On the whole 60 Minutes vs. Millenials fiasco
To recap: 60 Minutes ran a piece saying that millenials (those born from 1980-1995) are lazy little pricks who put their yoga classes above work, among other things. This has caused a fervor online among individuals born, coincidentally, from 1980-1995.
I shall summarize my opinion, as usual, in easy-to-digest bullet point form:
If you’re a millenial and offended by the video, try to hide your true emotions. Whining about a program on 60 Minutes — a show you and I both never watched until this crisis arose — just makes you look like the coddled little bitches they’re saying you are.
It would have been a much better piece if they had a dude who evoked Mr. Burns yell “Fuck Mister Rogers” into the camera at some point.
Coming up with a few adjectives to describe 80-million people who happen to be born between 1980 to 1995 is like saying the entire population of Germany is into freaky sex acts. Ridiculous, so don’t worry about it.
For serious, 60 Minutes knows how to get people to watch their shit.
You’re special.
I agree. The largest error that 60M made was projecting a sample (parents who complain about work evaluations? really?) across an entire generation.
This piece has as much to do with how our parents raised us as anything else, and it’s up to us to decide what kind of report card they get, so to speak. To be honest, I think their criticism of us looking for our dream jobs is somewhat warranted… I’ve talked with a number of parental units who either seem shellshocked that their kids don’t absolutely love their job (which was seemingly set on Day 1 of freshman year of college), or, at the very least, aware that perhaps “you can do anything!” wasn’t exactly the right advice to a 7 year old. Personally, I wanted paleontologist, but I think all those dinosaurs were found already. At least, the cool ones were.
The big question is if we could turn things upside down in the corporate world and make business better as a whole (not just the fun internet parts). The possibility is there.
Other random points:
- Love how the theme of the piece is how it’s disconcerting that the 2000ers are treating the world as if there has been progress since the last generation. Shouldn’t we do that? If we live in a world where we have to sign out for bathroom breaks, deal with mass layovers for the lower tier when we hit a low point, and… really… we’re amazed by how great the vacation time is for other countries… perhaps we haven’t made much progress beyond flat boobtubes.
- Zappos? If The Office is on one end of the spectrum for office misery, Zappo’s gotta be on the other side. That looked dreadful.
- Seriously guys, let’s not flip a lid when we’re criticized. It doesn’t exactly dispel the myth.
