Speaker announcement: Why are the Millennials the freaking worst?

Guys, it’s time to get real.

In the jour­nal­ism world, this would be an edi­tor’s note.

I, Saerom Yoo, TEDxSalem sto­ry­teller, here­by dis­claim that the speak­er I will now announce is a dear friend and for­mer col­league of mine. There­fore, I found it awk­ward and dis­hon­est to approach today’s post like any oth­er speak­er announce­ment.

I have a clear bias toward Kel­ly Williams Brown. I think she’s hilar­i­ous, tal­ent­ed and bril­liant. So we tried some­thing dif­fer­ent for her speak­er announce­ment. Since our main form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion is the “geech,” or “G‑chat,” we thought we’d let you in on our friend-to-friend, no‑B.S. con­ver­sa­tion.

Some con­text: Kel­ly was a news­pa­per reporter, sev­er­al of those years as the enter­tain­ment reporter at the States­man Jour­nal. That’s where we met. I also am a reporter at the States­man Jour­nal. This spring, Kel­ly made her debut as an author with “Adult­ing.” Ever heard of it? It’s only a best­seller.

At TEDXSalem, Kel­ly will be back to the town where her fame began — the town she wrote much of Adult­ing — to talk about how our gen­er­a­tion, the Mil­len­ni­als, are the worst. Just kid­ding. She’ll be address­ing those many arti­cles that you may have read about how those in their teens and 20s are basi­cal­ly lazy, self­ie-tak­ing leech­es and the poten­tial dam­ages of that type of gen­er­al­iza­tion.

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you TEDxSalem’s first G‑chat inter­view, edit­ed for length:

Saerom: Do you remem­ber the first words you said to me in Decem­ber of 2010?

Kel­ly:  Whoa. Um … hrm. Was it about red lip­stick or kit­tens?

Saerom:  No, haha­ha

I was at the SJ for my inter­view

and you warned me very seri­ous­ly that “there are no guys here”

Kel­ly:  HA. I real­ly hope those weren’t my very first words … I hope I at least intro­duced myself before drop­ping that truth bomb on you.

Although I can see myself kind of leer­ing out of a door­way and yelling that.

Saerom:  Yeah you prob­a­bly did.

Do you remem­ber that point of your life? three years ago? Where were you in your jour­ney?

Kel­ly:  You know, three years ago I was in this (rel­a­tive­ly, for me) intense peri­od. I was writ­ing con­stant­ly, both for the States­man Jour­nal and on my own time, and feel­ing that sort of rest­less anx­ious­ness that comes when you know that some­thing will be chang­ing for you soon, but you’re not sure what or when.

But on the oth­er hand, I was deeply deeply invest­ed in and lov­ing my job at the States­man Jour­nal (despite the dearth of dat­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties). Edi­tors Michelle Maxwell and Bill Church, who I con­sid­er my men­tors, were let­ting me do some real­ly weird and unortho­dox things.

Saerom:  Yeah, you know I’ve had the same kind of sup­port. The SJ is a spe­cial, spe­cial place for young, hard-work­ing peo­ple will­ing to do some crazy things.

Kel­ly:  It IS!

It’s incred­i­ble. I know this is kind of a sil­ly Bay Area-sound­ing thing to say, but it feels like an incu­ba­tor

Every­one is work­ing real­ly, real­ly hard, and every­one is cog­nizant of the fact that the indus­try is chang­ing and we have to do some­thing new

So as long as you’re get­ting your (immense) work­load done, there is a lot of free­dom there

Saerom:  Yep. And a lot of laugh­ter. So much laugh­ter. Which is so pre­cious.

At that time (again three years ago), did you know “Adult­ing” was on your hori­zon? Or some sort of book?

Kel­ly:  You know, I hoped there was a book on my hori­zon but I real­ly had no idea what it would be. I don’t write fic­tion; I’m not the kind of seri­ous per­son who can real­ly go in-depth on a seri­ous top­ic

So if you had told me, “Hey, you’re going to write a book!” I would’ve found it fan­tas­tic but also been very, very curi­ous as to what the hell it would be.

Saerom: How has your life changed and stayed the same since your debut as an author?

Kel­ly:  Well

It’s changed in that I’ve got­ten a lot of incred­i­ble oppor­tu­ni­ties

Although, to be fair, there were so many amaz­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties that came with work­ing at the States­man Jour­nal

But day to day, it feels remark­ably the same

Except now, if I see a pair of shoes that I absolute­ly love but cost $40, I can just go ahead and buy them. So that’s pret­ty neat.

Saerom: So remem­ber when you were on the Today Show? That was pret­ty crazy right?

Kel­ly:  Yes! If I had to sum up the expe­ri­ence in one word, that word would be “neat!”,  with an excla­ma­tion point

Saerom:  Watch­ing you on TV and hear­ing you on the radio, the thing that struck me most was how much of a nat­ur­al you are at being this celebri­ty author.

It felt like you were exact­ly where you were sup­posed to be.

