The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millenial
ribbonfarm.com
The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millenial
1–10 of 102 posts
Re: The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millenial
#2I feel like I've seen all of these strata. My timeline goes like this:
1) Worked at a defense tech startup, learned some code, told the AI what to do.
2) Got MBA, worked at big Wall Street bank with millionaire boss. Met some management teams at massive companies, discovered they were just ordinary people for the most part. Completely disregarded AI/tech because we were Too Big to Fail.
3) For the kiddos, I gave up hectic job and took a decent job at what I thought was a scrappy tech-focused company, which was subsequently acquired by a bigger slower company. Now I work in effectively a front-line role, which has a high potential to eventually be automated away. I do some code but it's mostly easy lay-up stuff. The AI tells us what to look at, and other people control that.
Meanwhile my wife is an IG/FB pro, mercilessly weaving the latest family related stories of success and tabulating the "like" coups.
I suppose we're faking it til we make it (again). It's an odd feeling to have seen maybe all three important sides of the new economy. I'll feel more comfortable when we're back in the top or middle again.
Re: The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millenial
#3This is a very long article about something that has been known for a very long time: middle class existential angst.
Re: The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millenial
#4This is a very long article about something that has been known for a very long time: middle class existential angst.
I really enjoyed Rao's writing on the Gervais Principal, but I've never read anything else by him that really clicked with me. This piece in particular is winding, meandering, and nonsensical.
Re: The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millenial
#5This is a very long article about something that has been known for a very long time: middle class existential angst.
Sounds like what a friend of mine likes to call "the pain of easy living".
Re: The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millenial
#6Anything with "Exclusive" in the name also qualifies; your stock is "as much as people will buy * fudge factor." Are you sure you don't mean "Inclusive"? And suits. Any suit. Yes, even the $1000 one. It's wrapping paper for your personality.
Re: The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millenial
#7there are too many digressions and obscure inside-references in this essay, but this cuts to the heart of the matter:
"[Premium mediocre] is an economic and cultural rearguard action by young people launched into life from the old middle class, but not quite equipped to stay there, and trying to engineer a face-saving soft landing…somewhere."
i'm 24 and while i can see the humor and hyperbole in this article, its also a pretty astute description of the disenchantment many of my bicoastal "elite" friends from middle/upper-middle class families feel.
timely too. one of my friends texted me this morning: "[my large corporate employer] laid off 90% of its sales force yesterday...survived another day in corporate America"
the worst side effect for me is feeling like i am stupid and naive for trying to do things the "right" way - the meritocratic, socially conscious, altruistic way - when it seems like these are values that do not achieve the right outcomes anymore. should just shut up and get mine.
overall i feel my generation, or at least my social strata, will mature to be colder, harder and more distant than our predecessors. all it will take to cement this transformation is another recession
Re: The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millenial
#8This is a very long article about something that has been known for a very long time: middle class existential angst.
Yeah. I feel like he spends a lot of time trying to say it's not about the bourgeoisie when it pretty clearly is. People have been writing about this phenomenon and this particular way of looking at social status from the mid 19th century to today. It's the same with "late-stage capitalism". People have been saying capitalism has entered a particularly "ignorant" stage for decades. Just because API's are now involved (I guess?) doesn't mean it's a revolutionary insight.
Re: The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millenial
#9I feel like I've seen all of these strata. My timeline goes like this: 1) Worked at a defense tech startup, learned some code, told the AI what to do. 2) Got MBA, worked at big Wall Street bank with millionaire boss. Met some management teams at massive companies, discovered they were just ordinary people for the most part. Completely disregarded AI/tech because we were Too Big to Fail. 3) For the kiddos, I gave up h…
I've never understood the instagram / facebook game that people seem to dedicate inordinate amounts of effort to... I mean, I guess it's just your typical one-upsmanship in a social network... but still. People try so hard to make it look like their lives are better than everyone else's... I don't understand. :(
Re: The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millenial
#10This is a very long article about something that has been known for a very long time: middle class existential angst.
Sounds like what a friend of mine likes to call "the pain of easy living".
We come from a billion+ years of organisms that have had to strive and fight for everything. Not necessarily all the time; there are brief times when resources are free and easy for some species (like, "a disease kills of 95% of your species and you're the only thing around that eats grass" or something; for the survivors it's suddenly a cornucopia), but they don't last this long, nor are they ever this easy. It's not hard to see why our genes haven't really prepared us for this wealth.