MILLENNIAL DIARY

WITH the Presidential race hotting up, the question, as ever, on everyone’s lips is: what do the millennials think?

After Trump’s presidential election off the back of presenting The

Apprentice in the US, it’s heartening to see the same can-do-literally-anything-Iwant attitude here in Ireland with three of our own reality TV judges battling it out for the top job.

Sean Gallagher gets points for seriously engaging with hot-button millennial issues and not hesitating when asked by Newstalk’s Sean Moncrieff whether he would rather fight a hundred duck-sized horses or a horse-sized duck — it’s the latter, obviously, “I studied karate and judo for 20 years”. Now he’s speaking our language. Naturally, his hot-dad vibes and sensuously shiny globe will capture a few of the more dysfunctional millennial floating voters.

Obviously, there’s nothing millennials love more than irony. It’s basically our religion (is that blasphemy? who cares any more!) from our sparkly unicorn phone cases to long talks about

Love Island break-ups to Patagonia fleeces, we can’t get enough of the irony. Human emoji Michael D is the ultimate ironic choice — a story-book leprechaun as President of Ireland? OMG guys, soooo funny, so subversively self-conscious. And he offers another seven years of guaranteed excellent memes, a policy point on which no other candidate can compete.

Of course, the more committed irony-junkies, the daring Kanye-in-aMAGA-hat millennials, will be throwing a hilarious vote to Peter Casey. The man says he’s not a feminist and that we’re ‘past that’ as a society because women are equal now — he’s an irony wizard! The bishop of banter! Our very own neutered Trump to give us something to tweet about! Casey says he has the ‘expertise and ability to be an influencer,’ and I think I speak for all when I say that if a vote for him means seven years of shilling detox tea and posing in bikinis for Fashion Nova discount codes, then pass me my ballot.

And then there’s the antibanter Joan Freeman, who is perhaps most obviously 100pc our type on paper. Aside from being a woman, she wants to bring wellness to Ireland. Millennials love to be well! And I’d say none of the Dragons’ Den lot would have funded Goop if Gwyneth had come knocking. Does Michael D even know what a sheetmask is?

Her mental health platform appeals to our generational neuroses and her attitude to it is reassuringly millennial: it’s all about that amorphous snake-oil, ‘awareness raising’. But then there’s the small print — the No vote in the abortion referendum. That’s your woman-card revoked, Joan. Next!

Watching the debate last week, we were thrilled to hear our catchphrase, “That’s racist!” from the mouth of oldie Gavin Duffy, but it’ll take more than that to make us forget about his penchant for hunting. Simon Harris’s Woke Bae of Ireland is safe for now; needless to say we felt personally victimised by his comment afterwards that people felt “frustrated” by “overt political correctness”. Message received, Gavin. Message received.

Liadh Ni Riada may have spent a lot of her campaign justifying events that predated her political career to her peers, but millennials are far more sanguine about it all. That was all before we were even born — and as we know, before the millennials came along to put the world to rights and tell you what awful people you all are, there was a load of problems. We couldn’t be hanging on to them all. And then Liadh invoked the holy name of Nelson Mandela, and how could we argue with that? Our very own Jeremy Corbyn! Except she’s a She — that’s 1-0 to us, Britain.

This millennial is on the edge of her seat.

Nadine Coyle (inset) has blown minds across the country last week by insouciantly admitting that she was never friends with any of Girls Aloud. Ona Celebrity Juice appearance, Nadine was asked which of the girls was her favourite; her eyes widened in mock mortification, and with a slow turn of the head she said, ‘Them aaaalll,’ with sarcasm that would make your ears bleed.

You’re never sure whether to believe what you read about fall outs, said the presenter, and apparently unaware that she was forcing us all to completely re-evaluate our world view, Nadine said that there was no fall out, “there was just no friendship to begin with”. Obviously the studio audience, like all of us who had grown up on the “friendship lasts forever” proto-feminism of the Spice Girls, were appalled.

“What are yous oohing about?” said a baffled Nadine, before conceding that there would probably be a reunion at some point. I’m not sure about this alternate reality where celebrities actually say what they think — give me the romantic fiction any

day.

******* It’s hard to believe that Meghan Markle has only been publicly pregnant for a week, since the announcement was made time seems to have stretched and warped, and we cannot remember life before.

Now, the standard millennial response to the three royal babies so far has been, obviously, ‘Urgh, I can’t believe this is even news’. The party line is that we hold no malice towards the actual children themselves — indeed George has emerged as an unlikely subversive gay fashion icon.

With Meghan’s news, we millennials smelled a rat: the overwhelming response to the news was a creepy, patronising, and insistent “Oh my god, it’s going to be SOOO cute.” I’m calling it — it’s racist. No one talked about how cute Will and Kate’s kids were going to be, they were always going to be white. Culture now is completely obsessed with the idea of beautiful mixedrace children.

Of course, this refers to a specific type of ethnically ambiguous toddler, with curly (but not too curly) hair, enormous (preferably blue or green) eyes, and brown (but not brown-brown) skin. We see them out and about and nudge the person we’re with, and say “Look how cute!” we might even go further, “mixed-race kids are so cute”.

I know, I know — this is the height of millennial nonsense and it can’t be racist if you’re saying nice things. But listen out for it. If this royal baby inherits his mother’s afro-textured hair and doesn’t have the soft curls we seem to be expecting, wait for the viral public petitions to “fix” it.