Gen Y
This is a post about finding someone in your life who is critical of you.
I’m part of the over-esteem generation. Our grandparents were more likely to be cold, distant and reluctant to praise or coddle.
When our parents raised us, they over-compensated for their lack of praise by building us up with doting affection and constant positive reinforcement.
A girl dressed like an idiot recently told me she refuses to buy new clothes.
Wearing an eye-gougingly disastrous mix of 70s era Bowie, 80s Cyndi Lauper and cargo pants, she told me she only shops at ``vintage boutiques’‘. But before you ask, her eyelids were not fused together until the age of 22.
She dresses that way because she’s ``anti-consumerism’‘. That’s right, our human kaleidoscope is an intellectual.
Continue reading "Gen Y and the art of sounding deceptively clever" »
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Lucy says:
by stating ’ toy story 3 is about toys’ and ‘not about vampires, communist utopias…’ you are being just as narrow-minded as these supposed subversives. Being on the other end of the binary is not subversive either. Read more »
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Heather says:
Nah, Zeta, the Bateman character was all about getting to see Christian Bale in the buff. Get your priorities straight. *wonders idly if I need to add a caveat to this post* Read more »
A 21st birthday, with a house full of family and grandparents. The birthday girl and all her friends come from middle class families who are supportive and loving. They all attended good schools, work casually, go to uni and have active social lives.
It sounds like a scene of suburban tranquillity, so why is the only thing going through my head is: am I only the person who’s noticed that the birthday girl and many of the friends are completely wasted on drugs?
Talking to the mum and another girl, all I can think is ‘how can she not notice? She has to know. Is she too embarrassed to say something?’
Continue reading "Youths’ code of silence on hard drug use" »
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James1 says:
Alcohol is a drug, stephen, no matter how you put it. Its history and whatever else means nothing. It is a depressant, similar to heroin. When you consume alcohol, you are consuming a drug. I don’t really care about whether drugs are legal or not - I don’t take them… Read more »
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Alex says:
Louis - I apologise. You are, of course, entitled to your opinion. I do feel that actually experiencing a thing (whatever that thing is) is kinda paramount to you KNOWING anything about it, however. Read more »
He spotted her from across the room did Matt, a friend (and his real name).
It was two weekends ago and the cute brunette in the corner of the South Brisbane house party was just his type (“Leggy, petite - like Summer from The OC but with huge cans’‘) and he was enamoured.
Eager to find the perfect pickup line, Matt found out her name and hastily typed it into his iPhone Facebook app. “She’ll have a favourite movie, or something on her profile we can have a sweet convo about,’’ was his reasoning.
Continue reading "The perils of love in the time of Gen Y" »
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Pan says:
Interesting that you assume your measurement of success is the same as everyone else’s. It’s wonderful that your 9 out of 10 friends are ‘couples’ and you can do lots of lovely ‘couply’ things together. I hope that works well for you - particularly when the dynamic shifts and a… Read more »
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Oldie says:
Ha! So true. Thankfully happily married to a beautiful girl that I met when I was in my 30’s and she is a bit older. I see all my nieces and her girlfriends in their late 20’s and they have great wardrobes, a great rented apartrment, a nice leased car,… Read more »
Recent ABS figures showed marriage in Australia is becoming more popular, while divorce rates are falling. They also showed the average age we’re getting married has increased to 29.6 for men and 27.7 for women.
For this to be the average, plenty of people are still getting married in their 20s or even late teens – but it’s not for lack of people telling them they’re making a mistake.
It’s rude to tell people they’re making a mistake when they’re buying a house, changing careers, or deciding to have kids. Why, then, is it OK to berate people for getting married when they’re young and in love?
Continue reading "Call me old fashioned, but it’s OK to marry young" »
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Carmen says:
I’m a 20 year old and personally getting married at a young age is not so good. For some (a minority) who are 18 can get married & stay married is very rare. How can a person so young think rationally if physically the human brain is not… Read more »
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Vonny says:
Maybe the people expressing disapproval at marrying young aren’t actually expressing disapproval. Perhaps they are expressing scepticsm regarding “it’s too good to be true”. There’s so many bad things that happen to people that when they see a good thing, they don’t realise it’s real. I think that despite this,… Read more »
In a speech to Young Labor seven months ago I said that generations were often unfairly criticised by the ones which preceded them.
