Adam Conover
5 HN recommenders · recommended in 9 months, 2016–2023
24:56 · 4M views · Mar 19, 2016
Adam Conover's talk at a millennial marketing conference argues that generations are an unscientific, condescending idea and that millennials do not exist as a real category. The description notes that researcher Jean Twenge later said he misrepresented some of her work.
HN commenters cite it when arguing that generational labels are marketing inventions used to belittle groups.
11 comments from Hacker News
I like to refer to Adam ruins everything on Millennials: this video TL;DW Generational titles (Boomers, Gen X, Y, whatever) are invented by authors to sell books. They never bring people up and are always used to tear people down. Everything said about Millennials has been said about every generation ever. You can take a Time magazine cover from the 50s about the entitled generation and slap a modern photo on it and it's the same damn thing. It's lazy. Millennials are the most diverse of any generation. That's about all you can really say, other than we're the most in debt and most likely to take unpaid internships compared to any previous generation. It's a straw man and it needs to die.
It kinda makes me thing of the "Millennials Don't Exist" talk by Adam Conover. He talks about how generational terms are just made up by authors who want to get rich and they're almost always condescending (those entitled baby boomers, those lazy millennials, those gen x-ers) and how people don't liked to be talked down to: this video Are millennials attached do their cellphones? Yes .. so are mothers, fathers, grandparents and some dogs. It's literally the most compact and powerful communication and computational device we've ever had. When you break down all the labels, all you really have is people. Talk to them like people.
Millennials don't exist, according to Adam Conover: this video I'm careful using the word "Millennial" these days and increasingly skeptical of online articles with the word "Millennial" in the title. Thanks to shows like Adam Ruins Everything[1], I am more informed on a variety of topics. (I learn visually and prefer to watch his videos instead of read an article). [1]: [LINK]
Adam (from Adam Ruins Everything) does a really good talk at a marketing conference on why Millennials don't exist. Generational titles are never used to bring people up, but always tear a group of people down. Time magazine covers about Baby Boomers from decades ago are almost identical to those calling Millennials entitled today: this video
Agreed. My favorite quote was "In some ways I love being a millennial, because it’s so much easier to be better than the rest of our generation" I can't tell if this statement supports or contradicts the rest of the article, but regardless, this bears watching again... this video The generational pile-on goes back and is pretty meaningless.