Comments on: Millennials and Virgos: Excluding the Underserved and Unpopular

By: Lane J

Lane J — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:14:50 +0000

I tend not to read many articles about Millennials, but the “Millenial Muddle” article caught my attention. The article stated millenials are “people born between 1982 and 2004″ Seriously?! You can not group people born in three different decades together. It’s like marketing to people in different countries. They look for different things. The millennial profile of “white, affluent teenagers who accomplish great things as they grow up in the suburbs, who confront anxiety when applying into super-selective colleges, and who multitask with ease as their helicopter parents hover reassuringly above them” is only a fraction of the people born between ’82 and ’04. Find what your audience has in common and leverage that.

By: insidetimshead

insidetimshead — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:56:49 +0000

Amen! I’ve been railing, seemingly in vain, against the whole Millennial stereotyping/cottage industry for a long time. While researching my master’s thesis (on the stereotype development for so-called “Generation X”), I found Howe and Strauss already lining up their rosy picture of Millennials in a 1992 Atlantic Monthly article. When the very oldest members of the generation were, what, 10 years old? Talk about putting the presumptions before the horse. The Arts and Sciences Group did a presentation at SUNYCUAD a few years ago deflating the myth, but apparently couldn’t get mainstream media to listen.

In other news, I’m also a Virgo, for what that’s worth.