Hey, young ladies! Do you regularly exhibit your nipples and/or pudenda on the streets? Young millennial fellas: are you a balls-out kinda guy in general? Good news! While some uptight fools will tell you not to dress like a slanch for your internship, we believe you are more likely to Find Your Unique Path and also to Make It In New York City in general if you just "be yourself." An office is an extension of your lifestyle, after all, and if your lifestyle is nipple-centric or "neo-burlesque" or "embodying James Deen gifs," that is fine, and don't let anyone tell you different. You're only young and pretty once!
"A neighbor told me that she believes the landlord illegally raised the rent and submitted bogus forms to whatever agency is in charge of the whole rent-stabilization process, claiming that work done by the last tenant was done by a contractor. I have no idea what any of this means, and I do not really care…. Also, I am in college and my parents are paying my rent, so do I have to tell them? Obviously, I am looking to do nothing in this matter. Is that cool?" —Jesus Christ, kids. (Also, you know, rent stabilization laws aren't that complicated, and if you're too lazy or stupid to [...]
Say a warm welcome to "One Minute News, a video-based online start-up conceived by former MTV advertising executive Doug Greenlaw—and his son, Mack, whose resume also includes a stint at the ostensible music network." Haha, ostensible. Haha, working with your dad. Anyway! Mack said that "we love Gawker, we love the Huffington Post," but they "don't seek to overshadow or muscle out any pre-existing entities." Well they might! Big words, launch boy. True, they are proactive and in your face with their snackifying media programming! Presumably this is on the Internet somewhere, if you have the attention span to find it. I couldn't, just the BBC's own "One [...]
When my manager at the test prep company called me to teach a summer school program, I jumped on the opportunity. I was six months out of New York University, and I was determined to stay in New York to become a writer. The only obstacle was New York's price of living, and the impending deluge of student debt.
The summer school gig meant consistent work at a tantalizing $20 an hour. Conveniently, the school was located a five-minute walk from my house, and it got even better: "The hours are eight to one," he said, "so you'll have the rest of the day to yourself." Visions of productivity [...]
For last summer's college break, I was looking for work that would lead to lots of "networking" and "opportunity." I ended up at a retirement home, washing dishes at minimum wage for sixty hours a week. I trained and was then replaced by a deaf, mentally challenged gentleman.
This summer, I'm an intern at an international, multi-billion dollar company. I'm not sure exactly how this happened. I do know it started on the Internet. I blogged about a product I liked-right as the product's creators simultaneously started their initial online advertising campaign.
"Who cares about a career? Not Gen Y," says the utterly maddening headline brought to you by Patricia Sellers at Fortune. She blames the lazy, ambitionless millennials for their current plight. They're so inferior to us respectable, principled Boomers, Sellers implies! No, she actually goes ahead and says this. In response to the recent Times profile, "American Dream Is Elusive for New Generation," Sellers wrote: "While the article focuses on the horrible job market for today's twenty-somethings, it suggests that these new adults are pretty much unfazed that they're not launching into a dream career. Apart from 14% of young adults who are unemployed today, 23% are [...]
"Apparently the avenues by which lusty millennials come to grope and perchance know one another are brusque, confused and rife with deception, and probably aren’t reliable precursors to unions of enduring bliss. Which is to say: they’re as imperfect as they’ve always been. While we Homo sapiens have paired off in diverse methods across disparate epochs, we’ve seldom done it with ample information or any particular finesse. There was no saner, better yesteryear: just a different set of customs, a different brand of clumsiness." —The Times'Frank Bruni talks sense in the wake of the Manti Te'o scandal and that other recent example of our semi-annual bout [...]
I don’t know why I’m never quoted in trend-pieces about What the Millennials Are Doing. I’m 23. I live in Brooklyn. I’m a perpetually underemployed graduate of a highly ranked East Coast university. I live with a female roommate who owns a lot of ramekins. And I decided to become a sperm donor to make ends meet In This Economy.
Manual labor jobs are on the decline, you know. Based on how winded I got trying to move a box of books into a new apartment a few months back, I probably couldn’t survive in a manual-labor-based economy, but like anybody with a steady flow of testosterone, I still like [...]
