How many of you will make one million dollars?

You’re not your job.  You’re not how much money you have in the bank.  You’re not the car you drive.  You’re not the contents of your wallet.  You’re not your fucking khakis.  You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.  ~Fight Club

Millenials in the Marketplace

I really agree with the Washington Post editorial ‘The Trophy Kids’ Go to Work. I wasn’t personally offended by the piece considering I had a really different upbringing (Russians don’t give compliments at all), and to be honest, sure, I commit some of the Millennial Sins. I feel it’s a fair assessment. I feel it’s right. Okay, so it was slightly doomsday…

Control the Millennials! The Ravenous Beasts! Give me the whip! Don’t let them loose!

Yet, here are some criticisms…

Come on, seriously. I wish the piece accented that teeny last paragraph. The one where we are the way we are because the baby boomers raised us like this. What is this duality between raising your kid one way, and expecting the children of others to act differently in your workplace? Yes, we should be treated with respect.

It was too patronizing to say we need scoobie snacks and little pats on the head. What we want is to be taken seriously. Yes, we want to know why we are doing something. We want to make sure we are being used properly. That we’re not doing something useless. We want to do meaningful work. Is that so wrong? So we ask, is this meaningful? If not, why am I doing this, or why should this be done at all? Being a coffee-fetching intern won’t get loyalty from me. I want my life and my work to have meaning and purpose. I understand my place in the food chain but that doesn’t mean I cannot be treated with respect and not be some menial subordinate.

Or, rather than seeing Millennials needing constant affirmation, perhaps we simply aim to please. We want to be your best worker that does right by you. An employee that wants nothing more than to please his/her employer? The affirmation is not for us, it’s for you to know that we aren’t not facebooking at every moment and going all “renegade” and trying to create a “revolution” and not doing the work…What we are doing is obeying the system and asking you, the boss, affirmation that we are doing the right thing for the structure. Were not trying to tear down the hierarchies. If we would, we would go all lone ranger. We wouldn’t ask for permission or opinion. We would do what we want. Isn’t it better that we ask to make sure we are doing what the boss wants.

Also, a point I heard in class, was that affirmation doesn’t feel good from our peers. Obviously praise from above is better.

We’re not some delicate bonsai fish that needed the exact food and temperature in order not to die. We’re human, and as mentioned before, we’re as well-trained to be tough as the boss’s kid. We like clear instructions. What’s the problem? We’re calling you out on your vague language. The language where you expect us to read your mind in what you want. Screw that. You should know what you want. Tell us, so we don’t waste your time and our time trying to figure out what you could possibly want. Pfft, you call use fickle. Treat us seriously and respectfully.

Now, there are a number of things that are fair enough.

Yes, we are a generation that is typically more rude. We blame others for our mistakes. We shirk responsibility (which works in tandem with my point about pleasing the boss (if we keep asking the boss all the time, if we mess up, it was their fault because they approved every step of the way) but it works with my contention that are sort of spineless and )

Can there ever be too much choice? (Poll)

Conversations with 0% APR

Comments on the first few chapters of Cluetrain. The actual writing is less annoying than the Theses.

“Markets are conversations. Trade routes pave the storylines. Across the millennia in between, the human voice is the music we have always listened for, and still best understand.” (Chapter.1) The first line, which I bashed on before, makes sense when thinking of caravans and marketplaces. Yes, language did some interesting things there. Yet, the difference between then and now is that then was a production of goods that people need, at prices they can afford, as opposed to our current capitalism framework that produces secondary and artificial needs, because that is more profitable. Then, was an exchange between two parties. Without a systematic currency system, both parties needed something of equal value to trade. That’s the conversation. The exchange. The trading of mutual goods. We don’t have this trade system now with our market. It is a top-down (push-pull) imperative, and we as consumers are allowed to choose A,B,C,D without any ability to design the Scantron or what A,B,C,D actually are. “Thus Henry Ford’s attitude toward customer choice: “They can have any color they want as long as it’s black.”"

It wasn’t just the nature of commerce changing, the systematization  of…well…almost everything, from language to price to what is worthwhile, the way people communicate change.

What I did find interesting though was this question: “”Who gives you permission to read those books?” Who gives us permission to explore our world? The question implies that the world in fact belongs to someone else. Who gives us permission to communicate what we’ve experienced, what we believe, what we’ve discovered of that world for ourselves?“

What I find more interesting is to explore the question of ‘What gives us permission to be human?’ I expressed this question in class when we were reading Gamer Theory, that digitalization and the binary mindset makes chance, analog, chaos all regulated and doesn’t give us the capacity to be human. To err. To experiment without the only answers being pre-defined multiple choice.

In aswer we shrug. We don’t know who gave us permission, we’re pretty sure we have it…but then, why aren’t we doing anything? Why aren’t we experimenting? Learning all we can? Who told us ‘no’? and if no one did, then why do we still accept that command?

Are we simply killed by choice? By too much choice. Can there ever be such a thing?

In Chapter 2, Cluetrain goes into this whole thing about being “managed”.

Is this the new PC-neoliberal-free-market-euphemism for being controlled? For being herded? Does it just sound better and less sinister?

The idea that we can manage our world is uniquely twentieth-century and chiefly American. And there are tremendous advantages to believing one lives in a managed world:

• Risk avoidance. Nothing unexpected happens if you’re managing your world.
• Smoothness. Everything works in a managed environment simply because broken things are an embarrassment.
• Fairness. In earlier times, life was unfair. Now you’re guaranteed your three-score and ten and if something “goes wrong,” the managed system will compensate you, even if you have to sue the bastards.
• Discretionary attention. If you were out in the wild, your attention would be drawn to every creaking twig and night howl. But now that the risks have been mitigated, things work right, and you can manage your time so you have not just leisure time but also discretionary attention: you can decide what interests you. Why, you can even have hobbies.

This reminds me of Bejamin Barber’s book Consumed. As he discusses the infantalism ethos that covers our everday lives.

Professionalism goes far beyond acting according to a canon of ethics. Professionals dress like other professionals (one eccentricity per person is permitted — a garish tie, perhaps, or a funky necklace), decorate their cubicles with nothing more disturbing than a Dilbert (formerly Far Side) cartoon, sit up straight at committee meetings, tell carefully calibrated jokes, don’t undermine the authority of (that is, show they’re smarter than) their superiors, make idle chatter only about a narrow range of “safe” topics, don’t swear, don’t mention God, make absolutely no reference to being sexual (exceptions made for male executives after the hot new hire has left the room), and successfully “manage” their home life so that it never intrudes unexpectedly into their business life.

Nice, safe topics. No boo-boos. No problems. No confrontation. Everthing is super swell and everyone plays nicely in the sandbox.

Most of us don’t mind doing this. In fact, we actually sort of enjoy it. It’s like playing grownup.

Everything is secure and predictable. You know when snack-time is. You know it will always be cookies. Everyone loves cookies.

When Cluetrain talks about voice…does that have anything to do with our discussions on the importance of face-to-face interaction? Is “The Voice” that human ability to err? To express difference?

Is Cluetrain trying to be the vox populi?

We are so desperate to have our voices back that we are willing to leap into the void. We embrace the Web not knowing what it is, but hoping that it will burn the org chart — if not the organization — down to the ground. Released from the gray-flannel handcuffs, we say anything, curse like sailors, rhyme like bad poets, flame against our own values, just for the pure delight of having a voice.

And when the thrill of hearing ourselves speak again wears off, we will begin to build a new world.

A new world of….Second Life?