mbulteau:

last-snowfall:

geardrops:

swanjolras:

out of all the aspects of millennial-bashing, i think the one that most confuses me is the “millennials all got trophies as a kid, so now they’re all self-centered narcissists” theory

like— kids are pretty smart, y’all. they can see that every kid on the team gets a trophy and is told they did a good job; they can also see that not every kid on the team deserves a trophy, and not everyone did do a good job

the logical conclusion to draw from this is not “i’m great and i deserve praise”— it’s “no matter how mediocre i am, people will still praise me to make me feel better, so i can’t trust any compliments or accolades i receive”

this is not a recipe for overconfidence and narcissism. it is a recipe for constant self-guessing, low self-esteem, and a distrust of one’s own abilities and skills.

where did this whole “ugh millennials think their so-so work is super great” thing even come from it is a goddamn mystery

what fucking kills me is, yeah, maybe we got the trophies, but who gave them out

this is not a recipe for overconfidence and narcissism. it is a recipe for constant self-guessing, low self-esteem, and a distrust of one’s own abilities and skills.

Which is pretty much what mental health practitioners observe happening.

It’s also what I observed happening as a singing teacher: the older kids literally would not believe a positive word I said until I had proved I would tell them they screwed up/had done badly/etc. I did so in as useful a way as possible (“So this passage. We really need to work on this passage. A lot. This passage is not good yet.”), but with almost every adolescent I taught I had to prove I would give them straight-up criticism before they would parse my praise as anything other than meaningless “the grownups always do this” noise.

I strongly agree with all of this, but this is only one of the two possible extremes. There’s another problematic one, the opposite reaction to gratuitous praise, which is the literal belief in its worth, and not only blindness but denial of one’s shortcomings.

And this is not exclusive to millenials, this started way back in 1969 with the self-esteem movement, and it creates absolutely ridiculous personalities that truly believe they are the best at everything and deserve no criticism whatsoever.

Both extremes are terrible. As usual, the balance is in the middle, and we’ve been blown to the sides for decades now.

A true opinion is better than fake praise, for everyone involved, no matter what.