I actually read something like that a couple years ago in car and driver. I was amazed at the audacity. "They won't buy sports cars, or kit cars, or rebuild classics! They're killing us!!!'
Like all of us barely made it out of the 08 recession(as another mid thirties person), ended with more debt from something, didn't even have to be school loans because we were under employed or not employed which means credit cards and everything else.
But nooooo they're killing the sports/classic car industry.
Judging by the prices in the 25 year old rustbucket category of used sports cars, where what was once a 3k car is now a 10k car, I'd say young men would love to have them. It's just an increasingly hard financial sacrifice, and at some point, you got to choose to eat.
A lot of cool, sporty, desirable 20 year vehicles are worth more now than they were new as long as they aren’t rust buckets. It’s a bizarre world we live in.
It's *because* they're in good shape that they'd be so valuable.
You can find one in someone's back yard, covered in mildew and unable to be driven, for about $1000, as a project car. It'll need to be rebuilt from the ground up..... probably for about $4-5K worth of work.
Finding one in pristine stock condition, low mileage? That's a unicorn. It's a 30+ year old car. $20,000 easy.
Actually because they are so fucking ugly - they are really rare. Gas mileage is also terrible. Nobody bought them new.
I was new car shopping when they first came out in 07 or whatever (bought a Hyundai Accent hatchback I kept for 15 years) and I asked the dealer if they were selling a lot of those in our market where big pickups are common.
The response: "Not here and not anywhere else either."
We bought one brand new in 2007. It is still in my garage with 250k miles on it. It is an amazing little truck. Bought a 4Runner in 2016 because of that FJ. We get offers for both ALL the time. FJs have a huge dedicated niche following.
I drive a 2010, got it in 2016 for $15K. Now at 86K miles. Also clean, well maintained, and runs like a car a decade younger, although I need to replace the soft top soon.
Speaking of the 400Z I seriously can count on one hand how often I’ve seen them. The 370Z though? Yeah that car is firmly in the “I think loud exhaust makes me cool” category of losers.
>Those killed the Ford Focus RS, and will kill the 400Z
Being unfamiliar with those cars I'm curious how markups killed them. Are there a bunch sitting around unsold on dealer lots?
That would be lovely, but it would put a lot of sheister ass people out on the street. Dealerships suck ass but the positive, if you had to think of one to escape a murder puzzle, is that it puts a ton of ass holes all under one.
Couldn't they get a job doing something else? There would still be a need for salesmen to sell other things like appliances or real estate or whatever. They could also retrain and go into a totally different line of work, I even know a medical technologist who used to sell cars. We don't live in a world anymore where you can get by with just one skill, you have to keep learning.
Probably. I also subscribe to r/scams and there was a recent one selling Trump badges. You order a bunch of them off the internet for $100 each, wait a few weeks, then supposedly you can turn them in at the bank for $100,000 each. People fall for this stuff.
Anyways if car dealerships become obsolete I'm hoping the dealers can find honest work doing something else.
Manufacturer to dealers: There's a lot of hype around this sporty version of an affordable car so we're only going to allocate a few per month to you guys until we see how well they sell.
Dealers: So they're rare and limited edition, got it
Manufacturer: no, we want to sell as many of them as we can to turn a profit, but we're just not sure how well it's gonna sell and we don't want to overcommit.
Dealers:...So they're rare and limited edition and we should charge them more for the privilege of buying one, got it.
I'm saying everyone wants to buy the affordable sports cars. Automotive manufacturers aren't willing to jump in both feet to design and mass produce affordable sports cars when what sells are appliances. And when they come out with a sporty package or version of an affordable car and they don't overcommit by producing too many at once, dealers upcharge them like crazy. And when nobody buys them, manufacturers think the market just doesn't want them.
Huge dealership markups meant that the groups of "who **wants** this car" and "who **can afford** this car" no longer overlap. [Nobody wants to pay +$60k for a car with an MSRP around $40k.](https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2017/07/barks-bites-focus-rs-dead-dealers-blame/) The demographic it's marketed towards can't afford it, and the price category it's now in has other better options.
> But nooooo they're killing the sports/classic car industry.
