That's the question which keeps me up at night, truthfully.

In the late 60s and early 70s, the hippies became a huge cultural movement. This was in no small part aided and amplified by the development of small, portable news cameras, the innovation of the "eyewitness news" format which slowly displaced magazine-style broadcast journalism, decreased barriers to access to print and radio by small groups, and the coincidence of their message with a large and well-televised foreign war.

And yet, if you survey every person who was of college age during the hippie era, you find that relatively few of them ever marched in protest or burned their draft cards. Most of them just evolved into the yuppies of the 1980s.

So is that what we're seeing here? It's quite likely. What seems to be new, however, is the access that they have to sway mainstream political opinion. That's worrysome.

That's certainly how I feel about it. I only met a few people who classify as such during college in the early '10s. They weren't even that bad so maybe it's more prevalent at liberal arts colleges. Even then I feel the whole topic gets enormous attention relative to the number of individuals who act this way. The result is a moniker for an entire generation. It is important to remember that plenty of people differ in opinion from the spokespeople of Generation Wuss. We see them in those Milo videos, on the internet trying to fend off SJWs, and even in this very thread. That should be reassuring as it clearly shows not everyone is on the Wuss bandwagon. It's easy to lampoon the whole generation, but there are many from it who would sympathize with your arguments. They simply don't loudly whine to their dean and to anyone who listens on social media about it... yet. News outlets pay them no mind, that much is true.

There are millennials who should take a hard look at themselves more frequently and question what they see, but proportionally I don't think it's as prevalent as people make it seem. Many people are the polar opposite in my experience.

Patterns repeat generation to generation. The only difference here is that those annoying fringe individuals are getting the podium more- thanks interwebs! More information of all types is available to us lol. Much of the "Back in my day" nostalgia about how things used to be better typically ignores plenty of negatives on [insert any given topic here] from those same time periods.

No doubt, we have some new challenges to address regarding everything in this thread, but to imply we are undergoing a black and white societal change for the worse is misguided. What I find funny is that large corporations (news outlets) appear to be propagating these messages and ideas. Intriguing....

As I write this, I'm on a work assignment in Pforzheim, Germany. Pforzheim was on the receiving end of a large RAF "Area Bombing" raid in early 1945. The raid lasted 22 minutes from first bomb to the last. It destroyed 83% of the buildings in the town, killed 17,600 townspeople, wounded thousands and displaced the remaining 30,000. An Allied propaganda newsreel of the time celebrated the "Death of a City" . . . in 22 minutes.

Pforzhein was an ancient Roman settlement (the Romans could "ford" a river here). In the following 2 millenia, it became a center of jewelry and watchmaking (and aircraft instrument manufacturing -- which is why I'm here now and which put them on the target list then). By all accounts, it was filled with beautiful architecture of the type I've been seeing in Italy and Switzerland for the past couple of weeks. Today, I went for a jog along the river trying to find some of this architecture. I went a long way, and finally started to see some homes that looked older than the British raid. For the most part, the city is ugly -- mid-1960's "modern." It is scarred.

People are friendly here, they don't seemed bothered by the history, younger people may not know it or care about it. Older people seem to appreciate the "American." But I feel anguished here. It's really disturbing to me. Although not nearly the same scale, when I look at this city I see the Basra Road through my HUD in 1991. It seems the greatest brutalities are reserved for the end of struggles, once the outcome is clear. The eventual victors redouble efforts to force the end, the soon-to-be losers make haste to finish their work. But, at least when wars end this way, they end.

I thought this was worth saying in this thread. Truth be told, I'm grateful that we consider things like "Generation Wuss" a big issue. We're lucky.

Memorial Day is coming up. Please remember. And talk to a Millenial about it. Don't forget that many members of "Generation Wuss" have and are answering the call in difficult times. They'll bear their scars.

I had much the same experience when I spent a month working at the Meyer Werft shipyards in Papenburg, up on the river Ems.

