Proud, Empty, Hollow Things

Sometimes you get the sense that these magazines’ cultural writers have very little experience with the entire American culture, and prefer to make their grand analyses based on what people they know in the gentrified parts of cities like New York and Los Angeles were talking about at brunch last weekend. The type of young person that magazine writers come across most frequently are magazine interns. Because the media industry is high-status, but, at least early on, very low pay in a very expensive city, it attracts a lot of rich kids. Entitled, arrogant, spoiled, preening — those are the alleged signature traits of Millennials, as diagnosed by countless magazine writers. Those traits curiously align perfectly with the signature traits of a rich kid. Have you seen your intern on Rich Kids of Instagram? If so, he or she is probably not the best guide to crafting the composite personality of a generation that fought three wars for you.

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Elspeth Reeve, “Every Every Every Generation Has Been The Me Me Me Generation,” The Atlantic (via andrewtsks)

As a millennial, I’m busy appreciating the fallout from Joel Stein’s article (whose unfairness I’d explain, but why bother when Elspeth Reeve just did). I’d also direct your attention to this post by Matt Bors, in which he said, among other things:

Maligned as a bunch of shiftless, tech-addled children raised to think they’d all get trophies, Millennials are trying to build careers out of the ruins of a job market. Amid a group that’s supposed to be a bunch of entitled kids, all I see around me are young people juggling multiple jobs and unpaid internships while trying to blot their (trigger warning!) student debt from their minds.

Essentially, you can either repeatedly report the accurate and nauseating facts about national student loan debt, ridiculous internships and unpaid work, low minimum wage and un/underemployment in the 18-25 set, OR you can label us a generation of useless, self-obsessed hipsters. And I’m going to stop there, because actually arguing against this article is at this point completely unnecessary (see the entire rest of the Internet for the last three days. I imagine if you just search “uggghhhh” or “shut up joel stein,” they’ll get you to the right places). 

(via thepoliticalnotebook)

(via thepoliticalnotebook)

My heart wants roots. My mind wants wings. I cannot bear their bickerings.

—E. Y. Harburg  (via thalamtnafsee)

(Source: wistfulcoffee, via machistado)

You are the universe, expressing itself as a human for a little while.

—Eckhart Tolle (via hymntohope)

(Source: rabbitinthemoon, via foreignphilosophy)