We should all be more millennial
If millennials are spoilt and mollycoddled, whose fault is that exactly?
Hello, and welcome to another bumper edition of: What Can We Blame Millennials For This Week? In today’s show, we ask: are young people responsible for Heinz’s decision to rename Salad Cream, Sandwich Cream? (Probably not, and we actually wouldn’t care if they decided to call it “Revolting Substitute for Mayonnaise”, but let’s kick up a fuss and have a pop at the young folk anyway.)
Also on today’s programme: is Britain’s cultural and educational heritage at stake because millennials would rather apply to Love Island than Oxbridge? (Never mind that Love Island was created by a middleaged man and many of its viewers are old enough to have done O-levels – I would like to let out my rotting resentments on people who are younger and smoother and having way more sex than me, and this seems to present as good an opportunity as any.)
It is a truth universally not acknowledged that the majority of the world’s problems have been created by the parents and grandparents of millennials – and yet, in a spectacular state of denial, we blame the children. The young folk are spoilt and mollycoddled (and, er, whose fault would that be, exactly?) and even worse than that they are super-sensitive, or “snowflakes”, a term bandied about by people who last felt an emotion in 1962, when it was beaten out of them by their nearest abusive school master.
I’m not a millennial, but if I was, I think I too would feel rather emotional when faced with the prospect of unemployment and an economy still recovering from being brought to its knees while I was still learning to count. And no wonder they’d rather apply for Love Island than Oxbridge, given that the average student graduates £50,000 in debt. At least on Love Island, you’re in with a chance of winning £50,000. At least on Love Island, they’ll take you if your skin isn’t white and you didn’t go to private school.
Perhaps some millennials do lack resilience. But if they do, it’s only because we failed to give them any in the first place, and if we did, we then proceeded to steal it from them. I’ve written this before and I will write it again: if having feelings is the worst thing we can find to say about this generation, then I reckon we are in pretty fine fettle ( just as some columnists become professional Brexiteers or bang the drum obsessively for closing our borders, I will fight the good fight on behalf of millennials).
Witness this weekend’s Millennifest, an event that would never have been put on by previous generations of young people on account of the fact we would all have been busy getting high. But millennials are not really interested in oblivion, as I was 10 years ago (or even last year). They are more concerned with social conscience.
And so it is that during the month when people would traditionally pile down to Glastonbury to drink their body weight in cider, millennials will instead be sitting in rooms listening to talks and workshops hosted by the likes of Vince Cable (far out!), Dominic Grieve (simmer down people!) and George Freeman (calm down at the back!).
The millennials I meet blow my booze and drug-addled mind. A couple of months ago I was introduced to Amika George, an 18-year-old who campaigns for free menstrual products for girls from low-income households; she is a tour de force, joined by Gabby Edlin, the 31-year-old founder of Bloody Good Period, which donates sanitary protection to people who cannot afford it, such as refugees.
Chidera Eggerue is the 23-year-old author of What a Time to Be Alone, a book about self-worth. She has approximately a squillion followers online. When I was 23, I thought self-worth was a perfume by Dior.
I am completely in love with Dolly Alderton, the 29-year-old author of Everything I Know About Love (so wise and lifeaffirming), and in total awe of Emma Gannon, 28, whose game-changing book about careers, the Multi-hyphen Method, had an entire episode of Radio 4’s Moneybox dedicated to it this week. And that’s just the ladies. If this is them in their 20s, then just imagine what they’ll be doing in their 40s and 50s.
In fact, I’ve worked out what my love of millennials is about. It’s the same as that feeling you have when you’re a kid, and you can’t help but coo over your best friend’s older sister because she has a boyfriend and a place at college and is allowed out past 8pm – only in reverse.
It’s a gigantic generational crush, pure and simple. They’re all so sensible, all so right. And that’s the thing at the heart of my weakness for millennials: when I finally get round to growing up, I want to be just like them.