In Praise of the Millennial Hipster

It's no secret that I both admire and envy the younger crew, the cohort that gets tagged Gen Y or 'the millennials'.

They cop a lot of flack but that's frankly just sour grapes.

In fairness, they have a tough gig, but they are a lot less fucked up than my cohort, who were wearing grunge flannel and listening to Nirvana in the early 90's.

The difference, to some extent, is that we were raised by Baby Boomers, and they mostly weren't. This is a significant advantage.

The main beef I have with Boomers as parents was their annoying tendency to try to make the world a better place by means of social change. Making the World Better By Changing the Culture of the Rising Generation. We are the world, we are the children, we are the ones to make a brighter day so let's start giving. For fuck's sake.

Which of course just created the most guilt-ridden and suicidal teenagers in history, and changed absolutely nothing, that being the very job that the hedonists turned moralists turned capitalists turned doomsayers of that generation diligently shirked for the past sixty years, while talking a game that could blister paint.

The main issue was the idea that you could sidestep physics, economics, engineering and even ecology and do something useful by grasping the social levers: "changing ourselves", which really meant telling your kids to be eco-messiahs AND fiscally responsible. At the same fucking time.

Folding paper cranes for World Peace is the best example i can think of to exemplify this insanity. It didn't work.

It was as futile and as weird as the empty promises of an 18-year old Miss America in swimsuit and stilettos; standing, nearly naked in front of a clothed crowd, aping beautiful sentiments in a display of heartbreaking hope and slightly erotic cultural submission.

One with absolutely zero probability of coming to fruition, because there was no mechanism behind the beautiful clock face, that would turn the wheels and bring the ship around.

They taught her to say these things, but never gave her the captain's chair.

And now, Gen Y are rolling their own way. They dress better, travel more, grow beards, watch porn, have fewer abortions and use less drugs than their parents. They ride bicycles, and try to live in whatever fragments remain of the Transit Cities.

The remnants of the Pre-War urban landscape, built by the Great-grandparents that the "Greatest" generation and the Boomers rebelled against; whatever fragments of sound urban planning escaped the Suburban Apocalypse, has Trains, dense urban form, walkable plazas: That kinda space is where Gen Y want to live.

They have to rent, of course, but that's ok.

And yeah, they are a bit flaky at work, and they like their toys,  but they're all right, these kids. I think we need to give them a go, and see how they pull up. I'm betting it will be considerably better than the Boomer cohort or the guilt ridden, preachy Gen X crew.

So Go Kids, lets see how you do. I'm barracking for you, anyway.

May the FSM be with you.