Headlines: Time Magazine Yells At Cloud

So, the Internet has been pretty busy with the controversy created by Joel Stein's article for Time Magazine about how the Millenial Generation (rougly, the people born in the early 80's to the mid 90's) is narcissist, lazy and entitled.

The reaction of the new media has been incredible: there we have it, a 41 years old man making such declarations about a whole generations of individuals who are living through one of the most complicated economic times in recent history woulnd't exactly pass unnoted, especially by a generation that domains and feels at home in the modern social plataforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Acussations were made: the article was either stupid because Time would be insulting one growing segment of buyers and consumers, or just plain insensitive to the reality of millions and millions around America (and hell: the majority of the Western world) that want a better job and want to achieve more in life but aren't in the best position to do it so due to high rates of unemployement...I'm not here to discuss that (it has been discussed enough by other, way better writers than me).

What I want to talk about is how, a journalist (an educated person), a member of the generation X could make such a big mistake: complain about how today kids are.

Bear with me, and see this funny experiment, because all those claims about how the youngers are lazy and self-absorbed are far from being something new. See this next Life magazine:

What's so special about it? It talked about the supposedly differences between the younger generation and the grown ups: among them, how these kids were lazy, unable to make a living and narcissists. The date of the magazine? May 17, 1968.

But that's far from the only one; meet, as Newsweek called it, the "Video Generation" (sounds lame, isn't?)

Just like their fashion sense

And on it talked about...yeah, the narcissism of this generation, willing to video-record every single banal thing crossing on their lives.

Moving to the 90's, we had...

An article about...guess what? How the Gen X was made almost completely by screwups, more "willing to hike the Himalaya" than in "climbing the corporate ladder".

Every generation in turn has been labeled that way...so, all those undesirible traits those publications described...could it be that is just older people forgetting how they behaved when they were our age? Or even funnier: maybe it has less to do with some generation in specific, and more with all youngsters of all ages?

As I read in a remote corner of the Internet: "As long as there's 20 somethings, there will be hipsters".

So, Mr. Stein; please, think more your words before you yell at that creepy cloud in the sky.

Shalom comrades.