Like Pforzhein, it was a major manufacturing center during WWII, and host to the largest shipyards in all of Europe. And while I was aware that the city had a rich history dating back for centuries, it took a while for it to really click for me that none of the buildings there seemed older than the 1950s. It dawned on me at last when I had a few hours to kill and was browsing through the showroom / museum at the yards. It featured a complete, linear chronology of the entire history of shipbuilding in the area, with little wooden models of every major vessel constructed since the first little sheep-carrier built by Willm Rolf Meyer in 1795.

But from 1930 to about 1955, there was a gap. Not an empty space; the timeline simply skipped straight over that period. And that's when it hit me. The reason that there are no old buildings is because Allied bombers completely erased the town of Papenburg from the map during the war. They just made it go away.


Anyway... The people were exceedingly friendly, young and old, and very accommodating. Even when I went into a little tiny hardware store in the central part of town, asking in very bad German for a soldering iron from a couple of middle-aged men who spoke very poor English, they were quite happy to help me, and in fact one of them actually took me down the street and pointed to the store where I could buy one.


Relevance:

Restaurant servers in Germany are paid a reasonable wage (and no tipping), however they are also quite competent. At the end of your meal, the server quickly tallies up your total in pencil on a notepad, you pay in cash, and they make change right there at the table, doing the math in their head. No calculators, no tablets, no cash registers. They are paid a lot, however they are also worth a lot.

I used to travel to Pforzheim a few times a year on business. Stayed in either the Hotel Residenz or Parkhotel (down by the river). They never showed much bitterness to Americans but my friends told me the older folks still had animosity towards "Brits" because they felt the extent of the raid was uncalled for. I used to go to Garmisch-Partenkirchen as well usually during the same trips and had a lot of older friends who's relatives would show me around places where they, as children, would be hidden in air raid shelters during bombings. One of the small chapels I would visit had pictures of all the German war dead (from the area) and memorials to them. It was strange for me to notice the vast proportion of them who died on the Eastern Front vs the rest of Europe.

It was strange looking at it from the side of the vanquished.

It's also considered good form to round up to the nearest Euro for the server (who, in the smallest places may be a relative to the owner). Even better form to not use a credit card (for those ever frugal Germans).

And there's the rub.

It would have been quite easy for the German people to adopt the position of a victim-state. God know they'd been fucked in every available hole by both their own government and by vengeful Allies. At the wars end, they had less than nothing. Their country's infrastructure and economy were virtually nonexistent, added to which the fact that the Potsdam Conference levied upon them the obligation to pay war reparations to Allied nations which would not be fully satisfied until the 21st century.

But they didn't.

They didn't whine and complain, and say "Oh, poor us. We have been unfairly victimized." And they certainly could have.

Instead, they hunkered down and rebuilt the country into what is today the shining star of the EU, and one of the most powerful economies on earth. A foreigner visiting Germany today does not see victims. They see a nation which is the height of civility, strong and proud, yet also humble and considerate.


I wish that we could all be Germany.

I'm at the Parkhotel.

My co-worker is back in Italy. He's as British as they come. Funny as heck but prone to saying the wrong thing sometimes (he usually gets away with it).

Speaking of Eastern Front, 20M dead in Russia . . . .

1940 Populations: Russia ~ 110M USA ~ 130M
2015 Populations: Russia ~ 140M USA ~ 325M

We must be doing something right. 2 oceans is only part of it.

As for us being Germany, I'm actually struck by how German US culture is. It's not talked about that much, and was pursposefully hidden last century, and we seem to celebrate other immigrants more -- but if you look around at a lot of the people and consider that the US is a nation of hotdogs, hamburgers and beer, Germany feels more like "home" than anyplace else in Europe, really.

Well, they did the first time. But they collectively learned from that and look at them now. An object lesson for others?

The "vengeful Allies" (USSR excluded) also took a different approach the second time.