The young adults of Generation Y are often generalised as being plagued by apathy and indifference.
They’re sometimes called lazy and ungrateful for the many perceived advantages they have over earlier generations.
Continue reading "My speech on Gen Y was about tough love" »
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imarion says:
This was a really refreshing read. Gen Y is pretty consistently dubbed as “not capable” or “selfish,” and it simply isn’t true. There are obviously incapable and selfish people in every generation, all over the world; but there no entire generation acts one way. Understanding that relationships are what cultivate… Read more »
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imarion says:
This was a really refreshing read. Gen Y is pretty consistently dubbed as “not capable” or “selfish,” and it simply isn’t true. There are obviously incapable and selfish people in every generation, all over the world; but there no entire generation acts one way. Understanding that relationships are what cultivate… Read more »
When I was 19, I started mapping out my career plans. I was in my second year of university when I decided to volunteer as an unpaid intern for two full days per week at a magazine publishing house. My baby-boomer father never understood how I could do it for two years without pay (while working weekends in retail, where yes, I dealt with the worst customers imaginable and cleaned up kid vomit from the floor of my store), but I had faith in the fact that it would one day pay off.
One day was not this week, because this week, Employment Minister Mark Arbib is urging Gen Y to readjust their ideas about work and employment, stop the “snobbery” associated with certain means of work, and take whatever jobs they could get. For someone whose attitude to work has more to do with paying university fees and funding my internet bill than snobbery and a class act on the career ladder, Senator Arbib’s comments did not go down too well. And I was not the only one to notice.
Generation Y has long bore the brunt of the attention-seeking, lazy, power-hungry generation that refused to put in the hard yards for their future, something which the Senator might have capitalised on in his address to a young labor conference last week. What he failed to recognise is the fact that Generation Y has suffered long enough as a result of this stereotype, and as such, was ditching conventional forms and methods of work in favour of something that works for them.
Continue reading "Gen Y is picky? You call it snobbery, we call it tactic" »
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Youngson says:
Hi Cindy,Generation Jones is ulausly considered mix between Generation X and Baby Boomers. We decided to focus on the distinct generations (Generation Z, Y, X and Baby Boomers) instead of combinations, like Generation Jones. We’d be happy to work with you to develop a post on Generation Jones. Please contact… Read more »
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Celeste says:
Like Dan I as a quallified Beauty therapist couldn’t get a job anywhere because he didn’t have “the experience”, and was never given the opportunity to actually earn it. Another Gen Y fave, Yet I have been working in a supermarket for the last six (6) years. Read more »
[*Ed’s note to Gen Y: that isn’t a typo in the headline. It’s a cool joke, and Lucy explains it further down.]
I think I realised I was different when I corrected the grammar of my extremely attractive barista.
It was a Monday morning; he was frothing milk as we chatted idly about the drunken antics of our respective weekends. All the usual stuff - the people we knew in common, the places we had almost run into each other, the quality of the cocktail jugs at various Sydney locations. He might have been carefully watching the temperature gauge rise on that little jug of milk, but we both knew where the real heat was. Just as I was about to casually invite him to a rock gig he dropped a clanger.
‘Yeah I like World Bar. Dave and me were there last Thursday.’
Continue reading "Mind your language if you’re making a parse* at me" »
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Barack Obama is so Gen Y, even though he’s 47.
Just this week he was copping a grilling on American station CNBC about government economic intervention when he stopped for a second, eyed off an annoying fly, and obliterated it ninja-style. “Now, where were we?” he asks the interviewer. What a chiller.
Pan left for a second to Kevin Rudd, 51, who when put in a similar situation, pulls out the painful to watch sauce-bottle-shake chat in a desperate attempt to appear “with-it”. With added cringe-benefits.
Continue reading "Tips for pollies wishing to connect with Gen Y" »
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billige flug reisen says:
Cost Accept,travel sir planning green emerge entry programme leader travel conservative brain enable property often hurt live kitchen gun increase about alternative search cold total aye mind early master far perfect separate front information form market observe plus effect once there eat teach domestic left major fast down membership instruction… Read more »
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Caspar says:
Despite the fact that this article gets to the core of my hatred for Gen Y stereotyping (being a 20year old Gen Y myself) the guy’s got a point. Obama may not have won the election because he used socail networking websites but he sure as hell did raise a… Read more »
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