MILLENNIAL DIARY
VOGUE and Spencer, in the manner of all recently married and settled young couples, have taken to giving out about their still-young, free and single friends who are resisting growing up.
On a podcast, they said that Jamie Laing was “too old” at 31 (30 being the new 21 for a generation who use ‘adult’ as a verb) to be still doing Made in Chelsea — though, in fairness to him, he did try to make the jump to the decidedly more staid Strictly Come Dancing, where the romances and break-ups are absolutely not encouraged by producers. Strictly at least has the good grace to be mortified at the bad behaviour of its contestants.
However, during training, Jamie suffered a ligament tear which left him unable to compete — typical snowflake. Nevertheless, he stoically officiated a ‘wedding’ for Vogue and Spencer, standing between them to hear their vows with a crutch for the second season of their surprise hit reality show.
The pair tied the knot for the second time in September, presumably inspiring Justin and Hailey Bieber to do the same. Last week, Vogue explained it was more like a wedding ‘Day Two’, except with a year instead of the customary night between the celebrations.
This allowed Vogue to give birth, capture the heart of broken Britain in series one of her reality show with Spencer, and look as if she had never been pregnant in the first place.
Vogue signalled the super-casual nature of the nuptials by the universal millennial language of fashion — wearing a jumpsuit.
For the second quarter in a row, Netflix has missed its subscriber projections. The once unstoppable streaming behemoth is faltering as it seems that finally everyone who wants Netflix already has Netflix. The company is optimistic in the face of the slew of new (and slightly cheaper) streaming services about to hit the market, promising shareholders last week the overall effect will be beneficial, as people abandon traditional methods of watching television in favour of a bundle of streaming products with Netflix at the core. It’s not the only millennial stalwart that finds itself faltering on the cusp of a new decade with more choice than ever before; ‘The Official Food of Everything’ Domino’s has seen growth slowing and labour costs rising and are pulling out of several European markets.
I imagine, 60 years from now, a grandchild of mine will sit on my knee and look up at me wide-eyed through their Google-glasses and ask, ‘Grandmamma, why do we say ‘square meal’ or ‘get the sack’ or ‘Netflix and chill’? What is a Netflix?’
This week in ‘The Catholic Church said What?’: The Pope has waded in to the obesity debate. Displaying an impressively wilful misunderstanding of global economics and food policy, the Pontiff pointed to the “paradox” of a world where there are people who are overweight and also people who are starving.
In his message to the director general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN on World Food Day, the rotund pontiff pointed to “the distorted relationship between food and nutrition”, where 820m people in the world suffer from hunger, “while almost 700 million are overweight, victims of improper dietary habits”.
Honestly, the readiness of old, fat, white men to judge other fat people never fails to amaze me.
As for this old, well-fed, white man, from his tax haven, with enough resources to end world hunger several times over, and still have enough left to treat those with disordered eating in the developed world?
Well — he should probably ask himself what Jesus would do.
Last week, Prince Harry came under fire for being a snivelling snowflake who does not love the paparazzi cameras that essentially killed his mother when he was a child.
Harry, whose new, unthinkable grief was marked by those same clicks and flashes in his too-big suits as he turned 13, said he still struggles with that aspect of his fame — “every single time I hear a click, every single time I see a flash it takes me straight back”, he said.
Despite this being a well-documented phenomenon in those who have suffered childhood trauma, and something that is accepted by the medical community at large — for an older generation it was proof of all that is rotten in millennials.
I have a theory that actually the apoplectic outrage that greets any millennial in the public eye who speaks about their own mental heath, trauma and triggers, is actually a symptom of baby boomers’ own undiagnosed PTSD, a result of a lifetime of corporal punishment, absent fathers and emotional neglect.
The next charity work Harry should engage in is helping repressed 60-year-olds process their own feelings of abandonment, allowing them to read about grieving 33-year-old public figures without having total meltdown, detailing the many terrible things that have happened to them that haven’t affected them at all! Not. At. All. Millennials, make sure to check back next week for details of my ‘Therapy for Triggered Boomers’ GoFundMe page.