Thoughts On Privileged Millennials and Stereotyping

I recently posted this on my personal facebook and it got a good response from my friends, so I’m sharing it here. Happy Friday, everyone!

Rant alert: if you're a friend of mine, please, please stop stereotyping millennials. Here's why:

I'm a millennial. I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a husband. I'm a dad. I'm a Christ follower. I own my house. I read a lot of books. I love coffee, I buy organic food, and I own an iPhone. 

I am not lazy, I am no more selfish than any other generation, and I care a lot about a lot of people. I accept responsibility, I pay my own bills, and I manage my own businesses (yes they're profitable and yes, I do run them from coffee houses most of the time). 

I hate in crowds and social pressures to conform. I'm an idealist and a dreamer, but also pragmatic. "Because we've always done it this way" isn't a good enough answer to any question. 

At my heart I'm a rebel, and I always will be. 

Millennials are individuals with individual motivations, tendencies, and dreams. It is a terrible mistake to assume that an entire generation of humans tend to be universally the same, just like it would be offensive to stereotype an entire group because of their gender or skin color. 

The next time that you think about sharing an article that stereotypes millennials, please remember that by sharing it, you're helping to build a stereotype that at best is an incomplete picture of a massive social group, and at worst builds a negative stereotype of an entire generation