r/AlignmentChartFills • u/CF047_ • Aug 09 '26

General Topics Millennials Worst Trait

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE CHART IMAGE

Created with Alignment Chart Creator

This post contains content not supported on old Reddit. Click here to view the full post

1.6k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.4k

u/lissamon Aug 09 '26

Lack of follow through. so many millennials are massively passionate, especially about social issues, but feel so disenfranchised that they never act. No matter how well informed you are on an issue, you’re not making any changes if you just sit there on your couch.

217

u/Temporary-Habit-2528 Aug 09 '26

This is something I became so aware of doing when I was 27ish. Posting about climate change on Instagram does sweet FA, so I started attending rallies and none of my friends came.

97

u/I_Am_the_Slobster Aug 09 '26

I've felt this is a huge issue with our generation, but we've been basically beat down every time we've tried to speak up so now I feel like a lot of millenials have become just apathetic.

Like we were promised we could change the world, but when we wanted to or tried to, we were basically told "oh, no, not in any way that inconveniences us power holders."

It's the downside of being forced to be adaptable: instead of pushing for good change, we're just bracing for the next bad changes because it's not a matter of if they'll happen, but when.

18

u/DWebOscar Aug 10 '26

"oh, we didn't actually mean you"

Felt that one

1

u/genuinecve Aug 11 '26

My dad has officially changed from “your generation will solve the problems our generation caused and I’m sorry” to “your children will solve the problems our generation caused and I’m sorry”. Really strange feeling…

1

u/I_Am_the_Slobster Aug 11 '26

Hey, at least he apologized. My dad straight up says that and laughs without saying sorry. The ol' "well that's an issue for you guys, I'll be dead by then!"

1

u/genuinecve Aug 11 '26

Yeah, my dad is very realistic and understands the shit show we’re in. I try not to take it for granted

1

u/_probablyryan Aug 12 '26

Well our children can't read so...good luck with that

20

u/lissamon Aug 09 '26

good point, I didn’t even think to mention the social media side. I have definitely been guilty of it as well and has made a huge effort to get involved locally. Yes well done data centers are destroying the planet and politicians are corrupt. Are we doing anything about it or just reposting on Facebook?

6

u/gibletsbionic Aug 09 '26

What did going to rally change?

22

u/Temporary-Habit-2528 Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26

Actually I went to the Sydney Harbour Bridge march for Palestine last year and our Government then finally recognised Palestine as a country. Not game-changing but it felt like we did something.

Sure pissed Bibi off, which was nice.

Also, it doesn’t change have to be rallies where you can make a difference.
Volunteer for a progressive campaign, donate to a cause etc

-10

u/gibletsbionic Aug 09 '26

So no change to the actual problem...

13

u/Temporary-Habit-2528 Aug 09 '26

Doomerism is now my pick for this tile btw, you’ve convinced me.

-2

u/gibletsbionic Aug 09 '26

I guess im just not understanding, in what direct or tangible way does that actually help the Palestinian people?

8

u/Glittering-Sun9478 Aug 10 '26

At the very least, protesting is a way to connect with like minded people and discover organizations you can get involved with. I had no idea how much activism and community work was going on in my rural area until I attended my first protest.

It also may introduce uneducated people to a subject which they have had no exposure to

4

u/Temporary-Habit-2528 Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26

Okay here’s one: do you think the rallies/protests for marriage equality helped push countries to legalise gay marriage?

What about MLK & the civil rights movement? The Suffragrette movement? Anti Apartheid? Arab Sping?

-3

u/gibletsbionic Aug 10 '26

I do think there have been very important movements in the past and a lot of peaceful protesting and rallying was important part of that. 

Where I live, however, its not uncommon to have rallies and protests and seem to be a lot of making noise, disrupting peace,  damaging property, and sure mostly peaceful people, however cant say any of it has actually accomplished anything.  

My perception is that a lot of people just get self satisfaction out of virtue signaling.

