Are Millennials Boomers 2.0?

 

I have heard some say that the Millennials are shaping up to be the Boomer generation 2.0. I have not really thought that myself, considering that Millennials have nowhere near the same amount of wealth, the same hold on power, the same tendency to ignore their families, nor as much of a cohesive generational identity as the boomers, though maybe this latter point is incorrect, which we will come back to. 

However, I read this article the other day, and it sounded like it was written by a boomer. I actually double checked who wrote it, just to see if it was written by a boomer or not. It is not,

“My generation – those born roughly between 1981 and 1996 – were talked and written about endlessly by the media, our every characteristic salivated over, scrutinised, scorned. For more than a decade, we were creatures of fascination, our cohort a byword for all things trendy. We were flat white-drinking hipsters; avocado-on-toast-eating snowflakes; fans of rose-gold finishings and the inspiration behind an era-defining eponymous shade of muted baby pink.

Though we hadn’t grown up online, we’d got our first mobiles in our teens, smartphones in our twenties, and were the right-aged demographic for the launches of the first mainstream social media platforms of MySpace and Facebook, making us more tech-savvy than our predecessors. While we were often blamed for the entire world’s problems – the banking crash and global recession weren’t the reason we couldn’t afford houses, it was our own profligate purchasing of pumpkin-spiced lattes – we were also, undeniably, the hip young things. Boomers were past it, mocked for their lack of internet literacy; Gen X had no real defining traits, or at least none that could be summed up in a snappy headline.

For my twenties and much of my thirties, I experienced an en masse version of “main character syndrome” – millennials were the stars, outshining our out-of-touch forebears. Anything and everything we did was, by default, interesting and cutting edge.

Of course it was inevitable that the new would become tired, the young, old. That’s the thing about the unstoppable passage of time, right? But nothing quite prepared us for the slow, inexorable slide from relevant tastemakers to figures of fun.

I first noticed the turning of the tide a few years ago, when articles started to appear detailing the emojis that marked you out as a millennial. Gen Z – those born between 1997 and 2012 – wouldn’t be caught dead using the crying-laughing face, nor the thumbs up (branded “hostile”), nor the grimacing face. Green ticks were out, as were clapping hands and monkeys covering their eyes: all staunch millennial favourites.

From there, the derision worsened. The term “cheugy” was born, encapsulating all that was deemed basic, try-hard, outdated – a list essentially comprising stereotypical millennial attributes. Gen Z mocked us mercilessly on TikTok; all that had once made us trendsetters now flagged us as irredeemable losers. Being an adult who liked Harry Potter, Disney or Friends made you cheugy. Wearing skinny jeans made you cheugy. Wearing your hair in a side parting made you cheugy. Heck, even drinking a Starbucks made you cheugy. Oh, how the mighty had fallen!”[1]

The whole article reads like someone who is jaded that they are no longer the centre of attention, or considered cool by the younger generations. It is one of the cringiest things I have read on this kind of topic and it reads like it was written by a Boomer mocking the Millennials. Imagine caring whether or not the next generation thought you were cool or not? What a strange worldview to live in. I am sure the person who wrote this might have been trying to have a bit of fun, but it did not read that way at all.

Of course, this does not mean that we should not care about the next generation, of course we should. Just not about whether they think we are cool. We should be thinking about how we can improve this society for them, so they can continue this legacy on for the generations below them. The Boomer generation, as a whole (and yes I know there are exceptions) stripmined all of our culture and society to their benefit, and are leaving the younger generations around to deal with their mess. And herein lies an important point.

While the Boomer generation is essentially unified in its worldview and experience, because they grew up with the same three TV channels showing basically the same kinds of shows, and the same three radio stations playing the same kinds of music, and therefore they were all prone to basically the same psy-ops, the Millennial generation is unified in this one experience: we were raised by the Boomers, almost exclusively. So while the society we grew up in was not quite as unified in media and cultural experiences, though it still was to some degree, we are all stamped by our experience with the Boomers. In this way we have a similar unifying experience that the Boomers had by virtue of being raised by them. Therefore, we need to be very careful that we recognize this and don’t mirror the behaviour of the Boomers.

They say that those who are traumatized are prone to pass on the same trauma. Without a doubt most Millennials are stamped with a certain cultural trauma because of the way they have been raised by the Boomers. No generation is perfect of course, this is a sinful, fallen world, but different generations emphasize unique distinctions and this quote from this woman who wrote the article is telling,

“For my twenties and much of my thirties, I experienced an en masse version of “main character syndrome” – millennials were the stars, outshining our out-of-touch forebears. Anything and everything we did was, by default, interesting and cutting edge.”

Imagine thinking you were one of the main characters of the world? What a narcissistic worldview. However, this is not that different to the Boomer pretension to be the “Greatest Generation” with the greatest music and the greatest achievements. It’s a diminished version of it, of course, but it is still narcissistic. I remember to some degree how much Millennials were pilloried in the media not that long ago, especially by the Boomers, who saw us as layabouts, drifters, and unserious, but I never really internalized it or cared about it. Why would you care about it?

But maybe many other Millennials do care about it? If this is generationally pervasive, then this is something to be aware of, identify and reject. We should not define ourselves by our generation, we have no control if other generations seek to define us that way, but we can control how we think about ourselves, and we should define ourselves by how we conduct ourselves in light of our duty to make this world a better place for the next generations. This is far, far more important than being seen as cool or not. The young don't need us to be cool, they need us to stabilise this sinking ship. 

One more thing, the author notes how Zoomers mock Millennials "for our nostalgia and perceived earnestness.” The nostalgia point is spot on. Millennials were the last generation to really experience the greatness of the West, and the greatness of what our culture could be across the board, before the decline became truly set in and obvious. We can face the danger of getting stuck in the past like Boomers, rather than looking to the future like we should be. It’s one thing to enjoy an old album, movie or book, it is another to be defined by it, as Boomers are by the Beetles, The Who, or Led Zepplin, and the anti-traditional culture "heroes" they saw in the movies and books they grew up with. I tend to think this is contributing to why so many movies and shows are so bad now. They are being driven by an increasingly influential Millennial cohort stuck in a nostalgia loop, seeking to put themselves in their own fanfiction. Though there is more to it than that, I think this is a significant part of it.

So, maybe there is some truth in the idea that Millennials are trending to becoming a Boomer generation 2.0. Maybe that is too harsh a sentiment considering we have far less wealth and opportunity than the Boomers. But what we do have is plenty of time to invest in the future generations. Not to make them think we are cool, but so that we can turn this ship of society around. We are getting older, and we are meant to, let's age with dignity, and by that I mean, let’s age with a view towards lifting up those who come after us, and not trying to cling onto an image of coolness that is completely meaningless.

List of References

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[1] Helen Coffey, 2024, "How millennials became the least cool generation," https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/millennials-gen-z-uncool-boomers-socks-b2568557.html