This is a response to Johnny Oleksinski's article, "I'm a millennial and my generation sucks".

The Millennial generation, or Generation Y, is a group of people spanning roughly from the years of 1980-1999, according to the U.S Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s generation chart. That means that I am a Millennial. I am seventeen and over those seventeen years I have heard many members of Generation X and the Baby Boomers complain about the people in my generation, “They’re entitled, whiny, and they have no respect for their elders!”. Growing up hearing these things from people outside of my generation was hard enough, but recently Johnny Oleksinski (a millennial himself), went on a huge rant about why he loathes his generation and everyone in it. It shouldn't surprise us that Millennials get a bad wrap as being “the worst generation” though, we are different from any other generation for a lot of reasons and that’s one thing that Baby Boomers detest the most; differences.

1. One thing that makes us, The Millennials, different from the other generations before us is our transparency. I believe this is why everyone despises us. We don't care what anyone thinks we have a “what you see is what you get” type attitude that people don't know how to handle. When fact of the matter is that it doesn't have to be handled. We are comfortable with ourselves. That’s why we put everything out on social media, that’s why we say exactly what’s on our minds, and people view this as rude and entitled, but it’s just honesty and confidence. We don't have to “save-face” to keep a good reputation like the generations before us, because our reputation was ruined a long time ago by people like Oleksinski.
2. Oleksinski states in the first paragraph of his extremely off-base article, that Millennials ignore the past and “abhor anyone and everything that came before them”. I’m not quite sure what type of people he’s been talking to, but goodness gracious that’s so false! Millennials have the most doors opened to the past via the internet and expanded libraries and all that jazz (thanks baby Boomers), than any generation before us. Actually I would argue that with everything that’s happened this past year or so our generation of young people have had to look back on the past to gain a standpoint on the recent events. Just because we are a generation of moving forward does not mean we turned our backs on the people of the past or the past itself, it means we just don’t live in it.
3. We are smart, contrary to popular belief. Part of it is due to our parents breathing down our backs for nothing less than an A+, and part of it is due to new knowledge. Schooling has become harder with more requirements and guidelines to achieve those requirements. If we were as brainless and “whiny” as Oleksinski would like to lead people believe, we couldn't have made it past the third grade. I'm constantly surprised at how smart the generations are becoming. It seem as though every year counties have to change the curriculum to fit in all of the new knowledge acquired, and yet we still get the grades.
4. Millennials are accepting. This kind of ties into the whole confidence thing. If you're confident in who you are and what you believe, the more likely you'll be to loving yourself and others. In the olden days people would bash others in order to appear to fit in, we accept others and therefore we all fit in. We recognize differences as a normal part of life. Variations aren't seen as a weakness or strength, they are seen as a simple truth. So Oleksinski, if you think all Millennials are whiny, entitled, dependent, and lazy; just know that some of us are delightful, humble, independent, and hard working. You should probably stop judging people without knowing them like the rest of us learned how to do did a long time ago.
5. Neil Howe and Williams Strauss wrote a book called Millennials Rising: The New Great Generation. In this book the co-authors write, “Over the next decade, the Millennial Generation will entirely recast the image of youth from downbeat and alienated to upbeat and engaged--with potentially seismic consequences for America”. They state that Millennials are smart, well-behaved and optimistic; and give insight as to why older generations wont admit to us being just that. This book is opinionated but it also has polls, data, and quotes from all generations (unlike Oleksinski’s article) to prove their point that Millennials are good kids just like the rest of you were.

So Oleksinski your “points” are invalid.Your definition of Millennials sounds a whole lot like a definition of just you rather than the rest of us. I’m not sure if you are insecure so you had to attack the rest of us to make yourself seem bigger, or maybe your perception of humankind is just skewed. Millennials aren't blaming the world for their problems like you stated, we are a generation of young-at-hearts still trying to figure everything out. So what if it takes some people a little longer than others? So what if we switch up our jobs a little bit? We aren't sorry that we aren't content with mundane lives and we like to travel too much (if that even is a thing). We aren't sorry that we live fast, think fast, and work fast. This is the way the world is going and you can either lag behind or catch up.

Oleksinski ended his article telling Millennials to stop blaming everyone for their problems, thinking that they are the best, and stop waiting for good things to happen. We don't blame the world for bad things that happen to us we blame people like him for being closed-minded and arrogant. In reality it’s the other generations who blame Millennials for every problem that has occurred when we haven't even had the time to screw anything up yet, that was them. We think we are the best because we’re young, thats a part of going through youth and every generation has gone through that sort of “rebellious stage”. Last but not least we are definitely not waiting for good things to happen, our generation has the most entrepreneurs since the Baby Boomers. From app designers, to home kit meal plans, and blankets that have sleeves, we aspire and dream in every way possible.

Oleksinski, we have proven time and time again that we indestructible, so naturally we don't care if you like us. We don't need you, a single person, or anyone else to. We like ourselves and unlike any generation before us; we are perfectly content with being the only ones who do.

An excerpt from John Green’s, Looking for Alaska:

“When adults say, “Teenagers think they are invincible” with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.”