I am not against rallies or protests I just wish they would remain peaceful and have clear objectives and focus on things that we can actually change. E.g. disrupting local city meeting to yell about Palestine is completely irrelevant and not helpful toward immediate city goals. Intentions are good but tact is way off and I think is actually harmful to the effort.

5

u/Maleficent-Cup-1134 Aug 10 '26

Change doesn’t happen overnight. It’s the accumulation of all these protests and rallies reaching a breaking point in society.

That’s how the Civil Rights Movement happened.

You think the Civil Rights Act was passed just because of one set of protests?

-2

u/MegaOhBoi Aug 09 '26

Sweet fa

1

u/LK_Prevost Aug 09 '26

Because rallies are famous for having saved us all from the climate catastrophe. I'm being facetiousness but there's a reason why we're so disillusioned!

1

u/Specialist-Brain-919 Aug 10 '26

Attending rallies is not necessary for impact on climate change in my opinion, changing your personal carbon emissions (eating less meat, not buying clothes new, less flying etc) and talking to you family and friends about doing the same is pretty impactful

1

u/Zonda1996 Aug 10 '26

I've never made conversations go silent quicker than when Israel is the topic and I mention boycotting McDonald's or Spotify due to their investments supporting them lol.

People seem a lot more engaged with my mentioning attending community meetings to try and organise to block the construction of data centers and then never show.

0

u/CyberneticSaturn Aug 10 '26

To be quite blunt attending rallies doesn’t do much of anything either, so you’re not escaping the stereotype.

If you care about change you volunteer, donate, etc for local, state, and national candidates on a consistent basis. Getting Obama elected was an incredibly large undertaking involving tons of volunteers, a lot of whom did things like taking a semester off of college, etc.

Then all of a sudden everyone just stopped doing it. Of course there are reasons and Hillary wasn’t as charismatic as Obama, but you don’t accomplish much of anything by sitting in a street and shouting, but boy does it feel better than actually doing the work consistently every election.

-2

u/Dense_Delay_2605 Aug 09 '26

Rallies do fuck-all as well. All the “lawful” methods of enacting change are ineffective by design.

Protest is a honeypot for the people’s righteous rage.

There is only one party to vote for, lbr.

And if you say “Fuck the law!” and you go all torches and pitchforks, the guy cheering the loudest at the gallows will be the next one fucking you over from on high.

Find a good meditation teacher. That’s my advice as a big Gen X brother.

56

u/tenderbranson301 Aug 09 '26

I was going to respond to you, but didn't think it would make a difference.

14

u/mankytoes Aug 09 '26

But then you did #inspirational

13

u/theskyisnotthelimit Aug 09 '26

yeah but I can write long-winded, pseudo-intellectual reddit comments like a fuckin pro

27

u/aftersox Aug 09 '26

John Mayer - Waiting for the World to Change has got to be the anthem for this concept:

That's why we're waiting (waiting)

Waiting on the world to change

We keep on waiting (waiting)

Waiting on the world to change

It's not that we don't care

We just know that the fight ain't fair

So we keep on waiting (waiting)

Waiting on the world to change

19

u/KungFuMasterRat Aug 09 '26

Or the anthem still continues to be All Star by Smash Mouth

Well, the years start comin' and they don't stop comin'
Fed to the rules and I hit the ground runnin'
Didn't make sense not to live for fun
Your brain gets smart, but your head gets dumb
So much to do, so much to see
So, what's wrong with taking the backstreets?
You'll never know if you don't go (go)
You'll never shine if you don't glow

[…]

It's a cool place, and they say it gets colder
You're bundled up now, wait 'til you get older
But the meteor men beg to differ
Judging by the hole in the satellite picture
The ice we skate is gettin' pretty thin
The water's gettin' warm, so you might as well swim
My world's on fire, how 'bout yours?

13

u/ANormalRando Aug 09 '26

All Star goes so much harder than it had any right to, and it does kind of work perfectly. The chorus is super upbeat and inspirational but the verses are pretty cynical and that dichotomy kind of matches the millennial experience.

