Generation Y, "yuppies", "millenials"...unhappy?

[Aldaron]

So, as any of you moderately active on social media should know by now, this article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wait-but-why/generation-y-unhappy_b_3930620.html is currently witnessing a sharing craze, and articles / people advocating have spawned in high quantities, and articles like this: http://aweinstein.kinja.com/fuck-yo..._source=gawker_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow have spawned in response.

You're more than welcome to give your generalized thoughts / feelings on this...but I have a few issues with both "sides." Well, more an issue with the first article, and confused as to why the second was so serious in trying to debunk it.

First of all, why is the assumption that "we" (I guess I'm considered a generation Y yuppie since I'm employed and was born in 88) are unhappy considered...absolutely true?

It's funny how the main article uses sweeping generalizations as the basis for its following points, but its probably funnier that people are supporting this stuff seriously.

Like honestly, if this was just an arbitrary opinion piece and acknowledged as such, no issue. People can say what they want when they want, and others can agree with that for whatever reason. But people are resharing / "amen"ing this crap and trying to actively justify its claims...

The article starts off with sweeping generalizations about the previous generations, then makes sweeping generalizations about our generation, then (well previously as well) states the main point...that we're unhappy, without any justification for this, then tries to use stuff like social media as evidence for why we would be more unhappy...but doesn't acknowledge the idea that social media simply could have made us aware of this unhappiness now, as opposed to then.

I don't get it...why is this crap the day's gospel???

Since when has it been proven that we as a generation are unhappier (not unhappy, but unhappier) than previous generations? Why are generalizations of how social media might be perceived by our generation used as evidence points and the idea that its simply putting it out there for more of us to observe not being considered?

I really hope you my incredibly intelligent smogonites were not part of the mindless rabble that liked / retweeted / shared this stuff...but if you were, and if it wasn't simply as an arbitrary piece you liked for subjective reasons (totally fine)...please tell me why. Actually, you can just tell me how you feel about the subject in general, and if you agree with it, that's actually fine...but we're all going acnowledge it's just subjective and arbitrary unless you can give me real evidence (something sorely lacking in the article...).

I just do not get it.

BTW, it isn't just our gen retweeting / sharing / liking this...the reason I'm more curious about this than other dumb articles is cause my bosses at work actually mentioned this and agreed with this...both of whom (a male and a female) are 50+ and have graduate degrees from top universities and are director level+ in my company (so figure older generation, "educated" and good with people).

 

[GatoDelFuego]

I'm pretty sure I'm super special and the world will just have to wait to see how amazing I am

Fuck this article the author was clearly just not cool enough for the world

In all seriousness...am I supposed to be unhappy?

All the sharing is probably just mindless people going "Yeah, screw all those people that have high expectations of the world! Amen! True stuff! I know that I am super special, but the rest of the world is so blind they can't see how silly their expectations of life are!"

 

[vonFiedler]

I remember reading this article a while back actually.

 

[chaos]

This stuff even made Hacker News today. I didn't have much to say about it there, and I'm not sure I have too much to say about it here.
While I'd like to say that it's a generalization and therefore wrong, it's hard to when I haven't been all that happy myself over the years.

I think the weirdest thing is using 'generation' to describe a large group of people, without regard to, say, income or education level.

 

[vonFiedler]

Oh right! That wasn't this article, that was Fight Club.

But in all seriousness, I'd rather live my whole life poor and making games than being as secure as my parents while also as miserable. Material happiness does not mix well with this generation's job philosophies, it's something I mostly abandoned a while ago.

 

[THE_IRON_...KENYAN?]

I was born in 1993 bb suck on them endorphins lol its probably the only way people like aldaron can get out of bed in the morning

 

[yee]

Social media makes information on the internet even more useless. Twitter recently recommended Sharknado and Ghost Shark to everyone.

 

[Ace Emerald]

I feel like this is the same thing as the "Me Generation" article from earlier this year (or last year?), just aimed at people 10-15 years older. I'm pretty much done with stuck-up middle age people (at least I think that's who's writing these) thinking they can accurately outline everything that's wrong with a younger generation while exaggerating, generalizing, and ignoring the fact that every generation has issues in the eyes of its predecessor.

 

[MCBarrett]

as to why people from our generation retweet and agree with this is because they want to separate themselves from being the stereotypical "unhappy gen Y kid" by doing so.

for the older folks its probably just a typical case of looking back fondly on something and not realizing that things really haven't changed as much as they think they have.

 

[Steamroll]

In all seriousness it's just a grab to get readers. It's a typical blogger article meant to fill out the rest of a daily paper to try and grab readers, whether people agree with it or not. It grabs readers and gets them talking. If people really took articles like this at face value they'd realize how unfounded the claims are and either stop reading or forget about it (or just throw the damn paper out because they're reading garbage anyways). The lack of actual concrete proof and the modern ideal of "everything you read is true" doesn't help to try and bring about the point that it's just a bunch of bullshit in the first place.

Another annoying thing about this is that we still practice and preach stereotypes, regarding race, gender, and even 'generations.' The earliest notion I heard of for the word 'generation' was for the baby boomers, which is still being mentioned today even though education and background make up a hell of a lot more about a person than what time they were born.

The greatest thing about reading this thread is learning that people still read the fucking Huffington Post.

 

[LonelyNess]

Whoa now... Don't hate on Sharknado...

