The 20-something generation, known as “the millennials,” seems appropriately titled, as it sounds like a cheesy all-girl, Avril-Lavigne-esque punk band a millennial would have jammed to at 13.
 
For 29 delightful years, I was adequately cushioned by my own social bubble, ignoring or looking down on these youngsters. But at 30, with everyone married or moving far away, I’ve felt thrust into a world of millennials. My new dating and social pool was in elementary school when I was sucking down MD 20/20s on Hobie Beach. My former roommate is five years younger than me, but as a B-52s, RuPaul, and Michael Stipe enthusiast, and a creatively dressed Gayasian — how was I to know he was the exception to the rule? What am I perceptive? The rest of these kids are apparently not very interesting.

At first, I was intimidated by these cocky, little bores. “Respect me!” I screamed silently inside, “I am your elder!”

They didn’t notice. 

Now, faced with legions of these fresh-faced jerkoffs, I began to feel foreign, alien, old. But in reality, you couldn’t tell us apart. On the outside, we’re all chucks and glasses. What separates is presumably on the inside.
 
Last time I considered “generational” differences, it was mocking my mom’s love of show tunes or attempting to read the Douglas Coupland Gen Xer books that came out when I was in high school. At that age, the “older” generation fascinated me. I truly believe I am the only person ever who saw Clerks twice in the theater.

The Gen Xers were the same age as older cousins, but cooler. These were the people who made the television we watched, the music to which we wished we knew all the words. These were our giants! Great role models they certainly were not, but an interesting group of geniuses. Think of Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon, Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth, Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands, Christian Slater in Pump Up the Volume, Spike Lee, and Wynona Ryder, man.

There was an easy sort of brilliance, an unkempt, lazy, downtrodden success. Milennials versus Generation Xers; it’s Biggie versus Kanye. My good taste would like to claim myself to Biggie’s generation, yet I’m Kanye’s age. Being born in 1979 places you somewhere awkwardly in the middle.

Who are the heroes of the millennials then? Us? Me? These younger kids all look “cool,” but they also all look the same. They all have the iphones, the Macs, the skinny jeans, the khafias, the stand-offish smug face. I can’t help but hate them, envy them, and then realize with shame that I actually relate to them. 

The most obnoxious thing about these young bastards is that everything with them has to be the best. They need the best, organic, flavor-balanced food, the most choice spices, the finest (presumably Belgian) beer, the coolest underwear, the best bike lock. This 24-year old I dated bought three knives for $400 while not actually steadily employed. I was very WTF at first, but then I remembered how an ex, born in 1979, bought every electronic gadget (including a first-generation bluetooth) and every fancy bit of camping gear imaginable the second he got a fairly decent job. Where does one generation begin and the other end?

A Flavorwire article looks at how goddamned nice these millennials are and how boring they’re making MTV. The image used in the article is of that tremendously terrible (and short-lived) MTV show about the too-nice, victim-type, destined-for-Williamsburg, teen-beauty-queen named Liz. I seriously couldn’t make it through an episode of My Life as Liz. She’s gorgeous and complaining about it? What happened to the dorkiness of Daria and Ghost World? What about Janeane Garofalo, and non-ironic, thick-rimmed glasses?

There was no snark in the show, but neither was there wit or humor. How do these young people live without it? It’s like the Oscar Wilde and Mae West died in them. The irreverence is unexplored. Everything is perfect and planned out; there’s no room for Auntie Mame. I guess if you were born in 1986, you missed out on the absolutely divine experience of dancing and singing your youth away to Van Halen videos right before you ran outside to roll around in the dirt, then ending the day by playing an hour of Nintendo before Chris Farley laughed you to sleep. You were too busy being coddled and cleaned.

The already overused Noah Baumbach quote from Greenberg sums up the Gen X/millennial conflict: “I’m freaked out by you kids because your parents were too perfect at parenting, all that Baby Mozart and Dan Zanes songs. You’re all ADD and carpal tunnel. I hope I die before I end up meeting one of you in a job interview.”

The people at Pew Research Center have nothing better to do than to study the shallow, snotty millennials, and they’ve created a quiz that indicates your generation. I took the quiz and, sadly, it turns out that I’m a full-blown humorless, too-nice millennial. What an uncool generational name. Gen X is tough; it’s rock (granted Billy Idol-rock, but whatever). Millennial sounds like a man in Toms.  

A recent, well-mentioned article in The Observer discusses super-sweet, internet psychos, and their influence on other peoples’ niceness on the Web. It’s hard to say, “fuck-off — you suck” to people you have to face daily. It’s also pretty funny how instinctively polite I manage to be when sober. I find it almost impossible to directly criticize people I know on my blog (not that I don’t find a way to get my point across). My brother said it was the anti-punk, but I think it’s the passive-aggressive punk, the obnoxious southern smile with a bitter taste on the tongue. Nice is creepy. Millennials are nice. Millennials are creepy. 

Oh, to live on the cusp! I am a sincere, polite person, like the media claims the millennials are. I think the greatest thing that separates me and my early-30s buddies from them is that we have a high tolerance for assholes. Recently, a friend who is my age went to a party where almost everyone present was 25-ish. She was shocked by how polite everyone was. Their booze manners were immaculate. They all asked her if they could make a drink from the bottle she brought before guzzling. 

Now, if you’re drinking with my age group, you know that if you bring a case of beer you have to hide a few in your car or you will be left with none for yourself, because as soon as you place that case in the fridge the broke ass gen Xers and millennial cusps will have rushed in like fire ants and left only the skeleton of a cardboard box as proof that you contributed to the party. I don’t respect it, but I understand it. I accept it. When your heroes were “The Guy on the Couch,” you’re going to take what you can get.

Another key distinction is that people my age can live comfortably with less — much, much less — like Ramen-noodle-3-nights-a-week less. To get the best you have to work hard, and that’s what these kids do. This is not part of my nature. I remember watching Slacker on Bravo in the 90s and thinking how great it would be to never ever work, never to be an adult. I ended up with the pretentious tastes of the younger generation, and the crooked ideals of the older.

It’s a hard line we walk, but us late 70s babies are doing it. Ah, fuck it: we’re the worst of both worlds — lazy and needy but intent on winning and eating organic. I never thought it’d be this hard to grow up, but then I look at them and I cringe. Robert Daltrey sang, “I hope I die before I get old,” but these stranglings already are old. They’re demanding little adults who like to work hard and think irony is only about wearing neon colors and American Apparel. I guess the free spirit of the hippy is dead in these bastards. Their DYI isn’t dirty. It’s expensive. These “hippies” wear $200 jeans, not thrift store trash.  

So, I thank God I wasn’t born in the 80s. There is a sense of liberation in being lost-in-space, in-between, caught-in-the-middle. I love old, used shit, I make crafts, and I say hi to strangers. I have a job and I own a Polo tee-shirt but I’m sure as shit no yuppie, ‘cause I bought it at Marshalls, in the kids section, because that’s how we in-betweeners do.

My semi-generation defines itself. We say where we stand, not where they tell us to place our feet. So, as the Gen Xers settle down in suburbia and the millennials redefine the workplace, I’m allowed to wait to have babies, and I was free to drive the country on less than $2,000 when I got laid off. It’s a strange sort of non-commitment, but I think I can not stick to it.