True enough. The Marshall plan was the big difference from the aftermath of WW1 vs. WW2 and kept another 'strong man' from emerging like what happened in the 1935 time frame because of the economic problems left over from WW1 (and the general global depression). Probably the single thing that puzzled most Germans with respect to American physche. Like wtf, they kicked the shit out of us and now want to help us????

I was always amazed how Germany manages to stay a manufacturing based economy and be a 'net exporter' of goods vs other much larger countries.

EDIT: Curious so looked at it. Marshall plan cost = $130B in 2016 dollars vs Iraq + Afghanistan rebuild (US portion, as of 2013) = $160B+

EDIT 2: We used to have a 'global sales meeting" which basically meant all the field engineering techs would get together in Germany one day/year from all over the world. It was held in English and we were basically brought up to speed by the home based product folks. Typically heavy on the engineering and light on the sales speak ('cause to a German engineer they can't fathom why anyone would want anything else so no need for "sales").

During one rather drunken evening at one of the local Biergartens a similarly drunken Frenchman informed me why the French didn't like us Americans... While myself (the only American) and a shitload of other guys sat around listening he told me we "should've invaded Europe through Portugal up through the Pyrenees instead of bombing the shit out of France. In other words, fuck the rest of Europe... My German colleagues looked, shrugged the shoulders as if to say; "we would've given you back France anyway if you asked and now you know why".

Cool enough. Kind of dull bar scene IIRC but the river area is nice this time of year and there's a few good biergartens around (duh... Germany). How long, I'll try and dig up some good restaurants if you have transport.

If the Germans had not invaded Russia, they could have had all of the rest of Europe, Britain, the Middle East and all of Africa. The Allies wouldn't have had a chance without Germany tying up so many forces and resources on the Eastern front.

America lost over 400,000 soldiers in both fronts combined. Germany lost 2,300,000 in Europe. Russia lost between 9 and 14 million soldiers (but they lie about numbers so it's hard to tell which is closer to true).

Watch the first seven and a half minutes of this to get some idea. Then watch the rest if you want more background.

^ Interesting video and nicely done infographics. Makes one wonder how screwed the world would be (overpopulated) if we didn't have a habit of killing off a fairly large chunk every few decades.

Oxford.

The very name evokes resplendence and awe.

Founded in the 9th century, Oxford University is the oldest continually operating academic institution in the English-speaking world. Its foundation predates the discovery of the American continents. The earliest of its scholars were nearer in time to the birth of Christ than to the present day. It is the foundation model of western University education, and its press are the guardians of the definitive reference of the English language itself.

And now, their Law School offers trigger warnings.

Just a bit of random commentary, from someone who has actually attended law school: Lawyers have to deal with violent, scary, unpleasant shit. Not all of them, of course. If you did it right, then you get to spend your career filing motions to suppress motions to discover evidence that some big corporation conspired against another big corporation. But all law students everywhere are required to study one of the more foundational concepts in law, which is criminal procedure. And in that particular field of study, well... people get kidnapped and raped and murdered and mutilated. If you are unable to objectively and dispassionately study said material, then frankly you have no business standing before the bar.



Come up next: Columbia Medical School allows students who get queasy at the sight of blood to opt out of gross anatomy.

Well to be fair, it is gross.

Medicine exposes you to plenty of messed up physical and social situations. Like you mentioned with lawyers, it should go without saying that these experiences are to be expected. Nevertheless, it wouldn't surprise me if your prediction on med schools comes true. Luckily there are specialties where you never see a drop of blood. But from my experience, that component can be one of the least distressing bits in such a visceral service industry, dealing with people at their worst. You'd be depressed to know the lack of overall understanding that some pre-meds have as they enter medical school. Also, C's get degrees.

I suspect that many issues discussed here have a common theme driving them: lack of perspective. I just finished a many-hour WWI audio history telling, a subject which gets less focus. It, along with tales of WWII and any other tragedies, really help you look at life through the lens of relativity. The lack of any large scale, nation-changing event that personally touches almost every family in society has probably helped the younger generation to heavily weight more asinine complaints.