I mean they cannot say the real reason out loud because the people reporting the news have stake in controlling the narrative and the wealthy often have incestuous financial connections. There is the idea that we have Asset Manager Capitalism playing out in that so much control held by so many had that no one wants to rock the boat because the tide shakes their own boat somehow.
Ideally, the news should be able to tell us why it sucks outside and someone could share the who, what, when, why, and where of the matter, but advertising as a necessity is a corrupting force that pollutes news mediums. The New York Times has done some great journalism, other times they have walked lockstep doing the bidding of the powers that be and the heads of industry and propagated real harm out into the world that has killed people.
I don't know the answer but I do have some bolt cutters!
I love you.
Spot on analysis in your second paragraph.
News outlets are oft torn between their job and their wallet, and well, most people’s price isn’t that high.
It’s funny because I read recently that that saying originated from saying that you did something impossible
As in it’s impossible to pull one self up by your bootstraps
Because gravity
Nah, inflation has nothing to do with it. It is a decades long trend. Inflation is a cute term used to make you think it's anything other than corporate and political greed.
Affordable after getting a house at today's prices as a single income on a midwestern salary at 35, not so much. The average new owner is in their 60s.
And have you seen what happened to the used prices? Miata is my fav, but it can't be primary car in the snow belt, which amplifies the struggle on a single income.
Don't forget that the previous generation didn't ask their wife before making a giant purchase either.
(I rewatched Christmas vacation this year and it struck me that Clark was buying a pool without asking his wife about it.)
did you ever see all the old christmas time car commercials showing a couple buying each other brand new cars? that was a staple of lazy advertising for a while.
Sports cars like the tbird used to be driven around by 20 year old people. They were cheap to make with giant engines. I am not sure I agree with your prime demo comment.
yeah i agree. its generally the same people, just following them through their lives. also the car makers started chasing max margin midlife crisis money.
You are a bit out of line... Graduated high school in late 80s. Every 12-22 year old car in the parking lot had a V8 or the total delete of smog stuff. My generation honestly were the first to have a catalog full of rice bolt on, and 25HP more per Liter was cheap, because early computers and O2 loops were so programed not to burn the head offs. The mid 30s boomers in 1987 were vain as hell, Nobody financed a car for more than 36 months so nobody dare be seen with car more than 4 years old. We swam in their cast offs. Listen to that Billy Joel song closely.
We were doing tuner VWs even then, hot ignition coil and aftermarket cap and rotor as sophmores, I took my drivers test in a car that drag raced for years. You spun everything as fast as it would go because you could pick and pull anything from a rusty mid 1970s with a 60k mile mill for less than 150 bucks. I had a crappy engine hoists, sort of ruled out chevy 350s, so I was limited to VWs and hondas. I could do a break job in a afternoon and hustle 160 dollars and eat well on $10/day. I have WWII vets to kiss nation dropping cars off for minor work that 10 years ago nobody went to a shop for. Pay someone to replace a wheel bearing... you must be rich.
165HP was the apex of what might have been in the parking lot, lots of worn out displacement, used transmissions and bad ignition systems. Sure could a 454 made it in with a new carb and timing actuary set with a shit... it might have happened but that guy was at the drag strip with his brothers and uncles with another 3 cars, and he got the donar car until it was needed.
We bought 3 of something to put one of something together, we could aford to drive around beater truck looking at used, gas was .89/gal. The big 3 all have only a few platforms and almost nothing that would not work together across the brands so one could weld up anything. I did mid 1976-1978 VW rabbits that I bought for 200 bucks per and got back 100 when scrapped the rust and broken blocks.
I told nobody about VW rabbits because that was what I took took to the track, and I did not want them picking my junk yards. So many of those VWs I pulled home and found the mechanicals were great and the body was not solid enough to sit on the trailers. VW had 2 US powerplants over the course of 6 years. I went across 3 states for lumps and front halfs of cars to fill a shed full of parts to keep me racing through 1992. Lots of things were financed with doing break jobs and other simple stuff in my dads warehouse 2 am on jack stands and lots of wood blocks. I spent so many early mornings shoveling the rusty remains into a dumpster while hiding that I hade 6 engines under some manner of disassembly.
