I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts “The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast” where author and director Bret Easton Ellis discusses with his weekly guest cinema, literature, and the vast differences between Generation X and Generation Y. Generation X is described as people born in the early 1960s into the 1970s while Generation Y or “Millennials” were born in the 1980s and 1990s. Mr. Ellis is quoted for coining the term “Generation Wuss” which portrays Generation Y as whiney, lazy, safe-space needing wusses. I’ve been struggling with this topic for some time now and I’ve come to the conclusion that Mr. Ellis is half right. There are some people in Generation Y that I have met that seem, to me, very ill prepared for the real world. They have been raised on social media having their opinions always heard and a trophy won no matter if you won or not.

However, in defense of Generation Y, I’ve seen many Generation X folks getting into fights on Facebook and Twitter saying they have a right to speak and the other person is just being a Nazi for not allowing their ideas to be heard. I’ve also seen people in my parent’s generation enter into contests and not win and receive awards just for participation and it made their day! They were bummed out that they didn’t win, but when someone gave them a certificate for participation in a fancy picture frame, suddenly that made it all better. They had something to hang on their wall and show off.

This is what it was like growing up in Generation Y. We didn’t ask for it, the trophies were just handed to us and we accepted it. If I look at all of the trophies on my shelf from different baseball and basketball seasons, I couldn’t tell you which trophy was from a winning season and which was a participation trophy, and to be honest, I didn’t care then and I don’t care now. If I was told, “Well, you didn’t get a trophy because your team literally won one game out of the season” I would have totally understood and just tried harder next time. I say this in defense of Generation Y because there are millennials who disagree with being called “Generation Wuss”. We do understand that there are some people in our generation that whine and complain about everything in the world. Such as trigger warnings for Shakespeare... in college. And if they don't want to be triggered by Shakespeare, they can opt out of reading it! I had an acquaintance who, when the US Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage was legal in all 50 states, berated and chided everyone who was celebrating because there were still other social issues to be solved. While that is true, we will take a victory when we can.

Mr. Ellis disagrees with most things coming out of Generation Y, which he is free to do. It is his opinion and his opinion will remain valid due to the First Amendment. I also have that same right to opinion, but I will both agree and disagree with him. There are both good and bad things coming out of Generation Y just as there were both good and bad things that came out of Generation X and the Baby Boomer generation. No generation is spotless, no matter how much we try to pretend.