To get a similar experience without throwing waves of our nation's youth into gunfire and the worst living conditions imaginable, I've thought on more than one occasion that everyone should spend some time as an EMT or at least ride on an ambulance. You really start to appreciate the positive situations in life more once you see the entire spectrum of humanity and life's possibilities. Whatever terrible scenarios your imagination can come up with, the first responders (of any branch) get to see it first.

Yep. Most people think of WW2 as being a slaughter of the Jews and Germany vs. Allies. In terms of body count, it was Germany vs. Russia.

Just now got to watch the video, very well done and very enlightening.

The American Flag is a political statement students are unwilling to make and it's offensive to those that don't believe in America but want everything from American Taxpayers for free.

I read this on the facebook today.

I am at a complete loss of words. Our children are being taught that words can physically hurt other people, not to mention teaching kids words physically damage fruit... This has really gotten out of hand.


Edit*
I just MUST ask this question.

Has ANYONE who is reading this been physically hurt by words? That's a serious question, because i really lack the mental capacity to be physically harmed by sounds expelled from another humans larynx.

As a child, i was taught the whole sticks and stones routine. I was called bad names, hell i still am. I usually acknowledge it and move on with my dumb life.

I think the word metaphor would be applicable. That said, I really don't think it's all that bad to try and instill respect in kids today.

Hell, someone has to...

My take on the story was that it was a stupid metaphor and highly deceptive to the unsuspecting children (if the teacher never informed them of the initial abuse afterwards). In reality, the apples actually demonstrated how words were undoubtedly irrelevant and it is the actual physical treatment that caused real physical damage.

That's not to say that words can't be psychologically damaging for young minds, but it is an enormous leap to claim physical damage.

I'm in my 50's and I can still recall harsh comments my father made to me when I was just a kid, so they definitely made an indelible imprint. Of course, the same is true with positive comments, as during that same time period, I can recall feeling so proud from minor off-hand praising comments he also made to me.

Of course, the phenomenon of words being this impactful to me is exclusively (and I think appropriately) limited to those that are closest to me though (i.e. my parents, siblings, wife, and children). There is scarcely a way that anyone on the periphery could possibly utter a sound which could cause me any real grief, let alone physical damage.

I think that the better lesson for children is to learn how to understand and apply their own physical and mental boundaries, so that no matter what they may encounter, they will have the best possible tools at their own disposal to deal with them. But again, that harkens back to the issue of taking personal responsibility; a particular ability which is so sorely missing from generation wuss.

I found out about a year ago that I am only two degrees of separation from Alanis. This knowledge has had no impact whatsoever on my life.

That having been said, God damn do I have some respect for any man who can be a decent parent to a child in this age...

The original post about the Apple has been edited to include that she did inform the kids of the deception.

I think teaching kindness and civility is extremely important. So is teaching toughness. They are not exclusive of each other. My only problem with that teacher's method (assuming she did actually reveal the deception) is that she missed the opportunity to teach the latter. Revealing the deception and exploring that would have been a good talking point about "sticks and stones."

Of course, depending upon the age of the children, it might be too much. It takes a bit more maturity to evolve toughness -- witnessing elders being resilient to adversity is one of the best ways, being resilient to your own adversities cements it. Having enough privilege to remove all adversity can doom a person.

Being taught toughness at an early age promotes maturity.

I completely understand the need to teach kids not to be verbally abusive. But maybe a little effort needs to be placed on teaching kids what kind of issues they will encounter when they get older and how to deal with them.

Teaching kids to be nice to others is a good thing, deceiving them into believing that words really can cause physical harm is a wretched thing. Now, not only are they going to feel like they can get physical "revenge" on someone by treating them poorly, but they are also being taught that the feels that they get when someone calls them names are internal physical injuries - perhaps injuries that must be retaliated for. Seems to me that they've learned the first lesson in "conflict escalation". Had they been taught that words were physically benign, a culture of de-escalation could have formed.

