The Very Model of a Modern-Age Millennial
by Meg Elison

An unprecedentedly intimate and comprehensive glimpse at the breadth and diversity of one of world literature’s most vital, adventurous presences.
On Monday I killed Applebee’s, on Tuesday I axed country clubs
I’ve never bought a diamond and I have no use for cashmere gloves
I quote dank internet memes in lieu of sharing actual thoughts
For earnestness has been passé since sometime in the early aughts
Still advertisers flail and fail to capture all my buying power
(The sum of which amounts to renting GIG cars by the paltry hour)
I’m subject to the bleak nostalgia of Generation Xers
And YouTube sensibilities adored by web-savvy youngsters
So I get to the take the blame for our country’s tanked economy
While fighting for my basic rights and bodily autonomy
In short I’m fucked in matters from the vital to the trivial
I am the very model of a modern-age millennial
In fact, when I know what is meant by “social justice warrior”
When I can tell at sight a fascist MRA conspirator
When such affairs are treated as unsolvable new mysteries,
I shake my head and wonder if the Boomers studied history
When I have learnt what progress has been made and then just flushed away
My generation’s best bet looks like playing Fortnite drunk all day
In short, if you’re angry right now and spewing aged white vitriol
Remember you created me: the modern age millennial
For I’m the generation raised upon the game Monopoly
You’re hoarding all the wealth and jobs and mock me for my poverty
So now I’m skewing socialist with discourse quite ungenial
Please check your local ballots for the modern-age millennial

HT: McSweeney’s via Karen L. Myers.

The Toast offers clues.

Some examples:

You have a pretty taste for paradox.

You speak English, but will lapse into Italian in order to create rhymes at the drop of a hat. …

You live in a country other than England, but the only way to tell this is from your dress and your occasional use of another language, as you are otherwise entirely indistinguishable from an English person.

You are an orphan.

You are not an orphan, but have just said that you are to a man who is altogether too interested in this fact.

You think you are an orphan, and are rather surprised to discover that you have either very rich or very disreputable relations.

Your mother is younger than you, or at least appears to be so? …

Your society’s legal system is fundamentally corrupt and everyone knows it, but no one has a problem with it.

A takeoff of Gilbert & Sullivan’s “Modern Major General” by the student choir at Simon Fraser University.

xkcd does the lyrics.