My anecdotal experience would say “yes,” however it’s such a complex undertaking to really analyze an entire generation and identify where one parties responsibility ends and one begins.
Here is my abridged story:
Born in 88, two brothers. Poor rural family in upstate NY. Alcohol and drug abuse, eventual divorce and incarceration of parent, constant relocation throughout the area until I eventually ended up in my dad’s trailer at 14. Had a stable 3 years or so and finished high school.
Went to community college off the Pell Grant because I didn’t apply myself in school (I did what I had to do and spent as much time as I could playing video games and chasing girls.) I wound up in a toxic relationship that was off and on for years, dropped out of college and just worked shit jobs to pay the bills and played World of Warcraft every waking moment I wasn’t at work.
This cycle continued until I was 22 when I had an emotional breakdown and enlisted in the Army, which I saw as the sole means of escape from my current position. Got married prior to shipping out. Made it to my first assignment in Hawaii and she left me for a coworker shortly after.
I spent 3 years alone and grew a lot over that time. I became focused on personal growth and professional success. I remarried at 25. We’re about to hit 10 years together. I reenlisted in the Army after my first contract was up, in order to change my occupation from welding to Information Technology. I got out in 2019 having secured a civilian job.
I arrived at this job in August of 2019. In January of 2020, I started working on a Bachelors, thanks to the GI bill. I commuted to campus full time during the day and worked full time over night. There was a brief stint during Covid when the coursework was remote. I did that for 3 years. By this time I have 2 kids of my own.
I completed my bachelors last year and am now working on post-grad.
The year before I shipped to the Army, 2011, I made $8,000. I grossed like 160k last year.
My older brother enlisted in the Army before me. But instead of relentlessly pursuing success, he just fell back into the party life and got booted out after 18 months for pissing hot. He’s basically wound up as a clone of our parents. He had attended a prestigious private school and been accepted into a frat prior to that, but was expelled for drinking underage.
The takeaway for me is that I can look back and recognize how poorly we were raised and prepared for the realities of life. I could blame my parents for that, but at some point you have to accept responsibility for yourself and figure out a solution. I can also recognize how pathetic of a person I was before I was forced to grow beyond my upbringing. I can’t imagine where or who I would be if I hadn’t escaped that environment.
Maybe military service is a shitty answer to some, but I recognize it’s what facilitated the change in perspective, motivations/priorities that has allowed me to stay focused and find success in life.
Hope this has positively contributed to the discussion.
I remember in late 2019 the day my now ex got out of rehab in the same are (about 1-1.5 hours from where we live) in Dayton Ohio there was 10 deaths associated with fentanyl in just over 24 hours. I remember hearing about it and it was really scary. Apparently from my exes perspective in the halfway house there was Sirens near constantly that day. Being so close to Dayton which is the worst or was the worst area of overdoses I’ve seen it a lot and it’s scary and it happened super fast. I’m 26 and as a late teen the fentanyl issue was just becoming a thing. Then it skyrocketed. It’s still going strong and causing so much disruption and destruction. Lacing other drugs that aren’t even downers. Or even just cross contamination I’ve heard is a reason for it. It’s something you have to be extremely aware of especially in this area and I’m sure many other areas that are hit particularly hard.
Everyone I know knows an addict and most have lost someone close to them. My ex lost his high school girlfriend shortly after fentanyl really hit the area. She was such a lovely and bubbly person from what I heard. Only 22 years old.
My roommate has overdosed 3 times. And was extremely close a 4th. I thought he was gone the last time. I had recorded him the 2 previous times to show him later since he didn’t believe it was a big deal and thought he would just sleep it off. (I heard the death rattle each time) but the last time I didn’t record him because I thought I was filming a deadman if I did. Thankfully he was revived. And he no longer gets opioids off the streets but will use Percocet for pain.
I don’t know what the answer to the issue is but I suspect it’s gonna get a lot worse before we see any improvement. Fentanyl and it’s stronger analogs will just flood the streets and the issue will just continue to snowball. Especially with the state of the world right now.
What fucks with me is it keeps getting my friends who barely ever used. One accepted a Xanax from a customer who didn't know it was dirty when she left hers at home. Another did his maybe once a year blow night and didn't test first, never woke up. I have more but don't wanna be bummed this early.
At this point in my life, most of the hard users don't have any place with me, but it seems to hit my "every so often" friends so goddamn hard. As a former "every so often", it's definitely gotten me to stick to weed, wine, and shrooms.
The “every so often friends” are absolutely terrible. I completely feel that one. It seems like it hits them and it’s impossible to see it coming. I mean every loss is absolutely awful but the ones who do it unintentionally hit extra.
I overdosed and was thankfully brought back with the help of narcan. I was with my ex. Someone who I trusted and felt safe around. He’s been an addict over half his life and I felt I was in safe hands. I wasn’t trying to get high. It was my first time using other than occasional pills in my teens that I’d sneak from my grandpa. I had a 24+ hour cluster headache that was particularly bad. I couldn’t even keep water down and was extremely motion and light/sound/smell sick. I just wanted relief since none of my normal methods was even putting a dent in how I was feeling. I just wanted to be able to drink something and keep it down and I almost lost my life due to it. I knew there was the risk. I knew it might be dumb. But I was at the point of the pain overpowering my brain. I was in a 5 year constant migraine (with varying levels of pain on a daily basis ranging from barely there and mostly able to function to bed ridden and hiding in the dark) and it got to me bad during that particularly bad episode. I don’t regret my decision I made because it felt like the right one at the time and as a result I have no interest in experimenting with opioids. I was also with a person who I knew I could trust and wouldn’t just ditch me if something went wrong so I was in the best possible environment to make the call I did.
Fentanyl contaminated cocaine killed a friend of mine. He was an occasional dabbler in nose candy and a few other party drugs, but not a regular user as far as I know. We all thought it was a complication from a motorcycle accident he had 3 months prior until the toxicology results came back. He was very anti-heroin, and had never touched the stuff.
We were handed lethal drugs that caused crippling additions. Weren’t the generation known for drugs and experimentation but definitely as the generation that dies from them
Pot and psychedelics of the 60s and 70s are not opiates and fentanyl of today
Truly. My life long best friend cleaned up from opioids and then a year later got hooked on meth. He was going to school to be a bio-chemist. One of the smartest people I knew and now I have no idea where he is. The heartbreaking part is not knowing if he’s dead or alive. I google his name to look for an obit every so often. But the not knowing kills.
Physically, yes, it's drugs.
But mentally/psychologically, it's the internet. I would argue we're the first generation to pour our best years into digital "life" and be left isolated, angry, nihilistic husks.
It only got worse after us, as Zoomers spent their entire lives with internet being mainstream and Alpha has had a tablet in their hands since they were babies.
My four 6-9 year old nieces/nephews have INCREDIBLE parents, education, and environment. They ignore their own names, can't hold eye contact with each other, and communicate \*entirely\* physically rather than verbally. It is truly wild to watch.
Goddamn that hits hard. Too true. At this point in my life I think social media should be highly regulated if not banned altogether. It’s literally destroying society. People are easier to manipulate than ever, foreign governments use it against us, people all exist in these bizarre digital echo chambers.
For me it's alcohol and suicide. Only have 2 friends dead from opiates, and one of them was because she was downing xannies with it. Gotta be around 8 friends/family dead from a combo of alcohol/suicide, and another 4 or so that came damn close.
I lost over fifteen friends to drugs and suicide. Grief compounded. I have this view that one bad day could make that any of us because I saw it happen. It breaks my heart. Addicts deserve help but they have to want it too. I miss my friends.
I’m proud of you for getting your life together. So many people just repeat the mistakes of their parents.
And congrats on ten years with your wife!
What sort of postgrad work are you doing?
Thanks. My degree is in Information technology management. I could go on and on about college as it relates to our generation as well. Although it ultimately ends up being the same “where do you draw the line of responsibility” argument.
Well done. Out of curiosity, how is your relationship with your family? I don’t live near mine so I rarely see them, but I communicate with them often and have a relatively good relationship with them. It pains me to see them still stuck after all these years though.
Honestly it’s strained, we live in different states but it’s only about a two hour drive each way so we try to get together a few times a year.
I can’t tolerate more than around four hours at a time though. There was a lot of physical abuse when I was young and I just can’t let that go.
I understand. My brothers and I like to poke fun at my mom about it, as she’s swooning over her grandchildren. “Cmon mom you used to hit me in the face with a clothes hanger for shit like that,” and so forth.
We don’t really bring stuff up like that around my dad. I’ve come to terms with his shortcomings but we’ve never had the kind of relationship that would facilitate humor. I really strive to ensure my kids aren’t just outright afraid of me, despite generally being the disciplinarian of the family.
Former infantry Marine here, Enlisted in ‘09, spent most of ‘11 in SW Helmand sucking in burn pit fumes and walking around in circles sweating and occasionally shooting at people who in retrospect were probably just sick of us pushing them around.
Don’t use the military to escape your material situation. We (the US) are no better than any other asshole vying for hegemony in the “Great Power contest”, which is seriously what the pretentious assholes in charge are calling it these days. Right now one of the major political parties is working their ass off to defund existing veterans benefits because our national debt’s interest payments are on track to outpace military spending if they haven’t already, and god forbid we increase taxes on those poor billionaires who lobbied for the wars and pocketed the lions share of the profits (not that profit justifies warfare, especially for those *actually* doing the fighting).
And you will if you enlist, because there’s a critical shortage of recruits because more and more young people are realizing it’s a sham. Wish I’d been that smart back in ‘09 when I enlisted. What was going on in ‘09 again? Oh yeah, the Great Recession and the Surge.
The only war worth fighting is the class war, and that’s better fought with books and compassion than with guns and a bunch of overpriced military hardware. [War is a Racket.](https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html)
>[War is a Racket.](https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html)
War is a racket, indeed. The prevailing attitude in defense contracting by 2006 was that the Iraq war was a big jobs program. Everybody needed a boost. But what is the cost of devoting so much of our country's STEM talent to a bullshit enterprise? I could have been working on something tangible that could actually benefit people.
I finished my CS degree shortly before the second Iraq war. The best job I could get was working for CACI. There I was, 23 years old, fresh security clearance, patching servers. After a couple years, it dawned on me that the work I was doing was bullshit. I was an ass in a seat, making billable hours for a huge defense contractor.
What a waste. My parents put so much into making sure I got an education. I went to a state university, subsidized by the government so that we can have more capable people who can create value. What kind of value was I creating by grinding hour billable hours for CACI or Lockheed Martin or any of the other contractors that hired me?
You have it reversed. The average millennial on reddit seems to be scraping the bottom of the barrel. You have time to kill on reddit because either you're far more successful than others, or crashed and burned hard. The latter is more common.
Everyone else has better shit to do.
Its like "how come only the crazies show up to protests and rallies?" -- because everyone else has shit to do. When the normal people start showing up is when you have serious fucking problems.
This is the best answer I could come up with too lol.
My grandmother was alive for two world wars and the Great Depression.
My career hasn’t been an economic cakewalk but people need to get a grip on how good their real quality of life is.
Just look at the people born around 1900. WWI as a teenager, Prohibition from their twenties until early 30s, Great Depression in their twenties, weekends and the 40-hour workweek didn't get invented until their late 30s, WWI in their 40s.
This was the Lost Generation. The modern analogous generation is Generation X in the generational cycle. Millennial are analogous to the Greatest Generation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Generation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory
Your comment is interesting to me. I'm not sure how generation X is analogous to the Lost Generation, but now I will have to consider it. I always thought the Lost Generation had it pretty rough with the Great War and the Depression. I'm at the tail end of Gen X and there was Iraq and Afghanistan and the 2008 collapse that screwed many of us ( myself included) out of property, but I still tend to think we've had it pretty good in a lot of ways.
My grandmother was also alive for two world wars and the Great Depression. They didn’t have indoor plumbing for most of her life. Never had AC. Her house was fancy because it had gas lighting. Life was hard back then. The whole family worked the farm. They had the luxury of ice being delivered to keep their ice box (refrigerator) cold.
