Big shocker, millennials took another hit last week.
According to Bloomberg, the widely-berated generation has caused the divorce rate to plummet, due to both waiting for financial stability and class inequality pushing marriage toward a luxury for the rich.
Regardless of true cause, millennials have received plenty of heat for ruining almost every pillar of society — from mortgages to golf and even wine corks. This kind of generational behavior makes it enticing to guess which parts of everyday life millennials could ruin next with their penchants for juice bars and sustainably sourced clothing.
Jonah Baker | Argonaut
Dreams
Don’t be fooled, I don’t mean the kind of aspirations that constitute careers. When I say millennials might ruin dreams, I mean there is a legitimate chance that the visions we go through during sleep may never be the same once millennials are done with them.
Two factors are sure to kill millennial dreams as we know them. Millennials are already working more and sleeping in less regular intervals, possibly throwing off the natural dream cycles and subconscious factors that go into the production of dreams. Since most millennials grew up with brain-dead cartoons doing their imagining for them, few would even be capable of the creativity necessary to dream like their forefathers did back when men were men and everyone had dreams that provided inspiration or forecasted the future (especially in soap operas).
The financial ramifications would be obvious. Without dreams, millennials would be actively killing the mattress and pillow industries, because millennials would see even less of the benefits of comfortable sleep.
Hair
Millennials are always looking for the next way to increase efficiency in their personal and work lives. Haircuts and styling cost each millennial a substantial sum of money and time over the course of a year, and low-maintenance hairstyles are coming into fashion.
Is it that unrealistic to project that all millennials will be voluntarily bald or rocking a buzz cut within the next few years? With so many constantly worried about their appearance in comparison to others, why not even the playing field as an entire generation and get rid of hair altogether? There is a non-zero chance that the pseudo-science diets and experimental drugs that are constantly linked to millennials will bald them prematurely anyway, so why not get ahead of the curve?
Of course, this would also send hairstylists and beauty product companies into epic tailspins, adding two more industries to the millennials’ list of kills.
Generational labeling
We are clearly running out of ideas for naming generations, with generations X, Y and Z being the best that we could muster for the past 40 years. In addition to the dearth of clever monikers, the term “millennial” has been beaten into the ground through constant media exposure. It seems unlikely that future generations would want any sort of term to group them together at risk of being admonished for every possible failing in society.
Ruining things
This one is self-explanatory. For their entire existence on this Earth, millennials have been ruining things like it is literally going out of style
Jonah Baker can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @jonahpbaker