Are the salty ones the ones that are free and empowered? I work at a big tech co with a lot of millenials making pretty good money, and no one that I come across seems salty.
But then I read sites like reddit r/antiwork or whatever and see all the salt, with people making sweeping generalized statements about how the entire millenial generation has been screwed over by boomers and will never move out of their mom's basement.
It's a function of money and bubbles within class strata. Antiwork is all minimum wage workers (or those making low to median amounts of money) and they see their wages not growing while things get more expensive. Your tech peers are relatively rich so they wouldn't be salty. Both are different bubbles that rarely intersect.
In fact, this reminds me of Slate Star Codex's I can tolerate anything except the outgroup [0], where the author talks about how he doesn't interact with conservatives even though he's aware that half of the US is composed of them.
> My hunch – both the Red Tribe and the Blue Tribe, for whatever reason, identify “America” with the Red Tribe. Ask people for typically “American” things, and you end up with a very Red list of characteristics – guns, religion, barbecues, American football, NASCAR, cowboys, SUVs, unrestrained capitalism.
> That means the Red Tribe feels intensely patriotic about “their” country, and the Blue Tribe feels like they’re living in fortified enclaves deep in hostile territory.
> Here is a popular piece published on a major media site called America: A Big, Fat, Stupid Nation. Another: America: A Bunch Of Spoiled, Whiny Brats. Americans are ignorant, scientifically illiterate religious fanatics whose “patriotism” is actually just narcissism. You Will Be Shocked At How Ignorant Americans Are, and we should Blame The Childish, Ignorant American People.
> Needless to say, every single one of these articles was written by an American and read almost entirely by Americans. Those Americans very likely enjoyed the articles very much and did not feel the least bit insulted.
> On both sides, “American” can be either a normal demonym, or a code word for a member of the Red Tribe.
Fascinating. I think "white people" operates the same way today.
> The other day, I logged into OKCupid and found someone who looked cool. I was reading over her profile and found the following sentence:
> > Don’t message me if you’re a sexist white guy
> And my first thought was “Wait, so a sexist black person would be okay? Why?”
> (The girl in question was white as snow)
> Around the time the Ferguson riots were first starting, there were a host of articles with titles like Why White People Don’t Seem To Understand Ferguson, Why It’s So Hard For Whites To Understand Ferguson, and White Folks Listen Up And Let Me Tell You What Ferguson Is All About, this last of which says:
> > Social media is full of people on both sides making presumptions, and believing what they want to believe. But it’s the white folks that don’t understand what this is all about. Let me put it as simply as I can for you […]
> > No matter how wrong you think Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown were, I think we can all agree they didn’t deserve to die over it. I want you white folks to understand that this is where the anger is coming from. You focused on the looting….”
> And on a hunch I checked the author photos, and every single one of these articles was written by a white person.
> White People Are Ruining America? White. White People Are Still A Disgrace? White. White Guys: We Suck And We’re Sorry? White. Bye Bye, Whiny White Dudes? White. Dear Entitled Straight White Dudes, I’m Evicting You From My Life? White. White Dudes Need To Stop Whitesplaining? White. Reasons Why Americans Suck #1: White People? White.
> We’ve all seen articles and comments and articles like this. Some unsavory people try to use them to prove that white people are the real victims or the media is biased against white people or something. Other people who are very nice and optimistic use them to show that some white people have developed some self-awareness and are willing to engage in self-criticism.
> But I think the situation with “white” is much the same as the situation with “American” – it can either mean what it says, or be a code word for the Red Tribe.
> (except on the blog Stuff White People Like, where it obviously serves as a code word for the Blue tribe. I don’t know, guys. I didn’t do it.)
> I realize that’s making a strong claim, but it would hardly be without precedent. When people say things like “gamers are misogynist”, do they mean the 52% of gamers who are women? Do they mean every one of the 59% of Americans from every walk of life who are known to play video or computer games occasionally? No. “Gamer” is a coded reference to the Gray Tribe, the half-branched-off collection of libertarianish tech-savvy nerds, and everyone knows it. As well expect that when people talk about “fedoras”, they mean Indiana Jones. Or when they talk about “urban youth”, they mean freshmen at NYU. Everyone knows exactly who we mean when we say “urban youth”, and them being young people who live in a city has only the most tenuous of relations to the actual concept.
> And I’m saying words like “American” and “white” work the same way. Bill Clinton was the “first black President”, but if Herman Cain had won in 2012 he’d have been the 43rd white president. And when an angry white person talks at great length about how much he hates “white dudes”, he is not being humble and self-critical.
Nope, completely different, so much that r/overemployed makes fun of r/antiwork-ers. Those who are overemployed are grateful to be in a position to do so, they are not salty at all, quite the opposite.
But then I read sites like reddit r/antiwork or whatever and see all the salt, with people making sweeping generalized statements about how the entire millenial generation has been screwed over by boomers and will never move out of their mom's basement.