New York, NY: Upon noticing an increasing number of young people on or near the designated lawn area of Time magazine’s offices, the staff issued a statement declaring that all millennials on the premises must vacate immediately.
Despite the protests of some of these young layabouts that the area “isn’t even a lawn” and is “more like concrete,” the staff has held firmly to their position with the support of local Gen-Xers and Baby Boomers. This comes on the heels of Time’s recent cover story by Joel Stein, “The Me Me Me Generation,” examining the narcissism and laziness of millennials.
“They just want everything for themselves,” said Greenwich Village resident Bill Davis. “Have you seen those Twitter things? They’re so self-centered, always asking for re-twitters and complaining about waiting for things.” Davis turned his attention to a 23-year-old photo documenting their food, excited to be eating something that wasn’t Mac and Cheese for the first time in three weeks. “Look at him, just eat it!” Davis added, content in his ability to buy food.
Gen-Xer Thomas Vernon of Staten Island is similarly not amused with the behavior of millennials. “I can’t remember a generation of kids that was this self-centered. When my generation was around this age, we had just started paying our CEOs disproportionately higher wages than their workers and made movies about how greed was awesome.” Vernon added, “Cocaine was also pretty great. And Flock of Seagulls.”
The statement issued by Time has been particularly confusing for 24-year-old intern Nathan Burress. “My editor came by earlier when the Internet was down and asked me if I had crashed it by playing violent video games. I told him there was no way I could even play ‘Centipede’ on this thing, let alone something violent, but I think he thought I was actually playing ‘Centipede.’”
“I mean, I’m glad to be getting the experience, which is more than I can say for a lot of my friends,” Burress said. “But sometimes I think I’d really like to be able to buy like, a new shirt or something. This one has a hole in it. Health insurance would also be rad.”
Though many of the millennials being asked to leave questioned Stein’s generalization of their generation, Stein defended his article, stating, “It’s not all bad, I mean, I did say they were nice.” Although a 41-year-old interviewed for Stein’s piece exhibited many of the characteristics he had accused millennials of having, Stein postulated that they weren’t just personality traits of some dumb people, but that the man had clearly spent too much time around millennials.
Stein also defended his research, pointing out that he had attempted to live like a millennial for a day and noted that only a group of people with so much unproductive, free time on their hands could text a lot of people in one day. When asked how he lived as part of this generation, Stein replied that he put on a t-shirt.