There were several lessons that I was taught as an open minded middle-school / high-school student that I later found to be polar opposite of the truth. One that I specifically recall was how a small group of people that called themselves "Israel" was enslaving and destroying a country named "Palestine" for no justifiable reason other than the fact that they were mean and evil people. That day, I left class thinking that Israel was the scum of the earth and needed to be destroyed.

I'm not:

Titty sprinkles.

There you go. :giggle:

Those are great words.

In Breaking Bad, there are two scenes where one of the antagonists eats an apple after doing something horrible. I think it's a reference to Adam and Eve.

A great perspective on the wonderful subset of this generation:

They're starting younger and younger:


Why police were called to a South Jersey third-grade class party
by Emma Platoff, Staff Writer Updated: JUNE 29, 2016 — 11:59 PM EDT

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1467397026


On June 16, police were called to an unlikely scene: an end-of-the-year class party at the William P. Tatem Elementary School in Collingswood.

A third grader had made a comment about the brownies being served to the class. After another student exclaimed that the remark was "racist," the school called the Collingswood Police Department, according to the mother of the boy who made the comment.

The police officer spoke to the student, who is 9, said the boy's mother, Stacy dos Santos, and local authorities.

Dos Santos said that the school overreacted and that her son made a comment about snacks, not skin color.

"He said they were talking about brownies. . . . Who exactly did he offend?" dos Santos said.

The boy's father was contacted by Collingswood police later in the day. Police said the incident had been referred to the New Jersey Division of Child Protection and Permanency. The student stayed home for his last day of third grade.

Dos Santos said that her son was "traumatized," and that she hopes to send him to a different Collingswood public school in the fall.

And she wants an apology. She said she graduated from Collingswood High School and has two other children, a 21-year-old who also went through Collingswood schools, and a 3-year-old. Her husband, the third grader's father, is Brazilian, dos Santos said.

"I'm not comfortable with the administration [at Tatem]. I don't trust them and neither does my child," she said. "He was intimidated, obviously. There was a police officer with a gun in the holster talking to my son, saying, 'Tell me what you said.' He didn't have anybody on his side."

The incident, which has sparked outrage among some parents, was one of several in the last month when Collingswood police have been called to look into school incidents that parents think hardly merit criminal investigation.

Superintendent Scott Oswald estimated that on some occasions over the last month, officers may have been called to as many as five incidents per day in the district of 1,875 students.

This has created concern among parents in the 14,000-resident borough, who have phoned their elected officials, met with Mayor James Maley, blasted social-media message boards, and even launched a petition calling on the Camden County Prosecutor's Office to "stop mandated criminal investigation of elementary school students."

The increased police involvement follows a May 25 meeting among the Collingswood Police Department, school officials, and representatives from the Camden County Prosecutor's Office, where school officials and police both said they were told to report to police any incidents that could be considered criminal, including what Police Chief Kevin Carey called anything "as minor as a simple name-calling incident that the school would typically handle internally."

The police and schools were also advised that they should report "just about every incident" to the New Jersey Division of Child Protection and Permanency, Carey said.

Previously, the school district, following the state's Memorandum of Agreement Between Education and Law Enforcement Officials, had only reported incidents it deemed serious, like those involving weapons, drugs, or sexual misconduct. Both Carey and School Board President David Routzahn described the protocol set forth after that May meeting as a significant change in procedure.

"It was a pretty clear directive that we questioned vehemently," Oswald said.

But a month after the meeting, and after police investigations that parents consider fruitless had begun to gain attention, Maley wrote in a public letter that the May 25 meeting was intended to "reinforce the applicability" of the MOA, "not to expand its terms." Prosecutor Mary Eva Colalillo, in an accompanying statement, said she hoped Maley's message "clarifies" the responsibilities of school officials.

