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Millenials Get Their Feelings Hurt
The Biscuits baseball team, the Tampa Bay Rays’ Double-A affiliate, sponsored a clever satire of millennials last week. The team offered a Millennials Night with avocado burgers, napping and selfie stations, and participation ribbons for everyone who came. Naturally, the agenda caused a backlash, with coverage on Twitter and several news outlets.
Mind you, most of the team is manned with millenials, and they thought the theme was funny. The reaction by millennials in the area was mixed, to say the least, which only demonstrates the perception that they have no sense of humor. Melissa Warnke, vice president of the Public Relations Council of Alabama had this to say:
From a PR professional’s perspective, they’re kind of accomplishing what all of us want to accomplish, and that is people talking about your organization, not only here locally, but it’s got a lot of reach outside of our own community, outside of our state as well.
The millennials who reacted defensively are probably the same ones who don’t see the opportunities that the world offers to them and instead see themselves as victims. Even America’s favorite pastime doesn’t offer a safe space. In fact, it’s possible that the satire hit too close to home.
So I’m curious: if you’re a millennial, are you offended? If you’re not a millennial, what is your reaction? Maybe, just maybe, a few millennials will realize there is some truth to the stereotype presented. Then again, maybe not.
Published in Culture
I’m not a Millennial, but I would have laughed at it and gotten my participation ribbon.
You betcha! Me, too!
I suspect the millenials who were offended were the ones who fit the stereotypes in the ad, and the ones who found it funny (like the players on the team) did not, but are tired of their compatriots who do.
Part of my middle son’s current job is to acclimate millenials to a workplace environment. He says it is one of the more challenging aspects of his job. (He is a pipeline engineer.)
If Millennials had any sense of self-awareness, they would have laughed at themselves and come out for the game night.
I remember hearing a news story several months ago about a group of millennials who told their boss that there was another employee who should be fired. It turns out it was someone high in the firm. Guess who was fired instead?
I can’t figure it out: one minute they’re helpless, the next they think they’re in charge. I wish your son the best of luck, @seawriter!
Sounds like we have the making of a new SNL skit: “Millennial Roughneck“.
I wonder if he has seen this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo0KjdDJr1c
I sent it to him a few weeks back
He is in the design end. Millennial Roughneck would have more applicability for production companies or my old employer NOV, which makes oil rigs.
I love the name The Biscuits! The satire was a great idea – tried everything else to loosen up this generation – why not humor?
That’s not funny!
(The ones who are offended are humorless twits – that’s why.)
@mike–k, I wonder how many people screamed about it! Scary, isn’t it?
Oh, for pity’s sake…I spent several enjoyable hours w/my millennial niece yesterday: one of the brightest, kindest, most-faithful, forthright, and funny people I know: There is hope yet. :-)
It’s probably a PR name, to get people to buy more hot dogs! Makes me hungry!
Maybe cloning would be a good idea after all, @nandapanjandrum! Seriously she sounds delightful.
I am a millennial and I’m terribly offended, especially by that thing they call Big Mo. What the heck is he, some kind of reddish mutant elephant? Come on, guys, you can come up with something cuter than that.
I’m also offended by the sleepy-eyed biscuit in the basket. Every other biscuit in the basket is enthusiastic and that offensive biscuit is going to sleep. Come on, little biscuit, you can stay awake through this.
I’m also offended by everything else.
My youngest brother in law is a millennial. He insists that he is not, because his oldest siblings are not, but he does fit about 70%-80% of the stereotype, even if he can’t admit it.
But he’s not in need of safe spaces, and he’s a hard worker that shows up on time, so I can understand why he wouldn’t want to be associated with that. I couldn’t really say how he’d feel about this.
I guess I find the stereotypes of my generation funny so I also find this funny.
Liar, liar, pants on fire!!! You are a kick, @kentforrester. Now you have me feeling sorry for a biscuit. Sheesh.
