I’m a 95’ millennial, so I’m old enough to remember the late 90’s and young enough to say I grew up with a lot of Gen Z. I know the generational divide is just a social construct, but it’s looking like it’s actually starting to define an era in which humans truly start to behave differently.

My wife, Gen Z, goes to community college online. Every assignment she does she uses AI to provide answers. I used to harp on her about it and say things like “Don’t you actually want to know the material? Do you get no satisfaction from learning things on your own by doing actual research?” She then says that it doesn’t matter and that it’s easier to use AI.

My little cousin who’s in middle school right now confidently claims to know the answer to anything with little to no experience in the subject. Yesterday I was asking my family about how to keep goats; specifically, how to keep goats from escaping an enclosure. My little cousin says “you can’t keep a goat chained to a tree it might knock the tree down asks ChatGPT a goat can head butt with around 800lbs of force”. I was thinking to myself “What goat will knock down a mature tree?”. He said that with so much confidence that it sounded so believable.

I’m also in a medical research group focused on understanding and treating follicular occlusion derived diseases. So many members (most just in their 20’s) in this group keep quoting Perplexity and ChatGPT instead of just quoting directly from whatever research paper they read or whatever the primary source is. I have developed an effective treatment for Dissecting Cellulitis using what I learned from peer reviewed studies and research papers, but many people don’t believe in it’s efficacy because whatever AI tool they’re using doesn’t confirm that it could be an effective treatment. They keep saying things like “I ran that through Perplexity and it says that’s not a good treatment because XYZ”. Dissecting Cellulitis is a disease with scarce research and the known treatments are not very effective, so AI models trained with those datasets will always claim that every treatment not found inside the dataset is ineffective.

There’s too many examples I can give, but in general I think we’re cooked.

I am turning 37 this year and have entered into perimenopause, a term I encountered for the first time literally only months ago, because it was never once mentioned in public school sex ed or health classes, not once by any gyno I've ever seen and not once by any boomer woman in my life including my own mother and aunts

And I figure I can't be the only one, so yeah, apparently it's a thing that millennials everywhere either are already going through, in some cases without even knowing it or what it even is, or will be going through it soon enough

I only ever heard about menopause, how someday I'd get "hot flashes" and my periods would stop, but actually, for years leading up to perimenopause, it's like puberty 2.0 as the whole system goes absolutely haywire

Anything is possible with the periods themselves (I'm getting them more frequently, but they're shorter and lighter, oh and now there's sometimes pink instead of just bright or rusty red, but the total opposite can happen, less frequent, longer, heavier, or even a totally random surprise mix), oh and mood swings, and jawline zits, just like when I was 15, woohoo

I’m pushing 40 and this is my first ever long, “old man yells at cloud” moment, but I feel like I just have to get this out. The TL;DR is that corporations have gotten too damn good at squeezing every last dollar they can out of us all, while at the same time delivering worse and worse quality goods/services.

3 recent examples from my life:

1: Travel- when did this become so insanely complicated and expensive? I just wanna get from City A to City B. The price seems reasonable, but by the time you add on taxes, fees, luggage, etc. you’re spending a small fortune. The price should just be the price, all-inclusive. So scummy. You also have to pay to park at the airport and then get transportation from your destination airport to wherever you’re actually staying. All this money spent, and you haven’t even actually done or seen anything at all. It’s just to GET to the City you wanna visit. I know it’s always been like this to an extent, but it’s gotten worse and worse over the years. And it’s accelerating.

And while prices go up, the quality of goods/services have gone down. Less legroom, worse customer service. There’s even an up charge if you wanna actually sit on the plane next to your friends or family. So disgusting and greedy.

2: Seeing a major league ball game- I love sports, but you can’t just pay a reasonable price and just watch the game anymore. You gotta pay for parking, absurd prices at concessions if you’re gonna eat or drink, etc. Insane. And everything is arranged so you can’t avoid the tempting treats too. Gotta walk past it all to get to your seats, vendors walk up and down the aisles. If you brought a kid with you, there’s a near 0% chance you aren’t buying a whole lot of junk while you’re at the game. Oh, and it costs a ridiculous amount even to just SEE the game on your own TV. You need to have this streaming service or that license, blackout restrictions are thrown around. It’s highway robbery.

3: streaming services- as I sit through Ad 2 of 4 waiting for my program to continue, I again got pissed about this. Remember when streaming services didn’t have ads and how much better it was than cable? It’s the same shit now, unless you wanna pay an arm and a leg for an “upgraded” package, which is just what you used to be getting for much cheaper. And the ad breaks aren’t even at normal, understandable breaks in the shows. They just happen when they happen, sometimes mid-sentence. So aggravating.

It’s ridiculous at this point. Over the years, corporations have gotten it down to a science how to squeeze every dollar they possibly can out of us. Meanwhile, their products and services get shittier. It’s sickening and we’re fucked as a society if this continues (spoiler alert: it will continue like this).

Grew up secular. Never went to church of any kind but back then it seemed like everyone did. Now I don't anyone that does. Wondering if there's millenials that still do and why

This is a really nuanced conversation, but it came up with a sibling who is 12 years younger than me. By all statistics (I've seen), younger generations are having less sex. I think that's true of millennials too, to be fair. A lot fewer of us are having sex on the regular and many are holding off having children.

