On an excursion to downtown L.A., we came across this hipster outside a coffee house, reading Nausea.

It was like seeing a panda in its own habitat, only better.  I know it looks posed, but I swear to god he is real!

Downtown Los Angeles has a burgeoning ‘arts district’, i.e. a run-down industrial neighborhood crammed with organic cafes and tiny shops selling vintage Americana. Young people wander around looking drab and gender-challenged. There’s a lot of third-wave coffee and it is delicious.

While admiring my photo of the hipster this evening, I realized that it might be more accurate to call him a millennial.

I think there’s a real difference but I’m still working it out.

Hipsters like to have fun, for one thing, but millennials are sourpusses.

Millennials don’t want to acquire furniture or children, and they all work in tech or spend all their time on Instagram.

They are married to their iPhones and Androids and they seem to enjoy irony without actually having a sense of humor. They reject traditional politics but they hate Israel.

According to one pundit, they have ruined 47 institutions and industries. They don’t use napkins or eat cereal.

God, who needs them, right?

Reading an essay about  them tonight, I had to learn a new word: Precarity.

Precarity is a precarious existence, lacking in predictability, job security, material or psychological welfare. The social class defined by this condition has been termed the precariat.

Apparently, we should think of millennials as a generation forced to live pared-down lives, victims of the broken economy rather than brats who disdain their parents’ furniture.

And likewise, they’ve been given a bad rap by “self-hating Boomers.”

Hahahaha!

At least millennials have crated an awful new jargon full of terms like ‘toxic-masculinity’ and ‘virtue-signalling’. If they keep up the word-coinage, I may learn to like them!

Or at least forgive them.

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