I started on this via this interview with Tom Peters:
What’s the definition of a millennial? A human being who has no money. What is the definition of old people? The people who have the money. My throwaway line is, “My people” — meaning old people — “my people don’t have the money. We have all the money.” And the amount of effort and attention that goes into marketing and product development for the over-50s is pathetically low.
Fucking a, Tom Peters! How sick a burn are those first two lines? DAMN!!!
OK, but seriously, this is true.
A 63 year-old tends to have more money than a 23 year-old. Just saying. They can buy stuff and make more decisions.
But we’re fucking obsessed with millennials, even if most everything we think about them is actually inaccurate.
What gives?
Youth is revered, age is not
That’s just a thing. People believe it. Youth are strong and virile and “the next generation.” Old people on the way out. Shouldn’t necessarily be how we think, but it is. Tad Friend hit the cover off the ball in a New Yorker article on ageism a few months back, basically arguing that Silicon Valley is making it worse. Now we deify the 22 year-old startup founder, not the 65 year-old who’s been growing…
