Not pictured in foreground: Anything that actually does anything even remotely beneficial for your laundry.
Earlier this evening, Comrade Levine helped ease the pain by sharing this article to his Facebook wall, an otherwise routine piece of hysteria about Those Damn Millennials and all of the ways in which we are unacceptably changing society. Strangely, most of these articles seem to limit the purview of their juvenoia purely to the consumer realm, and this Business Insider shit show is no exception; it surpasses other articles waxing idiotic about The Kids These Days only in its wide assemblage of consumer examples.
Here are the industries this article says are failing because of disinterest from millennials, along with a brief overview of why I think these industries suck, for I have no job, no current classes, and nothing better to do with my time than try to waste that of others. My hypothesis: Maybe we’d stop murdering all of their beloved businesses if all of their beloved businesses weren’t total garbage.
Casual dining chains like Buffalo Wild Wings and Applebee’s: The food at these places is worse for you than fast food and is every bit as factory-cooked-and-frozen halfway across the country and microwaved in the “restaurant” as fast food. (I’ll have the #WordSalad as an appetizer, thank you.) Instead of getting your food at a dystopian counter in what feels like a mess hall, you are served at a sticky table in poorly-lit, beer-reeking, butt rock-blasting shithole with decor furnished by the nearest bottom-shelf antiques shop.
Beer: Tastes like dirty laundry smells, doesn’t get you drunk if you can hold your liquor. Pass.
Napkins: A napkin is cloth and you launder it. These are shitty little pieces of miserably flimsy paper that no sensible person should use in a world where paper towels are just as readily available.
“Breastaurant” chains like Hooters: When your business is failing, whatever you do, do not look into the politics of your youngest target demographic. That would not be rational in the least.
Cereal: I mean, I never cared for the stuff much, probably haven’t had a bowl in over a year. Not having it because you have to clean things afterward is asinine, though. Heartless Industry 1, Millennials 9,682.
Golf: Ah, yes, I’ll just have my driver take me and my caddy over to the cart rental in the Rolls Royce and we’ll cease our murder of this industry forthwith!
Motorcycles: Loud, obnoxious, dangerous, famously associated with violent criminals, horribly bigoted ones in particular. SEE: “Breastaurant” entry.
Homeownership: Hahahahahahahahaha are you fucking kidding me?
Yogurt: Anyone’s guess is as good as mine on this one.
Bars of soap: And I quote, “Almost half (48%) of all US consumers believe bar soaps are covered in germs after use, a feeling that is particularly strong among consumers aged 18-24 (60%), as opposed to just 31% of older consumers aged 65-plus.” Who are we, Howard fucking Hughes? Heartless Industry 2, Millennials 9,685. At least they didn’t try to spin this one to imply that we’re unwashed.
Diamonds: SEE: “Breastaurant” entry again. Literally involves the dismembering of small children and vicious wars.
Fabric softener: “According to Downy maker Procter & Gamble’s head of global fabric care, millennials ‘don’t even know what the product is for.'” Stupid millennials, not knowing what a pointless product is for. There’s an incredibly apt metaphor in here somewhere, but I’m too busy looking at my smartphone to notice.
Banks: I mean, I’m pretty sure I haven’t heard about millennials stuffing their cash in the mattress en masse, but perhaps this includes business lost to people who are joining credit unions that won’t gamble with their deposited money and nickel-and-dime them with fees and charges. Pah! Credit unions! Why would anybody ever join such a foolish thing?
Department stores like Macy’s and Sears: “Who could possibly want to order goods directly to their door?” ponders industry giants who made themselves into what they are by aggressively circulating mail-order catalogs. Why would I rifle through wrinkled clothes and struggle with store employees who are paid so little that it would come off as offensively desperate if they were helpful?
Designer handbags: Forget it, it’s Chinatown! If you need a magnifying glass to tell that a mainly-cosmetic item is counterfeit, then it is, for all intents and purposes, not counterfeit.
Home-improvement stores like Home Depot and Lowe’s: SEE: “Department stores.”
Football: I won’t go into it at length here, but having read a shit-ton in the last year about the state of football’s popularity, I can say with confidence that this entry is entirely bullshit. Surely they could lament something more specific about football and of which there is more evidence of the uselessness of millennials, like not buying jerseys that cost over a hundred dollars or something.
Oil: SEE: “Breastaruants,” yet again. Also smells bad. Is hard to clean off of plants, wildlife, and out of earth and water. Continued combustion will literally make the Earth uninhabitable for humans. Procurement is ecologically harmful as well. Should be conserved as it is otherwise needed for plastics, of which advancing technology and growing populations will presumably only increase demand for.
I find it curious that all of the articles like this use an active word like “killing” to describe a trend which is defined by a lack of the relevant parties doing anything at all, in this case, engaging with these various businesses. Why, oh why, won’t the best-educated generation in human history, which is also simultaneously the worst-paid generation in the last century or so of American history, exchange money they don’t have for goods and services that make them sick, exploit others, and/or are mainly pompous, ostentatious displays of consumerism?
