Things Repeat Themselves

patrickandmarcus:

this is riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in an enigma

(via 01012012)

imaginarycircus:

curryjolokia:

thelifeandtimesofagaymer:

pantheraskew:

thelifeandtimesofagaymer:

helpimtrappedontheinternet:

sageoflogic:

sanityscraps:

freshgirljade:

catfacemeowmers:

motherjones:

kateoplis:

“Here are some broad descriptions about the generation known as Millennials: They’re narcissistic. They’re lazy. They’re coddled. They’re even a bit delusional.

Those aren’t just unfounded negative stereotypes about 80 million Americans born roughly between 1980 and 2000. They’re backed up by a decade of sociological research. The National Institutes of Health found that for people in their 20s, Narcissistic Personality Disorder is three times as high than the generation that’s 65 or older. In 1992, 80 percent of people under 23 wanted to one day have a job with greater responsibility; ten years later, 60 percent did. Millennials received so many participation trophies growing up that 40 percent of them think they should be promoted every two years – regardless of performance. They’re so hopeful about the future you might think they hadn’t heard of something called the Great Recession.”

The Me Generation

Well, they’re right about the “save us all” part, anyway.

Okay, like…what total fucking assholes.  Actually we HAVE heard of the Great Recession!  In fact, that’s WHY we live with our parents!  And I don’t actually know ANYONE in that age bracket who is optimistic about the future.  And I’m not sure how wanting a job with greater responsibility makes you narcissistic.  My last job was as a barista.  You’re telling me I shouldn’t want a job with greater responsibility than making coffee and being nice to people when they were mean?  And none of the people I have ever worked with EXPECTED to get promoted regardless of performance.  They either didn’t care about being promoted, or they expected to get promoted by working hard to show that they were more competent than everyone else.

Go fuck yourself, Time.

P.S.  Want millenials to stop thinking about themselves so much?  Then maybe you should make Syria or Bangladesh the cover story instead of whining about how your kids are annoying.

^^^^ this

Matt Bors has an amazing response to this sack of shit.

Wow fuck you Time. Then again Time hasn’t criticized the negative effects of the Baby Boomer generation on our society as much as some others have so this isn’t surprising.

Reblogging because that Matt Bors response linked above is amazing and worth reading.

Dear Time Magazine,

Not only are you mostly completely fucking wrong - you’re also missing the point: The reason Millennials have to worry so much about “me me me” is because *YOUR* generation (The Baby Boomers) fucked up our futures.

You want someone to blame? Look at yourselves - you basically destroyed what most of us could have had. Instead you devastated the job market, replaced it with shitty paying jobs and unpaid internships (are you fucking *kidding* me?) Saddled tons of us will MOUNTAINS of student loan debt, and then somehow have the balls to stand there and say “Why aren’t you able to support yourself and be happy with your life! We were able to do that when we were your age! You kids are so entitled!”

So I have one thing to say to you all: Go fuck yourselves. You put us here. Don’t blame us for the fact that we were fucked before we even had a chance. Congratulations “Greatest Generation” - you ruined your own kids’ futures. But that’s okay - you were the first “Me” Generation. It’s not like you all really cared that much to begin with. As long as it wasn’t happening to you.

^^^ I agree one hundred percent. 

I’m an early generation Millennial (Born in the early 1980’s) and I’ll agree that there are some people from the Millennial Generation that are self-absorbed, narcissistic and spoiled. But I don’t blame them. 

This is the generation of everyone gets a trophy, This is the generation of No Child Left Behind. Everyone moves forward in school. No one is stupid, or incapable or held back- they’ve got special needs, learning disorders and ADHD. This is the generation of child beauty pageants, reality television and professional sports. This is the generation of
“of course you can get some extra credit and a time extension because your parents thought you needed to be on Spring Break for two weeks and not one.” This is the generation of parents who did our projects for us. The childhood where cheerleaders not only had to be athletes but had to be beautiful, where sports scholarships were more of a pathway to school than academic ones. We were the generation that was told, “Of course we’ll make an exception for you. You’re special.” I don’t blame us. 

We were the generations of Cabbage Patch dolls, Tickle Me Elmo’s, Tomagachis, Furbies and Beanie Babies. We were the ones who played with pogs and every gaming system ever invented (and believe me, I’ve come a long way since my first Nintendo.) We were the generation when McDonald’s Happy Meal Toys became collectible items, for crying out loud. I don’t blame us. 

I blame all the people who told us the things we needed to learn before it was time to learn them. Is everyone special and unique? Yeah. Does everyone deserve to be recognized for their accomplishments, the contribution to society? Absolutely. But you learn that, or you used to, by  trying and failing, by learning that there are some people (its true!) that are better than you at some things. That there are always going to be people who are prettier, more athletic, more talented or better off financially. Becoming an adult was that journey- you learned to cope with your shortcomings and make the best of what you had. You learned to succeed because you knew yourself as a result of your failures. You learned that not every person was equal, but that everyone was equally important in the grand scheme of things. Now, we’re handed a trophy that says “participant” because we rode the pine all season, hauled the water coolers, kept stats or our parents paid for our entrance into some child beauty contest. What did that teach us?

I blame the generation that raised us to believe that more was better. I grew up poor, and my parents had agonies over the fact that they couldn’t get me as many Beanie Babies, Umbro shorts or Pogs as the other kids. You know what? I survived. I’ll admit any day that I suck at Mario Kart, but I’m still proud of the fact that I beat Super Mario Brothers and I can shoot the gun in Duck Hunt without putting it directly to the screen. But for a lot of my generation the phrase “Keeping up with the Joneses” is a way of life. You wonder why some of my friends spend all their time of their computers gaming? They don’t know better. They grew up with the next, better, bigger system right around the corner and being able to beat those games was a status symbol and by god they were going to do it. Status, we were taught, was everything. It was very Animal Farm, we’re all created equal, but some more equal than others. So its no surprise that the gamers of my generation are living on WOW and whatever the hot new game is at the moment. They’re writing code and designing new adventures for all of us, because there’s nothing left for them to do. And frankly, it makes them happy. And they deserve to be happy. 

