ARE YOU OFFENDED YET?

Your sooo millennial! - Does that trigger you?

It gives me a slight nervous twitch as if I’m about to be offended. Maybe that’s cause I couldn’t bare to be put in the same category as a Unicorn Frappuccino. 

Maybe its because someone might as well just call me a naive self-absorbed brat.

There it is again. I just stereotyped a millennial. Me a millennial, just stereotyped myself. 

Our brains are hardwired to make snap decisions on other people. We are inherently judgemental. You can practically hear people’s eye roll when someone proclaims they are vegan. The presumption that your just trying to ‘jump on the band wagon and that veganism is just a ‘trend’. Come off it - maybe they’re just giving a shit about the environment… you should probably try it sometime. 

I challenge you to not stereotype someone when you meet them. Even my sweet little old granny is at it. If you were to have a piercing on your face, which is pretty normal these days, she would automatically assume that your antics, within the more private side of your life, were somewhat um… slutty? A massive generalisation, totally unfair!

Apparently there is a thing called a ‘Stereotype Threat’. Its where you effectively hide behind your stereotype, using it as an excuse. If someone tells you, you are part of a group of people that act in a certain way, lazy and entitled in our case, you become lazy and entitled. If everyone already thinks you are, then why the fuck not? Take Liam Gallagher for example. He probably wasn’t born a tosser snorting lines. The press wanted him to be an out of control rock legend, so he became one. Had the press told him he was the squeaky clean boy next door, he probably would have done things differently. He probably wouldn’t have commented on his son’s 16th birthday saying that ‘He wants some complicated BMX bike thing. What's wrong with a stripper?’. But then again what do I know? I’m just a soft old millennial that’s too offended by things.

I have previously spoken about the snowflake issue, one of the many things that are in our little box of millennial stereotypes. Even Google, arguably the most intelligent database in the world thinks we’re shit, look at its suggested searches - 

Millennials are     …     rude

                                    soft 

                                   lazy

                                   idiots

                                   entitled.

I, like anyone else, can be lazy. This is okay though because I am a millennial, people expect me to be lazy. Have older people just forgotten what it was like to be young? ‘Work smart, not hard’ is the greatest millennial motto of all time. I sometimes call my flat mate when he’s in the room next door. I eat out of the saucepan so I don’t have to also wash up a plate. I have even gone as far to order a delivery pizza… from across the street. My friend has a bottle opener tied to the collar of his dog so that he never has to look for one. I mean besides the fact that this is a stroke of genius, this is about the laziest story yet. 

Pull your shit together people, don’t hide behind your stereotype. 

We’ve got to help each other out, as a generation.

We want the same things regardless of when we were born. I want to be rewarded on the basis of my contributions and given a chance to work hard, even if it is making a round of tea for a load of Baby Boomers. An unpaid job of course because I need 3 to 5 years worth of experience.

We are a generation that has changed the game; we’ve become more accepting and more socially aware. According to Pew Research Centre, we are 30% more intelligent than any other previous generation and our main priorities include being good parents and helping others in need. Not that stupid and rude any more, are we?

The stats and figures are there, we just have to prove, mostly to ourselves, a little harder. People say we have it too easy, but they were the generation that could buy a house on an unskilled job’s wage at the age of 21… and they say we are the ignorant generation. 

A lot of words have been reclaimed in the past decade. ‘Nasty woman’ was a slur made by Trump that has taken on its own meaning. Likewise ‘pussy’ (largely down to Vladimir Putin’s nemesis girl group, Pussy Riot) has been regained in feminist activism. People clearly feel more powerful using derogatory terms such as ‘bitch’, when self labelling themselves. Imagine if we made “you’re soooooo millennial”, a positive thing. That would be pretty fucking dope man. Even BuzzFeed have announced their surrender to the term’s ironic usage and have acknowledged ‘millennial’ as not just a cheesy marketing word, but simply another descriptive word in their vernacular. I’m not saying that we should be the generation remembered for shitting rainbows and fairies, I’m just saying it would be nice to be proud to be a millennial and not hide behind a wallowing student dept and a million cactus plants.

I am a Millennial and I am pretty fucking proud of it.  

Drink your unicorn frappuccinos and go into the night. 

Run free and take over people’s jobs. 

We are the future, stop judging us, stop judging each other!