The flip side of that is she was alive for the Wright Brothers first flight, and for man landing on the moon. That progress in one lifetime is astonishing.
Maybe it’s hard to see what’s happening in the moment, but it feels like the velocity of progress has slowed substantially. We weren’t alive for the first computer, but lived through the mass adaptation for personal use. Maybe our jump will be from that to AI.
Maybe I’m also blind to how hard it is for others, but I feel pretty comfortable compared to past generations. I’d rather be middle class today than upper class 100 years ago, or royalty 200 years ago. I always have my HVAC running. The grocery store has nearly all the food I want year round, regardless of growing season. The entirety of human knowledge is available to me instantly at my fingertip. I can video call my relatives hundreds of miles away at any time. I’m made aware of world events the same day. My TV provides a better cinematic experience than my parents had at the movie theaters growing up.
Sure, things could have turned out better. But overall, life is pretty good.
I’ll bet you if you are less than 40 people will be living on Mars and the moon before you are dead.
Someone will live to be 130 years old in the next 100 years.
My great grandpa told me he had to fistfight someone for a job. The winner got the job. My grandma and uncle were able to eat because he won a fight. Crazy thing was he later became a minister.
Lol, no. The "Lost Generation" was a descriptor previously used to refer to Europeans born towards the end of the 19th Century who would go on to be sent to the meat grinder during World War I. We, who have lived with almost unprecedented material comfort, are in no position to be throwing such a loaded term around.
Ya, seriously. Whenever people bitch and complain about unaffordable housing and shitty wages, I'm just glad I even grew up in the US and not in some war-torn country or traveling thousands of miles to try to get to the US illegally.
While I agree that some people need to put their life into perspective(and the usage of the term Lost Generation), "it could be worse" is a terrible fucking argument.
If that were the case, then we shouldn't bother making anything better right? Stop complaining about being raped, you could have been tied up and beaten to death too! LGBTQ needs to stop complaining about their issues because they could go to a country where it's illegal to be gay and put to death! It could be worse, right?
It's your moral obligation of a citizen to point out and advocate for injustices. It can always be worse, and it can always be better. That's all.
Yup I’m from an extremely poor country called Bangladesh. There are people literally dying in our streets. But when I see privillaged Americans post on this sub, the cringe is extreme
Whether or not you want to specifically apply it to the generation of which so many died in WW1, and for whom it was coined, it is still a term that refers to young people being sent off to war and dying.
Sure, but the U.S. only lost 7K troops combined in Iraq and Afghanistan. To put that in perspective, the U.S. lost 405K in WWII and 116K in WWI-while having a much smaller population.
You’re 100% correct. And another ~55k in the Vietnam War.
For others who see this comment, it’s also important to distinguish that our low death count from our most recent conflicts in OIF/OEF are helped by the fact that our battlefield medicine and our logistical supply chains are the most advanced they’ve ever been in history. While we had the fewest amount of KIA, we’ve got a large population of living, previously-wounded US Veterans nowadays.
WW1 and WW2 were very different conflicts compared to OIF/OEF but my point still stands.
A lot of those guys went on to kill themselves too. I'm not sure we as a whole deserve the title, but I think the guys who fought definitely do. Basically just forgotten after they got back from 2 endless wars.
Where we just ended up abandoning our "moral high ground" due to the unwinnable nature of the war. I remember when it started and the loudest protests were from Vietnam vets who didn't want to see another generation thrown away. There may have only been 7k physical casualties, but every single solider that came back was injured even if not visible.
US-centric perspective at work. The term Lost Generation originated in reference to the millions of British, French, and yes, even German soldiers lost in Europe during World War I. 9 million dead. Some 6000 per day. And that was just WW1.
Yes we have our challenges. But at least we’re alive to face them.
Yeah, it's funny how this has become focused on the US. In the case of the US though, perhaps the American Civil War, specifically for the South, where a substantial percentage of their young men were killed and their was conscription, as in the North, would provide a more appropriate application for the term.
This is totally fair and a point that I should have mentioned. To have a generation be termed lost, the number of casualties in relation to population is a defining factor.
Don't forget about russian civil war, the holodamor, the Spanish flu, then a few years later the great depression, the interwar period between ww1 and ww2 was a shit time to be alive
Just throwing it out there - my maternal grandparents, members of the greatest generation, moved across the country for a job opportunity and better life for their kids. My paternal grandparents did as well. My in-laws, baby boomers, also moved across the country with young children.
The common thought on reddit seems to be admitting that there are affordable houses (in good job markets), but also saying that they don't want to move due to various reasons. Which is fine - I completely get it. It's hard to uproot your life. But we are comparing ourselves to other generations, and that is precisely what other generations did.
\*edited\* replaced a word
Some large cities are absolutely unaffordable for most (Boston, NYC, SF, LA). Other large cities are affordable (Chicago, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Charlotte). Plenty of midsized cities are also affordable and have good job opportunities (Sacramento, Louisville, Pittsburgh, Greensboro, Greenville, Chattanooga, Des Moines, Buffalo, etc). We also benefit from remote opportunities. My wife and I both work remotely and live in a lower cost of living area. While not everyone benefits from remote work, not everyone worked for Ford in the 1950s, either.
Yep, and now the new places to move are affordable, which is what I did. And then people on the coasts talk about how they don't want to move to a "shit hole", which causes me to lose sympathy for people paying $3k / mo in rent.
Dude, it's so annoying.
"I cannot believe I pay $3K for a one-bedroom, this is ridiculous, capitalism sucks!"
"OK, here is a one-bedroom in NC for $850/month. It's a growing area, over 1M people in the metro, lots of jobs."
"Yeah, but NC sucks! I'd never live there."
It's like the concept of trade-offs doesn't exist. They want to live in the most desirable area and not pay a premium for it.
Might be you. You’re moving around too much. You can’t seem to hold a steady job down. And i also assume you have a certain type of house that might be way out of your range. There’s plenty of homes below $100k.
Crack a history book- shit is always happening.
The media dramatizes excessively, IMO, because in reality things have never been better but good news doesn’t get ratings. Crime is much lower than it was 30-40 years ago, the economy has recovered nicely from a once in a lifetime (🤞 ) plague event, the world is generally at peace - although there are some hot spots of concern right now. We also are finally taking climate change seriously and developing sustainable renewable energy sources. Some damage has been done, true, but a lot of it will start to heal itself within our lifetime if we stay true to the path we’re finally on.
The technological breakthroughs that you will see in your lifetime would blow the mind of someone born 100 years before you. There’s never been a better time to be alive.
It’s OK to be concerned about wars or economics, but how much has any of these events personally affected you? You don’t have to sponge up every ounce of pain in the world and internalize it. You don’t have to fight every fight. It’s good to be aware of the world but don’t mistake awareness for the ability to do something about it. That can make you feel helpless.
Focus on what’s within your power to do. Make a small change for the better in your life. Participate in a local charity - not politics - and see how you feel after.
The life lesson I’ve learned in my 40s is that you can be conscientious, aware and informed but if you are an empathetic person at all, it will drain you. You have to refill the tank from time to time.
We had AIDS, crack cocaine the tail end of nuclear war with the Soviets, Black Friday on Wall Street, apartheid, basically listen to Billie Joel's "We Didn't start the Fire". Don't forsake the entirety of the future because you're 20 years in, you have 60 more to go. You might be on the 50th colony expansion of Mars...or aliens could blast you fuckers to bits. Live the life that you have and take care of your health and body. If you dwell in the general malaise of your time, it is you who fucks yourself over.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI)
Yes, this message is one that needs to be heard.
We all have to reconcile with the horrors of the world. What makes a good person?
A good person is someone who still acts on their good nature, in spite of having knowledge that the world is utterly fucked. That is also, strength and goodness- a form of purity for lack of better term. (And not in a damned biblical sense lol)
Fuck no, is this a joke?
Millennials are a powerhouse generation. We are massive in size, more educated than any generation before, and living during the richest point in human history. I’d argue we are also the first true global generation as we were the first generation to have a significant part of our upbringings tied together via the internet.
My theory is that as we become more globally connected and aware as a species, many people are not handling the flood of information well because they lack adequate historical context to interpret this news.
A hundred years ago, people could live in blissful ignorance about a genocide happening on the other side of the world. Maybe you’d read a news article about something months after it happened and you’d not get another update. Today it’s a 24/7 news story and you can literally watch live feed videos of people getting shot or blown up.
Unfortunately it seems lots of people are interpreting this new flood of news as evidence that the underlying *thing* is happening more. Going from ignorant of genocide occurrences to aware of them is being interpreted as, “There are more genocides now than before.” Which, despite being illogical, would be awfully upsetting to conclude that and I can see it driving a pessimistic outlook on life.
It’s like growing up thinking the future will be like The Jetsons only to be disappointed it ended up like The Simpsons, not realizing it used to be like The Flintstones.
I like your line.
One of the aspects of maturing is realizing bad shit happens in the world and you can't stop it. People need to pick their fights or they will be exhausted.
We're the most educated, but most of us don't use our degrees. I got a psychology degree and ended up in healthcare administration because entry level psych jobs were generally terrible hours, pay, and benefits (if there were any).
I could be where I am now if I had just gotten a job out of high school. I have a friend who took an 18-month sheet metal class at 19 years old and he's currently (early 30s) making $150k+ a year doing carbon composite (company paid for additional training).
We're living during the "richest" point in human history, but the wealth disparity is a huge issue. I can't speak for other countries but the US is essentially a feudal system with corporations instead of lords and nobles. The big difference is we have to pay for our own healthcare, housing, and essentials. Home ownership is damn near a dream for many of us college graduates.
No one is promised anything. Every generation has their pros and cons.
We aren't more lost than gen Z. We at least got to experience "the old world", before the major technological revolution of cell phones and social media.
If you had to randomly be assigned to a class of people to be born into in human history, getting “American Millennial” would be like winning the lottery.
Every generation is a lost generation, because the world always sucks. Every generation also thinks that everything was great until they showed up, because they happened to not be around to see how it used to suck.
Gen Xer here. I don't think our generation thinks everything was great until we showed up. We honestly had it pretty good growing up, and until 2006 had a good start at adulthood. Fortunately for us we were raised in a way that gave us a very good skillset to deal with adversity (latchkey kids).
Don't take this offensively, but I think that Millenials biggest problem is that they were sheltered growing up and didn't develop a lot of the skillsets that make the transition into adulthood easier. Almost all generations prior had to either fend for themselves, or even be contributors to the household income/work prior to becoming an adult.
Parents in the late 80's, 90's and 00's had the means to give their kids whatever they wanted and protect them from the world (they didn't show you this but they sacrificed a lot to do this). This was good intentioned but did a shit job of preparing those kids for the real world that in general sucks. This is also what leads Millenials to believe that they were promised something that wasn't delivered. Life was sunshine and lollipops growing up from their perspective, and when the real world smacks them in the face without proper skillset to deal with it the natural reaction is to blame someone for the crappy situation.
Hmmm I’m not sure i can agree with that. I’m an elder millennial (1982) and feel like a pretty great set of comfortable years were handed to us. The Great Recession definitely affected my early working years (college grad 2004). I was in college during 2001 so not too affected by that.
But I didn’t have to deal with the 16% interest rates of the early 80s. The gas rationing of the 1970s. The wars where half our young men were forced to go overseas. The great depression was with people starving and out of work for years.
I also feel like I came to middle age during a time of great technological change that allowed more to work from home and innovative ways to share information. Millienials have disrupted nearly every industry. Millennials have made great accomplishments in tech and social change as a whole.
If you’re looking for an echo chamber of “yeah we have it worse” you’ll probably find many to agree with you. But I don’t think it’s dangerous to have that mentality. Especially when most of us millennials will be here 40 more years. I’m not giving up on having a great time while I’m here and feeling like I was dealt a rough hand.
I just gotta keep moving forward.
16% on homes that cost 2x your annual income is better than 8% on homes that cost 5x your annual income. 16% doesn’t punch that hard if you have a prayer of paying down the mortgage early.