So did you know that they were going to try to tie your book in with our ter­ri­ble, ter­ri­ble gen­er­a­tion?

I think we’re the mil­len­ni­als or some­thing like that.

Kel­ly:  well

i knew that there was this big, ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tion when i start­ed the project about whether or not mil­lenials could/would grow up

which seemed so sil­ly

of course we can. there is noth­ing spe­cial or wrong or spe­cial­ly wrong about us

but my book was my way of weigh­ing in on that ques­tion to oth­er peo­ple of our gen­er­a­tion

yes, of course we can grow up

yes, some­times it’s hard

yes, it’s easy to get frus­trat­ed or angry with your­self, but that’s far less pro­duc­tive than actu­al­ly fig­ur­ing out what you’re doing wrong then tak­ing the small steps to cor­rect it

Saerom:  Well much of the crit­i­cism out there about peo­ple in our age group seems to be more about the times, rather than us, specif­i­cal­ly.

yes, we have social media. so do my par­ents.

it’s the 21st cen­tu­ry. that’s what we tend to spend our time doing at this time in his­to­ry.

Kel­ly:  right. and social media is just a way to talk about your­self

and spy on peo­ple around you

which have been two of human­i­ty’s favorite things always

Saerom:  Right.

so what is the most out­ra­geous or fun­ny thing that you’ve heard in this tirade against the “enti­tle­ment gen­er­a­tion”?

Kel­ly:  hrm

let me think about that

it’s hard because part of what frus­trates me about the con­ver­sa­tion is that noth­ing real­ly stands out

it’s the same tropes again and again

the same vision that all of us are liv­ing in brook­lyn and hit­ting our par­ents up for mon­ey at every oppor­tu­ni­ty

the idea that we wake up in the morn­ing and decide to insta­gram rather than work

Saerom:  yeah, I don’t think I’ve heard any­thing unique either.

It’s just beat­ing the dead horse.

What’s weird is that many peo­ple in our age group agree with these sto­ries

On Face­book, I see my friends shar­ing and agree­ing with the same arti­cles and I would roll my eyes at because it’s just anoth­er piece about how we are lazy and self-absorbed.

Kel­ly:  well

it’s because all of us feel that those sto­ries are talk­ing about some­one who isn’t us

i hear very very few peo­ple my age who say, “yes, that is TOTALLY my life! i spend all my time on social media, i have no goals, i am per­fect­ly con­tent to live with my par­ents for­ev­er until i mag­i­cal­ly get a huge book deal!”

we all think they’re about some­one else

Saerom:  that’s a real­ly good point

so if you had to describe Amer­i­can mil­len­ni­als in your own way, how would you do it? Is there any­thing that describes the com­mon denom­i­na­tor?

Kel­ly:  well, the only com­mon denom­i­na­tor is age

every sin­gle mil­lenial is young-ish

that’s it! that is the only thing that you can hon­est­ly say all of us have in com­mon

because we’re talk­ing here, depend­ing on how you define the cohort, as some­where between 52 and 75 mil­lion peo­ple

i think there are traits that a lot of us share

but … my life as a 29-year-old copywriter/author in port­land ore­gon

prob­a­bly looks a LOT more like the life of a 39-year-old col­lege edu­cat­ed port­land woman work­ing in mar­ket­ing

than it does a 27-year-old man in mis­sis­sip­pi who is mar­ried with two kids and works in man­u­fac­tur­ing

or a 25-year-old woman in San Fran­cis­co who was recent­ly emi­grat­ed to the US and is liv­ing with her extend­ed fam­i­ly and work­ing in their fam­i­ly busi­ness

Saerom:  So why did you choose this as the top­ic of your TEDx talk?

What are you hop­ing peo­ple will get out of this?

Kel­ly:  you know

i think it’s impor­tant to ques­tion nar­ra­tives we have about groups of peo­ple

obvi­ous­ly, this is NOT a civ­il rights-type issue

i don’t want to frame it that way at all

but to me, there is a lot of opti­mism, cre­ativ­i­ty and entepre­neur­ship that i see among young peo­ple

and this is a dead horse.

i think it’s easy to work on assump­tions and gen­er­al­iza­tions

we use men­tal short­hand every day

that does­n’t mean it’s a good idea

Saerom:  yep. yes it’s con­ve­nient, and we have that innate abil­i­ty for a good rea­son. but not for the pur­pos­es of paint­ing mil­lions of peo­ple with one unflat­ter­ing brush for the sake of enter­tain­ment

Kel­ly:  RIGHT. pre­cise­ly

Saerom:  Well, I always end my inter­views the same way: Any last words?

Kel­ly:  thank you so much, saerom! i real­ly appre­ci­ate it and am so excit­ed to be a part of TEDx Salem

Saerom: Me too!

Now go take some self­ies. i’ll be sure to like them imme­di­ate­ly.

Kel­ly:  with emo­ji?!

Saerom:  of course.

the pan­da one.