Image by Felixtsao (License CC BY-SA 2.0)
I realize, that I, as a young person, am failing miserably for a number of reasons. I’m 24. I have no kids, no husband, no car, no house, no ring. I rent a room in a house. I don’t have any coffee table books or some poor inbred status symbol dog that I yank around on a leash as it gasps for air.
My bad.
In 2016, The Economist (Yeah, a real actual financial publication that’s all intellectual and shit and has actual journalists that work there, allegedly) dared to ask the question that no one else is asking. Because it’s fucking obvious.
They wanted to know, Why Aren’t Millennials Buying Diamonds?
What’s amazing, is watching this pillar of financial savvy totally ignore the financial aspects of this question, and paint millennials as a bunch of bleeding heart hippies. We darn kids are just a thorn in the side of all those conscientious diamond miners whose business models don’t actually include torturing African children or the ravages of war. We are hurting capitalism and need to fall in line.
“So, which is it?
Are we the whiny, entitled, under-achieving, basement-dwelling, scum of the earth? Or are we iced like a generation of sociopathic wedding cakes?”
My Apologies To Capitalism
Honestly, I think that saying most young people don’t buy diamonds because we don’t want to perpetuate decades of violence around the globe is giving us too much credit. It’s not like most of us are out here with millions of dollars to blow. Some of us probably don’t know, or don’t care. It’s not like when making the choice between popping a conflict diamond or something much cheaper on the finger of whoever we are proposing to, we are opting out of diamonds purely for ethical reasons.
Hell, if I was proposing to a bitch right now, they would get a Ring Pop on their finger; because that’s the kind of budget I’m working with.
And Ring Pops are probably at least 64% poison.
Here’s the kicker. Statistically, my cynicism and belief that the majority of people in any generation don’t care, is right. According the the De Beers Diamond Insight Report, Millennials worldwide spent more on diamonds than any other age group in 2015.
Gross.
So, which is it?
Are we the whiny, entitled, under-achieving, basement-dwelling, scum of the earth? Or are we iced like a generation of sociopathic wedding cakes?
We Are Definitely Both
Let me explain.
In the quest to distill big questions, ideas, and events into snappy clickable headlines, a lot of shit gets lost. Vast overgeneralizations happen. It’s way easier to fit ‘Millennials Suck’ on a T-shirt than ‘American Millennials are a diverse group, many of whom are being negatively impacted by a number of socioeconomic factors.’
Of course, your free spirited rich friend who lives off their parents money and thinks we all just need to ‘be love,’ is out there at a gourmet vegan diner, sipping on a ginger shot with a blood diamond on each hand; but that’s not most of us.
If The Economist was the only place asking questions like this, I might just let it go. But it wasn’t a one off thing. There’s so much of it. For years, a bunch of people who are allegedly much smarter, more professional, and make way more than I probably ever will to write shit, have been sitting around with at least one thumb up their asses mystified by Millennial spending habits.
Jesus, Take The Wheel
You ever see this piece by The Atlantic, which determines that Millennials aren’t buying cars and houses because we just don’t feel like it?
Seriously.
I feel like these motherfuckers have set me on fire and despite holding the smoldering match in their hands, have decided that I’m screaming because I just feel like it.
I don’t know. I guess, young people just don’t like being set on fire or something. Weird.
I mean, as of 2016, new graduates owed on average, nearly $40K in loans, and that number only seems to go up every year, but sure; kids aren’t buying houses and cars because they would rather live in a row home with 6 people, or in their mom’s basement, and spend an hour waiting outside in the dead of winter for the bus. What an airtight argument.
Sure, the cost of living rises every year, and most full time jobs don’t pay enough for you to live without a roommate or two in any city, but whatever. Kids just hate owning shit. They want to be free. They just don’t value owning stuff, man. They’re too cool for it.
Too Cool For A Secure Financial Future
These people grasp at straws, looking for any explanation outside of literally the most obvious. We keep telling them that it’s hard out here, and that we’re crippled by debt, and that finding any kinda job that pays anything is impossible.
And still they come out with involved think pieces tryna ponder the unfathomable mysteries of why we don’t buy shit, like our financial troubles are an episode of Cosmos. These people act like Carl Sagan is gonna pop out and tell all of us that if we want to earn a living wage with our degrees, we must first invent the universe.
Surprise. It’s not that we’re not buying cars and houses and diamonds in droves because we’re too cool for your vibes old man.
It’s because the vast majority of us have no fucking money.
Think about it. Thrifting and secondhand shit is in vogue. Oversized clothes, the sharing economy, minimalism, DIY, reusing and recycling, and biking everywhere are in. Everything lesbians have been doing since forever is cool now, and all of that shit didn’t blow up by accident.
While you can have all the money in the world and decide to embrace the hip aesthetic, and wear a 75 cent thrift store shirt from 1986 that’s two sizes too big, make all your furniture yourself, own one pair of shoes as ‘part of your lifestyle’, and ride your bike to the SaveMart, for a lot of us that’s not really a choice.
It’s because the vast majority of us have no fucking money.
Writing Off A Quarter Of The US Population Is Just Bad Journalism
While no one can seem to agree on whether the job market is good or bad, the inability of many of these highfalutin publications to listen to a quarter of the population, is insane.
According to the US census, there are over 80 million Millennials in the US. Usually, we would call intentionally alienating and misunderstanding a quarter of the US population a shitty move, even just from a marketing standpoint. As a journalist, going out of your way to ignore what people representing a quarter of the country are saying to you, without some dictator threatening to hook your nipples up to a car battery keeping you in line, is just a dick move.
There aren’t even any kind of threats to these people’s lives in the mix yet. They just don’t care.
While the media totally ignoring, misrepresenting, belittling, and attempting to gaslight entire sections of the population in all kinds of subtle and terrifying ways isn’t new, and Millennials are by no means getting it the worst, it’s wild to watch it play out in the clickbait era on an entire quarter of the US population.
Click click, motherfucker.
Isadora Teich is a freelance writer and traveler. They’ve written social media copy, tabloids, news, erotica, opinion pieces, quizzes, have worked on film scripts, and do some ghostwriting from time to time. Isadora lives for artistic experimentation and is working on a novel.
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