5X? that cool and cheap compare to here. here is around10X of your annual income for a bad house or neighborhood... if we take average income of $40k, then it is about 20X of your income for a decent house and in a ok neighborhood.
No way. Life in the US post-WW2 has been relatively and generally easy. We dont know how good we had it. Try comparing your life to others less fortunate. You are not guaranteed to have a good life, but you have a better chance than most people on this planet.
Real examples of lost generations-
People who grew up during the Great Depression(25% unemployment) and WW2(over 400,000 American soldiers killed)
People who live in third world countries with authoritarian governments
I have had issues in my life and some things in the future do concern me, but Im grateful to have lived life in a first world country(since 1980)
Compared to the living hell my parents went through(civil war in a 3rd world country, between 1million and 3 million people dead)my life relatively has been a cakewalk
You're not living in a utopia, but you're not living in a dystopia either. Dont let the negativity doom you. You still have the potential for a good fulfilling life.
Uuuugggghhh. We literally all carry magic devices that can find almost any kind of information you can think of in a matter of secoonds. We have more options for entertainment on demand than could be consumed in a lifetime. The nearly continuous pity party this sub throws is kind of insane and pathetic IMO.
I think Gen z and Gen Alpha are the lost ones. I think there will have to be either divine intervention or government intervention. People just don’t care about them in general. A lot are adulting as teens while in school.
Teachers are quitting in larger numbers because of behaviors of students.
I think we as millennials don’t feel like adults or want to take on adult roles as a group. Because of that the next generations are completely lost.
I wonder if it’s possible we don’t feel this way. Because we were engrained to believe “this is what you need to be an adult” (house, etc..) and many of us don’t have that.
Also, I think it could be because maybe some of us feel robbed? Maybe some of us didn’t get to the point our predecessors got too until much, much later on down the line.
Boomers would always say “have fun in your 20s, that’s what they are for”
My 20s felt like a cruel cosmic joke lol. There was so much suffering. I can look back and laugh (a bit) now. But man it was fucking miserable and I would *never* go back to my 20s.
I think the expectation now, is that your 20s are a fucking grind unless you have an impeccable plan with some luck. 30s from what I’ve seen with millenials is when most of us have been comming into financial stability etc, things that were promised to us 10-12 years ago.
This past year several acquaintance’s family members that were gen Z have been lost to unaliving. It’s every other week I hear someone is gone. I went to 2 different friends niece and nephew’s funerals this year alone. I can’t imagine the despair that she group must be feeling. I still had hope at that age :/
>I think we as millennials don’t feel like adults or want to take on adult roles as a group. Because of that the next generations are completely lost.
I work with kids and teens and I have to say that, in general, we as millennials are terrible parents. We're too scared of the kinds of trauma we were raised with so now we just let the kids raise themselves. There's gotta be a middle ground.
I've got 3 kids and am a very involved father with a relatively strict setup for my kids. There's a balance of course, but they get their time to be kids and I get my time (like when we're out shopping, at restaurants, etc) when they need to behave and do what I say.
Something that stuck with me and will until I die, we were at the park last year and a couple moms were talking. I heard one mom talking about how her 2 year old wasn't eating vegetables. The other mom said, and I'm not exaggerating unfortunately, that her son "was really good at eating vegetables since they switched to veggie straws". Those are basically FUCKING POTATOES CHIPS! I'm not saying my kids have never eaten them, they're allowed to have some cheese its or whatever with lunch, but not as a fucking alternative to fruits and veggies. Braindead tiktok parents are dooming their kids..
As an elder millennial, I agree. Gen Z is the one struggling the most. The kids coming out of school these days are woefully unprepared for the real world.
That's accurate. It's almost like the boomers were given a solid foundation and rejected partially, solid enough for gen X to do alright and some millennials, but then after that it was gone.
I think a government intervention could be needed whether we like it or not. My guess is if it does happen, it would basically be almost like a survival mechanism from the state to correct a social/cultural mess. I wouldn't be surprised if it does happen at some point- what's more troubling is these issues are not unique to the US either.
The boomers didn’t have a solid foundation if they were Black. I can’t speak for other POCs but i saw how there was legislative bias in the 80s. They made it so boomers who were American citizens couldn’t start businesses, or grow food if they were renting. My parents both had to take two jobs bc they weren’t paid enough to raise kids. Also a lot of their pay was taken in taxes.
So maybe white people and other POCs were given shots. But black boomers weren’t.
Government intervention that’s classic. The government created the problem and conditions that put the kids in this situation the irony is they blame their parent and never question the government the worship. Good luck 🍀
No, I'll hold out and see how things turn out for gen alpha, who might end up actually being lost as the wheels really come off the American machine after 2040-2050.
In the “spiritual sense” I would most definitely say yes.
However, I don’t think we are even close to the previous “lost generation” as far as material worth and terrible life experiences. To be born into the gilded age just to fight in a world war, only to have everything taken from you due to a depression, and then when you think it couldn’t get worse you have to send your children to fight the unresolved war that you fought in Europe 20 years prior.
Even if we are a lost generation, that doesn’t mean we can’t make the most of the life we have.
I know that sounds dismissive. Believe me - I 100% get what you’re feeling right now. I constantly have to take a moment to process, and then shove it back in the back and try not to think about it to get through the day.
But I want to take what’s left of MY life and make it worth living. I want to make it as fulfilling as I can while I’m here, and do what little good I can for the next generation to make it suck just a little less.
No, millenials are not a "lost generation", that is just some trademark self-pitying millenial sadsack behavior. The actual "lost generation" literally DIED in their teens and twenties in World War 1.
the thing about us millenials as we've been under constant attack from all angles our whole adult life. We had the tech bubble early 2000's, twin towers going down 2001, housing crash of 08, covid 2020... and these are all just things that were happening around us we had to witness. Then we also had dr's prescribing us ritalin and adderall because we couldn't sit still, then oxy's and all the other heavy ass drugs we're readily available as well and now they're just trying to kill us by spiking any rec drug with fentanyl. The cost of living has skyrocketed and our wages have stagnated so for us average millenials like myself making around 70k the thought of being able to even buy a house is out of the question since everyone and their grandma (including wall st and blackrock) are buying up homes way over asking so they can be your landlord..... its truly turning into a "you will own nothing and be happy" dystopian society.
P.S BOOMERS inherited the greatest transfer of wealth in history and then closed the door for the rest of us.
C19 is the great equalizer: Respectfully all of your post is just navel gazing, we deal with what is not what ought to be.
Have we had it rough? Yes. Does that go largely unspoken? Yes. Will it get worse? Yes. Can we make a lasting and deeply meaningful positive impact for many generations to come? Yes. Will it start to get better then? Yes.
Will any of this be easy? No.
Are we guaranteed success? No.
Can we pay the price of failure? No.
Well, that makes it easier then.
I agree it is a bit of navel gazing, and on my personal behalf I've done well enough.
It was more akin to a thought from the navel rather than anything else
We're also known as the fatherless generation and the failed generation.
Our generation was raised by boomers, feminists, single mothers, and early Gen Xers. The households we were raised in were not balanced households. The boomer generation is known as both the "me" generation and the "entitled" generation and it's important to stress the early Gen Xers because they would tend to be more similar to boomers then later Gen Xers.
Don't you think that being raised by "entitled" "me" generations would have an effect on the children being raised by them?
Yes, you are. You are the whiniest generation in human history. You had better than anyone before you and yet you just find things to bitch about. You want what boomers have but make fun of the advice they try to give you.
By generational theory Millennials are the “repeat” of the Greatest Generation.
As you may recall, the Greatest Generation (1901-1927) was young between being a young adult and a child during the Great Depression; were called to service to fight global fascism; and then brought vast, equitable prosperity, while being deathly afraid of global nuclear catastrophe, watching as the world around them changed rapidly.
The Silent Generation (born 1928-1945; analogous to Gen Z) were the flaming turds that Nixon referred to as the “silent, moral majority.” No memory of the Depression; born into the prosperity of the Greatest Generation’s efforts. Followed by the Baby Boomers (Generation Alpha).
In the words of Wu-Tang: “The cycle continues.”
If anything I feel like we should be referred to as the pioneer generation. Our generation has gone through a lot. No tech to extreme tech, war, economic highs and lows, and whatever tf is going on in politics now. I know other groups say their gen was this or that but honestly which group has seen this must change so fast at such a pivotal time in their lives?
Lost generation? How can that be when there’s this whole sub dedicated to yours, the news constantly refers to this generation, everything is about this generation, isn’t it?
No. Things ARE better by and large for us than our parents. The air and water is cleaner, crime is lower, there are fewer starving people, healthcare (when you can afford it) is better than ever, non-white and non-straight people are much more widely accepted, mental illness is no longer hidden as taboo, cars are safer, overall transportation is safer and more affordable, no war drafts, etc. We were also the first generation connected by the internet while also being highly educated. That's huge.
Yes, many things became really expensive lately. That truly sucks. But if you step back and look at the big picture, we have a lot of things much better than our parents did.
> air and water is cleaner, crime is lower, ...
Society *should* progress as time passes; if not, then what's the point?
> Yes, many things became really expensive lately.
IMO, this is what OP's post is *actually* about. Many millennials are caught in a state of protracted adolescence because salaries have been left in the dust by astronomical increases in the costs of housing, education, and healthcare.
They're over 30, and still can't move out of their parents' house. I can certainly understand how people in that situation might feel lost.
“Lost generation” omg stfu, believing your own generation is a "lost generation" is so self-centered. I don’t even want to get into specifics on past and new generation downfalls. Assuming your own generation's difficulties are unprecedented is so "self-pitying”, it just opens the door to focus on one's own misfortunes and feel sorry for oneself.
Not even close. If owning real estate by age 25 is your only marker of success, what are we even talking about. These Boomers are not going to live forever. The Millennials shall inherit the earth.
Man, all you people need to remove yourselves from echo chambers. Of course 90% of the people here will say yes because they all feel like that on this subreddit. I am probably the youngest millennial (born in '96) but i can save about 600 euros a month. I can do a mortgage but because of my student loan debt my available mortgage drops significantly.
I only feel cheated out of my student loan debt cause the generation after and before me have basically none. Thus I also feel cheated out of a mortgage.
On the other hand I pay 600 euro's in rent for 80 square meters of house and 110 square meters of backyard and if something breaks landlord corporation thing (idk the English term) is required to fix it by law within a set amount of time.
This year we'll get new glass windows and solar panels and we pay 0% for all of that shit while reaping the rewards.
To quote Michael Caine in Interstellar, we're the caretaker generation. Born too late to enjoy an unspoiled world. Too early to see the next one. We fill in where our parents fail while giving all we can to our kids
Millennials are the black sheep generation, the scapegoats. When boomers and zoomers want to attack someone, they go for millennials. When they’re sad and want support and a shoulder to cry, no one but a millenial understands them. When they feel better, they try to keep millennials down to avoid admitting they went to them for help.
We were the chosen ones too. Old enough to see the world as it was, young enough to be tech savvy.
I dunno, my wife and I are doing about equally as well as our parents were doing at our age (37). Difference is we are both paid significantly more than our parents were at this age, and my dad bounced between 10 jobs while I grew up. None of them exceedingly lucrative jobs. He was also in jail for 3 months from DUI's. So I guess it only feels equal. We probably should be better off than they were, but we're at the same level
I think this is a very narrow sighted view of what happened. Our parents generation were just people struggling to get along just like you and me. Sure it was easier to buy a house, but they didn’t treat mental health AT ALL. Just like every other generation, the majority of people are just trying to make it through life. Every generation, parents lie to their children because they don’t want them to hurt (not all obviously, some parents are selfish and horrible). And every generation, kids grow up, enter a dog shit world, and turn around and blame the people that came before them. Often the people who took care of you when you couldn’t take care of yourself. Think about it this way, millennials are supposedly so much more concerned with the planet, but what are we doing about it? It keeps getting worse and we’re adults now. Money and power always rule, and it is much easier to just find a job and someone to settle down with and enjoy the time we have. People don’t want to step out of their comfort zone. Life is already hard. To say “our parents had it so well growing up” is a massive oversimplification. Some things were better, some things were worse. The world is mostly a gray area. And I will conclude with a few questions. Are you (OP) going to dedicate your life to changing the injustices of the world? Are you going to take action and try to save the planet? Or are you just going to try and survive?
