Everyone refers to our generation, “the millennials”, as “snowflakes”, the generation that thinks they’re soo special, the generation that received trophies just for participating and the generation that seems to be offended by everything.
Despite these stereotypes, Millennials are actually working harder than ever, and in more college debt with fewer job prospects than previous generations.
I’m sure many older generations will say otherwise, and of course we’ve all heard (and rolled our eyes at) a similar tale of “when I was your age I had to walk uphill both ways to and from school, etc.” from our parents and/or grandparents.
As annoying as this sentiment is, I can’t help but cringe with a mix of jealousy and spite when I see a 11 year old with a newer version of the iPhone than I have. Despite all our supposed privilege, there are some things that our generation struggled with that future generations just will never understand…
14. Sharing is caring…
“Back in my day, we used to all share a single phone at home. What if I wanted call a girl I liked you say? Well I had to call her home and ask her parents to speak with her if they answered.”
13. The days before a few clicks through Google and Wikipedia held all your report information…
“When I was in the first few grades of grammar school, just before my parents got our first dial up modem, I remember doing reports for school with our encyclopedia set. How can you explain an encyclopedia to someone now?!
‘You see, it was a huge set of books – like thirty books – that was so expensive, sometimes people got it as a wedding present.’
‘And it had everything you needed to know about everything?’
‘Well, no, it was curated with only the shit the editors thought was the most important.’
‘What if you needed information about something that wasn’t in there?’
‘You went to the library.’
‘What if the library was far away?’
‘You picked a different topic for your report.'”
12. Kids say the darndest things…
“The other day I told my niece I’m older than YouTube and Google, and she asked if I was also older than the moon. Since when does a four-year-old have such a well developed sense of sarcasm?”
11. The anxiety of not knowing where your loved ones were at all times…
“Being a rather anxious child, I remember this feeling all too well if my parents said they’d be home in ‘a half hour’ or ‘twenty minutes’. Forty minutes later? They’re dead.
I went through the five stages of grief at least a dozen times before cell phones were cheap enough that me and my mother both had one.”
10. Texting on a flip phone was no easy feat…
“if you wanted an S, you had to press 7 FOUR TIMES!”
9. Mapquest Anxiety Syndrome…
“I had to print out directions from MapQuest and hope I didn’t miss a street.”
“I used to call that MAS or Mapquest Anxiety Syndrome. Watching every cross street going “fuck was that it? What about that one? Is it this one?? Shit I can’t read that street’s sign!” needed a damn Xanax just to get to your destination with your sanity. Lol”
8. The inconvenience of dial-up modems…
“GET OFF THE INTERNET I NEED TO MAKE A PHONE CALL!!”
7. Before the existence of the “On Demand” feature…
“We had these books called TV guides and had to organize our day by what TV show was on at what time! No seriously! on demand streaming wasn’t a thing!”
6. You’ll appreciate this if you’re from the North…
“The news channel that announced school closing in my city just had a scrolling list at the bottom that listed the school districts that were closed. What I hated was that my district started with an S, but whenever the news channel went to a commercial and came back they would start listing the school districts from the A’s again!”
“And meanwhile you’re eating breakfast and packing your backpack, just in case your school district decides once again to fuck you over, even though it’s well below freezing and you have to walk outside between classes. In two feet of snow. While it’s still actively snowing.
Damn, that was a decade ago and I’m still salty about it.”
5. Low Key feel bad that younger kids will never experience the wonder that was Blockbuster…
“For some reason looking for movies at Blockbuster was so fun. Now choosing a movie in Netflix feels like a chore..”
4. …And the simple joys that were Snake and Tetris…
“I didn’t have the internet on my cellphone. I paid by the text. The only game I had on it was Snake.”
3. Limewire giving your computer the computer-equivalent of AIDS…
“I had to wait 10 minutes to download a song on Limewire.”
“Limewire was my window into sex, music, movies, and pesky viruses and I wouldn’t have had it any other way at the time.”
2. Kids have no chill…
“One of the six-year-olds at my work asked me what iPads were like when I was a kid. I told him we didn’t have them, and he couldn’t comprehend it. He said, ‘Did you only have Kindles?'”
