Millennials Are Entitled, Narcissistic And Lazy - But It's Not Their Fault

[Dhair]

The effect of high technology (particularly social media platforms) on society is wholly negative compared to what I would like.
I would think that making the world smaller and being in constant contact with friends and neighbors would have an ego-dissolving effect, not an ego-feeding one.
Young women are particularly susceptible to this kind of attention. They're all mini-celebrities now. When everyone is constantly telling you how beautiful and perfect you are then positive reinforcement and work in general will become foreign concepts to you. I don't know how one could expect anything other than a totally nihilistic, hedonistic cultural attitude, which is what I think we've got. Our lives are devoid of all spirit and meaning.
Young men, on the other hand, are left in the cold. You need to look no further than the dramatic increase in suicide rates. As women become more hypergamous, men will "feminize" themselves in order to get closer to the opposite sex. This mating tactic is reflected in some animal species.
Ultimately, the western world is gravely ill.

 

[amethyst]

The effect of high technology (particularly social media platforms) on society is wholly negative compared to what I would like.
I would think that making the world smaller and being in constant contact with friends and neighbors would have an ego-dissolving effect, not an ego-feeding one.
Young women are particularly susceptible to this kind of attention. They're all mini-celebrities now. When everyone is constantly telling you how beautiful and perfect you are then positive reinforcement and work in general will become foreign concepts to you. I don't know how one could expect anything other than a totally nihilistic, hedonistic cultural attitude, which is what I think we've got. Our lives are devoid of all spirit and meaning.
Young men, on the other hand, are left in the cold. You need to look no further than the dramatic increase in suicide rates. As women become more hypergamous, men will "feminize" themselves in order to get closer to the opposite sex. This mating tactic is reflected in some animal species.
Ultimately, the western world is gravely ill.

Right. Because it's all about MEEEEEEEEEE! Selfies and ME. ME and selfies. What I ate for dinner. Where I go on vacation . Me Me Me! Glad someone else recognizes the insanity.

 

[Drareg]

What is sitting here and whining going to accomplish? Enlighten me, I'm all ears.

It will accomplish action and uncovering the motives behind human use of words,generally the purpose of dialogue.

 

[PUTFOT]

It will accomplish action and uncovering the motives behind human use of words,generally the purpose of dialogue.

Telling millennials none of this is their fault then encouraging bitching about the situation will accomplish action. Sound logic.

 

[Drareg]

Telling millennials none of this is their fault then encouraging bitching about the situation will accomplish action. Sound logic.

It's not entirely their fault and I encourage discussion to uncover more of the reality behind the issue if possible,your comments are classic rigidity and faux alpha male.

 

[PUTFOT]

your comments are classic rigidity and faux alpha male.

Uh-oh busted.

 

[Nova]

Here's a clip that was floating around the Redditsphere recently:


Millennials just happened to inherit civilization after its glorious apex. It's sad to reflect upon what the American Dream (or the Canadian/British/Whatever Nation Dream) might mean to people who were born during the early days of its decline.

All of these great minds proclaim to speak for a generation that they themselves are not members of. There's a certain sort of tongue in cheekness to this interview and many others whenever the topic of Millennials comes up. See, most of the high profile talk show and podcast hosts are Gen Xers. Old enough to remember the good old days of a seemingly prosperous economy and maybe fortunate enough to get a university education before the student loan cartel took that racket over completely.

They look down on the next generation coming up in their wake and they be like "WTF? These kids. These damn kids, they can't adult. WTF am I going to do, how am I going to lead, manage, tell these f_ckers what to do and how to do it and how can I realize my true potential if I can't get these kids to do their part..."

They trot out their allegations of participation trophies ruining sport and how grade inflation devalues effort and so on like it's some sort of gospel. And maybe it is, among the future tiger moms and Friday night father figures that are often the same folks willing to fork over money for seminars and books and the like. It's not gospel to those of us that lived it, lemme tell ya.

The West has a problem: We are no longer exceptional. No longer the best. We just can't go for that. That's why we elected a reality TV star / casino man as our president. It's not because he's a great leader or has tons of experience. It's because he says that he'll change things. Donald Trump will make us great again...

I disagree with Sinek that it's the corporation's job to help these kids develop "life skills". What are life skills anyway? The ability to be fully engaged in a meeting without staring at your phone? That's a high bar to set, right there, because who the hell is fully engaged in every single meeting, 100% of the time. Do you get penalized if you doze off? How about if you start doodling on a scrap of paper? What if you pass a note to a colleague? Or ask to take a bathroom break?