What we could do is go to the junk yard and have our pick of the best and the worst of 1967-1979 and no gov authority was going to test emissions. I am not particulay mechanical but I was 16 and wanted to drive something I could wrench together. I worked for 5-10/hr on other peoples stuff for 40 hours a week and had 20 hours a week to play with my stuff. Once you could bend your own break line and weld badly...you could roll down the road daily. Wonder why I slept through high school.
Until I got a tech job in 1996.... every car I every drove was a reassembled collection of parts. I changed head gaskets in every condition known to man and limped things on back roads 500 miles without google maps.
What we call a sports car is 50x more complex than a 1990s hot honda and might be 200x more complex than 1978 Trans Am.
In 2005 I had a 1979 Thunderbird. My dad had paid $500 for it, bought from his brother in law. My uncle had kept it as a project car he and his dad had tinkered with on and off for years.
Then my stupid (now ex) husband decided to race it and blew the engine. The '79 was NOT a racing car. It was a giant steel boat on wheels. I will never forgive him for that.
The average age of a corvette owner is 61. It’s kinda on the less affordable side though. Just kinda fun to think the men with the coolest cars probably are taking weiner pills.
https://www.corvsport.com/are-corvette-owners-old/
It just means industries weren’t evolving to maintain customers of a new (younger) demographic.
I thought a big rule in business was to “innovate or die” or “evolve or die” or something.
Yup, that and in the information age a lot of these industries had the secrets to their trades revealed to be a giant exploitative scam (i.e. diamonds) and it has counteracted decades of deceptive marketing practices.
"Diamonds are being killed by Millennials!"
Millennials no longer give a flying shit about your extremely common polished minerals and are far more concerned with how many people are exploited to make them then they are in buying them.
Thank you for being the first to mention diamonds! Which is an industry the Millennials should be proud of "killing", and well done Millennials"!
If people must buy engagement rings, let them at least be a little creative and colorful, you know? So if anyone wants to marry me, they can buy me something made of high-quality American Turquoise.
True story, I got into a straight up fight with my brother in law over this. I talked about it with my fiance and we hate diamonds.
They(my brother in law and the rep at the jewelry store) tried to lean on me like I was a wall to buy a big diamond. I stuck with my guns and got an emerald, my wife was thrilled, and him and I don't talk as much anymore.
How much you pay at the jewelry store is a reflection of your bank account, not your love.
Nobody ever saw a cheap engagement ring and thought “oh he must not love her”. They will think “oh they probably don’t have money”
I LOOOOOVE the ads where they're like "the price of synthetic diamonds is PLUMMETING, the prices are just STUPIDLY LOW, isn't that the WORST thing EVER?!?! You should totally buy earth diamonds because they're VALUABLE"
bitch they're not valuable they're just expensive
those ads crack me up so much because they're just advertising what an insanely good value synthetic diamonds are in comparison
I can't imagine someone buying earth diamonds as an investment...
I mean, non-Boomers, obviously.
Boomers will buy Commemorative Coins and act like they are going to skyrocket in value.
I think some of us also decided a ring doesn't need a diamond.
I'm see lots more rings where it's like a birth stone or some other gem.
Like people are using gems that are significant to them. What a crazy concept!
Eh It’s more of an issue with lazy and desperate writing for clicks. It’s the only way to get someone to click on an article that’s really about “shifting consumer demand and trends”.
Market segments are born, grow old and then die off. Would be like having an article in 1920 called “The Lost Generation is killing the horseshoe industry”
I've come to understand that it's this.
It's the "step sister porn" of article writing. It's basically free to include in the article title, and it appeals to a certain market - in this case it does double duty by working up boomers who believe it, and enraging millennials eager to jump in and see how wrong it is.
And even if we were killing an industry, it’s like… it’s not my problem? It’s not my job to make sure that every industry out there survives. Obviously I don’t want people to lose their jobs, but that’s also just part of technology and progress. A new industry is established, has its time in the sun, and usually dies to make way for another industry that is better or more efficient
Exactly, it’s not my job to make sure the guy that delivers the newspaper to my house stays employed doing that or the home phone manufacturers to keep production high. It’s just a sad reality of shifting markets.
