http://mashable.com/2017/07/31/things-millennials-have-killed/#iWtTsO10zZqT
For a reason unknown to the general public, there has been a steady stream of articles and studies done to prove how millennials are ruining one thing or another. There is a wide range of victims; millennials have killed everything from diamond to paper napkins to democracy, according to the above article. Do millennials have motives in the systematic elimination of once-successful industries? Or is simply that they can no longer afford the same luxuries as baby boomers, who created an economy in which millennials are destined to fail? No one but millennials can answer such questions, but according to the baby boomers writing these accusatory articles, they are too busy eating avocado toast and murdering fabric softener to care.
Why did baby boomers love diamonds so much in the first place? They were a symbol of wealth and status that only the richest could afford, and were even featured in a song by Marilyn Monroe, thus making them desired by all and purchased by all that could afford them. Millennials, on the other hand, have much more serious things to worry about in comparison to their social status or the stones they wear on their fingers; their predicament reflects the society created by the baby boomers that has made financial success and stability seem impossible even to the most anti-millennial mind. To be employed in a job which gives people enough money to cover all expenses as well as save enough to live a comfortable life all the way through retirement, prospective employees must have a solid education. To achieve this, they must go to college, a necessary task which baby boomers have made impossible for millennials as well. Older generations accuse millennials of being lazy because they are unable to pay these fees like they did back in the good ol' days. However, according to the New York Times, "In 1976, tuition and fees at private colleges were $10,000 in 2016 dollars. Now they’re $33,000. For public colleges there was a fourfold increase, from $2,500 to $10,000." These high fees have resulted in millennials becoming unable to afford unnecessary luxuries such as diamonds; the average student loan debt is $28,950. Once millennials land the jobs for which they worked so hard to earn, they must first pay off the mountain of crippling debt before even saving for the future, let alone buying precious stones. The image on the top left shows that millennials also earn a smaller average annual salary, thus hindering their ability to pay off their debt further and extending the amount of time in which they are consumed in debt. The second image shows that even with the degrees which are so necessary to get a high-paying job, millennials earn around the same amount as the average baby boomer did without earning a degree, which proves further that baby boomers have created a society surrounded around draining millennials of their resources, disabling them from ever supporting industries like those of diamonds and cruises.
Along with being burdened with crippling student loan debt, millennials also have to deal with a major problem created by baby boomers: climate change. By burning fossil fuels and cutting down trees at an unprecedented rate, baby boomers have killed the environment, which is unsurprisingly not an item on the list of things that have failed at the hands of millennials. This explains the millennials' killing of the paper napkin industry, as well as those of cars and oil. Left with a ruined environment and economy, they have been forced to rethink their priorities and save the world rather than the bar soap industry. Baby boomers will be long gone before they experience the extreme effects of climate change, giving them no reason to help millennials to prevent them from ever occurring. Why are millennials being portrayed as murderers rather than heroes of a ruined wold?
The media, which are for the most part still controlled by baby boomers' corporations, choose to depict millennials as lazy individuals who would rather post pictures of latte art and avocado toast than work as opposed to people left to clean up and repair the mess left by the baby boomers. This creates a negative image of millennials in the eyes of older generations, who are in reality spending their money on pointless things like cruises and diamonds rather than helping to save the world. What will millennials kill next? The bracelet industry? Tennis? The hope of ever being financially or environmentally stable? My prediction is the latter, though baby boomers are accomplices.
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