“Millennial” is perhaps one of the most overused buzzword of 2010. From a shade of pink named after the young generation to headlines, the word has plagued social media. To be honest, I didn’t even know I was a millennial until that happened.
Youth is a gift, yet the term we gave this generation seems cursed. Scroll through your Facebook feed for a minute and you’ll come across an article on the death of a certain things because of millennials, their fear of missing out, or their inefficient financial management. Millennials have been associated or blamed for so much negative things that millennial pink seems to be the only positive contribution of our generation. We have been bashed for almost everything and this generation is close to becoming a meme.
However, blaming the young portion of society who are starting to embrace the adult life isn’t new. Eric Weiskott, assistant professor of English at Boston College, suggests that this notion is not new.
Weiskott takes cues from medieval literature. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Troilus and Criseyde” and “The House of Fame,” he expressed his fear of miscommunication between his generation and the younger generations due to language changes.
Today, people are generally anxious about millennials not having or having too much sex. Thomas Malory also lamented about the change in romantic pace of the young generations back then. In Le Morte d’Arthur, Malory writes how young lovers are too quick to engage in sex unlike the older generations. “But the old love was not so,” he writes.
I wonder how they would react if they learn about millennials.
“The history of culture, the history of society, is filled with left turns that no one saw coming. I’m very certain that millennials will change the world somehow. But I don’t know how, and I don’t think anyone else does, either,” Weiskott told Boston Globe.
As they say, change is constant. Most of the time, the status quo’s perturbation is brought about by a younger generation. While it may be true that millennials have murdered this and that, the cultural, economical, and political changes millennials have inspired or are about to do are inevitable updates the fast-changing world requires.
“By then, there will be new problems and a new generation to take the blame for them,” Weiskoff writes.
Header image courtesy of Unsplash
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Writer: OLIVER EMOCLING