Generational torsion is not a new thing. Each generation has one that comes before and then comes after. The as-they-are-known Greatest Generation butted heads with the Baby Boomers that grew their hair and attended, to a man, Woodstock. Then the Gen-Xers befuddled their folks by missing expectations, be they a gastroenterology practice, or dropping out of college, as applicable. Befuddling is what we do in that shear between the decades, as if it were a function of nature and not human nature.
And now, as Gen-X grows old enough to inherit the management of the forces that run the world, the Millennials (or Gen-Y, or Echo Boomers), as they [...]
Let's go back in a time machine to 2003. Ron Howard and Brian Grazer and pals come out with a new TV show and all of sudden everyone starts to notice a shy, quirky, weird kid playing a character named George Michael played by actor Michael Cera. The awkward deadpan character seemed to strike a chord with younger audiences. The marketers get excited!
Nine movies later, seven of which feature Cera as a lead, romantic or comedic, he's now the target of something mildly interesting, pop-culturally: outright hatred.
Ah, summer-the glorious, lazy days when we elderly folk try to find glorious, lazy millennials to do our bidding. (Late summer is when we old people complain when they go missing on drug benders and/or paid work.) This year, we took the most passive approach to summer interns: we took everyone who randomly applied! Completely self-selecting! And yet, a great crew. I asked each of these four young people to introduce themselves to you fine readers and to send in their most summery photo. [N.B. None of their presumably helicoptering parents even wrote their bios for them! Maybe the kids are alright?]
"I plan to spend time in high school and college classrooms in the next few weeks to explore whether millennials can reverse a generation-long decline in U.S. politics. Will they rejuvenate comity, compromise and a viable political center? Will they pull together, or will they become Generation X-treme? Most important: Will the best and brightest of the largest generation even bother with politics or government?" —Hey millennials, I know you're busy trying to find a job and a way to move out of Mom and Dad's, but we also need you to save the democracy that has failed you so badly. And you'd better do it, or else [...]
"What is it like to be a not-quite-adult today, and how does that compare to previous generations? A conversation about what it's like (or what it was like) to be at the time of life when you finally have to start making adult decisions about careers, marriage, family and friends. How are timelines shifting? Is being young harder today than it used to be?" So many questions! Awl pals Anna Holmes and Emily Gould—and a bunch of other people—have answers! Probably. You can safely skip ahead to around the seven-minute mark to get started here. Enjoy!
The comments on this Dealbook piece about how Wall Street has reconstituted the notion of employment as bottom-line cyclical churn are 100% mean, as you'd expect. ("I can't help but wonder if any of these laid-off wunderkinds ever ask themselves whether they contributed to the current economic situation," for example. And: "My God these people are pathetic. Even when they're laid off and collecting unemployment, they still sound like insufferable snobs.") But the sheer numbers involved in the way financial firms chew up and spit out young people are pretty bad. These are the very kids who were the children of the subjects of New York magazine parenting [...]
Millennial rules for dating and blogging: "I have probably ruined countless relationships with my penchant for oversharing and the somewhat naïve belief that honesty trumps all else. Writing is my one true love. Everyone else-from sweet, corn-fed boys with curly hair to rough older men with adroit hands-will always come second. I'm probably not as sorry about that as I should be." Jesus Christ, you kids, no one is going to be able to run for Senator in twenty years!
Three months ago, I posed for my college graduation photo—the official one in front of an American flag, diploma in hand, ready to face the world. Since then the photography company has emailed me almost weekly, offering discount upon discount and before-it's-too-lates. But when the picture was taken, just seconds after I had crossed the stage and shaken hands, I was too delirious to smile, so instead I bit my lower lip. I mean I almost swallowed it. I don't know how it happened. Normally, I have no trouble smiling. But I remember at that moment that the muscles would not contract into a casual, triumphant smile, that my [...]
LeBron James is 25 years old. If he had gone to college and completed all four years, he would have graduated in 2007. Think of the people you know who are that age, think of the decisions they make and how they carry themselves, take a quick glance through their Facebook tagged pictures, and then imagine them with hundreds of millions of dollars and the freedom to do whatever they want. Do they seem like super well adjusted people who are driven enough to have excelled in their vocation, if they had skipped college and had been working for the last 7 years, to have elevated themselves to the [...]