Maley said in an interview Tuesday that there had been a "misunderstanding" during the May 25 meeting. But Oswald said the Prosecutor's Office was shying away from its own instructions.

"At some point, it seems, they've realized that the intent of the MOA that they're leaning heavily upon is not what they directed us to do," Oswald said. "It went way above what that MOA says."

Another point of contention between the Prosecutor's Office and school officials is what prompted Maley's meeting in the first place.

In a public letter issued to parents Monday, Routzahn said he was "not aware of any single event" in the district that might have prompted the Prosecutor's Office to ask for a higher reporting standard.

But Maley said the Prosecutor's Office had been concerned about a "delay" in reporting an incident at Collingswood High School this spring. He would not comment further, noting that the incident was under investigation by the Prosecutor's Office.

Oswald said the high school incident had not been raised during the meeting May 25.

"I welcome discussion on that as well," he said.

Several parents said they consider the recent police involvement not only ridiculous but harmful.

Megan Irwin, who has two daughters who have attended Collingswood public schools and who teaches first grade in Pennsauken, said the police had been called to deal with behavior the schools could easily have handled.

"Some of it is just typical little-kid behavior," Irwin said. "Never in my years of teaching have I ever felt uncomfortable handling a situation or felt like I didn't know how to handle a situation."

And Pam Gessert, a Collingswood resident who works as a school counselor in Burlington County, said that because teachers have the best relationships with students, they are most qualified to determine what happened in a particular incident.

Most of all, parents said they were concerned that undue police involvement threatened their children's well-being.

"I don't want this to happen to another child," dos Santos said.

Why police were called to a South Jersey third-grade class party

"Brownies" will soon be added to the list of "triggering" words. They're gonna come up with a politically correct name for them.

Great, now my neices "troop" is going to be known as the "fudgey cake squares".

I'm offended by that. Calling someone a "square" is a micro-aggressive form of anti-intellectualism. Just because I'm articulate and have conservative moral values doesn't make me dull or boring.

Surely, "fudgey" and "cake" are more offensive than "square."

Are you trying to appropriate my culture? Exactly how many times have you been called "cake" in your life?

Check your privilege.

"Check" and "privilege"!! My ears are bleeding!

Sorry, that was insensitive of me not to provide a trigger warning.

Do you need a safe space?

We're only a few election cycles away from these two having an actual shot at it:

"Sweet cakes" is offensive.

Edit: I guess several baking related items are on that list now. "Sugar" and "honey" have the potential to make a waitress lose her composure these days. "Tart" has always had that effect. Then there's "cream puff" and "sugar biscuit".

None seem to carry the weight that a slur like "cum dumpster" conveys, but what do I know.

You're such an optimist. What makes you think that things will get so much better?

Who said anything about things getting better? I'm not postulating that electing a couple of actual clowns* to the executive office would be a good thing, merely pointing out that it's becoming less and less unlikely to occur.

I was. But I'm just less happy than normal with our choices this year.

My company owner's daughter had an old-world first name - like Ruth or Norma or Agnes, don't remember. She didn't like that so much, and had it legally changed to "Babe." It's funny seeing a modern SJW-type's reaction the first time they hear it. "This is the 21st century! You can't talk to her like that!" "Um, you wanna take this one, Babe?....."

[QUOTE=sixshooter;1344828]"Sweet cakes" is offensive.

Edit: I guess several baking related items are on that list now. "Sugar" and "honey" have the potential to make a waitress lose her composure these days.

QUOTE]

Where I live, the waitresses still call the patrons by such, especially "Hon" as in short for "Honey".

When I last went to Myrtle Beach, we found a small diner off the beaten path. The rather large black waitress called me "honey" and my wife "dearie". She treated us like we were long lost family. It's still one of our fondest memories of the place.

Sweet cheeks, sugar shorts, sugar tush, all seem perfectly acceptable.

