Mythical Millennial #2: Brexit and absolutely no chill
Whether you voted in or voted out, it’s hard to deny on that fateful morning in June we woke up to a changed United Kingdom. (Apologies to my readers across the pond if this is completely baffling to you, but in case you haven’t heard, we’ve voted to leave the European Union and a lot of young people are hecka pissed off about it.) “What does this have to do with youth marketing?” you may ask. Well. This is probably the biggest youth marketing failure of all time.
Only 36% of 18 to 24 year olds turned up to vote compared to 83% of 65+ year olds. The young people who did show up, overwhelmingly voted to remain in the EU. However, is this truly surprising? Low electoral turnout amongst young people isn’t a new problem, but besides Bite the Ballot’s hashtag-heavy #TurnUp campaign, there wasn’t any real effort to combat the issue. “Both [Remain and Leave] campaigns have been a disaster in terms of meaningful engagement on such complex issues,” said Bite the Ballot founder Michael Sani. He isn’t wrong.
It feels like a betrayal for me to say that all young people are disengaged (#notallyouth). But who is more to blame for the low youth turnout? The government, or general misguided apathy? Who knows. As John Oliver rightly puts it, “there are no f***ing do-overs” when it comes to the referendum, so we might as well keep calm and carry on.
If you haven’t heard of ‘The Internet of Things’(IoT) yet, it’s probably because it’s permeated your life so much you don’t notice. Concept: everyday devices like your fridge, your phone, your shoes, all connected to the Internet cloud, transmitting and receiving information that subtly tweaks your life (see for example, Amazon’s artificial intelligence assistant, Alexa). IoT advocates claim that we’ll live in a future where “anything that can be connected, will be connected.” Terrifying.
Creepy IoT news of the week: apparently Facebook uses your phone’s location to suggest new friends. Zuckerberg, oh Zuckerberg. First you indoctrinate us through VR headsets, then you force us to be friends with our immediate neighbours. The horror. The horror.
A long ‘un, but a good ‘un. Song rec courtesy of the lovely @charlubby.
You! Me! Dancing! by Los Campesinos
If you’re at all into Greek mythology, you’ll absolutely love reading about the millennial Cassandra, Prometheus and Sisyphus in this post. The true mythical millennials.
If you have any groovy tunes that’ll fight off the Brexit Dementors that have come about, tweet them at me, yeah?
See you in two weeks,
B x
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Originally published on Mythical Millennial.