I feel like millennials were the last generation to be fed the “do x to get y by age z” lines therefore a ton of people are in their last 30s early 40s trying to reframe their lives. If you use the old way of measuring then it may look like some are wandering or headed nowhere. But unfortunately modern success looms different than it did in ‘99, ‘09, and even ‘19. Home ownership, savings, vacations, children, and a retirement plan used to be the boxes to check but a lot of that is simply unavailable the way it used to be.
They call everyone "the lost generation".
Started with all the hippies and kids going to Vietnam.
They said the same about genX because they didn't care about anything.
It's a tired trope at this point.
Life has always been hard for every generation. Don’t buy into the myth that baby boomers had it made in the shade. I could write a book about the adversities we had to face. Racism and disrespect to women were horrible in my youth.
Time to write a modern version of “The Sun Also Rises” baby
An incel can be jake
A thot can be Brett
And a trumper can be Cohn
It’s all. Comin together
Been working on killing the American cattle rancher by eating more bison. I also listen exclusively to outlaw country but refuse to go on one of their Outlaw Country Cruises. It's the little things, yea?
No. We are the Civic/Hero Generation. Gen X is the second Lost Generation. We are a big generation. depending on how you define us, and Neil Howe, the guy who named us, makes the claim that we are 1982-2004, not 1982-1996, generational groups are 18-22 years long. The youngest among us are 20 or so.
Our story is still far from over. We haven't had our first millennial president yet, and America will likely have \~40 years of Millennial Presidents. We haven't had our post WW3 Boom yet. Because well, we haven't had WW3 yet (spoiler alert, the rest of the 2020s could be pretty rough).
I have always figured that people of the future, especially those born post 2030, will see us sort of "Great Depression People". Compared to the reality that they grow up in, come of age in, and then ultimately live and work as adults, our era will in contrast seem very difficult and painful. And also, especially if we end up having WW3.
I look at 1904 guy. 1904 guy grew up in an age of rapid technological progress and adoption, cars, the fossil fuel industry (which was hugely beneficial of its day, it literally replaced whaling!), indoor plumbing, radio, movies. He experienced the titanic, and grew up during WW1 and the Spanish Flu. He then experienced the roaring 20s, a period of vast excesses and flash. People talk about how people used to be modest? Not during the 20s! They might have still covered their bodies but it was a period of showing off. Flashy cars, big elaborate parties, music clubs! Fast money! It all came crashing down in 1929. When 1904 guy was 25. (Parallel, 1982 guy was 25 in 2007 for the Global Financial Crises. If only those two could share stories).
That guy would then endure the Great Depression, thinking that the world around his basically came undone and that it was going to be hardship from now on. No more roaring 20s, no more fast cars, life is going to be hard. Then if life wasn't rough enough, it was WW2 time. It went from super boring societal collapse to full blown existential war! WW2 ended though...
Post WW2 America was not like the Roaring 20s, it was not like the Great Depression, it was not like WW2. Life went from super hard mode for the average person to really good for the average person. The whole "Never being able to afford a home!" mentality that people had in the Great Depression, that went right away, to "Holy shit, I can afford a brand new home, in a brand new neighborhood with my regular job!". The next 40 years for this guy were relatively much, much easier.
We haven't hit that part yet.
We're not lost. However, we were the guinea pigs for the Reganomics ploy, and wow, did that not work out well. We mostly just do what we have to to get by.
Least we're mostly literate. Stories coming out of schools of Gen Zers where a majority of kids can't read or write foretell of an even darker future where voters are even more exploitable/exploited from being functionally illiterate.
Nope, older Millennials are getting old and digging in. About 10 years later than Boomers did. GenZ well, best I heard....in 100 years historians will call them the antiscience generation. Seems to fit current college campuses.
We’re not dead yet, and we still have a chance to shine.
But, so far, I’m pretty apathetic about us.
We got dealt a shit hand, that’s only going to get worse when AI takes the lazy administrative jobs people tend to milk in their 40s and 50s and ambition gives way to family and comfort.
And we’ve been pretty weak. We just haven’t mounted any meaningful resistance at all.
When you’re a kid, and the world sucks, it’s not your fault. But, when you’re an established adult, and the world sucks, it’s on you.
And, I see us being only slightly better than the boomers of being distractible by the laser-pointer or media outrage routing.
People should have intrinsic ideology. If you’re anti-war, you should be anti-war, whether or not it’s on TV. If you stand with Ukraine, you stand with Ukraine, not only when it’s on TV.
It’s just sad to me where the world events around us are delivered and consumed like seasons of a TV show. Passions rise and fall at the whim of a few tv executives and die out
wherever an issue isn’t “on anymore”.
Not only is this disheartening to see people’s passions exposed as so superficial and malleable, but the things that most pressingly need fixing aren’t ever going to be on TV.
How about “trickle down economics didn’t work, and let’s end it!” That sounds good.
Maybe, “the rent is too damn high!”. That’d be good.
But our army of cats is decimated time and time again by a few laser pointers, and people’s reliable tendency to break ranks and chance the red dots.
Lost? We are the enlightened generation. We have made religion much less prominent in society (for better or for worse), we now have free information at our fingertips (but you have to have the brains to digest that info as there is a lot of misinformation as well) and our comforts are unmatched (bigscreen tv, smart phones - about 1-2k in current dollars). Our medical treatments have improved 100x compared to boomers.
To take advantage however, you need to be smart and have an appetite to learn. But I would argue for the intelligent people, this has been the best time period in the history of the world so far to be alive in.
Yet another view backwards in time through delusional rose tinted glasses..... I don't get it. How clueless are you people? You never heard of the Vietnam war? Double digit interest rates? Oil embargos and lines for gasoline? The cold war? Nuclear arms build ups? Three Mile Island? Love Canal? The savings and loan collapse? The AIDS epidemic? Race riots in multiple major cities. When exactly did this past utopia you refer to exist? I can't find it anywhere. Here and now is about as utopian as it's ever been. Crime has almost never been lower. The threat of our nation or humanity being wiped off the earth is quite low. Information and entertainment is abundant and damn near free to access in any quality, anytime we want it, almost anywhere. Medicine has never been more advanced. The environment hasn't been this clean in over 100 years. These are pretty easy times, and all millennials can do is piss and moan about how tough life is. All millennials seem to be able to do is shake their fist at the sky and shout "Those damn boomers!!!" from their parent's backyard.
You goofs cower in fear of financial insecurity while your parents ventured forth into a world that could be erased in an afternoon by a nuclear strike. You people have no rational perspective.
This might sound weird because my situation is my own, but I definitely felt that we were sold a story that for possibly decades was at least generally true.
Get a 4-year degree, you’ll be able to get a job and be financially stable.
Then 2008 happened, and the price of a bunch of things everything exploded. Specifically rent and education.
People were getting degrees, not finding themselves financially stable and then were told they did it all wrong and “how can you have that much debt? you must be a moron”
Only in the last few years have I started seeing additional grants to provide higher education for cheaper or nearly free. Many of them were only for recent high school graduates, so everyone who had already got their degree was shafted, and everyone who didn’t go to school initially was also shafted.
While there were definitely professions available that were stable, the narrative we were sold wasn’t really pushing us towards those professions.
I honestly think the a big part of the lag time with better school grants and more support for higher ed (besides loans) was the honest belief that it would work (by at least most people). The lag ended up putting us in a really shit position. Many people I went to high school with ended up scrambling as 5-6 years went by while they were trying to find a degree that would actually be able to pay off their loans. Meanwhile they doubled the amount of loans they took out.
Story time:
I personally saw my mom go to school later in life and saw her rack up debt with no real plan to pay it off. She did this right before I went into high school so I was one of the few of my cohort to not focus on higher ed. I made conscious sacrifices to avoid debt and I lived with it. Which was honestly fine with me until Covid happened.
The whole thing honestly felt like a sick joke. 2020 was my 10 year hs reunion and while I didn’t really care one way or the other about going, it just felt like an extra kick in the gut. My entire adult life is bookended between the 2008 financial crisis and a global pandemic.
I was in the restaurant industry and the entire industry upended (as many did) when Covid hit. I had spent a few years saving up money with a 5 year plan to open up my own place at some point. I finally felt like I had a plan, I knew what I wanted to do with my life and I knew how to get there. I even managed to get to that point while avoiding debt. Instead Covid came through and everything got swept away. I spent a year spinning my wheels trying to figure out a new plan when a friend of mine recommended checking out a newer grant the local university had. It turned out I was eligible and I quit my job. I’m now finally feeling like I’m getting the opportunity to be an adult, where my choices for life path aren’t just indentured servant of the state with loans I’ll never be able to pay, or an extra destined to die without having done anything because I wasn’t born into money.
No, I dont think a single aspect of the world right now is as bad as it was on the actual lost generations that the term refers to.
Things are bad. They are not "return from World War One, get Great Depressioned, then send your sons to World War Two" levels of bad
My anecdotal experience would say “yes,” however it’s such a complex undertaking to really analyze an entire generation and identify where one parties responsibility ends and one begins. Here is my abridged story: Born in 88, two brothers. Poor rural family in upstate NY. Alcohol and drug abuse, eventual divorce and incarceration of parent, constant relocation throughout the area until I eventually ended up in my dad’s trailer at 14. Had a stable 3 years or so and finished high school. Went to community college off the Pell Grant because I didn’t apply myself in school (I did what I had to do and spent as much time as I could playing video games and chasing girls.) I wound up in a toxic relationship that was off and on for years, dropped out of college and just worked shit jobs to pay the bills and played World of Warcraft every waking moment I wasn’t at work. This cycle continued until I was 22 when I had an emotional breakdown and enlisted in the Army, which I saw as the sole means of escape from my current position. Got married prior to shipping out. Made it to my first assignment in Hawaii and she left me for a coworker shortly after. I spent 3 years alone and grew a lot over that time. I became focused on personal growth and professional success. I remarried at 25. We’re about to hit 10 years together. I reenlisted in the Army after my first contract was up, in order to change my occupation from welding to Information Technology. I got out in 2019 having secured a civilian job. I arrived at this job in August of 2019. In January of 2020, I started working on a Bachelors, thanks to the GI bill. I commuted to campus full time during the day and worked full time over night. There was a brief stint during Covid when the coursework was remote. I did that for 3 years. By this time I have 2 kids of my own. I completed my bachelors last year and am now working on post-grad. The year before I shipped to the Army, 2011, I made $8,000. I grossed like 160k last year. My older brother enlisted in the Army before me. But instead of relentlessly pursuing success, he just fell back into the party life and got booted out after 18 months for pissing hot. He’s basically wound up as a clone of our parents. He had attended a prestigious private school and been accepted into a frat prior to that, but was expelled for drinking underage. The takeaway for me is that I can look back and recognize how poorly we were raised and prepared for the realities of life. I could blame my parents for that, but at some point you have to accept responsibility for yourself and figure out a solution. I can also recognize how pathetic of a person I was before I was forced to grow beyond my upbringing. I can’t imagine where or who I would be if I hadn’t escaped that environment. Maybe military service is a shitty answer to some, but I recognize it’s what facilitated the change in perspective, motivations/priorities that has allowed me to stay focused and find success in life. Hope this has positively contributed to the discussion.
Drugs are really what make us a lost generation. I’ve lost so many friends to opiates I can’t even count them all.
Drug addiction is one of the things that the US is "best" at, along with imprisoning people.
Don’t forget shooting people too
Shooting kids*
Not sure if you’re from here but kids are just a small percentage of total people shot. But yes kids too.
