Millennial Lives, Millennial Times: Sentenced to Death by Hanging (Out)
I sometimes refer to our generation as the ‘hangout generation’. We do not spend time with each other, only hang out. We do not have ‘friends’, only people we ‘hang out’ with. We do not invite people to have coffee or a meal together, only hang out.
By its vary nature, hanging out evokes casualness and a carefully effected nonchalance. It would be social death to appear too interested. More than anything, hanging out means one (or both) parties have one foot out the door at all times.
‘Hanging out’ represents the essence of social interactions of our generation. I suspect it is also one of the reasons for the extreme loneliness we millennials experience. Hanging out leads to a Cold War-like state of affairs that I call mutually assured loneliness (MAL), where both parties feel socially empty, yet are afraid of openly expressing it first, lest they be labelled as desperate or needy.
Additionally, I observe that we tend to faithfully subscribe to the “Law of Disjoint Hangouts”, by which I mean that we have differing , non-overlapping friend circles each targeted towards a separate activity. For example, we have one set of friends we like to call ‘study buddies’, another set of ‘party friends’, yet another set of ‘gym friends’, and finally ‘work friends’. Heck, some even have ‘friends with benefits’ to satisfy our base physical urges.
Even technology confirms this. On Instagram, we can choose to share our stories with ‘close friends’ (or whatever other subset of our followers we may desire). On Snapchat, we share specific details of our lives with a select few, and other details with other subgroups. Facebook allows us to customize our status update to only show on certain people’s newsfeeds.
Regardless, there is one theme that runs throughout these hangouts:
Namely, a self-focused desire for personal gratification through the particular activity. It is only co-incidental that we enjoy the person(s) company. For example, we text our ‘party friends’ when we need someone to party/drink with, but not otherwise. We call on a separate set of friends to study with before exams, but forget about them on Friday nights.
The result is that each friendship is qualified. Take away the activity, and the basis for the relationship vanishes. This leads to an extreme sense of insecurity. We know that if tomorrow something bad were to happen to us, those we ‘hangout’ with would not come to take care of us. The basis for a deep meaningful relationship — trust — is simply not there. And thus, we are each sentenced to death by hanging (out)…