I get called sweetheart by waitresses in Georgia sometimes, along with hun, honey, and once honey pie. The honey pie lady was an absolutely sweet caricature of a southern country waitress and was so much fun. She actually said the dessert of the day was "nanner puddin'". She was awesome.

I?m a millennial and my generation sucks | New York Post
[quote]
Millennials are the worst. I should know — I am one.

At 26, I’m stuck in the middle of the world’s most maligned, mocked and discussed age group. And I hate it. Imagine being forever lumped into a smug pack of narcissists who don’t just ignore the past, but openly abhor anyone and everything that came before them.
“My boomer co-workers get paid more and they have no clue what Reddit is!” drones the millennial victim as the tiny violin plays. Meanwhile, baby boomers gave us, um, computers, and our major contributions to society are emojis and TV recaps.

2016 hasn’t exactly been a banner year for the Lousiest Generation.

First there was Talia Jane, the dopey, 25-year-old Yelp employee who was rightly fired for whining about her low salary on social media. Next came the 27-year-old Mic writer who told his boss he was taking time off for a funeral when he was actually building a tree house.
And then entered the Sandernistas, Bernie Sanders obsessives who preached reform and inclusion by berating their closest friends and family for daring to think differently. (One post on the “Bernie or Bust” Facebook group reads, “I don’t want to be friends with you if you support Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.”)

This is what happens when parents slap their toddler’s headshot on a birthday cake.

Recently, a comment from a colleague hit me like a stray selfie-stick. She said, “In some ways I love being a millennial, because it’s so much easier to be better than the rest of our generation. Because they suck.” It was jarring to hear the truth so plainly stated. But she’s right. We suck. We really suck.

Like a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, I must admit that I’m powerless to my biological age. Nonetheless I fight back every day against the traits that have come to define Gen Y: entitlement, dependency, nonstop complaining, laziness, Kardashians.

People like me are called “old souls,” or “26-going-on-76.” We’re chided by our peers for silly things such as enjoying adulthood, commuting to a physical office and not being enamored with Brooklyn. Contentment has turned us into lepers. Or worse: functioning human beings.
My millennial friends want me to be hopelessly nostalgic for the ’90s, obsessing over which “Saved by the Bell” character I’m most like, while ironically purchasing Dunkaroos and Snapchatting my vacant expressions for 43 pals to ignore. Or flying home for the weekend to recover from office burnout by getting some shut-eye in my pristine childhood bedroom. Thanks, but I’ll pass.

This is my number one rule: Do whatever millennials don’t. Definite no-nos include quitting a job or relationship the moment my mood drops from ecstatic to merely content; expecting the world to kowtow to my every childish whim; and assuming that I am always the most fascinating person in the room, hell, the zip code.Millennials are obsessed with their brand. They co-opted the term from Apple and Xerox to be — like so many other things — all about them. “What’s your brand?,” millennial employers ask. The trouble is that a young person’s brand rarely extends beyond a screen: Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube. When you meet them, they’re never quite as witty, attractive or entrepreneurial as they seem on Facebook. They’re fiction authors, spinning elaborate yarns about their fabulous lives: “The Great Cathy” or “Asher in the Rye.”
But the truth is more like “A Tale of Two Cindys.” She’s the life of the party online, dull as dishwater in person.

Last year, sitting at a bar in Hell’s Kitchen, a 29-year-old friend asked, “How do you just start talking to somebody you don’t know?” The best answer I could muster was, “I’m interested in other people. I like to ask them questions about themselves.” Simple, right?
Not when your mind has been warped to believe you’re automatically deserving of others’ attention like the pope in Vatican City.
Perhaps their messiah complex is a result of being coddled, petted and worshiped like toy poodles from infancy all the way to college. Pundits love to cite soccer participation trophies as the downfall of Western civilization — but it gets even worse.

