“He’s a millennial. That means they’re the,
you know, like, lost generation.” As quickly as they arrived, it seems
like millennials might be over. For years, viral media posts
asked how millennials – people born
between 1981 and 1996 – would save the world and
embrace new technology in order to
fundamentally change things. But now things seem
less certain than ever, and the promised changes
have yet to materialize, and millennials born
in the early 1980s, also known as elder
millennials or “geriatric” millennials, are entering their 40s. “I am a millennial,
but I am an ELDER!” [Elderly voice] “I’ll
tell you the tale…” [Whoosh] “...of the landline.” Some of the most powerful people
in the world are elder millennials. But are they losing
their cultural capital? And what are they like as
they approach middle age or become parents? Ultimately millennials,
as a generation, have been defined by
the loss of potential, whether that’s through social media,
their fleeting pop culture dominance, or the concept of
the traditional family. “You kids have been told
you can do anything. You think everything is out
there for you to have. It's not.” But in each case, millennials
have found new and exciting ways to adapt and reshape the culture – proving that rather
than being “snowflakes,” they’re actually quite resilient. “Greg, it’s not 1997.
It’s not this, it’s not that. Don’t be so binary, Mr. Betamax.” So where is the Elder Millennial
today – and will they be okay? If you’re new here,
be sure to subscribe and click the bell to get notified
about all our new videos. “You deserve paid work.” “I can't get paid work. I just graduated from
Cornell with a business degree. That's the worst Ivy.” Millennials, and especially
older millennials, are at risk of getting lost. They’re trapped between
gen-x and boomers, a generation that has held
onto power for decades, and Gen Z, which now holds cultural
capital and collective fascination. Practically as long as we’ve been
telling stories about older millennials we’ve been telling stories
about the fact that they’ve been pushed out by younger people. “Well, it’s just going to be
a bunch of young people.” “So…” For older millennials, the entry into
adulthood was, from the beginning, a story of loss, as the generation
graduated from college around or just after the 2008 financial crisis. “I had this idea, this dream, this
vision of where my life was gonna go, and then I had to put it on hold
because there weren’t jobs out there” “I still haven’t recovered from 2008” This is part of why Girls is
one of the most recognizable portraits of older millennials – the girls of Girls remain just that –
“girls” in arrested development, unable to grow up into women – in part because of how little
room they’ve been given to actually make a career. “Do you know how crazy
the economy is right now? I mean, all my friends get
help from their parents.” Hannah and her friends are millennials
who have spent their entire adult lives blamed for their own
financial and personal problems, whether it’s thanks to the
idea that they were ruined by “participation trophies” and
the expectation of success, or the viral myth that they spend
all their money on avocado toast. Termed the “Me Me Me Generation”,
Millennials have been described as lazy and entitled for years,
and widely assumed to be obnoxiously self-centered,
if not full-on narcissistic. “I am a millennial. We are known
for our entitlement and narcissism.” Meanwhile, millennials who have managed
to carve out success for themselves don’t like being identified
as millennials at all. Some didn’t even call themselves
millennials a decade ago, when “millennial” had
the implication of youth. “Yes Jess, that’s exactly what
hip, trendy millennials want to eat: casserole.” It’s hard to blame them for
wanting to avoid the label: even though the oldest
millennials are in their 40s, the dominant narrative
about them hasn’t changed. “What do they call them?
‘Millellials’?” “Millennials.” “People love to hate them.
It’s like a national obsession” Stories about how millennials
spend too much money on food and Netflix subscriptions
continue to this day, even though the real reason
millennials are less likely to own property is because
their wages are stagnant. It took 15 years for older millennials
to recover from the devastation of the 2008 financial crisis and ensuing
Great Recession, followed by the added burdens of the
Covid-19 pandemic. “For the first time in modern memory,
we’re having to confront the ugly truth: that my generation will be worse off
than my parents and grandparents were.” This has left millennials with
a sense of powerlessness, and a need to find new
ways to define themselves – and it’s made them
susceptible to nihilism. “It seems that our one defining
trait is a numbness to the world. An indifference to suffering.” No show has captured that helplessness
and frustrated need for meaning better than Search Party, perhaps the definitive
portrayal of older millennials. “Who are you hiding from?” “Honestly? Myself.” Following its opening scene at brunch,
much of the series is a long, extended joke about millennials, exploring
how the generation’s difficult financial circumstances have, in fact,
made some of the stereotypes true. “Working feels bad and I don’t
ever wanna work one more day in my entire life.” At the beginning of Search Party,
older millennial protagonist, Dory, ropes her friends into looking for
a missing college acquaintance – but she’s really driven by a
profound lack of meaning or purpose in her aimless life. And it turns out the
whole quest is for nothing – they were looking for someone
who never needed rescuing. “Isn’t this hilarious, you guys?
I mean, like, nothing happened! Like, we literally - we thought
all these crazy bad things and literally nothing happened.” This expectation of big events
that fail to materialize is the perfect representation of the
elder millennial experience. But Dory keeps searching –
and by the time the series ends, her striving for enlightenment and
improving the world have done a ton more damage than
anything she set out to fix. So there’s a creeping feeling that
her fatal mistake was ever trying to achieve more or expecting
to find meaning in this existential wasteland in the first place. Whether you’re an eBay whiz,
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simply click to microphone at the top of the page and enter code: THETAKE. If the early years of the millennial
generation were defined by anything, it was the rise of the internet. The internet came with a promise
of openness and connectivity, an ideal that fueled the young
adulthood of many millennials. “The way we win is by creating a new,
democratic, decentralized internet.” Many of the early successful millennials
made billions based on the idea that the internet had the potential
to connect people, and rise above the divisions that
had defined the 20th century. “We lived on farms,
then we lived in cities, and now we’re going
to live on the internet.” And there’s a sense in
which this promise came true: movements like the Arab Spring were
fueled by widespread access to social media, which made it possible for
protestors to communicate rapidly, and actualized the
potential of an open internet. “Millions of people in one country
after another were tasting freedom of expression for the very first time.” But on the other hand, the companies
that embodied the promise of openness and connection have proven that,
in fact, it might not be the best thing to have everyone constantly
plugged in all the time. “The millennials are very online.
