DEAR READERS,
At Millennials Magazine, we started off with a splash page that asked our visitors to give us a short definition of what they thought a “millennial” was. We got a lot of cool answers, from the real-world cliche to the lost, from the cynically realistic to the epochal:
MILLENNIALS: IN UR COFFEESHOP STEALIN UR WIRELESS
MILLENNIALS: WE CAN HAZ IDENTITY?
MILLENNIALS: MORE MONEY FROM SELLING MY KLONOPIN THAN MY WRITTEN WORD
MILLENNIALS: MY CHILDHOOD ENDED THE DAY THE TOWERS FELL.
The splash page was the first step in our mission; that is, to give millennials a chance to speak independently, to begin to define ourselves against an avalanche of polemical articles defining us as a generation “victim to the recession” and “stupefied by technology.”
Today marks the launch of the second phase of our project. Millennials Magazine, a weekly blog and online publication with official issues released quarterly, shares the same goal: to help us define ourselves. To this end, we’ve invited our generation to show what we think of us, rather than how the New York Times constricts us. We’ve gathered digital landmarks, records of how we feel and what has happened to us. We have collected a story of a school shooting by Dana Berube, recalling the events that marked such pivotal points in our own childhoods. We have collected love stories conducted by cell phones, criticism on cultural nostalgia by Dan D’Addario, The O.C.’s utopia by Rosie Gray, and on the possibly post-racial digital world by Lucia Flores. We have a dialogue taken wholesale from Real Life. We have artifacts of our age in one place.
We made this magazine because we want to share what it’s actually like to be a millennial. The greatest remark I heard about our splash page was that it made someone feel less alone. We all need that in our lives, bent by the economy into new paths, deconstructed into abstract digital worlds and posted characters at a time on Twitter and Facebook. Millennials Magazine is a place to feel less alone in our group experiences of getting broken up with over text message, of recalling 9/11 seen as a 12-year old, of trying to find a post-graduation job when so few exist, of seeing yourself on YouTube. We hope that in reading these pieces, it becomes clear that being a “millennial” is no singular thing, but in a way, the term gathers all of us, and all of what it means to be young now.
Still, we have to be fully aware that self-analysis is inherently self-indulgent, but waxing nostalgic on the 90s is also just fun, and a way for us to remember our own pasts.
Thank you for coming,
WHAT TO DO NOW?