How can anybody seriously wring their hands in confusion at what is happening here? Businesses that don’t sell things people want aren’t logically supposed to exist in the free market, right? Well, then.
Fuck ’em all.
Thank God. No more asshole fascists on Harleys.
The extent of good Harleys have been put to was droning out those Westboro Baptist assholes who picket funerals.
And they used the same tactic against anti-war protesters during the Bush years.
Meh. Obnoxious, but nonviolent. Which apparently is too much of an ask of the right these days.
Are you kidding? I saw right wing bikers rough up senior citizens while the cops looked on and laughed, and all in support of US wars abroad.
Fair enough. I was thinking more the obnoxious drowning-out practice.
The drowning out is only part of their general intimidation act. It’s unfortunate that the press decided to make it only about the Westboro Baptist Church. Too many people fell for it. Fuck those assholes. It says all you have to know about them that the larger movement “Rolling Thunder” was named after a genocidal carpet bombing campaign against Vietnam.
I’d like to say I wasn’t fooled, but clearly I was. I’m compelled to look further into it, but it’s probably not worth stressing about the finer details of the conduct of protesters I would’ve needed my parents’ permission to go and get my ass stomped by.
good article…alarming as well is the fact that millienals are making less money so pay less in taxes to generate govnt income which can be siphoned off to give to subsudize these companies to operate a little longer to prolong ceo bonuses….bang on conclusions for most items, though as a senior i woud suggest that direct retail sales of paper napkins are down because we go to fast food places and steal wads of them ( where easily accessiable) to take home….this also explains why we as seniors dont like appleby’s as they ‘horde’ their napkin supplies from us….
Thanks! As it concerns the shrinking tax base, Grover Norquist’s most famously insane quote comes to mind: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” I don’t think it’s an accident that the people he makes sign no-tax pledges have held the national legislature and most of the state legislatures for seven years as that revenue base has rapidly deflated.
P.S. I fully endorse the liberation of napkins from their fast food shackles and advise you that the Sheriff of Nottingham can be tripped up by leaving some napkins underfoot on a smooth surface he’s about to walk on.
“Beer: Tastes like dirty laundry smells, doesn’t get you drunk if you can hold your liquor. Pass.”
From what I see, most younger drinkers are rejecting the crappy beer from big brands like Constellation and Budweiser in favor of smaller and local craft breweries, which is a very positive thing. It sounds like Aloysius should check out one or two (hint: there are way more choices out there than fizzy yellow 4% lagers).
As a Gen Xer I was brought up on beer commercials. They were everywhere. They were part of a (homophobic and sexist) culture I despised. If millennials are rejecting that, good for them.
I can assure you, I’ve drunk many of the various craft beers; the major American brews have only entered my body when there was no alternative or the alternative was three times the price. I’m a millennial and a New Yorker, after all.
To be fair, my assessment of why “millennials” are “killing” the beer industry was just my personal opinion of beer as a whole, but re: this being about the smaller companies getting market share from the larger companies, I’ve definitely seen the numbers that indicate that this is happening (and gods bless them), but the original article from Business Insider to which this is a response cited an overall loss of revenue across the entire beer industry (albeit a mild one percent loss in revenue while wine and spirit revenues remained unmoved, which doesn’t sound like much of a trend, hence the brevity of my entry).
I don’t know which of the components of beer gives it that “dirty laundry smell” taste I ascribe to it, but it definitely must be in the constituent components because I’ve never had a beer where I didn’t notice it. Carlsberg is the beer where I’ve noticed it the least, and I guess is therefore my favorite. I actually notice it more in craft beers than major beers, but the major beers taste crappier for other reasons. But I see no purpose to drinking alcohol for taste, so I think beer will probably be lost on me unless I one day change my mind on that.
“Why, oh why, won’t the best-educated generation in human history, which is also simultaneously the worst-paid generation in the last century or so of American history, exchange money they don’t have for goods and services that make them sick, exploit others, and/or are mainly pompous, ostentatious displays of consumerism?”
This is a sentence I will be quoting (or stealing) in some future post.
Hope you don’t mind.
Thanks.
Go hog wild. I’m just a fan of attribution, that’s all I ask.
More power to you millennials, if you are working less, spending less, and paying less in taxes. Maybe at some point the government won’t be able to afford all these wars.
I suspect the housing market is declining because people are realizing how much trouble home ownership is. Constant maintenance, taxes, insurance, and they keep changing the zoning in your neighborhood. Home ownership is a scam to supply the banks with borrowers.
Sadly, the issue for most seems not be working less but working more for much less. As far as the wars go, they’ll just put ’em on the credit card. Happens every time.
some very interesting points made here, thanks for sharing. Life goes on and the world continues to evolve. Changes occur and this leads to some businesses closing and new ones opening. This isn’t a new concept, and as you point out many of these business failures are due to the companies themselves not being able/ wanting to evolve to keep up with the times. The writing was on the wall but many of those listed above just kept on as normal and are now paying the price.