MILLENNIAL DIARY

CIARA O’CONNOR

IT’S safe to say that when figures emerged last week indicating that Irish teens are among the worst offenders in Europe for drunkenness, parents across the country breathed a sigh of relief.

With all their #goals and #mealprepping and rising exam results, it seemed for a while that Ireland was inhabited by a generation of buff weirdo-nerds with temples for bodies.

“Twas far from hot lemon water you were reared, Shane,” mammies across Ireland upbraided their offspring, “you’re not leaving the table until you’ve finished your Heineken and that’s the end of it.”

We hear all the time that kids these days are more sensible than their parents ever were — teen pregnancy is falling, smoking and drugtaking are increasingly retro, and boozing is no longer a given for the average 16-year-old.

So it was with secret pride that we discovered a greater proportion of 15-year-old girls in Ireland and the UK had been drunk at least twice in their lives than in any other European region, while the boys were behind only their counterparts in centraleastern Europe.

But under-age alcohol consumption has still fallen dramatically here — and apparently that’s nothing to celebrate. Because it’s all down to The Internet. More specifically, that modern horseman of the apocalypse, social media.

Whereas in innocent days gone by, kids had good, clean fun bush drinking, snogging and throwing up in their neighbour’s geraniums, nowadays they’re simply online: talking to their friends, making new ones from all over the world with similar interests, playing games, watching videos, learning stuff, being exposed to different worlds and views. And not a drop taken. Kids these days — deplorable, eh?

****** Because the world is a terrible place, last week Helen Mirren was criticised for wearing a backpack while 73. Apparently, she is too old for even weight distribution across her back and shoulders — this is a luxury that should be afforded only to 19-year-olds who don’t particularly need it. At 73, Helen Mirren should presumably be pulling a tartan shopping trolley behind her, or clutching a small, black leather number containing only lipstick and a folded crisp £5 note, like the Queen. What else would such an aged crone require? A phone that they can’t work? Come off it.

Now, like any good internet storm in a teacup, the response to the criticism was far bigger than the criticism itself, which appears to be confined to a couple of bitchy comments on Mirren’s Instagram (does this woman have no concept of appropriate behaviour for her age?). But when it’s someone like Mirren, even one nay-sayer is news. She is one of a small number of white-haired democraticallyyet-unofficially elected royalty who are beyond reproach. Imagine, if you will, someone meantweeting about David Attenborough. Try licking your elbow while you’re at it.

But it turns out that we were just being warmed up for something with far higher stakes — another hitherto untouchable doyenne of British film, Judi Dench, publicly defending Kevin Spacey. What’s a millennial to do? The reflexive impulse to ‘cancel’ anyone aligning themselves with sex offenders fought with the equally instinctual urge to protect Judi at all costs.

We’ve let her off before — when she broke the cardinal rule of modern celebrity and said she “wouldn’t call myself a feminist at all, really”, and when she said of the #MeToo movement: “It is scandalous, but it’s very hard when a lot of people concerned are great friends of yours.” We clamped our hands over our ears and said “La la la, I can’t hear you, Judi”.

Then, last week, Dench said Spacey was “a good friend” who had been an “inestimable comfort” while they worked together after the death of her husband. No Judi, we thought, don’t do it. But she ploughed on, “I can’t approve, in any way, of the fact that — whatever he has done — that you then start to cut him out of the films… Are we to do that throughout history? Are we to go back throughout history and anyone who has misbehaved in any way, […] are they always going to be cut out?”

‘MISBEHAVING’? Sexual assault? Equating replacing Spacey in his last movie, a financially prudent move which will contribute towards a better and safer Hollywood future, with fascist censorship?

Judi, we tried to help, but you’ve left us with no choice. You’re out. Oh for the innocent days of Mirrenbackpack-gate. Someone find Maggie Smith and gag her, we can’t have any more of our grandparentswe-wished-we-had publicly self-imploding.

****** Stop the presses! Big news! Two hot people banged each other 11 years ago! Last week, Chrissy Teigen said (in not so many words) on a chat show that she and husband John Legend had sex on their first date, and everyone lost their minds. It was either further proof that Chrissy is bae, or evidence of depraved sluttery the likes of which is sending us all to hell in a handcart. Because, in 2018, what Chrissy Teigen says matters.

Although John Legend is technically the more famous of the couple, with a ludicrously successful music career for the last 15 years, model Chrissy is the undisputed patron saint of the internet. Everyone loves Chrissy Teigen. She is probably single-handedly keeping Twitter’s share price steady.

Being culturally relevant today means following Teigen closely online: it’s being able to exchange your favourite Chrissy-clapbacks with friends at after-work drinks on a Friday.

With her much-vaunted ‘realness’, sense of humour and passionate hatred of Trump, she is one of the most influential celebrities of our time.

So the fun-sucking puritans were livid that she let John defile her precious flower immediately, despite the fact that any human who met Chrissy Teigen would aim to seal the deal before nightfall.