And have we even bothered to question the need for meetings in the first place? A lot of meetings turn out to be organized events where a bossling or aspiring bossling spends a chunk of time pontificating on various things for their own gratification. Any pertinent information will passed around via email, group chat or the bulletin board anyway. So why are we even there in the first place?

I submit that the reason why there is such disconnect between Millennials and the workforce is that the older generations are insisting upon adhering to a model of doing things that no longer works. Pun intended, :p

Think about it...a significant portion of modern jobs do not actually require our physical presence. Yet we're required to go sit in a room somewhere for 8ish billable hours a day (sometimes more) in order to do those jobs. Many of us in corporate-world spend lots of time rearranging things on a screen, answering calls, responding to emails or sorting through stacks of whatever. That's all stuff that can be done just about anywhere with access to technology, yet TPTB insist that we must go to XCorp HQ and sit in Cubicle 59B to do it. Why? Because that's the way it's always been done? WTF is that about?

Millennials are not all entitled or lazy. I think that some of us who are on the older side have realized that we just don't want to play the game by the established rules. We aren't looking to buy a 4 bed, 4 bath McMansion in an area with A+ schools and a new car every 3-5 years. We aren't looking to sit behind a desk until we're 55-60 and plan for a retirement that may not ever come to fruition. I think many of older Millennials are looking beyond the pragmatic here-and-now and thinking more about the idealistic there-and-future.

We want to be better off than our parents who worked themselves to death and were never around. We want better for our kids (if we have them), better than growing up in broken homes and going to public schools where we know they are lied to on a daily basis and have no freedoms.

Some of us don't do social media because that sh!t is toxic. Plus it loses its allure rather quickly once you get out into the so-called real world and realize that most of your friends are just as lame as you are, if not more so. It's all pictures of there progeny or their pets. Or endless cycles of reposts of quote porn and recipes for sh!t that no human should really be eating. Sometimes it's nice though, to feel connected to a larger world in some small ways. After all, there are 7 billion of us and only a small handful have ever "made an impact". Most of us just make waves or ripples. Those are necessary too, because small actions can have big effects over time.

 

[amethyst]

Here's a clip that was floating around the Redditsphere recently:


Millennials just happened to inherit civilization after its glorious apex. It's sad to reflect upon what the American Dream (or the Canadian/British/Whatever Nation Dream) might mean to people who were born during the early days of its decline.

All of these great minds proclaim to speak for a generation that they themselves are not members of. There's a certain sort of tongue in cheekness to this interview and many others whenever the topic of Millennials comes up. See, most of the high profile talk show and podcast hosts are Gen Xers. Old enough to remember the good old days of a seemingly prosperous economy and maybe fortunate enough to get a university education before the student loan cartel took that racket over completely.

They look down on the next generation coming up in their wake and they be like "WTF? These kids. These damn kids, they can't adult. WTF am I going to do, how am I going to lead, manage, tell these f_ckers what to do and how to do it and how can I realize my true potential if I can't get these kids to do their part..."

They trot out their allegations of participation trophies ruining sport and how grade inflation devalues effort and so on like it's some sort of gospel. And maybe it is, among the future tiger moms and Friday night father figures that are often the same folks willing to fork over money for seminars and books and the like. It's not gospel to those of us that lived it, lemme tell ya.

The West has a problem: We are no longer exceptional. No longer the best. We just can't go for that. That's why we elected a reality TV star / casino man as our president. It's not because he's a great leader or has tons of experience. It's because he says that he'll change things. Donald Trump will make us great again...

I disagree with Sinek that it's the corporation's job to help these kids develop "life skills". What are life skills anyway? The ability to be fully engaged in a meeting without staring at your phone? That's a high bar to set, right there, because who the hell is fully engaged in every single meeting, 100% of the time. Do you get penalized if you doze off? How about if you start doodling on a scrap of paper? What if you pass a note to a colleague? Or ask to take a bathroom break?

And have we even bothered to question the need for meetings in the first place? A lot of meetings turn out to be organized events where a bossling or aspiring bossling spends a chunk of time pontificating on various things for their own gratification. Any pertinent information will passed around via email, group chat or the bulletin board anyway. So why are we even there in the first place?

I submit that the reason why there is such disconnect between Millennials and the workforce is that the older generations are insisting upon adhering to a model of doing things that no longer works. Pun intended, :p

Think about it...a significant portion of modern jobs do not actually require our physical presence. Yet we're required to go sit in a room somewhere for 8ish billable hours a day (sometimes more) in order to do those jobs. Many of us in corporate-world spend lots of time rearranging things on a screen, answering calls, responding to emails or sorting through stacks of whatever. That's all stuff that can be done just about anywhere with access to technology, yet TPTB insist that we must go to XCorp HQ and sit in Cubicle 59B to do it. Why? Because that's the way it's always been done? WTF is that about?

