Veritable Tantrum

Sometimes, I think it’s a good idea to just sit down and have a real heart-to-heart talk. You know, one generation to another, speak our minds, try to genuinely communicate in between tear-gassings and Addison Rae posts.

You kids today are living in a different world than the one we grew up in. You’re angry, right? Angry about student loans and lack of free federal access to Zyn and chats with your partner about edging? Well shit on a candlestick, I’m angry about all of that, too! When I graduated college in 2014 we didn’t even have abortion. Well, fine, we had abortion — but we didn’t have one-hundred streaming services. The only streaming service we had was the one coming out of our dickie.

All I’m saying is, you college graduates don’t have it that bad. Sure, you’re new adults plodding through a hellishly fickle economy fueled by tariffs and AI and the demons running our federal government whose only initiative is to stuff their own pockets while shoving a hose in the mouth of the already-drowning working class. You’re slowly realizing all adults are arsonists disguised as firemen. But you’ll be fine. If you don’t try to swim, how can you drown?

I’ll concede that people my age have been wrong about some things. We millennials let Vine die on the vine when it could’ve been the best possible outcome. Vine was like the inchoate baby version of TikTok if that cute baby was kneecapped and against all odds somehow ended up running faster than Usain Bolt. TikTok is the center of the pop-culture solar system, the only means of achieving wealth and clout nirvana in the modern age. But I, a 32-year-old, only use it to ponder whether that Beef Wellington recipe I saw on FoodTok will be enough to impress the Hinge girl I’ve somehow, against all odds and awkward murder jokes, made it to a third date with. 

I hate to say it, but millennials really are the last generation of well-adjusted adults. We’re the last to not grow up entirely devoured by social media. Yes, we saw news on Facebook about beheadings in Afghanistan, but it was something we came home to — on our bulky desktop, in our parents’ office, where we had a ten-minute rule before our dad told us to fuck off so he could play online poker and daydream about a life that didn’t so closely resemble Hell. We’d go to school and be away from social media during daylight hours; you college grads grew up with it in your pockets, on your person, all the time. Your generation will not become normal adults. What will your middle age and golden years even look like on a psychological level?

Still though, there’s a glimmer of hope for your entry into the job market. Résumés, which for decades listed internships and jobs washing cheese sauce off of plates in restaurant kitchens, will now be inundated with follower counts. The post-grad job market has always been a rigged game, but now you need hard social media numbers to back you up. Those unfortunately bode less transferable skills than, say, writing bullshit ad copy for an abusive magazine or handing out BLTs at a Baltimore soup kitchen.

But all kidding aside, most Zoomers are just the offspring of Nearlyweds. Most of your parents never wanted to have you back in 2011, and if they did actually care about you, they never would’ve read that article on Gaddafi’s execution on their iPhone 4S while you sat on the floor stacking blocks. There is nothing more captivating, more radioactive, and more debilitating to an infant than a small luminous screen in their parents’ hands. Having an iPhone in the eyeline of a child should be punishable by firing squad, both parent and child.

Here’s my advice for recent college grads seeking employment and purpose during these dog days of summer: jump into a lake. You can sell out and work whatever soulless, high-earning job you want, but you still won’t be able to buy a home at a reasonable price. Even if you do, you’ll be locked in at a mortgage rate that’ll decimate your livelihood for the next thirty years. Then again, who cares? Buying a house just means having a place to store your USB chargers and flat-brim hats while paying off a bank until you start looking at coffins.

Save yourself decades of distress and just end it all at the next music festival that inadvertently becomes the next great American disaster. Just make sure to reproduce beforehand. The U.S. has stopped atmospheric testing for now, so maybe the kids born after you will have a fighting shot. Do it quick though, because the Department of Energy will definitely start ramping testing back up. Probably in the next five minutes. Nuclear apocalypse could be the perfect character builder for your little Ezras and Penelopes growing up seeking the closest Blank Street Coffee. We emerged from the Ice Age pretty strong, if it’s any consolation.

So let’s give it a try. Fight your way through the muck of adulting, or abandon all hope. College is the time when you feel the most alive; it’s only fitting that everything after college feels the most like you’re dead.