This sort of thing can spread.” Recent shows looking back at
the hype of 2010s tech unicorns explore the disconnect between what
was promised through millennial culture and what actually materialized. WeCrashed dramatizes how WeWork
rose thanks to cool-sounding rhetoric of togetherness and a lifestyle revolution,
but was ultimately exploiting low-paid labor to enrich people at the top. “We can't lose the millennials.
We need them.” (Scoffs) “Why?” “Because they work 80 hours a
week for free beer and T-shirts.” And The Dropout’s story of Theranos CEO,
Elizabeth Holmes, captures how millennial optimism and hopes of changing the
world could be easily co-opted by a few bad actors and reduced to empty
words in service of raising money. “Our series B round
closed at $165 million.” (Yelling) “I'm going
to change the world!” 2000s and 2010s millennial culture
did radically change dominant aesthetics and the starting points
of cultural conversations – yet it seemed that little of that
impact returned as concrete gains or security for the
regular young people who believed they were on
the cusp of important change. “You keep saying we're a family
and that this is our company, but none of that is true.
So please just stop saying it.” As elder millennials have
started to enter middle age, they’ve also been forced to confront
that their options for families are fundamentally different from those
of their parents and grandparents. Birthrates are declining and,
as Business Insider reports, “People of childbearing age,
many of whom are millennials, are delaying having children” –
often for economic reasons. We see this reflected onscreen. Previous generations of
aspirational TV comedies followed upwardly mobile
professionals, who were able to live the American dream. “We’re getting a house.” “And a baby.” “We’re growing up.” But the Friends equivalent
for this generation, New Girl, follows several millennials with
stagnant careers, packed into an apartment that’s far less glamorous
than Rachel’s and Monica’s, sharing a lifestyle that still feels
like a college dorm. “Hey, why are you guys all in here?” “I’m brushing my teeth!”
“Doing the thing.” “Is she hogging the shower?
Cece, come on. Hurry up!” Millennials onscreen
are having kids later, having fewer kids, and having
more problems when they do. The millennial characters who
do get to have traditional families often have compromised
their morals or their dreams, cynically assimilating into industries
and systems largely controlled by boomers so they can pay
for a mortgage and schools. And even when they’ve achieved
a semblance of stability, they’re often still living in the past. “We still haven’t
been to the new Largo.” “Remember our Largo days?
I miss our Largo days.” “Me too. Still can’t believe you
flashed Gnarls Barkley after that Fiona Apple Show.” Millennial TV series, You’re the Worst,
explores this demographic through Rob and Lexi, a “cool”
millennial couple with a young child. At first, series protagonist Gretchen
follows Rob and Lexi around, fixating on them as an example of
what she could have if she and her boyfriend Jimmy were able to
commit to having a child and a house while still remaining “cool”. But the illusion falls away fast: adulthood simply fits
wrong on Rob and Lexi, and Rob confides in Gretchen
that he also feels adrift and regrets his choices. There’s simply no
way to have it all. “It’s a really good car.
Gas mileage is great. But I see it in the driveway
and it’s like, um, whaaat?” Rob and Lexi, and the older
millennials they represent, are trying to cling to their
fading cultural cachet – but at the same time, they don’t
want to change with the times, or work to understand how things could
be different for the younger generation. “She’s never gonna make a good stepmom.” “Doing YouTube makeup
tutorials is not a career.” The lack of opportunities millennials
have had can help explain why they feel so attached to
their cultural capital and unwilling to let it slip away,
even as they’re equally anxious to hang onto any level of
available financial security. Millennials have long been
heavily defined by the communities they form online, and
specifically around pop culture Millennials are the
generation that made Harry Potter, the initial audience for the
Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the drivers behind the entertainment
industry’s commitment to trying to cultivate larger fandoms. But after only about a decade
of millennial cultural dominance, the tides are already
turning in favor of Gen Z, which is now the object
of collective fascination. “I know your generation relied
on flowers and fathers' permission, but it's 2019, and unless you're
Amish, nudes are the currency of love, so stop shaming us.” Still, elder millennials do have certain
power and potential available to them as they enter this middle-age period. Many have been leaving their
jobs in large numbers as part of the “Great Resignation,”
making them some of the most powerful people in the workforce. As the generation who
grew up along with the internet, they’re arguably the best
positioned to run hybrid workplaces. Even the general fact that millennials
exist between boomers and Gen Z means they can mediate between these
two very different generational poles. “I think that I may be
the voice of my generation. Or at least, a voice
of a generation.” Millennials have been
defined, above all, by crisis. They’ve been caught up in a series
of cascading crises that have left them in a much different world than
the one they were promised. Even amidst 2022’s rising inflation,
some experts note that the middle-aged, i.e. elder millennials, are
among the worst affected by it. But millennial so-called “snowflakes”
have had to become incredibly resilient, adaptive and creative in the
face of all these challenges. They’ve helped to redefine
so many cultural standards in far-reaching ways that paved
the way for Gen Z’s outlook to have a fundamentally
different starting point. So even at this
low moment in millennials’ political
and literal capital, we haven’t seen the last
of this generation’s power. “Be nice to the millennials. We’ll
be controlling your Medicare soon.” Thank you for watching The Take. Don’t forget to subscribe and let
us know what you’re watching.
