The article was titled “Why I’m Tired of My Generation.”
A juicy headline, no doubt. The specter of a fatigued college student alone begs a read. A friend shared this gem on Facebook apropos of nothing, and it transported me to a new world. The wonderful world of Odyssey.
Selling itself as a “social content platform that discovers and shares a chorus of millennial voices,” Odyssey has a number of categories, some more interesting than others. After a quick skim of the site’s policies, I was leaning heavily toward signing up on behalf of Gamecock Nation.
Right up until I started reading.
“Why I’m Tired,” filed under articles of 500 words or less, was aptly subtitled “Simply a rant.” From the looks of it, Odyssey has many "simply a rants," and this was indeed a rant. Yes sir indeed, a rant. A rant in the same manner that "Get Hard" was Simply a Masterpiece.
It packs as much punch as you’d expect a 350-word diatribe from an Arkansas sorority sister would. Briefly summed up, ‘90s babies have an undeserved sense of entitlement, normalize of disrespect towards authority figures. America clings to number one position in spite of us. Comments agree wholeheartedly, roll credits.
Normally I shake off bad journalism, but, unfortunately, one problem that does in fact plague my generation is that they are more inclined to read HuffPo than David Simon or, on the other side of the aisle, take Breitbart over George Will. Hence, the piece’s 8,000 Facebook shares.
So, to fight the ironically-fashionable trend of ragging on my generation, I will fulfill the role of laughing at those who find it ironically fashionable to rag on my generation. I am not here to debate the ethics of police brutality nor the protesting of. I am simply here to provide context.
And certainly, context is key when evaluating this generation. The age of Ike, the Johnson half of the '60s, the Reagan '80s, what did they have in common? People were real back then. They had real integrity and they really loved their families and they ate real food. There was none of this skateboarding on the sidewalks. First time someone took a swing at a cop was what, 2011? If my memory serves me, heroin became fashionable about that time, as did infidelity and bunting against the infield shift.
You are special, millennials, in that you see a need to police yourselves. And you are not, in that a good portion of every generation that preceded you has felt exactly the same. To say nothing of their parents.
The difference is that, without the Internet, those who preceded you had to be qualified to write about this perceived societal disrespect before they were allowed to write about it before an audience of more than family and friends.
Books were usually involved in this process.
BuzzFeed quizzes were not.
Now get back to work.