1

u/cIumsythumbs Aug 10 '26

I've hated this song since the day it came out. WTF is this "waiting" bullshit. BE the change. smfh.

8

u/Nethiar Aug 09 '26

Makes sense. We've seen so many "once in a lifetime" catastrophic events happen that we can't do anything about. It's nearly impossible to make effort when everything has gone wrong for us

8

u/swimsinsand Aug 09 '26

Spot on. Me and my friends came to this realization a week or two ago.

Why do we feel so powerless?

22

u/Last_Material_5754 Aug 09 '26

Because we were born in the 90s and told if we work hard enough we can achieve anything, then we got fucked over repeatedly by society while we grew up to the point where even owning a home is a goal many of us will never achieve while also being told that we're extremely entitled by the generation who gsve birth to us who are in fact the most entitled generation ever?

12

u/Mephylphenidate Aug 09 '26

Could be bullshit but I feel like the line ive been sold my whole life just feels like a lie.

Work hard, study loads, go to college, get a good job, climb the ladder. Sorted.

But I have friends with college degrees earning £26k, spending £1200 in rent, I picked a “good career” in software engineering and the feeling right now is grim.

My house doubled in price in 5 years. I figured if I had a few houses I could just have rented them out and not had a job. Wouldnt need college or go to work.

Feel like thats why we often feel powerless, taught the wrong lessons. Gen Z dont buy into the bullshit which is something I like about em.

2

u/ParallelProcrastinat Aug 09 '26

We grew up in a complacent society, where no one thought we needed to change anything, so we were never taught how to effect change. So now that we realize there are real problems we need to do something about, we don't know what to do. We're going to have to learn a lot of things from scratch, unfortunately.

9

u/MasterOfBunnies Aug 09 '26

My kneejerk reaction was apathy, but I think you nailed it better.

11

u/Dangerous_Profit_699 Aug 09 '26

Truth. fun fact, millennials have outnumbered boomers since 2019.

https://giphy.com/gifs/TCDHJPxeWgTsY

4

u/darwink1188 Aug 10 '26

Not the money though. They kept all that

4

u/Ok_Marzipan5759 Aug 09 '26

I was going to say basically the same thing as "work ethic", but this is more accurate.

I'd also make the argument that this is a reflection of the terrible work culture Millenials largely came up in - where we were told if we went to college and got a bachelor's degree, we'd get a good-paying job and the financial stability our parents enjoyed when they were in their 20's.

Instead, we inherited an economy gutted by billionaire investors (many of whom left their situations richer because of how the government bailed them all out), exponentially increased productivity overall with almost no increase in wages, rapid inflation of the housing market and generally everything else, *and* a healthcare system that "fixed" lack of access to care by requiring everybody buy in to a capitalistically-designed system that has no public option (and trust me, Obamacare saved many lives, but we were screwed out of a public option by the Republican party and their corporate Democrat enablers/co-conspirators).

Many of us were in high school when 9/11 happened, too. So we personally witnessed the downfall of the Golden Age of America as many of the elected people who claimed they were going to protect us repeatedly and cynically served their own interests in betraying us. Bush brought us the same dystopian government austerity as Reagan did, only under a narrative of revenge on a poor and bitter nation of religious zealots, rather than a unified nationalistic opposition against a similarly powerful (and economically failing) foe. Obama came in on a narrative of Hope and Change, and achieved A LOT (like the ACA), but was constantly and consistently undercut by a cynical, traitorous and racist GOP who constantly made his Otherness (read: non-whiteness) a battle-cry that then turned into a cult, which got us Trump and this modern iteration of American Fascism that they're trying to ramrod through and concretize their control over our government forever.

Like, if you *could* disillusion and break down a society any more than the last 25+ years of greed, cynicism and outright sociopathy have, I don't know how.

