Sometimes while I’m at work and daydreaming about being lucky enough to get hit by a bus so that I can pay off my student loans, my fantasies are interrupted by other random thoughts. Like, why does Gary Busey look like a child tried to draw Nick Nolte from memory? Does Gwyneth Paltrow’s origin story begin with an Afghan Hound falling into a vat of radioactive wheatgrass smoothies?
Or, the thought I wonder about most: How will my generation fare when modern society inevitably crumbles? As an older millennial (31), I feel my generation could adapt…
On one hand, elder millennials understand how things operate without the internet the way baby boomers do. We were there. We’ve seen it done. We vaguely remember real-life social interactions. We remember landlines, and Polaroids, and creeps paying extra for stamps so they could overnight their dick pics to strangers.
But on the other hand, we also understand how dependent humanity has become on technology, especially for the younger generation. Only millennials can relate to a Gen Z’ers need for tech; the addiction to the screen. The inability to sit through your grandfather’s funeral without feeling the weight of your phone in your pocket as you anxiously wonder if a Kardashian has Instagrammed another ass pic that challenges the limits of human anatomy and defies the laws of physics.
RIP, Pop-Pop.
So I guess what I’m saying is that it’s possible for millennials to survive in a world where everything we know and love has gone down the shitter. We just have to get back to our roots, but getting there might be a little jarring.
To help facilitate the transition, here is the millennial’s four-step guide to surviving the inevitable collapse of modern society:
Step 1: Collect Cash
Since life is basically eighteen years of carefree breeziness followed by forcibly restraining yourself from snapping things in half every day until you die, it may be hard for older millennials like me to remember using cash when we were little. But if you think hard enough, you may remember exchanging physical currency for goods and services.
Before Venmo, CashApp, and direct deposit, money was made from paper and metal, and featured portraits of old, white, powdery-haired women.
Who these handsome ladies were has been lost to history, but some scholars maintain many of them were integral in the Revolutionary War battle made famous by Mel Gibson, when he murdered Draco Malfoy’s dad with a hatchet and an American flag.
I’m 99% sure that’s how that went down.
That aside, all things will go back to being bought with good ol’ fashioned cash. So it might be a good idea to take a page out of the boomer playbook and begin hoarding as much of it as you can.
Step 2: Find a Journal and an Abandoned Construction Site
I don’t find pleasure in other people’s pain, BUT I would be lying if I said boomers losing their shit when they’re not seated within fifteen seconds of walking into a busy restaurant doesn’t get me harder than a diamond. Sadly, when something like that happens after modern society implodes, millennials like me won’t be able to share those gleeful moments online. Instead, we’ll have to manually write our thoughts down on paper.
This is where the journal comes in.
However, once you have your thought written down, you’ll need a way to “post” it since tweeting it is no longer an option.
This is where the abandoned construction site comes in.
Once you’ve found one, find a brick and rubber-band your handwritten thought to it. Next, hurl the brick through the window of a person you think might want to read it. All my research indicates that this is how people shared unsolicited opinions in the past. It’s not a stretch to assume this is how it will be done in the new America.
Step 3: Get a Bullhorn
Sometimes I like to envision what my life will be like in fifty years. Sitting in front of a fire on Christmas morning with my grandson on my knee. Explaining in a soft, Abe Simpson-esque voice how back in my day “TikTok” was a song by Ke$ha that his Gam-Gam would clap her booty cheeks to.
But then I have to remind myself that in fifty years, I probably wouldn’t have a voice to explain anything to my grandchildren since technology is destroying people’s vocal cords… I’ll explain.
Until recently, boomers utilized a primitive, yet effective method of manual communication using only their mouths for most of their lives. Because of this, their vocal cords are very strong. This also explains why the loudest asshole in a room at any given moment is almost always a boomer.
Unfortunately, this is not the case for Gen Z’ers. They have never known a life without technology. Everything they’ve ever needed can be ordered through an app, and as a result, their vocal cords have atrophied beyond repair. Sadly, countless Gen Z’ers will die of starvation within the first few weeks after society collapses. The sight of eager buzzards surrounding them as they wheeze at the feet of drive-thru intercoms, unable to properly articulate their orders, will become unsettlingly common.
Millennials will suffer, too, but not to the same extent. While we have adapted to a life of communicating solely through apps, we once lived in a time where talking was required. Therefore, we can adapt back. But years of neglect have left our voices very weak.
Hence, the bullhorns.
Not only will this allow millennials to be heard, but loud, harsh rasping through a bullhorn set to its highest volume will also fool boomers into thinking they are conversing with one of their own. This will be key when the time comes to pick a new leader, as boomers often refuse to listen to anyone born after 1980 regardless of how logical their ideas are.
Step 4: Never Leave Home Without a Brown Paper Lunch Bag
By the time my parents were thirty, they had:
- Careers
- Savings accounts
- A house
- Two cars
- Five kids
- Food on the table
By the time I was thirty, I had:
- Misplaced
- My pants
- At Target
- On three separate occasions
Needless to say, I’m painfully ill-equipped to handle a structure-less world, and anxiety doesn’t make that any easier. And, after studying some old Cosmo magazines in my mom’s coffee table the ancient scrolls, I discovered that people in the past didn’t have ways to let everyone know about their most recent gluten-related panic attacks.
Sadly, when modern society finally crumbles, millennials will have to revert to our ancestor’s methods of anxiety control…
The brown paper lunch bag.
Apparently, huffing into one of these puppies can help calm a person down when they’re losing their shit over trivial nonsense. I don’t understand the science myself, but I suppose in extreme situations you could always add a spritz of spray paint to liven things up.
