Will Entitlement Bury Gen Z?

Ellie Masukevich lives in Illinois. In December of 2022, on a Tuesday night no less, she was 18 and got drunk before 7pm. She seems to have smoked a few bowls too. The cops got her for swerving around, and when they tried to arrest her, she got a little, uh, violent:

It’s a bad one. You can almost see the demise of mental health in real time.

It should be noted there’s something weird in this video. When first put into cuffs, she screams something about “This feels like going to Utah!” Some have suspected that maybe she was a troubled adolescent and her family had her sent to some reform camp in Utah, but maybe it was one of those deals you read about sometimes where they come in the middle of the night and get you. Maybe that’s why the handcuffs part was so triggering. I think that needs to be stated.

Looks like she ended up "Not Guilty" on many charges, tho.

You may also remember the Stephanie Melgoza case out of Illinois. She got 14 years in prison, tho.

In that case, two people died because Stephanie drove drunk. She then laughed about it, probably because she hadn’t processed that two people died. (I’m not forgiving her there, just explaining what it’s like to be overly-intoxicated.) Melgoza got 14 years, I think, in the Illinois prison system. She will be out and have a chance at life by probably 35 to 40 years old.

Now, Ellie didn’t kill anyone (good), but both these videos are sometimes held up as examples of bratty Gen Z behavior, where consequences don’t matter to them apparently.

I would generally disagree with that, and I think there are millions of young adults in Gen Z, and consequences matter to most of them. It’s easy to cherry-pick anything for a specific narrative. Both these cases are more about “People shouldn’t drive drunk” than anything. I’ve had to learn that myself.

Most older generations think the newer generations are entitled, off-task, and off-putting. They think that for a variety of reasons, and Ms. Ellie here isn’t the poster child for it— especially if there was some type of “take her to reform camp” situation, which might be logical if she’s cruising around a Buy Buy Baby and a Target drunk, at 18, weeks before Christmas on a Tuesday night.

Plus, on entitlement, just remember: we can’t solve it, but we can reduce it with some better approaches to parenting, empathy, et al.

What’s your take on this Ellie girl?