Millennials are not all entitled or lazy. I think that some of us who are on the older side have realized that we just don't want to play the game by the established rules. We aren't looking to buy a 4 bed, 4 bath McMansion in an area with A+ schools and a new car every 3-5 years. We aren't looking to sit behind a desk until we're 55-60 and plan for a retirement that may not ever come to fruition. I think many of older Millennials are looking beyond the pragmatic here-and-now and thinking more about the idealistic there-and-future.

We want to be better off than our parents who worked themselves to death and were never around. We want better for our kids (if we have them), better than growing up in broken homes and going to public schools where we know they are lied to on a daily basis and have no freedoms.

Some of us don't do social media because that sh!t is toxic. Plus it loses its allure rather quickly once you get out into the so-called real world and realize that most of your friends are just as lame as you are, if not more so. It's all pictures of there progeny or their pets. Or endless cycles of reposts of quote porn and recipes for sh!t that no human should really be eating. Sometimes it's nice though, to feel connected to a larger world in some small ways. After all, there are 7 billion of us and only a small handful have ever "made an impact". Most of us just make waves or ripples. Those are necessary too, because small actions can have big effects over time.

Great points.

In a nutshell:


QUOTE:
"I submit that the reason why there is such disconnect between Millennials and the workforce is that the older generations are insisting upon adhering to a model of doing things that no longer works. Pun intended, :p"

I agree.

QUOTE:
"Millennials are not all entitled or lazy. I think that some of us who are on the older side have realized that we just don't want to play the game by the established rules. We aren't looking to buy a 4 bed, 4 bath McMansion in an area with A+ schools and a new car every 3-5 years. We aren't looking to sit behind a desk until we're 55-60 and plan for a retirement that may not ever come to fruition. I think many of older Millennials are looking beyond the pragmatic here-and-now and thinking more about the idealistic there-and-future"

Very true. Many have seen the writing on the wall and are faced with seeing reality for what it is. How does one support oneself and plan when the economic future is so tenuous? You do the best you can do right now, with what you got.

 

[lexis]

Right. Because it's all about MEEEEEEEEEE! Selfies and ME. ME and selfies. What I ate for dinner. Where I go on vacation . Me Me Me! Glad someone else recognizes the insanity.

Someone wrote that if you were to send postcards of your new car to every neighbour in the 80s you will be
given strong medication. But now the insanity is the new normal.

 

[X3CyO]

I wonder if it's also because of the information overload of the internet (Ontop of social media, etc., etc.)

It's a lot easier to make us think that we know more than we do because we can cram so much more in, but the value of life providing the stress to apply the knowledge, and refine it into a tool is lost. Kids don't have to face the same situations as past generations where you're tossed to life to experience the suffering and get out of it using a few tools, whereas now, we have all the tools and none of the skills/experience. It's extremely condusive to an ADHD mind.


You can see that the kids who are forced to survive, or given the option to escape the traditional path that can push through become very successful; a lot of them becoming "meme's".

It's easy to see how the suffering has changed who they are to different degrees and makes me wonder more about what is "adaptive vs mal-adaptive". Everything that has been done has been to raise the standard of living to make life so much more enjoyable and secure, but what happens when you're already content with just about nothing? Like traditional peoples who lived as land stewards before they were invaded/decimated.


It doesn't help that there are minds out there that teach it (for people who need it), but kids have access to it too, then what? Nobody's doing work; promoting a life of only saving rather than making more. What happens to the economy? What happens when they're "out-competed"? Is this all a "necessary mal-adaptive" function of pufa for the people who know to just survive to perpetuate the opposite behavior of kindness and stewardship in the end?



I wonder if this is the downfall of free-time and freedom: When it's spent on our own instead of as communities as it once was, it's much easier to enter a state of learned helplessness and the downward spiral into an ego that builds exponentially. We've lost our way of wanting to help others and working symbiotically in the face of all the competition, and restrictions to join without paying an arm and a leg.

With all the information that is out, it's hard to not become a perfectionist of sorts; wanting to avoid any and all problems by learning everything. It's nerve-wracking, cause even in the end, you still end up offending someone, or destroying yourself in the process. How do you know if you're right if you're taught to be open minded and to always consider the context? How do you not go crazy in a world already gone crazy? Avoiding failure and always being wrong?

Don't know really where I'm going with this.

basically what @Nova said.

What do you do when you're at the end of a prosperous cycle? is self-destruction the only option, even with the foresight to see it coming?