Look at the television we used to watch and then what we were seeing in our tender teen years. Reality television. Professional sports. Sitcoms depicting the “every day family” that wasn’t every day at all. Goodbye Mr. Huxtable. So long Winslows. We don’t need middle class America anymore. We’ve got Friends and My Super Sweet 16. We were shown, without a word being spoken, as we grew up that it wasn’t cool or fun to be middle class anymore. We needed to be rich. We needed drama to make us interesting. Every person who wasn’t beautiful needed to learn a skill, a social skill, and the meaner, the more cunning and awful you were the better. If you can’t make the world beautiful after all, make it interesting. 

You wonder why we’re lazy? We were taught that there’s no rule that can’t be gotten around. We’re such special snowflakes we get extra time, extra credit and extra points just for showing up to class. No wonder you have people like one of my old school mates whose parent’s paid for her admission to an Ivy League only to be shocked that she couldn’t hack it when she found out in the real world there were things like deadlines, where there were people smarter than her, and where no, exceptions aren’t really made for you because you’re pretty and people like you. No wonder I ran into people in college who didn’t know where France was on a map, or that we were engaged in a war, or that there were people in the world who were white and not Americans.Our special snowflake generation wasn’t taught those things, or if they did miss class that day, they got extra points for going to Cancun with mom and dad for a week. Its cultural learning, you see.

Why are there tons of us with horrible jobs, or crippling student debt or half-finished educations?  I blame you, Baby Boomers. You created a world where it was okay for a company to tell me, no I didn’t need decent health insurance and when I had the audacity to get sick I ended up dropping out of college because I had to choose between paying for my classes or taking a second waitressing job so I could both pay my medical bills and eat. What’s that? I should have had a “real” job? Let me tell you how many jobs I passed up, or left, because “getting an education isn’t priority for our team members.” All that team playing, commitment and dedication you pride yourselves on? You’ve turned it into a corporate world where outright enslavement is called “team playing” and unwavering mindless agreement with the corporate machine is called “vision.” I know too many people, even in low end, blue collar, minimum wage jobs who go in early, work off the clock, do a little extra every day. They have to. Not for pay. Not because they love what they do. They do it because their employers expect it of them, because “when they were a kid” they had no problem doing a little extra for their boss. Its expected. Its how you get a good schedule, a vacation. When layoff time comes, it helps keep your job. 

You wonder why we’re all self-absorbed, why we’re lazy, why we live at home? You made us this way. We are so tired at the end of the day, so exhausted from all that “extra” we put in for you, no cost-no problem, we figure we deserve a little time to ourselves. We deserve some time with people who think we’re worthwhile. And if we spend time instagraming our dinners or taking Facebook profile pictures in our parent’s bathroom, can you blame us? We were taught that media, that being portrayed in the media, can make us important and beautiful. Stop and consider- would Facebook have made it in your generation? I doubt it. You say its because you had better things to do, a better head on your shoulders. I say its because you had a sense of your own worth. I say its because you had to learn it. This generation has no sense of who they are or what they can do (yet) because they’ve been taught their whole lives that individuality, that breaking from the pack, can only be done by the rich, the beautiful and the uber-talented. 

Are we lazy because we were taught that there’s a shortcut for everything? Are we lazy because we have learned if we wait long enough someone, or technology, will do it for us?Are we lazy because we believe, at some point, we deserve a break too?

I think you have it wrong, Time. All wrong. I think Millennials are remarkable. We’re struggling in a time of technological revolution. We’re coping with the mistakes that you and the generations before you made- and they’re way bigger by the way- and we’re still struggling out of the nonsense you taught us. We’re all special. We’re not good enough. More is better. We don’t have enough.Give a hundred percent, unless I want one-fifty. Its amazing we’ve made it this far. Give us time, give us a little more time. Once we’ve sorted it all out, I’ll bet you’ll be surprised. Our generation’s coming of age may be a little late but once we hit that beautiful point of cultural critical mass you won’t know what’s happened. 

Maybe, just maybe, this is another lazy, self-indulgent rant from another lazy, self-indulgent Millennial  But tell me, something, Boomers- what have you done to make the world, or even the lives of your children, a better place? You’re not playing for the team, I’d say…

Reblogging this again for Sarah’s excellent commentary.

Again for the commentary.

They pulled this same shit for Gen X. When I was 20 I kept hearing about how my generation was so cynical and disillusioned and entitled and blah blah blah.

And this has always been the case no matter when the hell you were born:

“The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of
today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for
parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as
if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is
foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest
and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress.”
-Peter the Hermit, 13th Century AD

“The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for
authority, they show disrespect to their elders…. They no longer
rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents,
chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their
legs, and are tyrants over their teachers.”
-Socrates, 5th century BC

“What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders,
they disobey their parents. They ignore the law.
They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions.
Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?”
-Plato,5th century BC

“I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on
frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond
words… When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and
respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise
[disrespectful] and impatient of restraint”
-Hesiod, 8th century BC

imaginarycircus:

bluejobs:

d4rklights:

agirlnamedboy:

cursivekisses:

Things I find strangely pretty: dust swimming in the afternoon sun.

i’ve been waiting for this gif to pop back up in my dash for forever

such simply things

omg

my mommy used to tell me they were sun fairies 

Lucretius thought dust motes were atoms.