials can't wait for anything nowadays! Grr! It's fucking infuriating. He sees absolutely ZERO of the positive effects social media and the improved global connectivity it is has produced. "When I go to dinner with friends I don't bring my phone, because I don't want to be distracted ". Oh, good for you. Pretentious fucking prick.
Is there not a video without that background music? As if it wasnt already preachy enough, there's the music choice as well that makes me want to roll my eyes. "Motivation"- i mean, "MOTIVATION" videos do my box in, but i gritted my teeth and watched the whole video. While screaming internally. Seriously though, that music. Like, serious level of smug cunt here. AHHHH!! It reminds me of the shit someone i knew watched all the time in class and thought he was better than everyone else because of it. Like, honestly, fuck off mate. Alright, Alright. I'll be serious now, I mean, i kinda get what he is sayin, a little? Phone addiction, yeah, i can see that. However, I'm not sure if it can be considered an addiction when such a thing such a phone with internet is pretty much essentual to our lives. I'll admit that i might be spending too much time on my phone in my bed, but if i wasnt, i'd just be doing it on my computer. Only difference is i'm a little more comfortable in my bed. Of course, if i have to wake up to do shit, like... go to work, i'll do so. (Eventually, i just suck at waking up so early.) Maybe we havent been raised up as well as the previous generations? Debatable, i'm sure the generations before "Millennial" was preached and bitched at from the generations before. That could be an arguement to make, but in experiance, as a brit anyway. I'd want to beleive that my parents and teachers didnt shelter me from failure, and i've had my fair share of them. I've really had my ass handed to me trying to do stuff to get better. But i've still achived some things that my family never has done in the past, and i know i've got more in me to do. Now i know for a fact i've had some pretty low self esteme, but that's more because of the long period of butting heads with bullies and the such, which i'd say is a reason why i'm not that high up in that social ladder, i'm not much of a social butterfly, never have been and i could very well not have all of those skills because of that background. My question is, how the fuck do you develop them in the first place? From what i've gathered, you have to force yourself out there. So maybe working where i am is helping me, slowly...? Even if it's been a struggle. Not stressful, but i think i can explain that due to my actions at work as a whole...? Actually, come to think about it. Even with phones being a thing that everyone has in their pockets, i've still been able to develop relationships with my collegues by not only working with them, but also bitching at stuff about work. Those off hand comments about customers being used as a coping mechanism eventually evolves to talking about things i might not be exactly comfortable talking about with my parents but i'm willing to talk to those people i work with who might be more "experianced" in life, or those who just have a different perspective, honestly i'm willing to call bullshit to Simon because of this. Doesnt matter what generation your from, Millennial, X, Y, Zed, whatever. We all have problems we have to deal with, some of which are just unique to that generation. Although, yeah, fair point. Maybe kids shouldnt be given mobile phones and i'd even say the internet, never mind social media. I do hope that when we eventually have kids, hopefully anyway, that we can bring up our kids in a way that avoids the mistakes that we where effected by, i mean, isnt that the whole idea of parenting? Am i missing something? I really don't know, man. At this point i'm just rambling and thinking out loud when i should be debating. Like, seriously though, what is Simon's background? Is this all an act? Is he wearing a mask here? Is he playing a persona? What's the deal here? I'd be willing to bet he doesnt practice what he preaches.
It's two different worlds, yeah it's doing great if you look at the top, numbers going up and all that. But if you're looking below that, it's starting to look like a gilded age.
generations are a construct
First and foremost, the construct of "millenial" itself is a product of society, and so are the qualitative judgements and sterotypes that is prescribed to it. While you can be reductive and define a millenial as someone born in the 80's or 90's, you would have to address what else society defines as "millenial". The media might have a more essentialist definition of a millenial, roughly approximating "broke and depressed 20-somethings who basically depend on the internet", but from the view of what I would call an out of touch bourgeois pundit such as that fellow in OP's video, we are "those young, lazy whippersnappers who keep killing our industries". This illustrates the subjective and memetic manner of cultural and social constructs, where one can maybe never truly escape from the qualitative judgements others will prescribe to you. As I would myself fit in with the first two of these definitions, and some rich old guy would probably think of me in the third one too, I cannot escape being considered a "millenial" by society. Capitalists love to split us into categorical and arbitrary groups, steering discussion away from the actual problems that are facing our generation and will get worse for the generations to come. Because these problems are too products of society, the culture we build in the face of our problems is our reaction to our lived experience. Furthermore, millenials cannot be a product of just one of the three factors. Because the political and the techonological cannot be removed from the societal, and nor can the technological be removed from the polical, and vice versa. All social behavior is societal, and all societal development is political and technological. If you keep boiling down behavior and culture to generational constructs, you'll never see the whole picture.
