Readers' reaction to the Guardian's Generation Y takeover
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Version 0 of 1. All week you've been hearing from the Guardian's 10 digital trainees. And boy, have they heard from you. In tweets, Facebook posts and comments beneath their articles on life in Generation Y, there has been a mixed torrent of sympathy, scepticism, wit, polite disagreement and the other kind. And some themes have been emerging: Does Generation Y even exist? Not everybody is convinced. Actually, a lot of people seem past convincing. "They are just making this guff up. No such thing as Gen Y," said Andy Z beneath Wednesday's article on internet dating. VonZeppelin added some corroboration: "My missus can text, watch telly and shout at me all simultaneously. And she is fast approaching 50." Online, of course, it was less immediately clear that the articles were being published as part of a series of themed issues, leaving naid to ask: "Did someone at Guardian towers say you're all fired unless you produce 10 articles a week with 'Generation Y' in the title?" Let's laugh at them! Others, such as Chinasky75, saw the distinction between the generations all too plainly. "Wish i was part of this generation," he or she said, also beneath the dating piece. "Never have to leave the house or talk to people face to face. Would have suited me down to the ground at 18!" Unwisely, MartyMcFly thought he would try his hand at gloating. "Generation Y may be at the vanguard of social media but I don't live with my parents so who is the real winner?" he asked. To which Arkadyagain replied: "Your parents." Get a job Broadly speaking, unemployment was accepted as a real grievance that does unite those people who left school or university in the past six years. In firm but fair terms, stringvestor – "a crusty fiftysomething who occasionally has to recruit people" – joined the debate beneath Emma Howard's feature on young people's struggle to find work. In his view, many in Generation Y let themselves down by carpet-bombing employers with poor-quality applications. "I can stare at a pile of CVs and be totally bored and uninspired by the endless bullsh1t about being a solution-focused, dynamic team player," he said. Hank_Scorpio begged to differ, rather pithily, by saying that in the headline – How young people's lives have been destroyed by the cuts – "the last word is missing a letter". Greetings GUARBOT The invention and testing of a robot that could replace Guardian journalists was not an immediate success, I am extremely glad to say, although it proved popular with readers. Many, though, were under the same impression as Mitchell Hansson, who asked on Facebook: "Aren't they already?" Meanwhile, on the site, LoneArchitect raised "the terrifying prospect of CIFBOT, the automated comments machine capable of producing tens of millions of arguments about Israel/Arsenal/Margaret Thatcher". Perhaps in future GUARBOT and CIFBOT can just fight it out while the rest of us go for lattes. Sex, sex, sex There was a lot of it on Tuesday and Wednesday, which got many commenters reminiscing about the good old days, when even softcore pornography was scarce and precious. "Hedge porn," kindablue called it beneath Frances Perraudin's article on pornographic social media. "What a delight it was in those days to spot flesh-toned printed matter underneath a bush." In place of that delight, many readers now warmed to the experience of ripteam, who responded to the news that pornhub.com had more than 14.7bn visits last year by saying: "Yeah, sorry, that was mostly me." Some things never change One reader, Anthony Parker, was so taken by the Generation Y series that he tweeted Erica Buist a heartfelt poem on the subject ("Why oh why oh why/ Did they promise us the earth?"). Truly, if young people are still putting their sorrows into poetry, if not perhaps the very finest poetry, then all is well. |