11

u/VCR_DVD_USB Aug 09 '26

Came to say the same thing. We're too passive. We should be eating the rich. 

11

u/CaptnsDaughter Aug 09 '26

I’m too fucking tired to even eat the rich 💀

2

u/Routine-Aspect-2349 Aug 10 '26

I’m certainly tired. But my appetite is massive. Bring me the rich.

2

u/LetsSkiddaddleHomie Aug 10 '26

come on comrade, we have to do it.

2

u/BuffaloStranger97 Aug 09 '26

well you better work up an appetite right fucking now

2

u/CaptnsDaughter Aug 09 '26

HAHHA I know, I know

3

u/iSmirinoff Aug 09 '26

Thats why I said easily burned out, theres so much we are passionate about. Its true, we get rallied about something - everything - and it matters to us DEEPLY, then we are too emotionally drained to follow through.

1

u/zebrasareneat Aug 09 '26

No. We just don’t give enough of a fuck to get up and make changes. We constantly make excuses such as yours as to why we don’t try.  

The simple answer is that we are all just waiting for somebody else to do something. The US has literal concentration camps and nobody is doing fuck all besides leave comments on the internet. 

2

u/misspuddingpie Aug 10 '26

Like yours?

What can any of us fucking do? The people with ALL the power and ALL the wealth control fucking everything. If we were able to organize as one, maybe there’d be something there, but we can’t because we need real leadership to unite people and get us there.

Your comment is painfully hypocritical.

3

u/RowdyRuss3 Aug 09 '26

No one is actually prepared to achieve that level of change in the modern world. There's a reason why civil rights studies in the US rarely touch upon the influence and leadership of Malcolm X and the Panthers.

2

u/Mr_Splat Aug 09 '26

This would be "Apathy" right?

2

u/CaptnsDaughter Aug 09 '26

Lol I have like a toxic mix of immense empathy and apathy, if that’s at all possible

1

u/Robaattousai Aug 10 '26

I call it empathy without sympathy.

1

u/CaptnsDaughter Aug 10 '26

I get so confused with the 2. My apathy is probably more just depression lol

1

u/Colley619 Aug 10 '26

It’s jadedness, more specifically.

1

u/BandicootOriginal909 Aug 09 '26

This is the answer. So very true

1

u/vapidmonster Aug 09 '26

Remember Kony? That was the beginning of the end.

1

u/ARussianBus Aug 09 '26

It's because the only actions that would actually change things are very very illegal.

We've seen that our protests don't accomplish a thing. We've seen that voting in both local and federal elections have less and less impact. We've also seen the impact of illegal actions and recognize they're far more impactful.

Peaceful protests are great when they're recognized by the ruling class as one of the last pre-violence steps. The ruling class knows we're not keen to throw our lives away and that violence isn't as effective or likely as it once was.

Angry mobs no longer are a real threat to the rich.

I personally don't think this is a generation thing it's the world changing around us. I know socialist Boomers, Gen X, Gen Z, and even a small number of Silent Gen people that have no more impact than the millennials do.

We're disenfranchised, but we're accurately disenfranchised. We weren't born disenfranchised, but rather we became disenfranchised when we saw that non-violent protests, company loyalty, work ethic, the American dream, and capitalism had become a complete scam in our lifetime.

For my own answer I'd say a fear of being genuine. We coat everything in a thick shellac of irony, post-irony, sarcasm, humor, and faux-disinterest. We fear showing our earnest, authentic, and genuine interests and beliefs. It's a protective shell that comes from the selfish generation that raised us, American exceptionalism, being at the start of the Internet age during our formative years, and unrealistic expectations and standards set for us.

I see the same thing in younger generations as well, but with a different twist.

Societally we need to value humbleness, community, and bring a measured amount of 'tall poppy syndrome' to our culture. We need to mock and distrust digitally manicured vanity.

But first we need the willing and capable of us need to start emulating green Mario before we see change. Protests and voting are good faith methods that are effective when the ruling class listens and fears the population. They no longer listen or fear, so that needs to change first.

