Gen Y’s Problem (and Their Solution)

One reason Gen Y’s getting memory-holed is because their upbringing isn’t compatible with the current narrative. They’re being silenced off of social media since their childhood memories don’t match the hate-fueled rhetoric that’s being pumped out today. They were taught from an early age to ignore petty differences and embrace world culture. They were taught to seek the good in people, that science doesn’t know all the facts (but always thinks it does, sometimes to dangerous effect), and that a little research goes a long way.

Consequently, Hollywood wants to pretend Gen Y didn’t exist. They also want to retcon it.

I’ve seen plenty of examples of life in the 80s being re-imagined so it’s more in-line with the current narrative through modern TV shows like Stranger Things (Season 2+). Any Gen Yer can see that, while that show does get a lot of things right, it’s still a bit “off”. And what it gets wrong usually has something to do with an -ism as it relates to modern politics. This stuff is intentionally there to give younger generations a false impression of what it was like growing up in the 80s.

Rewriting history with pop culture fiction can’t change the fact that an entire generation reached out and learned about the world that surrounded them, even pre-Internet. It’s hard to deny that the typical 90s teenager had experienced international penpals, studied world religion, integrated heavily with “African-American” culture (from the clothes they wore to the music they listened to), and was the first generation to re-embrace Japanese culture since the bombing of Pearl Harbor. If their parents hadn’t decided to focus so much on their careers and so little on procreation, I believe Gen Y wouldn’t be so easy to ignore and could have even changed the world for the better.

Despite being taught not to ask questions, they somehow learned to be critical thinkers. That’s a big no-no–It’s not easy getting through a college course as a Gen Y these days. You’ll be given written assignments where you’re told what your opinion is and how to defend it.

Boomers, on the other hand, were told their whole lives they were destined to be the best generation in history. That they would usher in the “Age of Aquarius”. They were told they had great taste in music and art while being trained to prefer abstraction and subversion. They were told that they had set women free. That they would be the ones to achieve a utopian world peace. That they should give themselves a pat on the back because if their nation could go to the moon, anything was possible (even though most of them couldn’t program a VCR to save their lives, let alone tell you what it takes to get a ship out of Lower Earth Orbit).

Every time Gen Y opens their wallets for Boomer merch or a little 80s nostalgia hit in the year 2022, it just makes Boomers’ heads swell even more. It reinforces that they truly were the best generation. And that’s what kills me about this setup. Gen Y hates the Boomers (and vice-versa), yet they won’t let go of Boomer IPs even at the age of forty, treating old properties as if they’re security blankets.

Gen Y’s problem is that they place these movies and cartoons from their youth on such a high pedestal that when they do actually try and create something, it’s typically not something new. Instead it’s an homage or derivative of their favorite 80s and 90s properties. Those IPs have become a replacement for religion in their hearts, so perfect and sacred that they’re almost afraid of making something greater, something that could surpass any greatness that formed part of their childhood. They’ve self-stifled because they don’t realize they’re still kneeling at the altar of Gozer the Gozerian.

Millennials don’t feel that “sacred” connection, of course, so they’re more than happy to trample on holy ground, jumping in to write the newest sequels. They didn’t grow up with these IPs, don’t care about them, and they couldn’t possibly understand what made them so great in the first place. And yet Gen Y is still sucker enough to pay for these “official” sequels and reboots, blinded by their pop cult faith.

But maybe it’s time for Gen Y to look back at the originals with an honest and critical eye and see that even those seemingly untouchable works aren’t as perfect as they thought. It IS possible to make something better than Star Wars. It IS possible to surpass Steven Spielberg and out-write Stephen King. But it must be done with truth, not propaganda. Truth is what creates art that survives the ages. Truth is what makes properties add up to more than the sum of their parts.

And time is the ultimate equalizer. The Boomers’ dominance cannot last until 2030. Whether the majority of Gen Y will stop sitting around on their asses consuming fake sequels while waiting for their Promised Land to never arrive has yet to be seen. But someone will have to take over.

The point is, Gen Y doesn’t have to be memory-holed forever. The Millennials are dropping the ball, filling their works with the same brand of propaganda and lies that the Boomers tried to fill Gen Yers heads with so many years ago. These new stories will not survive the ages no matter how much they plaster Star Wars and Ghostbusters branding all over their movie posters. Gen Y has an upcoming unique chance to build something new and better, something meaningful that lasts. But they must first find the courage to stop kneeling at Gozer’s altar long enough to create.

These days, a lot of projects are financially failing and Boomers continue to die off, so it looks like it’s up to Gen Y and Z to roll up their sleeves and reinstate the traditional art of storytelling. All they’ve got to do is remind people how fun, inventive, and exciting an original adventure can be, especially when it’s based in truth. The future could belong to them … if they’d just find the courage to step up and tell the next great stories.