Generation Y: Generation Snowflake? by Tamar Almog and Oz Almog (Vallentine Mitchell, £50)
When I was at university, I read a text that bemoaned the fecklessness, lack of morals and generally pathetic nature of the younger generation, looking back wistfully to a time when standards meant something.
There are some topics of discussion which transcend time and space, language and culture. Of them all, I would suggest that this is the most popular. After all, the text I read at university was written in the sixth century by an Anglo-Saxon monk.
In that sense, Generation Y: Generation Snowflake? (the question mark might as well not be there, given the book’s viewpoint) is merely carrying on that tiresome tradition. To their limited credit, the academic authors —wife-and-husband team Tamar and Oz Almog — after a few score pages enthusiastically trashing the youth of today, spend a tenth of a paragraph considering whether they are mimicking the moaning of a hundred generations of human history — only to discount the notion almost immediately. In their own words, apparently “a moral equilibrium has been violated here”, this generation is far more “self absorbed” than any before it.
Not just self absorbed, I should add. Here are some of the statements made by the authors about today’s up-and-coming generation (millennials). They are “childish” and “passive”. They suffer from “visual illiteracy”.
Because they have apparently “never been deprived of anything material… their drive to change the world is lower.” They have “embraced a selfish and narcissistic world-view… it’s easier for them to take advantage of other people.”
At times, the language is that of near-disgust. Apparently, millennials are “so occupied with their wants, needs and pleasures that they can no longer hide or restrain spontaneous expressions… this is why they tend to eat loudly, chew with their mouths open while smacking their lips… [and] yawn in other people’s faces.” We get it; the authors think young people are selfish.
But their attempts to show this go to bizarre, even disturbing lengths. For example, they discuss the higher rate of depression among today’s youth, including the following: “It’s hard to ignore the sense that there’s a somewhat narcissistic and childish element in depression… a self-centred person becomes a prisoner of his own pain.”
Anything and everything is twisted to fit the book’s theory. What about the fact that volunteer organisations “are packed with young, eager, idealistic and well-meaning young men and women”? Ah, our writers tell us, that’s only because today’s youth want to “add a notable line to the resumé, gain experience and get ahead in the employment market”, so this apparent desire to do good is “driven by utilitarian rather than altruistic motives.”
The book makes outlandish statements that its authors expect the reader to accept as fact. In one chapter, it claims that, in the UK, children still living in their parents’ home in their late 20s are called KIPPERS — “Kids In Parents’ Pockets Eroding Retirement Savings”.
This acronym has no regular usage in British society; the only references I’ve found to it are in a couple of newspaper articles from 2003. Elsewhere, the book talks about Girls, a US TV series that the Almogs represent as accurately portraying the zeitgeist — “you could say that this is a show about the suicide of an entire generation”.
It’s a pretty large claim to be made of a show which enjoyed increasingly mediocre viewing figures and which its own producers asserted did not relate a universal millennial experience.
The authors do concede, quite often, that the way in which today’s generation was raised has probably contributed significantly to their innumerable deficiencies. But woe betide the millennials themselves daring to point to their upbringing as a factor for how they behave.
This, the authors posit, just proves millennials’ selfishness because they’re placing blame on others rather than taking responsibility.
In summary, this book is ideal for anyone who already firmly believes that today’s youth are little more than pathetic, feckless ingrates who leech off earlier, harder-working generations. For anybody else, don’t bother.
Daniel Sugarman is a JC reporter