Last week, Hastings High School in Westchester, NY, handed out 87 commendations at its Senior Awards Ceremony. The graduation class size? 141 teens. A Reason Foundation survey found 58 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds think their own generation is entitled. Huh. Why could that be?
The social awkwardness of 20-somethings is a problem caused by two enemies: Kanye-sized egos and smartphones. But in order to be a good networker — still the best way to secure a job — you need to stop filtering mediocre selfies with “valencia” on Instagram, look up from your device and string together a few words with strangers. Preferably, words about them.

Too often, during a conversation, a young person’s eyes glaze over as they decide what scintillating tidbit about their brilliant selves to reveal next, be it the three days they didn’t leave their apartment, or how a study abroad experience in Portugal nine years ago shaped who they are today. News flash: Nobody cares.

(Sorry, I just got a text from someone I’d rather be spending time with. Feel free to keep reading while I carry on a separate conversation with them.)

The self-obsession doesn’t go down well at the office, either. Millennials make up the largest portion of the workforce. But employers are terrified of them — with good reason. They’re serial job hoppers. According to Gallup, in 2016, 21 percent of the commitment-phobes left their job after less than a year. Sixty percent are open to it. The “Where do you see yourself in five years?” question has never been more redundant, because the answer is almost definitely “Not here.”

One friend of mine has tackled six different jobs in two years, which seems more stressful than just sticking with one less-than-perfect spot for a while. How long should any person stay in a gig? At least 18 months, according to most career experts. Think of it as binge-working.
And once they do land their dream job as a hoverboard tester paid in wads of cash and sushi burritos? They want to work from their apartment. A US Chamber Foundation study said work-life balance drives the career choices of 75 percent of millennials. In my experience, however, the balance generally tilts toward wherever you can type pantsless.
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Millennials are more interested in documenting their lives than they are in living their lives to the fullest.Photo: Getty Images

The situation looks bleak — but we can turn it around, millennials. Here’s how.

Action item one: Stop blaming everybody. Don’t blame the big banks, don’t blame your mom, don’t blame the baby boomers, don’t blame your employer, your landlord, the economy, the Apple store, the media, the airlines, the weatherman, George R.R. Martin. By absolving ourselves of responsibility, we’ve become forever 8-year-olds, tattling on the world in hopes it will better our situation. It won’t. It will only make it crummier.

Action item two: Stop being so insular. Many young people were shocked when Brexit won out in the UK, or when Donald Trump became the presumptive GOP presidential nominee. That’s because you’ve curated your social media accounts — where most of your interaction takes place — to be in total agreement with your opinions. But most of the world doesn’t think the way you do, which doesn’t make them bad, just different. Try empathy on for size. Befriend some dissenters. Grab a beer with them, listen to what they have to say. For once, don’t yell at them.

Action item three: Stop waiting around for something big to happen. Getting a job is hard. Filling out a million online forms isn’t enough. Primping your LinkedIn and hoping your God-given greatness will finally be recognized by everybody else like your grandma always said it would will get you zip, zilch, zero. You need to leave your apartment, meet people, be assertive, interested, open. I’ve gotten full-time jobs by sitting at bars and dancing at wedding receptions.

Fellow millennials, I want to like you. I really do. But you make it damn near impossible sometimes.[\quote]

I think this seals it for me. Listen to this self-important yuppie talk down to all his friends. And, yes, I chose a derogatory boomer term for a reason . . . we've always had a$$holes. But their voices are so much louder now with the technology.

Chris Kyle and countless other Iraq/Afghanistan vets are millenials. Both my daughters are millenials. I could go on. All good people.

I spent the whole weekend at the track instructing in the heat. Left my cellphone at home. This morning it had a dead battery. What bliss!

Not everyone from the 60s was a Hippie either...

'xactly!

It's unfortunate that the worst of the boomers are now entrenched in politics.

white people sure like black people

I love this lady. I mean, yeah, she's a cam-whore. But she's so good at parodying SJW culture...

Millennials outraged over TV show portraying millennials as outraged

:giggle:

I like his description of our culture as infantilizing adulthood.

"The infantilism of our culture"
'nuff said

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