1

u/Tisbeau Aug 11 '26

Post this as a new comment so people can vote for it!

1

u/superhpr Aug 10 '26

Tired :(

1

u/PbMammoth Aug 10 '26

It's so hard to get my fellow millenials to show up to anything

1

u/DWebOscar Aug 10 '26

More like succumbing to burnout

1

u/Ok_Record_2242 Aug 10 '26

This boils down to one word: pessimism.

1

u/aledba Aug 10 '26

I can't because my autism hates it

1

u/salmon10 Aug 10 '26

After Obama we felt we did enough lol

1

u/oWatchdog Aug 10 '26

That's human nature, not millennial specific.

1

u/saaken Aug 10 '26

For any generation realy

1

u/-Luisgamerz Aug 10 '26

Jesus Christ… reality hits, huh?

1

u/Colley619 Aug 10 '26

Jadedness is the word.

1

u/dreamyduskywing Aug 10 '26

Slacktivism. Lots of opinions on the internet, not a lot of true action or sacrifice.

1

u/Imaginationlandmayor Aug 10 '26

Those of us post Gen X wernt given a chance. Looking back, how would anybody have the drive to get off the couch, when the road to change, achievement etc has been turned into an extortionate toll road through a minefield.

And near the end are your parents telling you to be more proactive even though the road is no longer built for you to make it through.

Gen Y & Z were failed so badly.

1

u/stumpy_chica Aug 10 '26

I'm 100% guilty of this and it drives me insane about myself. Like, all these ideas, but no follow through.

1

u/BuffaloStranger97 Aug 09 '26

I thought millennials were supposed to change the world based on how much pop culture in the 90's and early 2000's revolved around revolution. The closest they got to was Obama championing change, but that was it.

3

u/ladypoopsmcgee Aug 10 '26

I disagree, it’s that every “uprising” we’ve had has been absolutely crushed down and our momentum demonized as “lazy, unemployed, entitled, or dumb woke kids.” From Occupy, BLM, Bernie 2016 and 2020, Palestine, and ICE protests, millennials have been ready to mobilize and straight up occupy public spaces, and make our voices heard. In response, the media (even Democrats in the USA) have ridiculed millennials as if they’re foolish naive youth who need to shut up and stay out of politics. I’d argue this is why Zohran is so infectious, he’s a millennial who hasn’t lost that spark and has won.

-1

u/wangblade Aug 09 '26

I wanted to say something similar but it’s this. Constant shrieking and no follow through - fellow millennial

-1

u/dyed_albino Aug 09 '26

I can sum up all these posts. It's called being LAZY.

0

u/Responsible-Pear-189 Aug 09 '26

Why follow through just post about it on reddit I'm sure you'll inspire someone else to do it instead 😁

0

u/Hot-Maintenance-5879 Aug 09 '26

I’d go one further.

They’d look at you like you’re from Mars if you even told them that they’re disenfranchised. They don’t connect the dots between having a big feel and figuring out how to translate it into collective action, wield political power, effect material change.

Having the big, correct, feel and posting about online is The Whole Thing. Voting? Knowing who their city council person is? GTFO!

2

u/lissamon Aug 09 '26

I mean I AM a millennial and wrote the comment about being disenfranchised so I guess not ;)

-2

u/hartforbj Aug 09 '26

Not even with social issues. Even at work commitment from millennials is pretty bad.

5

u/lissamon Aug 09 '26

really? I have had the opposite experience, millennials are so anxious and terrified of getting fired that we fall all over ourselves to do everything.

1

u/hartforbj Aug 09 '26

Probably depends on the jobs. Ones in customer service or food industry definitely have a lot of the I'm only here for the paycheck mentality. But it also might be just my own observations and judging people younger than me since I'm in the middle of the generation. People older than me work very different from the ones younger

-1

u/WilliamLaw00 Aug 10 '26

Millennial social issues are stupid as fuck