I had a sobering experience where I realized i'm not just myself, I'm an older woman version of myself. I actually like being older. Could you imagine being 25 or 35 right now, today?
Millennials seem obsessed with trendy tech and image, their own and those of others. They are irrationally driven as if making an impact is a kind of nirvana. Their written and spoken language a hackney kind of english.
' He had like - no filter.' ( What the fuck does that mean? Was he honest? Too harsh? )
Everything needs to be authentic yet social media is the opposite of authentic. Authenticity is a state that exists in reality, not on the internet. Who has ever said ' The internet is authentic' ? yet, people's authentic selves are obliterated by filters and slick editing. We now have an army that is inspired to invent ways to hack life, compete, or create alternate AI worlds to exist in. They're also the main players in an indictment squad of tech malfeasance and hustle culture.
Several months ago I accepted a position at an arts start-up as an operations coordinator, which included a thesis level list of responsibilities. It was a lot, but the bigger challenge was trying to adapt to a manic millennial sister in her 40s with a husband and a toddler. She was an adrenaline junkie. A bad bunny energizer. She would talk so fast, I would get caught off guard. Attentive, present listening wasn't enough. She had to see me taking notes as if doing more faster is a form of productivity. Today's ' fast-paced environment ' should just be called what it actually is - a ' manically paced environment '. I caught glitches, typos, and mistakes in her own work, while my own was nitpicked to death. For example, she added a space to words bracketed in parens. Don't use an underscore! Her strength had been in grant writing, but her narratives read to me like an earnest graduate student.
This was compounded by the shift in the San Francisco arts scene to put artists of colors and creative spaces at the front. Yes! Her strategy to navigate the money and power people in arts funding was to tell ' positivity ' stories, not real life ones. The white folks will feel bad if we talk about you know, actual systemic oppression and inequality. I kid you not, she once said the money people, eager to fund the arts and do good, are more responsive to the Native American genocide narrative than the Black Holocaust narrative.
I tried to mirror her politically correct language style: BIPOC ( apparently I'm one, but I can't even pronounce that word, which it isn't ). Stay on brand, metrics, safe and inclusive space ( in America? Is this an aspirational thing? ) It's amusing to me how the response to overt racism and neo-fascism in America is to create minutia busywork words in response to racism and neo-fascism. Proof that one is opposed to what over 40% of the country is politically and socially aligned to: a white country for white people.
It's ironic to me, someone who experiences all the American isms, that now I have to do more work to prove that I'm oppressed and marginalized. It's become a kind of progressive social currency. Listen, no one is given my 1960s name anymore. Black folks are not that serious about pronouns. We just need to keep the bills paid and not get shot down in the street, a car, the supermarket, at school, at work, or in church. But okay, ' safe space'.
The company used Asana which is the project management platform of the minute. Google Workspace does essentially the same thing as Asana, but after 20 years, Google is old people shit, much like cash. Asana has hip tutorials with energetic Coachella-looking
The director would send me passive-aggressive, clapback emails for things i didn't do. The reactive person without discernment is a bonafide red flag. This happened a few times. She was all over the place with the deflective blame game. The first time I encountered this was not directed at me, but at the non-profit that managed the building. A bullet point essay-like email that could have been a meeting with diplomacy. This is where email can turn into a force of evil; a tool for cowards and cry babies.
If you don't respond to such antics, this makes millennials salty. They think they're being ignored.
I sensed I was going to be the fall woman if anything, even between other people, went wrong. I hadn't got to getting the CRM system online and the space opened to the public. The position itself was going to be more stressful and chaotic down the line with workshops, programs, lost and found smartphones, and fancy water bottles. There are benefits to aging and wisdom. I can see yon horizon ahead, which is wrought with apps of doom and professionals who say shit like ' Show me your cool factor'.
My cool factor? Uh...give me a minute. Should I break that down by decade or within the last few hours?
The this is too much became clear as to why it was over a month before a recruiter, an awesome dude, tracked me down. Someone else had been in the position before me and walked. A recruiter wouldn't tell me that ( professional discretion ), but I figured it out. There was an urgency when he contacted me. Whenever he checked in, he offered hilarious strategies as an analogy to hang in there, and encouragement. The good dude was stuck trying to fill a position for a person who had poor leadership skills and didn't trust anyone enough to do the job.
After a month in, I needed a millennial translator. I gave an objective summation to a millennial friend. He's a go-getter who makes over 200k a year as a practicing artist and educator. Dude, am I tripping or what?
' Nah, bruh!' he said, without hesitation. ' It's a sinking ship. She's in over her head. '
Gotcha.
I had been stoked because it was a creative space, run by a mixed sister for young artists of color. Jackpot joy! Unfortunately people of color are people and we can have glitches. We're not just victims living under the yoke of oppression.
We can be self-serving, deceitful, or ill equipped for the position we hold. The director also assumed I was gay because of my androgynous style. I thought that was odd, but I realized millennials define androgyny differently than Gen X. To our generation, an androgynous person could be gay or straight. It was a mystery as much as it was an aesthetic style. To millennials the androgynous ( non-binary ) person is assumed to be queer or queer-adjacent. I'm a punker and drag adjacent, both of which are rooted in the 1980s.
She brought this up once at lunch and again on a Zoom ( with other people! ) when I mentioned my person ( a dude ). The straight millennial femme can't get their head around older women who dress something like a dude and somehow manage to be loved and adored by others in platonic and romantic ways. This doesn't jive with the current standard for straight women in media and entertainment. Maybe our aesthetic values that evolved before they were born are too abstract.
Introducing Grace Jones, the most beautiful woman in the world who looks like a dude!
It got a bit tedious to me. I don't play 'bougie cat' or compete with women in a racist society. I will play cupid like an amour G for friends and acquaintances, the men and the women. I want others to be loved because we are all worthy of love and happiness, neither of which have anything to do with the ego. Competing for the attention of men or against women is all ego.
That's what it came down to. At the root, I was competition to her, untethered to the social norms of her time. I was from a different one. I was comfortable with the power people and the building people. I spoke several languages. I was an adventure traveler who had been to places on my own. I was a local who remembered the old SF art patrons ( the Pelosis, Aliotos, and Gettys ) and performers like Pickle Family Circus ( Robin Williams, Bill Irwin ). Being gay would have been a trifecta for her instagram-ready propaganda machine: the bi-racial queer woman. I despise that modern word 'bi-racial' and I never use it as a descriptor for myself.
In the end, I built out several docs and work that will live on forever, but the universal we didn't work out. Lesson learned. No start-ups again for this old dame! Nope. I've been on this scene for a very long time. Give me people who cook, still make things by hand, and have interesting and original ideas. Asana is just the hot new thing that will inevitably be replaced by another hot new thing within 5 years. Like Myspace or Vine. What was that social thing with the black smiley face logo? Ello?
I'm cool with trying to keep up with any of it. Somewhere out there are analog people who still appreciate style and substance over speed.
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