They are talking about the ones growing up around the year 2,000 AD, not 1,000 AD, Kent.
Every positive example gives me hope, @qoumidan. They set examples for others, whether or not they’re in the precise age group. Thanks.
This one takes a slap at boomers as well. I liked it a lot:
That is hysterical! Everyone should get skewered. Then a group hug!
Ageist! I’m offended.
I’ve never been entirely clear on exactly what range we’re talking about when we say “millenials,” though I am unfortunately familiar with the stereotypical attitude associated with them. (Disclaimer: my six kids were born 1986-2000, which apparently makes them all millenials, but none of them behave like one.)
I’ve read of millenials being described as “echo boomers,” a harmonic fecundity created by that great post-war population surge of which I am a direct beneficiary. I’ve heard parents of my generation complain about their own millenial children, and what I always want to say (but never do, because I’m not a complete jerk) is that our children did not benefit from the quality of parenting that we enjoyed.
We boomers have a lot for which to answer.
In spite of all this kidding around, the situation with the millennials is a cultural tragedy. In an effort to convince our kids that we love them (did we think we weren’t loved), we have smothered them, spoiled them, and incapacitated them. Our generation (well, yours @henryracette) takes a lot of the blame. It is so sad that you are the exception. What have we done? Can we repair the damage?
But he’s not in need of safe spaces, and he’s a hard worker that shows up on time, so I can understand why he wouldn’t want to be associated with that. I couldn’t really say how he’d feel about this.
We are going to Oregon to attend the wedding of my wife’s youngest grandson. He works for his father who builds custom homes in the Oregon wine country. No college degrees for any of them. Just hard work. Another son works with them.
Her third grandson works with his uncle in LA building custom Porsches that are being restored. Among their customers are Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno. One of their cars sold for a million dollars.
Three boys, the youngest 21, and they are all working hard and doing very well. Not a college degree among them.
Outstanding. You and your wife must be very proud, and proud of her son, too.
Sort of like the way baby bombers like myself find baby boomers to be wearisome.
My son-in-law is an older Millennial (35 years old) has many negative things to say about the lack of work skills, interest, and capabilities of the younger Millennial (22 – 25 year old) grad students and post-docs that rotate through the areas around his research lab. And those are the kids with degrees in the “hard” sciences, so it’s not just the Grievance Studies majors.
I’m reluctant to ascribe blame, Susan. The last hundred years in America and the west generally have been, in many ways, unprecedented in human history, and it would be asking a lot for those who lived through them to anticipate how our social and technological transformation would shape the future.
I think the post-war industrial boom and attendant increase in prosperity in the 1940s and ’50s is a big part of it. It would be unreasonable to expect people who grew up during antebellum poverty and hardship to not want to shower their children with the benefits of that sudden flourishing. And it would probably be unreasonable that people who no longer got to watch their fathers work — because he worked in a factory or office and not in the fields near home; because he drove to work instead of walking; because mother stayed home and attended to the children instead of working alongside dad on the farm; etc. — should grow up with the same sense of what work is, of how hard it is and how exceptional prosperity really is.
My father was an insurance salesman, and a wonderfully good one. He managed to raise seven children (of whom I’m the oldest) and still take summers off while we were growing up. Only many years later did I really understand that he never stopped working, that he read about his industry constantly, thought about it constantly, worried about the money constantly, and never actually played or relaxed. To the somewhat oblivious child I was, it looked effortless, and I grew up assuming that work was easy and life was easy.
I can’t blame his generation for wanting to spare mine the hardship, insecurity, and precariousness of his own. And I can’t fault them for not anticipating the effect such insulation might have.
I think the other great driver of the deterioration of character is television. I mean that sincerely: other than raw prosperity, I think television, with its constant drive to produce novelty, is among the
very worstmost damaging things that have happened to us. But that’s the subject for another post.What is a baby bomber? And how do you find us baby boomers wearisome?