Millennials get some bad press. The whiny snowflake persona, if true, would be incredibly annoying. Fortunately, I get to work with many of them and know better. As a generation, Millennials been good sports with all our ribbing for years and eventually came up with one of the greatest subtle comebacks of all time, Okay, Boomer. (Granted, they tend to say it to Gen Xers, but as a real Boomer, I’m just as amused.)
Every time a Boomer misspells mellinnial, an angel gets his student loans paid off.
– from OK Boomer: ‘What Time is That on Netflix?’
Then in 2013, I learned to love this generation. Twice.
In February, I attended the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing in Washington, D.C. and met the brightest, kindest young minds I’ve ever known. They shattered every Millennial stereotype I could ever hold.
In May of that same year, a Cheerios commercial came out featuring a little girl asking her mom about her Dad’s heart. The mom was white, the dad was black. As a boomer who grew up in a bi-racial family in the 1960’s, I just smiled at how the times have changed. Apparently, the ad offended a few racists on YouTube. What doesn’t? More importantly, the vast majority of Boomers and Gen Xers appreciated this depiction of a non-typical TV family.
But Millennials were different. The ones I talked with were neither offended nor encouraged by the Cheerio family. They loved the ad but completely missed the controversy and hullabaloo. Their colors didn’t even register.
That gave me hope; and hence, the love.
The Elements of Simple 