My insufferable generation

On April 3, a post on X appeared like an unholy specter, in that blood-boiling “I did a thing” format:

Lena Dunham’s memoir comes on the heels of fellow millennial feminist Lindy West’s latest book, Adult Braces, which was met with… concern. And after reading a sort of review-non-review of Dunham’s book by yet another known female millennial writer, Amanda Hess, I think we’re now officially in the era of: Are the Online Ladies Entering Midlife… OK?

Millennials like to insist that we are the only ones who have handled the internet well. We don’t believe every Facebook post like the boomers are wont to do, and we’re not spiraling through a mental health crisis brought on by the algorithm like younger generations. But the more we see our former Hashtag Heroes checking in today, the more I think we maybe aren’t as unscathed as we once thought.

“It (the 2010s) was the height of what was called ladyblogging, a word that now carries the funk of millennial jargon, but at the time represented a fresh outlet for young women who had something to say, whether political snark or self-conscious sex diaries,” Hess writes. “‘Girls’” was met by a generation doing almost real-time memoir and criticism, which became a vehicle for certain internet writers to develop their own personae — voicey and agenda-setting, despite their youth and inexperience.”

As then, these most recent memoirs insist on their self awareness, while the rest of the world seems to be asking, DO you know what’s going on? Do WE? Or have millennials perhaps misconstrued putting our lives online as self awareness? Yes, both Dunham and West seem aware of where they are now — but the desire to show us so immediately, and working within the same machine that brought them harm in the past, is a head-scratcher. It’s as though the whole radical transparency/authenticity credo everyone abided by in the 2010s will somehow triumph… despite the fact that only tell-it-like-it-is Trump won with that.

It sounds like I’m singling out women here, but it’s important to acknowledge that young, female millennials were the ones made to believe that sharing intimate details about their lives made them valuable. Many of the movements of the era were reliant on women offering personal, sometimes traumatizing details about themselves: #ShoutYourAbortion (prompted by West) and #MeToo among them. There is a fine line between sharing to destigmatize, and feeling like you owe your story to anyone, for any reason.

But at the time, it felt empowering. Tides were turned (unfortunately, many have washed away since) and some women even got book deals, paid gigs, or other big-deal contracts out of being particularly snappy with their online sharing.

With the demands of the internet — be fast, be unique, be more — maybe mine is a generation that has sometimes confused transparency with self-reflection. I hate-watched Girls when it came out and never understood culture’s fascination with the series. Maybe I kept watching because I found the flailing tendencies of the characters relatable enough (and flail they did — Marnie Michaels, you extraordinary second-hand embarrassment). But the show gave us four women who clearly were not real friends, and real friends are often the only people who can help us self-reflect. To me, Girls was all transparency, no substance: We were looking into a world of the least self-actualized, most vapid people you’ve ever encountered. The fact that so many critics consider it peak millennial culture makes me want to shotgun enough Four Lokos to forget the show ever happened.

(Conversely, a friend’s Gen Z cousin told her that hanging out with our particular friend group makes her feel like she’s in Broad City. I take this as a compliment. Abbi and Ilana also flailed, but they clearly did so on the solid foundation of healthy friendships.)

The lack of critical self-reflection — the inability to take a beat before you post — is the biggest missing piece I can identify from the 2010s, a time spent largely shouting into the void and seeing if anything would stick. Words flew out of our mouths before we paused to consider what we were saying, just yanking the steering wheel into the most liberated lane we could find. Unfortunately, we barreled into the post-woke mob going about 100 miles per hour.

I won’t begin to act like I’m not a product of my generation. As I began writing this particular newsletter, I found myself at my kitchen table on a Sunday evening, drinking a $37 bottle of Sauvignon Gris orange wine while I scowled at a witty essay on Khloe Kardashian’s unsettling griege pantry. (I was also — insufferably — wearing Poshmarked Everlane barrel-leg pants. I am exactly who you would expect me to be.)

Even though the culture seemed to call for it in my 20s, I always felt uncomfortable with the idea of publicly sharing intimate details of my life. I assumed it was because I didn’t want to make my friends or family squirm. Yet hearing about the latest works from my generation’s success stories, I have to wonder if my gut instinct had more to do with recognizing when digestion is best relegated to the internal organs. Just because you have the book advance doesn’t mean you need to put whatever is happening in your immediate life on the page; maybe you need to spend some time with it before regurgitating that information directly into your fans’ open maws. (Sorry for these visuals, there’s a mourning dove nest on our building’s porch and I’ve been dive-bombed several times. Bird parenthood is very literally top of mind for me!!)

As Hess notes, “There was some confusion in that moment about how to read work of the kind that Dunham was making, but it was read — insistently, immediately, often intelligently, but increasingly unsympathetically.”

There is no doubt in my mind that millennial women will continue to move through our lives posting about our experiences in real time (and younger folks will no doubt tell us it’s cringe, which we deserve). The other reality is that we do at least wind up processing it all collectively. Not everyone will choose to bare themselves quite so completely and publicly, but we’ve held onto the idea of group discussion. 

However you feel about Dunham, West, or their peers, if you’re a millennial with a retinol prescription, their sharing has likely sparked some spirited conversation among your friend groups. At the end of the day, that’s probably a net good that someone over-shared. It gives the rest of us an opportunity to discuss and self-reflect — and for that, we are #blessed.