In late April, a video posted to Facebook by a 23-year-old Texan named Alexis Bloomer, in which she unforgivingly criticized her fellow members of Generation Y, quickly went viral.
“If you guys have anyone on your social media, like I do, that’s over the age of 40, you’ve probably seen a post at some point about how our generation sucks.”
Well, yes, Alexis Bloomer, I have heard people our parents’ age criticize our generation. However, I’ve also heard grandparents criticize our parents’ generation, as I’m sure our great-grandparents did to them.
The truth is, every generation has had its flaws, and there are people from every generation who will admit that. However, a good majority of the blanket statements that were made in this two-minute rant were simply not true, not to mention unbelievably hypocritical.
Bloomer starts off by criticizing our manners, like saying yes ma’am and no ma’am, and saying that we “don’t hold the door open for ladies, much less our elders.” Now, not only is this a blanket statement, but I’m not quite sure how she was able to come to this conclusion. In my experience, members of our generation are the ones who hold the door open no matter how far away the person behind them is. I also have never met a woman over the age of 30 who really appreciates being called ma’am, because quite frankly, it makes them feel old. I’m sure there are people our age that can be pretty rude, but there are people at every age that could use a crash course in basic manners. Judging by this video, that includes you, Ms. Bloomer.
Next she brings up music and celebrities, and I don’t think my face left my palm once from this point on while watching.
“We listen to really obscene music that degrades women and pretty much glorifies drugs and crime.” We’re going to take a step back to the '60s for a second, with the Beatles singing “I get high with a little help from my friends,” or “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” This era was literally called the time of sex, drugs and rock and roll. Jump ahead to the '70s, when Pink Floyd sang about being “Comfortably Numb,” and Fleetwood Mac sang “Gold Dust Woman.” The generation before us grew up listening to music about drugs just as much, if not more, than we did.
Bloomer goes on to say that a big problem with our generation is that we spend more time making friends online than we spend building relationships in real life. While this is a problem that I’ve definitely noticed with our generation, I think the points she uses to back this are extremely hypocritical. One point in particular that really got to me was, “Our idea of standing up for something we believe in means going on Facebook and posting a status with your opinion.” But wait a second, isn’t that what you’re literally doing right now with this video? You felt a certain way about an issue, so you took a video of yourself, in your car, with your smartphone, and posted it online for your thousands of followers to see. Then you say that people who value their follower count or try to keep up an appearance on social media are what is wrong with our generation. Something really doesn’t add up there.
I can deal with all of the insults this girl has thrown at us up to this point, but once Bloomer starts throwing around the words "lazy" and "entitled," I start to have a problem. Our generation has attended college at a higher rate than Generation X, and is paying a lot more money for it too.
“We have more opportunities to succeed than any of those before us, yet we don’t appreciate the opportunities we have now.” I, for one, would like to know which opportunities she’s referring to, and where I sign up.
According to a report by New York City comptroller Scott Stinger, in New York City millennials are making around 20 percent less than the generation before us, for the exact same jobs. The average cost of college has more than doubled in the past 20 years, even when inflation is taken into account. No matter how much we work our way through college, we are going to end up with a lot of student debt. So I don’t really feel bad for wanting college to be cheaper.
Bloomer ends with an apology to our elders, who “raised us better than this,” but I don’t think our entire generation collectively decided to be entitled. It’s the generation that raised us on participation trophies and the "everybody’s a winner" mentality that made us this way. Our parents have definitely fostered a false sense of entitlement in us since birth. Our elders didn’t raise us better than this, they raised us into this.
I would also like to point out that the banking industry was deregulated, which destroyed our economy, American soldiers were in Iraq and we were wasting trillions in perpetual war, and climate change was already too far gone before millennials even knew what any of this meant.
Life is hard no matter what generation you’re a part of, and it seems that every single one has made some mistakes along the way. We’re not perfect, but nobody is. Posting a two-minute rant on the Internet is not going to make any changes in the world. We get enough criticism from those 40-year-olds on Facebook; we really don’t need one of our own downplaying what we’re going through as well. So, Alexis Bloomer, maybe it’s time to put the phone down and start actually working toward a better life for all of us.