Im a firm believer that the rise of ADHD/ADD diagnosis are from a rise in children and teenagers being given a massive amount of technology and being raised to expect immediate gratification.
Millennials are a product of their boomer parents fucking up when it comes to parenting, indirectly creating the stereotypes they ridicule us for by telling us to "live our dreams" because they had it easier in their youth compared to us and their insane economic beliefs fucking up the global economy and destroying our housing market for decades to come and ignore all of that when we try to bring it up and get offended when we don't buy into Fox News because unlike them we have the internet to fact check any bullshit they are told and just stick their head in the sand to avoid reality. Now because we have the internet and information age to completely change our culture and way of life we get blamed for every industry and/or business that dies by failing to adapt. I didn't have a phone until my high school years, and that was years after the iPhone hit and everyone had the early smartphones by then.(2010ish years) and I had to pay for it myself. Now my niece is years younger than I was and got her moms old smartphone to use and has some of the worst symptoms of ADD/ADHD I can think of (I had the same problems in my youth but I have the computer to blame on that.) The computer did not cause it for me but it made it really bad and apparent to how much it held me back.
I get what you're trying to do, but you can't expect a reasonable discussion when your only substantiation for the claim is a viral Facebook video; and a weak one at that. You want to have more questions to drive the discussion because it is multi-faceted. When writing an essay, you want to ask yourselves several questions to can umbrella under your thesis and allow for many avenues for analysis. The same should be done when you're trying to have a discussion like this.
Is it possible for ADD/ADHD to develop later in age or would that count as it going under the radar?
As far as I'm aware it doesn't just develop, it just becomes more apparent.
If you're going to try and incite a debate with a faux-ambivalent, no-sides-taken attitude but then actively take sides, don't fucking bother.
Donald Trump was the first millennial
We live in a society
as a person with ADHD, this is bullshit.
As a person with ADD/ADHD I'm in firm knowledge that your belief is full of shit.
Funny how boomers speak of entitlement in newer generations yet they lived their lives during a constant growth period, which disproportionally rewarded all economic endeavors. Whereas now you're practically punished for trying but still you must to get by
Or, much more likely, the rise is in diagnoses is due to improvements in detection methods. Just like with the supposed rise in autism that anti-vaxxers love to scaremonger about.
A generation that basically invented mindless consumerism and was raised in one of the most prosperous times of humanity complaining about the things that are bound to happen when your fuckups crash down on the generation below you in the form of endless debt, ecological disasters, climate change and skyrocketing society-illnesses like cancer, depression, overweight and loneliness. Really nice guy
Boomers leeched off the opportunity that their predecessors gave them and shuttered it away to everyone else.
Getting a job was easier back when my parents were trying to get a job. Back then, jobs also paid reasonable and cost of living was reasonable where I grew up. That much I do know. I also know that in the last job I was at I could just barely do good enough to not have managment and coworkers yelling at me most days (litterally). But more and more stuff and responsibility kept being piled onto me and at that point I could no longer do good enough. I considered suicide because I felt like a failure no matter how hard I tried. After therapy and finally moving back from the edge of suicide I can safely say, it's society's fault. From experience and from listening to others, it's truly society utterly failing the new generation. I maybe have ADHD and Autism, however because I couldn't ever afford getting evaluated, I cannot say I have it definitively, only that my therapist has said that I certainly fit the criteria, but she too noted that she is just a therapist, not a psychiatrist. As for tech? No, it has an effect on everyone of all ages.
Really hits hard when you hear that a basic summer job between semesters between semesters made enough cash to cover tuition, room & board, and some of your books. This worked roughly up until the 90's for most colleges. One of the things that drive me nuts is how many jobs require a degree, but the work is either routine and boring or it is highly focused on one area of the degree. Serious job training needs to come back. Granted, this is what I have seen/experienced. It would be better use of time and resources to train a person to do that particular job than to bring on someone with a whole lot more knowledge and under employ them. And probably cheaper in the long run.
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