Tag: millennials

rnoonpie:

last-snowfall:

geardrops:

swanjolras:

out of all the aspects of millennial-bashing, i think the one that most confuses me is the “millennials all got trophies as a kid, so now they’re all self-centered narcissists” theory

like— kids are pretty smart, y’all. they can see that every kid on the team gets a trophy and is told they did a good job; they can also see that not every kid on the team deserves a trophy, and not everyone did do a good job

the logical conclusion to draw from this is not “i’m great and i deserve praise”— it’s “no matter how mediocre i am, people will still praise me to make me feel better, so i can’t trust any compliments or accolades i receive”

this is not a recipe for overconfidence and narcissism. it is a recipe for constant self-guessing, low self-esteem, and a distrust of one’s own abilities and skills.

where did this whole “ugh millennials think their so-so work is super great” thing even come from it is a goddamn mystery

what fucking kills me is, yeah, maybe we got the trophies, but who gave them out

this is not a recipe for overconfidence and narcissism. it is a recipe for constant self-guessing, low self-esteem, and a distrust of one’s own abilities and skills.

Which is pretty much what mental health practitioners observe happening.

It’s also what I observed happening as a singing teacher: the older kids literally would not believe a positive word I said until I had proved I would tell them they screwed up/had done badly/etc. I did so in as useful a way as possible (“So this passage. We really need to work on this passage. A lot. This passage is not good yet.”), but with almost every adolescent I taught I had to prove I would give them straight-up criticism before they would parse my praise as anything other than meaningless “the grownups always do this” noise.

Personally, as a millennial myself, I never even saw participation trophies; literal or metaphorical. Like, I grew up my entire life with a pretty severe case of ADHD and I was always the “problem kid” who wasn’t “making enough of an effort” when it came to my schoolwork. But with art and creative writing? Oooh, I was soooooo gifted!!

But honestly, my self-esteem started plummeting around middle school when I started seeing kids with better skills than my own, and I started realizing that adults were full of shit and just praising my stuff because that’s what they were programmed to do.

I’m 24 now and I still have a pretty damn difficult time accepting when people are actually praising my efforts. Like, with literally anything. If I cook dinner I have to anxiously ask everyone who eats it if it tastes okay, and when they say it’s really good, I don’t really believe them. I feel mediocre with about everything I do.