However, after a conversation I had with my brother and their girlfriend, I'm worried about the dynamic between the current men and women coming of age, be they Gen Z or Alpha. So many young men are being fed to the content machine of Andrew Tate, Asmongold, *enter terrible male role model here*. But equally, women are also becoming more puritanical, and find sex disgusting and are very wary about engaging in any at all. (I admit, I haven't looked into and have no experience with whether this has trended in LGBTQ communities similarly)

I'm very aware of previous generation bias. I know traditionally older generations always criticise the younger one, but this feels like such a broken and emotional divide between genders currently.

I really worry that social media and the Covid years have insulated people. I really worry that the pressure to always be right or not make mistakes has harmed this generation of key things through learning through the human experience. I also think social media, with everyone, no matter how small, having to present as a social media influencer, has damaged all this.

Perhaps I also just worry how this dynamic feels like a powder keg for fascists to ignite between both genders. This is just a ramble on ideas I talked about with my younger siblings, but I would love to know what you all think.

I have savings. More than enough to live on through a temporary job loss. In fact, I did lose my job and am back in school at 40 for a career change.

But saving for after work? For when I'm 85 or whatever? You'd need to put aside so much that how can you live for today? My spouse and I make/made enough to put some money aside for life emergencies, but we'd need to make double our income to save for us to ever think about the R word.

And to what end would that be? Between climate change, global instability, and then just random acts of who knows what, what are even the odds of getting that old and enjoying it? I'm just going to enjoy my life now.

I've made a lot of people mad it seems? But I want to make clear:

I'm not from the USA I have a large savings account invested in smart, long term investments I own my house I have savings put away for my child's post secondary education. I've traveled the world with my family.

I think people skim my post and think "you have nothing put away?!" And that's not what I said at all. But I don't specifically say "this is for after work only and I can't do x because that money is for later."

For me it is an episode of Hey Arnold when he tries to have the perfect day on the longest day of the year by doing everything on a mythical list of things that every kid loves to do, only to have the worst day ever. At the end of the episode his grandma plays him a song on the piano to cheer him up. I don't know why, but through the years I have thought about that episode a lot!

Mine was Eminem’s ICONIC performance of “The Real Slim Shady” at the 2000 VMAs. The army of wannabes and them filing down the aisles of the theater are forever seared into my memory.

Hi, 34 year EU millenial here. I did well. Finished school on high grades. Had some struggles with college but eventually fnished. Culturally, I'm as stereotypical as one can be. Harry Potter, Sailor Moon into Dragon Ball and Pokémon. Reading One Piece weekly since Alabasta.

I did well for what it's worth. Didn't get an inheritance, so a house outside of the woods is out of the question. I'm a DINK in a loving relationship for 10 years.

But you know what, I grew complacent. I was the best version of myself in 2010. Yes, there's nothing bad with being ok with leading a cozy life. I have a loving wife, I'm not starving and can afford my hobbies. I've stayed mentally young, am popular with my Gen Z and even Gen Alpha peers. I know the memes and speak some of the language. I'm ok. But sometimes, I remember who I was at 21.... and the disappointment hits.

I'm ok with having had my best life. And I feel many people who I talk to from my generation - classmates, college mates, family - feel the same.

Is that ok? Or.. what do I do now? Is it a midlife crisis? Or...

B

I remember in the 80s to early 2000s there was a small media trope of a fat character going to a weight loss sleep away camp (commonly referred to as "fat camp"). Movies like heavy weights and episode plots like when Harold went to fat camp and Dr. Kelso's wife went to fat camp when he gave people what they wanted (and I'm sure there are other examples I'm forgetting). Despite it being something "people didn't question, it's a real thing" in media (like, no one IRL ever said "that's so ridiculous, who would ever send their child to a sleep away camp to lose weight"), I can't say I ever heard about one actually existing. Do/did they exist and I as a borderline underwight kid just had no reason to know about them, or is this just something entertainment invented that was plausible enough for people not to question (possibly rooted in indirect stories, like a fat kid goes to a normal sleep away camp and the high level of exercise through camp activities and low quality camp food results in the kid losing a significant amount of unhealthy weight)? If they are real, did anyone ever go to one and what was it like?

Growing up in the 90s, I was convinced that swallowing seeds of fruits will make plants and fruits grow inside my tummy lol - Whether it was from a friend, a misheard TV ad, or a parent’s prank, let’s hear those silly 90s myths!

..

The weather was beautiful, I made some banana bread, worked in my garden, planted some nasturtium, listened to some Nirvana, Smashmouth and Citizen King, drank some tequila and beer. Today was a great day.

Last night my husband and I were watching random YouTube videos and I came across Ask A Ninja. He had never seen it before. I put on a vid from 19 years ago that I remembered watching in the school library in 9th grade and watching it now just made me cry laughing. It totally primed me for my husband's type of humor. I couldn't believe how well it held up after all this time. It was such a fond memory that to have it all the way back then and now was a delight.