#millennialslike

CARPE-ING THE NOW LESS TRAVELLED

Millennials don’t do generic. They don’t do big box. They don’t do canned, pre-made, synthetic McSperiences.

What they do do is ignore reality, have untenable dreams, get shit-canned on a toxic mix of booze, self-righteousness, and bad decisions.

But —this is important — they don’t do it the old way. They do it with innovative technology, expensive coffee, and vintage bicycles. They do it in bespoke clothing in out-of-the-beaten-path places they saw on a Celebstagram feed.

SPIRIT ANIMALS

Millenials are NOT about status. They are not about titles, actual achievement, or any other old person way to try prove your importance.

Millennials are about mystery, adrenaline, and EXPERIENCE. The bolder and authenticker the better. I’m talking things like free climbing, meditation, and riding a motorcycle across a super authentic country filled with poor people.

GIVING

Millennials are doers. They will not be slowed down by things like negativity, HPV, or legally binding contracts. They will not read some boring thing when they could be living boldly and authentically. Which is why they will always sign the terms of service without reading them.

And here’s the bonus: millennials are also influencers. Baby Boomers and Gen Xers (wrongly and sadly) imagine themselves to be 25 also, so they blindly adopt many key millennial behaviors.

TECHXPERIENCE

In the same way that boomers were born connected to an overinflated sense of importance, and X-ers were born connected to an odd sense of superiority-masked-as-cynicism, milllennials were born connected to technology. 

So if you are going to make market to millennials, you need to put the messages where their eyeballs are: on their phones. They will literally never see anything anywhere else.

AUTHENTIMAGERY

I recently heard an art theorist discussing humans’ primal memory of their first experience of light while exiting the birth canal, which was disgusting because he was old and his ideas were gross and boring.

So we left and went to a barge party where Earl Sweatshirt and Dakota Fanning were spinning hard house and chillwave until 5am.

When the sun came up I was making out with Adrian Grenier’s cousin, who then took us back to Adrian’s industrial loft space in Bed Stuy where his maid (?) served us fresh-baked blackcurrant scones.

STREET COUTURE

Let’s talk about the real reason for the season y’all: shopping, spending, and showing it all off:

Millennials keep it positive. They aspire to disrupt the status quo and achieve outrageous success because they are somehow cosmically special. Which is why even though they are saddled with historic crippling debt from college loans, and despite the fact that they can’t find work, they are practically addicted to buying exorbitantly priced casual wear.

From $78 t-shirts and ball caps to $150 hoodies and $500 sneakers, anything that a cynical, fussbudget Gen-Xer might get for a ten-spot at Target, can be purchased from a condescending hipster for 10-100 times the price in a white-walled boutique that has 10-15 items artfully arranged on one small rack in the middle of the room (or, more likely, on an app that has been modeled to mimic that experience via mobile).

What you don’t get in quality is more than made up for by a cool logo and the fact that someone saw Tyler, The Creator was wearing the same thing in at an afterparty-themed advertorial on Thrillist.

THWARTING CONVENTION

Millennials don’t just think outside the box, they live outside the box. If they knew about the box, they’d smash it instantly with some clever social/digital innovation, BUT THEY DON’T BECAUSE LIKE I SAID ALREADY THEY THINK SO FAR OUTSIDE OF IT THEY DON’T EVEN KNOW ABOUT IT.

This means instead of doing boring stuff like office work and getting tested for chlamydia, they’re doing bold stuff like motocross and authentic stuff like going to countries where everyone is poor and celebrating the photogenic blight on Instagram.

ADRENALINE

The same old same old won’t do for millennials. They crave bold new experiences that push the limits. Which is why they can’t get over the thrill of the virtually murdering the bejesus out of everyone and everything on their computronic gaming systems.