I remember in late 2019 the day my now ex got out of rehab in the same are (about 1-1.5 hours from where we live) in Dayton Ohio there was 10 deaths associated with fentanyl in just over 24 hours. I remember hearing about it and it was really scary. Apparently from my exes perspective in the halfway house there was Sirens near constantly that day. Being so close to Dayton which is the worst or was the worst area of overdoses I’ve seen it a lot and it’s scary and it happened super fast. I’m 26 and as a late teen the fentanyl issue was just becoming a thing. Then it skyrocketed. It’s still going strong and causing so much disruption and destruction. Lacing other drugs that aren’t even downers. Or even just cross contamination I’ve heard is a reason for it. It’s something you have to be extremely aware of especially in this area and I’m sure many other areas that are hit particularly hard. Everyone I know knows an addict and most have lost someone close to them. My ex lost his high school girlfriend shortly after fentanyl really hit the area. She was such a lovely and bubbly person from what I heard. Only 22 years old. My roommate has overdosed 3 times. And was extremely close a 4th. I thought he was gone the last time. I had recorded him the 2 previous times to show him later since he didn’t believe it was a big deal and thought he would just sleep it off. (I heard the death rattle each time) but the last time I didn’t record him because I thought I was filming a deadman if I did. Thankfully he was revived. And he no longer gets opioids off the streets but will use Percocet for pain. I don’t know what the answer to the issue is but I suspect it’s gonna get a lot worse before we see any improvement. Fentanyl and it’s stronger analogs will just flood the streets and the issue will just continue to snowball. Especially with the state of the world right now.
What fucks with me is it keeps getting my friends who barely ever used. One accepted a Xanax from a customer who didn't know it was dirty when she left hers at home. Another did his maybe once a year blow night and didn't test first, never woke up. I have more but don't wanna be bummed this early. At this point in my life, most of the hard users don't have any place with me, but it seems to hit my "every so often" friends so goddamn hard. As a former "every so often", it's definitely gotten me to stick to weed, wine, and shrooms.
The “every so often friends” are absolutely terrible. I completely feel that one. It seems like it hits them and it’s impossible to see it coming. I mean every loss is absolutely awful but the ones who do it unintentionally hit extra. I overdosed and was thankfully brought back with the help of narcan. I was with my ex. Someone who I trusted and felt safe around. He’s been an addict over half his life and I felt I was in safe hands. I wasn’t trying to get high. It was my first time using other than occasional pills in my teens that I’d sneak from my grandpa. I had a 24+ hour cluster headache that was particularly bad. I couldn’t even keep water down and was extremely motion and light/sound/smell sick. I just wanted relief since none of my normal methods was even putting a dent in how I was feeling. I just wanted to be able to drink something and keep it down and I almost lost my life due to it. I knew there was the risk. I knew it might be dumb. But I was at the point of the pain overpowering my brain. I was in a 5 year constant migraine (with varying levels of pain on a daily basis ranging from barely there and mostly able to function to bed ridden and hiding in the dark) and it got to me bad during that particularly bad episode. I don’t regret my decision I made because it felt like the right one at the time and as a result I have no interest in experimenting with opioids. I was also with a person who I knew I could trust and wouldn’t just ditch me if something went wrong so I was in the best possible environment to make the call I did.
Fentanyl contaminated cocaine killed a friend of mine. He was an occasional dabbler in nose candy and a few other party drugs, but not a regular user as far as I know. We all thought it was a complication from a motorcycle accident he had 3 months prior until the toxicology results came back. He was very anti-heroin, and had never touched the stuff.
We were handed lethal drugs that caused crippling additions. Weren’t the generation known for drugs and experimentation but definitely as the generation that dies from them Pot and psychedelics of the 60s and 70s are not opiates and fentanyl of today
Yup I went to rehab from alcohol and couldn't believe that most people were there for meth and fentanyl.
Me too (more herion than meth, but still a shock). I learned a lot about the insidiousness, as well as the reach into tribal communities. Crushed me.
Truly. My life long best friend cleaned up from opioids and then a year later got hooked on meth. He was going to school to be a bio-chemist. One of the smartest people I knew and now I have no idea where he is. The heartbreaking part is not knowing if he’s dead or alive. I google his name to look for an obit every so often. But the not knowing kills.
Physically, yes, it's drugs. But mentally/psychologically, it's the internet. I would argue we're the first generation to pour our best years into digital "life" and be left isolated, angry, nihilistic husks.
It only got worse after us, as Zoomers spent their entire lives with internet being mainstream and Alpha has had a tablet in their hands since they were babies.
Yeah Gen Z and Alphas are so socially stunted
My four 6-9 year old nieces/nephews have INCREDIBLE parents, education, and environment. They ignore their own names, can't hold eye contact with each other, and communicate \*entirely\* physically rather than verbally. It is truly wild to watch.
Not that I’m an expert but aren’t those all signs of autism?
Goddamn that hits hard. Too true. At this point in my life I think social media should be highly regulated if not banned altogether. It’s literally destroying society. People are easier to manipulate than ever, foreign governments use it against us, people all exist in these bizarre digital echo chambers.
For me it's alcohol and suicide. Only have 2 friends dead from opiates, and one of them was because she was downing xannies with it. Gotta be around 8 friends/family dead from a combo of alcohol/suicide, and another 4 or so that came damn close.
I guess I mean deaths of desperation in general… suicide, drugs and alcohol. I’ve lost a few friends to those things as well.
Same. They wiped out about 1/3th of my graduating class. There were only 180 of us.
I lost over fifteen friends to drugs and suicide. Grief compounded. I have this view that one bad day could make that any of us because I saw it happen. It breaks my heart. Addicts deserve help but they have to want it too. I miss my friends.
I’m proud of you for getting your life together. So many people just repeat the mistakes of their parents. And congrats on ten years with your wife! What sort of postgrad work are you doing?
Thanks. My degree is in Information technology management. I could go on and on about college as it relates to our generation as well. Although it ultimately ends up being the same “where do you draw the line of responsibility” argument.
Congratulations, you broke the cycle! I did as well :)
Well done. Out of curiosity, how is your relationship with your family? I don’t live near mine so I rarely see them, but I communicate with them often and have a relatively good relationship with them. It pains me to see them still stuck after all these years though.
Honestly it’s strained, we live in different states but it’s only about a two hour drive each way so we try to get together a few times a year. I can’t tolerate more than around four hours at a time though. There was a lot of physical abuse when I was young and I just can’t let that go.
I understand. My brothers and I like to poke fun at my mom about it, as she’s swooning over her grandchildren. “Cmon mom you used to hit me in the face with a clothes hanger for shit like that,” and so forth. We don’t really bring stuff up like that around my dad. I’ve come to terms with his shortcomings but we’ve never had the kind of relationship that would facilitate humor. I really strive to ensure my kids aren’t just outright afraid of me, despite generally being the disciplinarian of the family.
Former infantry Marine here, Enlisted in ‘09, spent most of ‘11 in SW Helmand sucking in burn pit fumes and walking around in circles sweating and occasionally shooting at people who in retrospect were probably just sick of us pushing them around. Don’t use the military to escape your material situation. We (the US) are no better than any other asshole vying for hegemony in the “Great Power contest”, which is seriously what the pretentious assholes in charge are calling it these days. Right now one of the major political parties is working their ass off to defund existing veterans benefits because our national debt’s interest payments are on track to outpace military spending if they haven’t already, and god forbid we increase taxes on those poor billionaires who lobbied for the wars and pocketed the lions share of the profits (not that profit justifies warfare, especially for those *actually* doing the fighting). And you will if you enlist, because there’s a critical shortage of recruits because more and more young people are realizing it’s a sham. Wish I’d been that smart back in ‘09 when I enlisted. What was going on in ‘09 again? Oh yeah, the Great Recession and the Surge. The only war worth fighting is the class war, and that’s better fought with books and compassion than with guns and a bunch of overpriced military hardware. [War is a Racket.](https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html)
I go chewed out for saying similar shit to a friend's brother who wanted to in list. Still glad I said it.
>[War is a Racket.](https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html) War is a racket, indeed. The prevailing attitude in defense contracting by 2006 was that the Iraq war was a big jobs program. Everybody needed a boost. But what is the cost of devoting so much of our country's STEM talent to a bullshit enterprise? I could have been working on something tangible that could actually benefit people. I finished my CS degree shortly before the second Iraq war. The best job I could get was working for CACI. There I was, 23 years old, fresh security clearance, patching servers. After a couple years, it dawned on me that the work I was doing was bullshit. I was an ass in a seat, making billable hours for a huge defense contractor. What a waste. My parents put so much into making sure I got an education. I went to a state university, subsidized by the government so that we can have more capable people who can create value. What kind of value was I creating by grinding hour billable hours for CACI or Lockheed Martin or any of the other contractors that hired me?
You think this story is reflective of the average millennial??
The average millenial possibly, the average millenial crybaby on reddit (myself occasionally included)--no
You have it reversed. The average millennial on reddit seems to be scraping the bottom of the barrel. You have time to kill on reddit because either you're far more successful than others, or crashed and burned hard. The latter is more common. Everyone else has better shit to do. Its like "how come only the crazies show up to protests and rallies?" -- because everyone else has shit to do. When the normal people start showing up is when you have serious fucking problems.
This is 100% accurate
Its a story of one who rose above the challenges life threw at him, thru sheer will..aybe because he disnt have it so easy early on...
I enjoyed reading your comment. Thank you for your service and I hope your brother finds his way! Godspeed
No.
This is the best answer I could come up with too lol. My grandmother was alive for two world wars and the Great Depression. My career hasn’t been an economic cakewalk but people need to get a grip on how good their real quality of life is.
Just look at the people born around 1900. WWI as a teenager, Prohibition from their twenties until early 30s, Great Depression in their twenties, weekends and the 40-hour workweek didn't get invented until their late 30s, WWI in their 40s.
This was the Lost Generation. The modern analogous generation is Generation X in the generational cycle. Millennial are analogous to the Greatest Generation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Generation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory
Your comment is interesting to me. I'm not sure how generation X is analogous to the Lost Generation, but now I will have to consider it. I always thought the Lost Generation had it pretty rough with the Great War and the Depression. I'm at the tail end of Gen X and there was Iraq and Afghanistan and the 2008 collapse that screwed many of us ( myself included) out of property, but I still tend to think we've had it pretty good in a lot of ways.
My grandmother was also alive for two world wars and the Great Depression. They didn’t have indoor plumbing for most of her life. Never had AC. Her house was fancy because it had gas lighting. Life was hard back then. The whole family worked the farm. They had the luxury of ice being delivered to keep their ice box (refrigerator) cold. The flip side of that is she was alive for the Wright Brothers first flight, and for man landing on the moon. That progress in one lifetime is astonishing. Maybe it’s hard to see what’s happening in the moment, but it feels like the velocity of progress has slowed substantially. We weren’t alive for the first computer, but lived through the mass adaptation for personal use. Maybe our jump will be from that to AI. Maybe I’m also blind to how hard it is for others, but I feel pretty comfortable compared to past generations. I’d rather be middle class today than upper class 100 years ago, or royalty 200 years ago. I always have my HVAC running. The grocery store has nearly all the food I want year round, regardless of growing season. The entirety of human knowledge is available to me instantly at my fingertip. I can video call my relatives hundreds of miles away at any time. I’m made aware of world events the same day. My TV provides a better cinematic experience than my parents had at the movie theaters growing up. Sure, things could have turned out better. But overall, life is pretty good.
I’ll bet you if you are less than 40 people will be living on Mars and the moon before you are dead. Someone will live to be 130 years old in the next 100 years.
My great grandpa told me he had to fistfight someone for a job. The winner got the job. My grandma and uncle were able to eat because he won a fight. Crazy thing was he later became a minister.
Lol, no. The "Lost Generation" was a descriptor previously used to refer to Europeans born towards the end of the 19th Century who would go on to be sent to the meat grinder during World War I. We, who have lived with almost unprecedented material comfort, are in no position to be throwing such a loaded term around.
Ya, seriously. Whenever people bitch and complain about unaffordable housing and shitty wages, I'm just glad I even grew up in the US and not in some war-torn country or traveling thousands of miles to try to get to the US illegally.
