Ageism is bad, mmkay?

This post came across my feed this afternoon.

This, friends, is what we call "ageism," and is a prime example of why we need to fix the workplace age discrimination laws in the US (because according to law, ageism is totally legal unless you're discriminating against someone because they're over 40).

It's also getting really old, because this is the kind of shit my peers and myself have been putting up with for roughly 20 years now (and GenXers put up with for a decade or two before that).

That's right, this garbage is old enough it can almost (or already) drink (and apparently older than what most people still seem to think Millennials are...). When we get into the more general "oh the youngest generation is the downfall of civilization!" then you're getting into complaints that are literally thousands of years old.

Really, if you're going to continue to gaslight entire generations, at least get new material.

Oh, and make sure you're actually targeting the right generation. Millennials are 24 to 39 these days. The "stupid kids" you're thinking of are actually GenZ (who, by the way, are already over this BS and will very likely eat us all at the rate things are going).

But let's get to the meat of this and why seeing this on LinkedIn, of all places, viscerally angers me.

Let's start with the face of it: "lawl, those dumb Millennials can't do this thing!"

That thing is usually something the people making fun of us should have taught us, but actively refused to do so. I kid you not, I had asked to learn to drive stick when I was a teen and was flat-out told "no," because either "the car is too old and you won't be able to feel the gears and you'll destroy it" or "the car is too new and you'll ruin/cause excessive wear on the gears." I know and know of a great many Millennials who were told the same thing. Combine that with the car companies producing fewer manual transmission cars (thus reducing the likelihood of any given person to happen across someone who owns a car with a manual transmission, let alone is also willing to teach or let them borrow the car to practice/teach themself) and you end up with a cohort of people who don't have experience doing something. Go figure. I'm pretty sure Boomers don't know how to send a telegraph in Morse Code, either.

If you genuinely believe that Millennials don't know cursive (we do, by the way), then consider the fact that, by definition, that means it was GenX and Boomer-populated school boards that removed it from the curriculum.

Of course, I already know what the Boomer response is going to be to this post:

"Snowflake."

"Go back to your safe space."

"Grow a thicker skin."

There's a name for this behavior: gaslighting, and it's abuse. Full stop.

It's also unprofessional as hell. Seriously. Whatever happened to professional respect and "don't be a jerk"? And you wonder why younger people have no loyalty to companies or managers.

But Let's Talk About The Deeper Ramifications

Most younger people will already agree that the above is bad enough, because...you know...abuse is bad in and of itself. But evidently we need to spell this stuff out for the older folks.

Shit like these memes negatively impacts our careers.

No, I'm not joking. I'm not exaggerating.

It perpetuates the harmful stereotypes of "entitled kids" who have "no real-world experience." (Never mind the fact that we're now in the third recession of the most influential part of our careers and most of us served and/or has had several people close to them serve in active wars since 9/11. And...you know...the fact that most of us are in our 30s.)

I personally know people who have been fired for being a Millennial, despite being a good worker and valuable asset to the company.

I've personally been fired for speaking out against people perpetuating ageism in the workplace.

Our skills are very often downplayed. The default assumption is that we're "entitled" and want "participation trophies" (apparently for daring to actually demand getting paid what we're worth). Never mind the fact that that whole "participation trophy" thing was our parents' idea.

And yes, it's perfectly legal, because of the holes in our worker protection laws.

It also harms our society as a whole.

Wages have stagnated for the past 20 years. The federal minimum wage hasn't changed for 11 years, losing nearly 20% of its purchasing power (ie - things that cost $7.25 in 2009 now cost $8.66). That was the last of three increases brought by the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007. Prior to that act, the minimum wage hadn't been increased since 1997. By 2007, it had lost 30% of its buying power.

Meanwhile, college tuition has increased over 1400% since 1977. So you know that $20,000 tuition you paid? It costs $300,000 now. (Actual tuition numbers: Harvard tuition in 1971 was $2600 per year. This upcoming year, it's nearly $50,000. If tuition kept pace with inflation, it would cost roughly $17,000.)

Between that, the Dotcom bust, and the Great Recession, our economy has shifted dramatically. Gone are the days of "company loyalty." Companies took on an attitude of "be thankful you have a job (even if it pays garbage)" during the Recession and never really shook it, while the erosion of unions and worker protections destroyed the stability of so-called "real jobs" and gave rise to the "gig economy" and "the hustle" (aka - working 2 and 3 and 4 jobs, many of which effectively pay piece rate).

What a lot of people didn't realize was that this erosion happened in the field of journalism, too. The result was the sugar-coating of people engaging in the gig economy out of necessity and painting it as a choice for "disruption."

The changes which these terms allude to are not, as the media, businesses, or officials would have you believe, the result of some shift in culture or society; but rather, represent a top-down legislative and normative continuation of long standing neoliberal capitalist business and economic trends. More specifically it represents a further erosion of worker’s’ rights, remuneration, benefits, pensions and their ability to collectively bargain

Gaslighting Millennials harms our society and economy, because it ignores the very real socioeconomic problems in our society in favor of blaming Millennials. It was our "personal failings" that kept us from getting jobs in 2009 or held our careers back in the years since, not the fact that banks engaged in predatory lending practices that caused a housing bubble and subsequent bust, leading to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, causing three years of over 7% unemployment (peaking at 10%), and Millennials just entering the workforce had to compete with now-out-of-work and no-longer-able-to-retire GenXers and Boomers who had more experience and were willing to work for entry-level wages. It's Millennials that are "killing [insert consumerist industry here]," not the fact that cost of living has outpaced wages, so there's just not that much room in the budget to spend on things like diamonds, crappy chain restaurants, and overpriced plywood houses, so when we did/do have room for discretionary spending, we tend to go for things that we feel bring us more value for the price, like experiences and self-improvement. Millennials just have no work ethic, it's not that we've spent the past half-century or so creating a society that glorifies overwork and created legalized wage theft and employee abuse of nearly half of the workforce. The Friedman doctrine isn't a thing and never caused massive harm to the economy and worker (and consumer) rights, Millennials are just entitled.

The above-linked meme -- and the others in the same vein -- reinforce this gaslighting and misdirection. They reinforce the broader message of "everything's just fine, it's just these stupid kids," even as the rafters fall down in flames.

And you wonder why "OK Boomer" is a thing.