The other morning, I woke to a bombardment of millennial tropes. They came from my timelines and news feeds, my inbox and the small square TV that I was watching on the treadmill at the gym. Like little catapulted rocks:
- The well-groomed white male hustler, vested in more ways than one, pictured smiling with his arms crossed above a headline promising readers that if they follow his advice they’ll finally create content that other millennials will click on.
- The friendless freelancers, depicted in our broke isolation gazing sadly out the windows of our studio apartments, tilted faces lit metal blue from the gloom of our open laptops.
- Finally, the murderous among us, depicted amid a witch’s brew of vape smoke in the upper right-hand corner of a Fox News segment that itself referenced a Bloomberg article: Millennials Kill Again. The Latest Victim? American Cheese.
I stepped off the treadmill. Something about the bombardment made me feel gross. First I thought it might just feel gross being generalized. I don’t presume myself above generalization. And I know that, as a straight white man, I’ve never been generalized in a way that’s actually dangerous or harmful. But to…