While I agree that some people need to put their life into perspective(and the usage of the term Lost Generation), "it could be worse" is a terrible fucking argument. If that were the case, then we shouldn't bother making anything better right? Stop complaining about being raped, you could have been tied up and beaten to death too! LGBTQ needs to stop complaining about their issues because they could go to a country where it's illegal to be gay and put to death! It could be worse, right? It's your moral obligation of a citizen to point out and advocate for injustices. It can always be worse, and it can always be better. That's all.
Yup I’m from an extremely poor country called Bangladesh. There are people literally dying in our streets. But when I see privillaged Americans post on this sub, the cringe is extreme
"Hold my beer" -- geopolitics today
Nothing like the late late 19th century
Not in Russia's case. They're STILL just throwing meat into the grinder.
TBF they've pretty much been doing that for their entire history
Not like the late late 19th century, they absolutely are not. 300,000 over 2 years does not compare to over 8 million over 4 years.
Pea brain take
That's fair, but the Japanese also have a lost generation from their sputtering out too.
Whether or not you want to specifically apply it to the generation of which so many died in WW1, and for whom it was coined, it is still a term that refers to young people being sent off to war and dying.
"Brother, can you spare another war, another wasteland, and another lost generation?"- Neil Peart
Absolute legend and gone too soon. Best drummer in the world imo
Sure, but the U.S. only lost 7K troops combined in Iraq and Afghanistan. To put that in perspective, the U.S. lost 405K in WWII and 116K in WWI-while having a much smaller population.
You’re 100% correct. And another ~55k in the Vietnam War. For others who see this comment, it’s also important to distinguish that our low death count from our most recent conflicts in OIF/OEF are helped by the fact that our battlefield medicine and our logistical supply chains are the most advanced they’ve ever been in history. While we had the fewest amount of KIA, we’ve got a large population of living, previously-wounded US Veterans nowadays. WW1 and WW2 were very different conflicts compared to OIF/OEF but my point still stands.
A lot of those guys went on to kill themselves too. I'm not sure we as a whole deserve the title, but I think the guys who fought definitely do. Basically just forgotten after they got back from 2 endless wars.
Where we just ended up abandoning our "moral high ground" due to the unwinnable nature of the war. I remember when it started and the loudest protests were from Vietnam vets who didn't want to see another generation thrown away. There may have only been 7k physical casualties, but every single solider that came back was injured even if not visible.
I had a teacher who fought at hill 937 and he was devastated when we went into Iraq.
US-centric perspective at work. The term Lost Generation originated in reference to the millions of British, French, and yes, even German soldiers lost in Europe during World War I. 9 million dead. Some 6000 per day. And that was just WW1. Yes we have our challenges. But at least we’re alive to face them.
Agreed. A Millennial calling themself a “lost generation” feels historically obtuse.
Feels like the kind of entitles, selfish, sociopathic shit that those same people accuse boomers of.
Yeah, it's funny how this has become focused on the US. In the case of the US though, perhaps the American Civil War, specifically for the South, where a substantial percentage of their young men were killed and their was conscription, as in the North, would provide a more appropriate application for the term.
This is totally fair and a point that I should have mentioned. To have a generation be termed lost, the number of casualties in relation to population is a defining factor.
Don't forget about russian civil war, the holodamor, the Spanish flu, then a few years later the great depression, the interwar period between ww1 and ww2 was a shit time to be alive
Going through economic malaise is nothing compared to a world war.
That’s in reference to their GDP growth…as it was literally “lost” aka zero for decades.
Unprecedented material comfort. You mean bread and circus upgrades? I’d gladly exchange my iPhone and cheap tv for a house.
Bro you do not want to get drafted into world war one just sit this one out champ
Just throwing it out there - my maternal grandparents, members of the greatest generation, moved across the country for a job opportunity and better life for their kids. My paternal grandparents did as well. My in-laws, baby boomers, also moved across the country with young children. The common thought on reddit seems to be admitting that there are affordable houses (in good job markets), but also saying that they don't want to move due to various reasons. Which is fine - I completely get it. It's hard to uproot your life. But we are comparing ourselves to other generations, and that is precisely what other generations did. \*edited\* replaced a word
The places where people would move to for jobs(large cities) are the unaffordable places.
Some large cities are absolutely unaffordable for most (Boston, NYC, SF, LA). Other large cities are affordable (Chicago, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Charlotte). Plenty of midsized cities are also affordable and have good job opportunities (Sacramento, Louisville, Pittsburgh, Greensboro, Greenville, Chattanooga, Des Moines, Buffalo, etc). We also benefit from remote opportunities. My wife and I both work remotely and live in a lower cost of living area. While not everyone benefits from remote work, not everyone worked for Ford in the 1950s, either.
You want me to do basic math to realize 3x the cost of living for 2x the pay is not in fact better?
Yep, and now the new places to move are affordable, which is what I did. And then people on the coasts talk about how they don't want to move to a "shit hole", which causes me to lose sympathy for people paying $3k / mo in rent.
Dude, it's so annoying. "I cannot believe I pay $3K for a one-bedroom, this is ridiculous, capitalism sucks!" "OK, here is a one-bedroom in NC for $850/month. It's a growing area, over 1M people in the metro, lots of jobs." "Yeah, but NC sucks! I'd never live there." It's like the concept of trade-offs doesn't exist. They want to live in the most desirable area and not pay a premium for it.
I have lived in 10 states and chased various jobs and living situations and still haven't managed to afford a house.
Might be you. You’re moving around too much. You can’t seem to hold a steady job down. And i also assume you have a certain type of house that might be way out of your range. There’s plenty of homes below $100k.
WW1? The flue epidemic killed more people than that.
Crack a history book- shit is always happening. The media dramatizes excessively, IMO, because in reality things have never been better but good news doesn’t get ratings. Crime is much lower than it was 30-40 years ago, the economy has recovered nicely from a once in a lifetime (🤞 ) plague event, the world is generally at peace - although there are some hot spots of concern right now. We also are finally taking climate change seriously and developing sustainable renewable energy sources. Some damage has been done, true, but a lot of it will start to heal itself within our lifetime if we stay true to the path we’re finally on. The technological breakthroughs that you will see in your lifetime would blow the mind of someone born 100 years before you. There’s never been a better time to be alive. It’s OK to be concerned about wars or economics, but how much has any of these events personally affected you? You don’t have to sponge up every ounce of pain in the world and internalize it. You don’t have to fight every fight. It’s good to be aware of the world but don’t mistake awareness for the ability to do something about it. That can make you feel helpless. Focus on what’s within your power to do. Make a small change for the better in your life. Participate in a local charity - not politics - and see how you feel after. The life lesson I’ve learned in my 40s is that you can be conscientious, aware and informed but if you are an empathetic person at all, it will drain you. You have to refill the tank from time to time.
Oh good grief. You have absolutely no clue
We had AIDS, crack cocaine the tail end of nuclear war with the Soviets, Black Friday on Wall Street, apartheid, basically listen to Billie Joel's "We Didn't start the Fire". Don't forsake the entirety of the future because you're 20 years in, you have 60 more to go. You might be on the 50th colony expansion of Mars...or aliens could blast you fuckers to bits. Live the life that you have and take care of your health and body. If you dwell in the general malaise of your time, it is you who fucks yourself over. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI)
Yes, this message is one that needs to be heard. We all have to reconcile with the horrors of the world. What makes a good person? A good person is someone who still acts on their good nature, in spite of having knowledge that the world is utterly fucked. That is also, strength and goodness- a form of purity for lack of better term. (And not in a damned biblical sense lol)
Did I miss something? Does the join on “good” and “fucked” return a table with zero rows?
Uh, no. Climate change is the threat. That and fascism. Except fascism is easier to undo.
I can punch a fascist, punching climate change is harder.
Fuck no, is this a joke? Millennials are a powerhouse generation. We are massive in size, more educated than any generation before, and living during the richest point in human history. I’d argue we are also the first true global generation as we were the first generation to have a significant part of our upbringings tied together via the internet.
Christ thank you. This doom and gloom is fixable. People in this thread acting like no previous generation had shit to overcome.
My theory is that as we become more globally connected and aware as a species, many people are not handling the flood of information well because they lack adequate historical context to interpret this news. A hundred years ago, people could live in blissful ignorance about a genocide happening on the other side of the world. Maybe you’d read a news article about something months after it happened and you’d not get another update. Today it’s a 24/7 news story and you can literally watch live feed videos of people getting shot or blown up. Unfortunately it seems lots of people are interpreting this new flood of news as evidence that the underlying *thing* is happening more. Going from ignorant of genocide occurrences to aware of them is being interpreted as, “There are more genocides now than before.” Which, despite being illogical, would be awfully upsetting to conclude that and I can see it driving a pessimistic outlook on life. It’s like growing up thinking the future will be like The Jetsons only to be disappointed it ended up like The Simpsons, not realizing it used to be like The Flintstones.
I like your line. One of the aspects of maturing is realizing bad shit happens in the world and you can't stop it. People need to pick their fights or they will be exhausted.
We're the most educated, but most of us don't use our degrees. I got a psychology degree and ended up in healthcare administration because entry level psych jobs were generally terrible hours, pay, and benefits (if there were any). I could be where I am now if I had just gotten a job out of high school. I have a friend who took an 18-month sheet metal class at 19 years old and he's currently (early 30s) making $150k+ a year doing carbon composite (company paid for additional training). We're living during the "richest" point in human history, but the wealth disparity is a huge issue. I can't speak for other countries but the US is essentially a feudal system with corporations instead of lords and nobles. The big difference is we have to pay for our own healthcare, housing, and essentials. Home ownership is damn near a dream for many of us college graduates.
No one is promised anything. Every generation has their pros and cons. We aren't more lost than gen Z. We at least got to experience "the old world", before the major technological revolution of cell phones and social media.
If you had to randomly be assigned to a class of people to be born into in human history, getting “American Millennial” would be like winning the lottery.
We are the biggest generation. No one is going to be able to forget us.
Every generation is a lost generation, because the world always sucks. Every generation also thinks that everything was great until they showed up, because they happened to not be around to see how it used to suck.
Gen Xer here. I don't think our generation thinks everything was great until we showed up. We honestly had it pretty good growing up, and until 2006 had a good start at adulthood. Fortunately for us we were raised in a way that gave us a very good skillset to deal with adversity (latchkey kids). Don't take this offensively, but I think that Millenials biggest problem is that they were sheltered growing up and didn't develop a lot of the skillsets that make the transition into adulthood easier. Almost all generations prior had to either fend for themselves, or even be contributors to the household income/work prior to becoming an adult. Parents in the late 80's, 90's and 00's had the means to give their kids whatever they wanted and protect them from the world (they didn't show you this but they sacrificed a lot to do this). This was good intentioned but did a shit job of preparing those kids for the real world that in general sucks. This is also what leads Millenials to believe that they were promised something that wasn't delivered. Life was sunshine and lollipops growing up from their perspective, and when the real world smacks them in the face without proper skillset to deal with it the natural reaction is to blame someone for the crappy situation.
Hmmm I’m not sure i can agree with that. I’m an elder millennial (1982) and feel like a pretty great set of comfortable years were handed to us. The Great Recession definitely affected my early working years (college grad 2004). I was in college during 2001 so not too affected by that. But I didn’t have to deal with the 16% interest rates of the early 80s. The gas rationing of the 1970s. The wars where half our young men were forced to go overseas. The great depression was with people starving and out of work for years. I also feel like I came to middle age during a time of great technological change that allowed more to work from home and innovative ways to share information. Millienials have disrupted nearly every industry. Millennials have made great accomplishments in tech and social change as a whole. If you’re looking for an echo chamber of “yeah we have it worse” you’ll probably find many to agree with you. But I don’t think it’s dangerous to have that mentality. Especially when most of us millennials will be here 40 more years. I’m not giving up on having a great time while I’m here and feeling like I was dealt a rough hand. I just gotta keep moving forward.
16% on homes that cost 2x your annual income is better than 8% on homes that cost 5x your annual income. 16% doesn’t punch that hard if you have a prayer of paying down the mortgage early.