 

[Trax]

A generation of people who got free university education (in Australia anyway), a job for life culture upon graduation, and easy entry into the housing market really don't have any right to claim that a generation that got none of those things is unhappy because of entitlement issues.

 

[Shinryu]

I really hate the fact that I'm lumped in with the other Gen Y people and how they stuck millennial with them...

That being said, a lot of them are a product of their parents' values on them and sociological conditioning; they went to carebear parenting and other shit pretty fast from actual punishments, so a lot of them got that whole entitled feeling. Remember, "everybody wins" these days, everything is "politically correct", etc etc.

That and if you ask every prior generation, each of them views the newest ones with disdain; baby boomers looked down on Gen X, which looked down on Gen Y, etc etc. But the world has yet to end.

 

[Acklow]

I am indeed unhappy.

 

[Jorgen]

I think this is just a combination of the typical "young folks these days and their rock music" sentiment coupled with the fact that young adults, having just recently left college and striking out on their own financially, are generally not in the best of financial situations, hence the perceived unhappiness. This is hardly the last time an article like this will be written, although I haven't the foggiest why this particular article on the matter is all the buzz right now.

 

[Mandeln]

Social media makes information on the internet even more useless. Twitter recently recommended Sharknado and Ghost Shark to everyone.

You say that like recommending Sharknado is a bad thing.

 

[xenu]

haha lol it has sharks and tornados le xDDD epic maymay

 

[Blue_Tornado]

I had no idea what these terms even meant a few days ago but it's not like I was oblivious to life or anything
In fact I had the same reaction as Acklow which is pretty funny

But anyway
It's a fact that living is harder than it used to be...for people who were part of the lucky sections of planet earth who had access to modern life in the first place. This will continue to be the case no matter what social structure or philosophy we endorse. The fact that 'we' have had it good for the past god knows how many years is something we have to deal with and will be worse for our children save some unexpected technological breakthrough.

 

[Justin8649]

This isn't anything new. Since the beginning of time the older generations have consistently bashed and hated on the younger generation. Just a generation ago, all of the young people were "stupid pot smoking hippies that hate war" but those "stupid pot smoking hippies that hate war" are now waging wars and blaming us for being lazy and wanting everything handed to us without having to work for it.

Ironically enough, those same people will be collecting their social security checks that come out of our pockets while we will most likely never see a dime of it. Also, with the new healthcare law, it appears that older people will end up paying less for insurance while the younger healthy people will be paying a higher amount than their actual health risk would deem necessary.

All we ever hear about is how "these types of crimes didn't happen in my day" "the world was a safer place in my day" "we never had to lock the doors" when in reality, the world has never been a safer place to live in. Crime numbers are insanely low. People are living longer than ever before. This means we have more old people living to complain about all of the younger people "ruining" their lives.

 

[ryan]

I mean, the subtitle of the second article really summed it up well for my stance: "Fuck You. I'm Gen Y, and I Don't Feel Special or Entitled, Just Poor."

I had to drop out of college after my first year because it's so goddamn expensive, and I was either going to have to choose to live a life of financial debt or duck out for a bit and try to save up to cover some of the costs (mostly cost of living). My parents don't really hold the feelings shared in the first article because they get how goddamn hard it is out there today. My mom lost her house a few months ago because property taxes were well beyond what you might think would be appropriate considering how much she payed for the house itself. My dad makes enough to get by, but that's about it. And that's how it's always been for my family; we've always made it by but haven't had the money for much else beyond that.

Because of this, I'm probably a "special case" in the eyes of the author of the first article. But this kind of ties back into the claim that the article is filled with empty generalizations. Maybe I'm just an exception to the rule, but I wasn't raised the way that the first article describes, and I've never had an "I'm great, suck my dick world" mentality.

 

[Myzozoa]

This first article assumes that each gen Y person had these rich parents that gave them a sense of entitlement, but the truth is that most had working class parents, and until recently it was actually possible to have a family on a working class wage, for various reasons this is no longer the case, and the political/economic features that allowed our parents to prosper (such as free college education) are no longer in place for us. The government supported our parents generation, and since it isn't doing so for ours, we look to our parents for support, this leads to their generation viewing us as 'entitled' because we look to them for the things that they looked to the government for when they were our age, such as help paying for college, etc.

The first article is pretty awful, just a bunch of unsubstantiated claims and opinions that affectively say, "I'm old and I'm bitter, and these kids? theyre a bunch of whiners, whoelsethinkit?" The second article is bad because the first article doesn't have any logical substance to respond to, so why bother? Facebook image crafting bit was maybe the only real substance of the first article and it is still a flawed treatment of the issue...

 

[Princess Bubblegum]

I said this on another forum but. You are special.

Also this article is trash, it puts me in the same generation as my father.

 

[GCSChris]

Social media makes information on the internet even more useless. Twitter recently recommended Sharknado and Ghost Shark to everyone.

but sharknado is a remarkable work of art.

 

[Minwu]

i am going to make a more realistic counter-generalization here: oppression 101

if this is supposed to apply to the general population i think it fails because what the internet does is y'know, give certain people freedom to rally for the first time ever -- protests organized through twitter by iranians being one less subtle example. another thing a large amount of people from the 70s in America were finally born into was a few civil fucking rights. idk if i am speaking with clarity but the simple point is sometimes being fed up is not actually a sad thing and touting the good old days is sometimes faulty

 

[His Eminence Lord Poppington II]

that article is so fucking gay lol