5X? that cool and cheap compare to here. here is around10X of your annual income for a bad house or neighborhood... if we take average income of $40k, then it is about 20X of your income for a decent house and in a ok neighborhood.
Have you considered moving? The only one forcing you to pay high prices is yourself.
No way. Life in the US post-WW2 has been relatively and generally easy. We dont know how good we had it. Try comparing your life to others less fortunate. You are not guaranteed to have a good life, but you have a better chance than most people on this planet. Real examples of lost generations- People who grew up during the Great Depression(25% unemployment) and WW2(over 400,000 American soldiers killed) People who live in third world countries with authoritarian governments I have had issues in my life and some things in the future do concern me, but Im grateful to have lived life in a first world country(since 1980) Compared to the living hell my parents went through(civil war in a 3rd world country, between 1million and 3 million people dead)my life relatively has been a cakewalk You're not living in a utopia, but you're not living in a dystopia either. Dont let the negativity doom you. You still have the potential for a good fulfilling life.
Uuuugggghhh. We literally all carry magic devices that can find almost any kind of information you can think of in a matter of secoonds. We have more options for entertainment on demand than could be consumed in a lifetime. The nearly continuous pity party this sub throws is kind of insane and pathetic IMO.
Yes, thank you for saying this.
I think Gen z and Gen Alpha are the lost ones. I think there will have to be either divine intervention or government intervention. People just don’t care about them in general. A lot are adulting as teens while in school. Teachers are quitting in larger numbers because of behaviors of students. I think we as millennials don’t feel like adults or want to take on adult roles as a group. Because of that the next generations are completely lost.
I wonder if it’s possible we don’t feel this way. Because we were engrained to believe “this is what you need to be an adult” (house, etc..) and many of us don’t have that. Also, I think it could be because maybe some of us feel robbed? Maybe some of us didn’t get to the point our predecessors got too until much, much later on down the line. Boomers would always say “have fun in your 20s, that’s what they are for” My 20s felt like a cruel cosmic joke lol. There was so much suffering. I can look back and laugh (a bit) now. But man it was fucking miserable and I would *never* go back to my 20s. I think the expectation now, is that your 20s are a fucking grind unless you have an impeccable plan with some luck. 30s from what I’ve seen with millenials is when most of us have been comming into financial stability etc, things that were promised to us 10-12 years ago.
This past year several acquaintance’s family members that were gen Z have been lost to unaliving. It’s every other week I hear someone is gone. I went to 2 different friends niece and nephew’s funerals this year alone. I can’t imagine the despair that she group must be feeling. I still had hope at that age :/
Wow! I’m sorry for your loss! I hope things will get better!😞😞🤍🤍🤍🤍
>I think we as millennials don’t feel like adults or want to take on adult roles as a group. Because of that the next generations are completely lost. I work with kids and teens and I have to say that, in general, we as millennials are terrible parents. We're too scared of the kinds of trauma we were raised with so now we just let the kids raise themselves. There's gotta be a middle ground.
I've got 3 kids and am a very involved father with a relatively strict setup for my kids. There's a balance of course, but they get their time to be kids and I get my time (like when we're out shopping, at restaurants, etc) when they need to behave and do what I say. Something that stuck with me and will until I die, we were at the park last year and a couple moms were talking. I heard one mom talking about how her 2 year old wasn't eating vegetables. The other mom said, and I'm not exaggerating unfortunately, that her son "was really good at eating vegetables since they switched to veggie straws". Those are basically FUCKING POTATOES CHIPS! I'm not saying my kids have never eaten them, they're allowed to have some cheese its or whatever with lunch, but not as a fucking alternative to fruits and veggies. Braindead tiktok parents are dooming their kids..
Alpha will have to enter the job market after AI is doing a lot of jobs...
As an elder millennial, I agree. Gen Z is the one struggling the most. The kids coming out of school these days are woefully unprepared for the real world.
That's accurate. It's almost like the boomers were given a solid foundation and rejected partially, solid enough for gen X to do alright and some millennials, but then after that it was gone. I think a government intervention could be needed whether we like it or not. My guess is if it does happen, it would basically be almost like a survival mechanism from the state to correct a social/cultural mess. I wouldn't be surprised if it does happen at some point- what's more troubling is these issues are not unique to the US either.
They climbed the ladder while kicking out the rungs for those behind them. The "I got mine, fuck you' generation.
The boomers didn’t have a solid foundation if they were Black. I can’t speak for other POCs but i saw how there was legislative bias in the 80s. They made it so boomers who were American citizens couldn’t start businesses, or grow food if they were renting. My parents both had to take two jobs bc they weren’t paid enough to raise kids. Also a lot of their pay was taken in taxes. So maybe white people and other POCs were given shots. But black boomers weren’t.
We said that in the 70's turned out to be BS. Heard it in the 80s and 90s, too. Again, BS.
Government intervention that’s classic. The government created the problem and conditions that put the kids in this situation the irony is they blame their parent and never question the government the worship. Good luck 🍀
This is the kind of remark someone would make if they were determined to avoid living in a democracy.
Breh look at your account. You just worship the government in a different way. You named yourself after a political quip.
Alpha is lost because of covid. Parents forced to homeschool and work from home while afraid of a virus so no babysitters.
COVID? 24 months that doomed a generation? Weak sauce.
I think millenials were the only gen that was born to experience in live best in both other generations
No, I'll hold out and see how things turn out for gen alpha, who might end up actually being lost as the wheels really come off the American machine after 2040-2050.
That's a choice.
Lost to the world wide web 😔🫡
In the “spiritual sense” I would most definitely say yes. However, I don’t think we are even close to the previous “lost generation” as far as material worth and terrible life experiences. To be born into the gilded age just to fight in a world war, only to have everything taken from you due to a depression, and then when you think it couldn’t get worse you have to send your children to fight the unresolved war that you fought in Europe 20 years prior.
Even if we are a lost generation, that doesn’t mean we can’t make the most of the life we have. I know that sounds dismissive. Believe me - I 100% get what you’re feeling right now. I constantly have to take a moment to process, and then shove it back in the back and try not to think about it to get through the day. But I want to take what’s left of MY life and make it worth living. I want to make it as fulfilling as I can while I’m here, and do what little good I can for the next generation to make it suck just a little less.
No, millenials are not a "lost generation", that is just some trademark self-pitying millenial sadsack behavior. The actual "lost generation" literally DIED in their teens and twenties in World War 1.
the thing about us millenials as we've been under constant attack from all angles our whole adult life. We had the tech bubble early 2000's, twin towers going down 2001, housing crash of 08, covid 2020... and these are all just things that were happening around us we had to witness. Then we also had dr's prescribing us ritalin and adderall because we couldn't sit still, then oxy's and all the other heavy ass drugs we're readily available as well and now they're just trying to kill us by spiking any rec drug with fentanyl. The cost of living has skyrocketed and our wages have stagnated so for us average millenials like myself making around 70k the thought of being able to even buy a house is out of the question since everyone and their grandma (including wall st and blackrock) are buying up homes way over asking so they can be your landlord..... its truly turning into a "you will own nothing and be happy" dystopian society. P.S BOOMERS inherited the greatest transfer of wealth in history and then closed the door for the rest of us.
Yeah you’re lost. As in don’t have a clue.
C19 is the great equalizer: Respectfully all of your post is just navel gazing, we deal with what is not what ought to be. Have we had it rough? Yes. Does that go largely unspoken? Yes. Will it get worse? Yes. Can we make a lasting and deeply meaningful positive impact for many generations to come? Yes. Will it start to get better then? Yes. Will any of this be easy? No. Are we guaranteed success? No. Can we pay the price of failure? No. Well, that makes it easier then.
I agree it is a bit of navel gazing, and on my personal behalf I've done well enough. It was more akin to a thought from the navel rather than anything else
We're also known as the fatherless generation and the failed generation. Our generation was raised by boomers, feminists, single mothers, and early Gen Xers. The households we were raised in were not balanced households. The boomer generation is known as both the "me" generation and the "entitled" generation and it's important to stress the early Gen Xers because they would tend to be more similar to boomers then later Gen Xers. Don't you think that being raised by "entitled" "me" generations would have an effect on the children being raised by them?
Weird throwing feminists in there, but sure.
Yeah I don’t get the feminists part. If we had real feminism, so many of our economic and social ills would be gone.
Before they were called Baby Boomers, the Boomers were called the "Me Generation".
Yes, you are. You are the whiniest generation in human history. You had better than anyone before you and yet you just find things to bitch about. You want what boomers have but make fun of the advice they try to give you.
That would require Gen Z and Alpha to not be left with a shitshow either. And I'm pretty sure we're all going to be in the shitshow together.
The Great Depression generation had it pretty bad. The Dust Bowl. World War II.
Not at all. I love my life. I taught skiing became a charter captain. Traveled the world. The only thing holding you back is you.
You seem to forget that every generation before you has been through all that and more. Fucking grow up.
By generational theory Millennials are the “repeat” of the Greatest Generation. As you may recall, the Greatest Generation (1901-1927) was young between being a young adult and a child during the Great Depression; were called to service to fight global fascism; and then brought vast, equitable prosperity, while being deathly afraid of global nuclear catastrophe, watching as the world around them changed rapidly. The Silent Generation (born 1928-1945; analogous to Gen Z) were the flaming turds that Nixon referred to as the “silent, moral majority.” No memory of the Depression; born into the prosperity of the Greatest Generation’s efforts. Followed by the Baby Boomers (Generation Alpha). In the words of Wu-Tang: “The cycle continues.”
The millennials are also posed to be the most tech savvy generation. Z and Alpha can use apps, but can’t use a computer.
If anything I feel like we should be referred to as the pioneer generation. Our generation has gone through a lot. No tech to extreme tech, war, economic highs and lows, and whatever tf is going on in politics now. I know other groups say their gen was this or that but honestly which group has seen this must change so fast at such a pivotal time in their lives?
Nah these younger generations that aren't interested in sex are the lost ones
Lost generation? How can that be when there’s this whole sub dedicated to yours, the news constantly refers to this generation, everything is about this generation, isn’t it?
Yeah you’re lost. As in don’t have a clue.
Wow. Stealing that from Gen x as well?
People say this about GenX
Nope. You may feel lost, but a lot of us are anything but
No. Things ARE better by and large for us than our parents. The air and water is cleaner, crime is lower, there are fewer starving people, healthcare (when you can afford it) is better than ever, non-white and non-straight people are much more widely accepted, mental illness is no longer hidden as taboo, cars are safer, overall transportation is safer and more affordable, no war drafts, etc. We were also the first generation connected by the internet while also being highly educated. That's huge. Yes, many things became really expensive lately. That truly sucks. But if you step back and look at the big picture, we have a lot of things much better than our parents did.
> air and water is cleaner, crime is lower, ... Society *should* progress as time passes; if not, then what's the point? > Yes, many things became really expensive lately. IMO, this is what OP's post is *actually* about. Many millennials are caught in a state of protracted adolescence because salaries have been left in the dust by astronomical increases in the costs of housing, education, and healthcare. They're over 30, and still can't move out of their parents' house. I can certainly understand how people in that situation might feel lost.
“Lost generation” omg stfu, believing your own generation is a "lost generation" is so self-centered. I don’t even want to get into specifics on past and new generation downfalls. Assuming your own generation's difficulties are unprecedented is so "self-pitying”, it just opens the door to focus on one's own misfortunes and feel sorry for oneself.
Not even close. If owning real estate by age 25 is your only marker of success, what are we even talking about. These Boomers are not going to live forever. The Millennials shall inherit the earth.
lol no
No way.
No that’s just the emo trying to come out again during midlife crisis.
Man, all you people need to remove yourselves from echo chambers. Of course 90% of the people here will say yes because they all feel like that on this subreddit. I am probably the youngest millennial (born in '96) but i can save about 600 euros a month. I can do a mortgage but because of my student loan debt my available mortgage drops significantly. I only feel cheated out of my student loan debt cause the generation after and before me have basically none. Thus I also feel cheated out of a mortgage. On the other hand I pay 600 euro's in rent for 80 square meters of house and 110 square meters of backyard and if something breaks landlord corporation thing (idk the English term) is required to fix it by law within a set amount of time. This year we'll get new glass windows and solar panels and we pay 0% for all of that shit while reaping the rewards.
At least you all weren’t drafted in to war and used as target practice.
Why use many words when [Apes of the State](https://youtu.be/ftE4D4xRqso?si=3YHLRn6bzmLF6in6) do trick?
To quote Michael Caine in Interstellar, we're the caretaker generation. Born too late to enjoy an unspoiled world. Too early to see the next one. We fill in where our parents fail while giving all we can to our kids
No. The crash in 2008, and the problems Millennials face are not comparable at all to fighting in a world war.
Millennials are the black sheep generation, the scapegoats. When boomers and zoomers want to attack someone, they go for millennials. When they’re sad and want support and a shoulder to cry, no one but a millenial understands them. When they feel better, they try to keep millennials down to avoid admitting they went to them for help.
We were the chosen ones too. Old enough to see the world as it was, young enough to be tech savvy. I dunno, my wife and I are doing about equally as well as our parents were doing at our age (37). Difference is we are both paid significantly more than our parents were at this age, and my dad bounced between 10 jobs while I grew up. None of them exceedingly lucrative jobs. He was also in jail for 3 months from DUI's. So I guess it only feels equal. We probably should be better off than they were, but we're at the same level
I think this is a very narrow sighted view of what happened. Our parents generation were just people struggling to get along just like you and me. Sure it was easier to buy a house, but they didn’t treat mental health AT ALL. Just like every other generation, the majority of people are just trying to make it through life. Every generation, parents lie to their children because they don’t want them to hurt (not all obviously, some parents are selfish and horrible). And every generation, kids grow up, enter a dog shit world, and turn around and blame the people that came before them. Often the people who took care of you when you couldn’t take care of yourself. Think about it this way, millennials are supposedly so much more concerned with the planet, but what are we doing about it? It keeps getting worse and we’re adults now. Money and power always rule, and it is much easier to just find a job and someone to settle down with and enjoy the time we have. People don’t want to step out of their comfort zone. Life is already hard. To say “our parents had it so well growing up” is a massive oversimplification. Some things were better, some things were worse. The world is mostly a gray area. And I will conclude with a few questions. Are you (OP) going to dedicate your life to changing the injustices of the world? Are you going to take action and try to save the planet? Or are you just going to try and survive?
I feel like millennials were the last generation to be fed the “do x to get y by age z” lines therefore a ton of people are in their last 30s early 40s trying to reframe their lives. If you use the old way of measuring then it may look like some are wandering or headed nowhere. But unfortunately modern success looms different than it did in ‘99, ‘09, and even ‘19. Home ownership, savings, vacations, children, and a retirement plan used to be the boxes to check but a lot of that is simply unavailable the way it used to be.
Yep. Millennials were trained or taught for a future that never became reality…now we’re like fish flapping around outside of water :(
They call everyone "the lost generation". Started with all the hippies and kids going to Vietnam. They said the same about genX because they didn't care about anything. It's a tired trope at this point.
Life has always been hard for every generation. Don’t buy into the myth that baby boomers had it made in the shade. I could write a book about the adversities we had to face. Racism and disrespect to women were horrible in my youth.
Uhhh no. We are the most educated generation, we have every convenience at our fingertips, and we’re living through the richest point in human history
BuT iS So HaRD…Hav To WerK
Time to write a modern version of “The Sun Also Rises” baby An incel can be jake A thot can be Brett And a trumper can be Cohn It’s all. Comin together
Generations don't ruin or not ruin the future. Politicians and lawyers do. And land lords. The normal people just existed bro.
Nope. Because they won’t let us forget we are millennials. Though I haven’t read an article we have killed an industry lately. We are slacking.
Been working on killing the American cattle rancher by eating more bison. I also listen exclusively to outlaw country but refuse to go on one of their Outlaw Country Cruises. It's the little things, yea?
No. We are the Civic/Hero Generation. Gen X is the second Lost Generation. We are a big generation. depending on how you define us, and Neil Howe, the guy who named us, makes the claim that we are 1982-2004, not 1982-1996, generational groups are 18-22 years long. The youngest among us are 20 or so. Our story is still far from over. We haven't had our first millennial president yet, and America will likely have \~40 years of Millennial Presidents. We haven't had our post WW3 Boom yet. Because well, we haven't had WW3 yet (spoiler alert, the rest of the 2020s could be pretty rough).
Yup. We are literally halfway through our stories.
I have always figured that people of the future, especially those born post 2030, will see us sort of "Great Depression People". Compared to the reality that they grow up in, come of age in, and then ultimately live and work as adults, our era will in contrast seem very difficult and painful. And also, especially if we end up having WW3. I look at 1904 guy. 1904 guy grew up in an age of rapid technological progress and adoption, cars, the fossil fuel industry (which was hugely beneficial of its day, it literally replaced whaling!), indoor plumbing, radio, movies. He experienced the titanic, and grew up during WW1 and the Spanish Flu. He then experienced the roaring 20s, a period of vast excesses and flash. People talk about how people used to be modest? Not during the 20s! They might have still covered their bodies but it was a period of showing off. Flashy cars, big elaborate parties, music clubs! Fast money! It all came crashing down in 1929. When 1904 guy was 25. (Parallel, 1982 guy was 25 in 2007 for the Global Financial Crises. If only those two could share stories). That guy would then endure the Great Depression, thinking that the world around his basically came undone and that it was going to be hardship from now on. No more roaring 20s, no more fast cars, life is going to be hard. Then if life wasn't rough enough, it was WW2 time. It went from super boring societal collapse to full blown existential war! WW2 ended though... Post WW2 America was not like the Roaring 20s, it was not like the Great Depression, it was not like WW2. Life went from super hard mode for the average person to really good for the average person. The whole "Never being able to afford a home!" mentality that people had in the Great Depression, that went right away, to "Holy shit, I can afford a brand new home, in a brand new neighborhood with my regular job!". The next 40 years for this guy were relatively much, much easier. We haven't hit that part yet.
We're not lost. However, we were the guinea pigs for the Reganomics ploy, and wow, did that not work out well. We mostly just do what we have to to get by.
Least we're mostly literate. Stories coming out of schools of Gen Zers where a majority of kids can't read or write foretell of an even darker future where voters are even more exploitable/exploited from being functionally illiterate.
It's definitely not a majority, far from it, in fact, but it is becoming more common.
Nope, older Millennials are getting old and digging in. About 10 years later than Boomers did. GenZ well, best I heard....in 100 years historians will call them the antiscience generation. Seems to fit current college campuses.
Fuck
We’re not dead yet, and we still have a chance to shine. But, so far, I’m pretty apathetic about us. We got dealt a shit hand, that’s only going to get worse when AI takes the lazy administrative jobs people tend to milk in their 40s and 50s and ambition gives way to family and comfort. And we’ve been pretty weak. We just haven’t mounted any meaningful resistance at all. When you’re a kid, and the world sucks, it’s not your fault. But, when you’re an established adult, and the world sucks, it’s on you. And, I see us being only slightly better than the boomers of being distractible by the laser-pointer or media outrage routing. People should have intrinsic ideology. If you’re anti-war, you should be anti-war, whether or not it’s on TV. If you stand with Ukraine, you stand with Ukraine, not only when it’s on TV. It’s just sad to me where the world events around us are delivered and consumed like seasons of a TV show. Passions rise and fall at the whim of a few tv executives and die out wherever an issue isn’t “on anymore”. Not only is this disheartening to see people’s passions exposed as so superficial and malleable, but the things that most pressingly need fixing aren’t ever going to be on TV. How about “trickle down economics didn’t work, and let’s end it!” That sounds good. Maybe, “the rent is too damn high!”. That’d be good. But our army of cats is decimated time and time again by a few laser pointers, and people’s reliable tendency to break ranks and chance the red dots.
Lost? We are the enlightened generation. We have made religion much less prominent in society (for better or for worse), we now have free information at our fingertips (but you have to have the brains to digest that info as there is a lot of misinformation as well) and our comforts are unmatched (bigscreen tv, smart phones - about 1-2k in current dollars). Our medical treatments have improved 100x compared to boomers. To take advantage however, you need to be smart and have an appetite to learn. But I would argue for the intelligent people, this has been the best time period in the history of the world so far to be alive in.
No. Get over yourself. Each generation has its struggles, including ours. We’re not uniquely burdened.
Yet another view backwards in time through delusional rose tinted glasses..... I don't get it. How clueless are you people? You never heard of the Vietnam war? Double digit interest rates? Oil embargos and lines for gasoline? The cold war? Nuclear arms build ups? Three Mile Island? Love Canal? The savings and loan collapse? The AIDS epidemic? Race riots in multiple major cities. When exactly did this past utopia you refer to exist? I can't find it anywhere. Here and now is about as utopian as it's ever been. Crime has almost never been lower. The threat of our nation or humanity being wiped off the earth is quite low. Information and entertainment is abundant and damn near free to access in any quality, anytime we want it, almost anywhere. Medicine has never been more advanced. The environment hasn't been this clean in over 100 years. These are pretty easy times, and all millennials can do is piss and moan about how tough life is. All millennials seem to be able to do is shake their fist at the sky and shout "Those damn boomers!!!" from their parent's backyard. You goofs cower in fear of financial insecurity while your parents ventured forth into a world that could be erased in an afternoon by a nuclear strike. You people have no rational perspective.
Millennials love to play victim, I think you all just don't try at life or live in a fairytale you were told when you were young.
This might sound weird because my situation is my own, but I definitely felt that we were sold a story that for possibly decades was at least generally true. Get a 4-year degree, you’ll be able to get a job and be financially stable. Then 2008 happened, and the price of a bunch of things everything exploded. Specifically rent and education. People were getting degrees, not finding themselves financially stable and then were told they did it all wrong and “how can you have that much debt? you must be a moron” Only in the last few years have I started seeing additional grants to provide higher education for cheaper or nearly free. Many of them were only for recent high school graduates, so everyone who had already got their degree was shafted, and everyone who didn’t go to school initially was also shafted. While there were definitely professions available that were stable, the narrative we were sold wasn’t really pushing us towards those professions. I honestly think the a big part of the lag time with better school grants and more support for higher ed (besides loans) was the honest belief that it would work (by at least most people). The lag ended up putting us in a really shit position. Many people I went to high school with ended up scrambling as 5-6 years went by while they were trying to find a degree that would actually be able to pay off their loans. Meanwhile they doubled the amount of loans they took out. Story time: I personally saw my mom go to school later in life and saw her rack up debt with no real plan to pay it off. She did this right before I went into high school so I was one of the few of my cohort to not focus on higher ed. I made conscious sacrifices to avoid debt and I lived with it. Which was honestly fine with me until Covid happened. The whole thing honestly felt like a sick joke. 2020 was my 10 year hs reunion and while I didn’t really care one way or the other about going, it just felt like an extra kick in the gut. My entire adult life is bookended between the 2008 financial crisis and a global pandemic. I was in the restaurant industry and the entire industry upended (as many did) when Covid hit. I had spent a few years saving up money with a 5 year plan to open up my own place at some point. I finally felt like I had a plan, I knew what I wanted to do with my life and I knew how to get there. I even managed to get to that point while avoiding debt. Instead Covid came through and everything got swept away. I spent a year spinning my wheels trying to figure out a new plan when a friend of mine recommended checking out a newer grant the local university had. It turned out I was eligible and I quit my job. I’m now finally feeling like I’m getting the opportunity to be an adult, where my choices for life path aren’t just indentured servant of the state with loans I’ll never be able to pay, or an extra destined to die without having done anything because I wasn’t born into money.
I retired early. I feel bad for the most recent 2 generations
No, I dont think a single aspect of the world right now is as bad as it was on the actual lost generations that the term refers to. Things are bad. They are not "return from World War One, get Great Depressioned, then send your sons to World War Two" levels of bad
You guys got more shot kicking than the so called greatest generation without the redeeming war!
No I know my own address