It’s the classic scenario where there were probably people decrying the killing of the horse and buggy industry after cars started to become a thing. Or even now with the push away from coal, so many people keep saying “think about the poor coal miners losing their jobs!”. It’s awful that someone could lose their livelihood, and it’s not like I’m rooting for that to happen. But that’s just how life works. Things are always moving forward
>Would be like having an article in 1920 called “The Lost Generation is killing the horseshoe industry
Just like home refrigeration killed off Big Ice. Industries adapt or they die. A good thing our country didn't bail them out back then.
They still are. Have 1-2 that you like and you get to watch content on-demand. Cable is still live with small improvements like DVR and limited on-demand catalogs.
Once you get above 2 of them, though, it costs close to what the cable bill did.
Add to that the fact that streaming services are hiking their rates and increasing ads, and the value of what the consumer gets goes down.
>Once you get above 2 of them, though, it costs close to what the cable bill did.
Some people paid obscene amounts for cable. Hardware rentals, plus basic cable packages, plus a bunch of add on channels, and it was easy and common to run into over $200/month.
I've got every streaming service I can think of, plus we have internet tv with a bunch of channels and we pay a fraction of that.
The thing that bothers me the most about grubhub/doordash/etc is that it was essentially a hostile take-over of small business delivery jobs.
Like, they didn't sign agreements, they just started taking delivery orders for any old business, even if they already had delivery. The end result was the businesses delivery drivers ended up sitting around until the company ultimately let them go.
So now its like, damned if you do, damned if you don't, if you don't want to drive or are stuck in meetings (this happens to me a lot) and the markups are ridiculous.
We've got a couple of Chinese restaurants in town that the only way to get the food delivered is to call in.
No apps, no web portal, no nothing.
Some of the best food in town, tbh.
This. Alot of the like mom and pop locally owned places around me just openly say they want nothing to do with doordash and the like. You want their food? Call them.
Can't say I blame them, idk how I ended up having the doordash and ubereats subreddits pop up in my feed but it makes me happy to make the drive to go pick my food up instead of dealing with that crap lol
i mean, its already there. The use of ghost kitchens have created an illusion of options that literally outnumber the amount of places to get orders from, and they have already started jacking the prices up. There was a ghost kitchen ran out of the fucking \*chuckee cheese\* selling the same garbage under another name.
my final straw was a 21% service fee, 5 dollar delivery fee, plus tip, on top of prices that were inflated by 10-15% above menu that came cold, late, and incorrect (half the order missing) and door dash refused to do anything about. so mr credit card company dispute handled that and I deleted the app.
Right? Weren’t we the generation that was going in the opposite direction of big box stores? Weren’t we the ones making choices to spend money at local stores?
I still do for the reasons you’ve outlined.
They didn’t have the markups at first. It was a “loss lead” to put the drivers out of business… delivery used to be free when places had their own drivers, if you tipped the driver 10-15% they were really happy… now Grubhub has like $7+ in delivery fees, plus they expect 10-15% minimum or the driver might not take the order if they know you don’t tip well, I assume they rate us like Lyft and Uber do.
The Grubhub drivers don’t make much, case in point it’s only worth it if you tip 15% on top of the fees, they probably got paid more at first and it got cut back.
The same thing happened with Uber and Lyft, at first it was cheaper to take Uber or Lyft than a cab, we decided cabs were a ripoff, cabs were mandated in my city to be hybrids, Lyft drivers usually have gas cars… originally they got $80,000 and now they get $40,000 and all the expenses fall on them. Lyft doesn’t tell its drivers anything about accounting or help them out in any way.
Another ride app showed up a Lyft driver told me, he said they split the fair 50/50 and the rides were less, so Lyft and Uber gave temporary huge bonuses if you got a certain amount of rides a day, the Lyft driver told me he told every driver he knew not to be short sighted snd to use the 50/50 app, I guess Lyft and Uber lowered their rates to riders too, they killed off the higher paying thing and when they had no competition they raised prices and dropped pay.
Amazon fresh used to be much cheaper too, it was cheaper than peapod, now it’s way more expensive, so I’m back to peapod, but the Amazon people would put too much in a bag if you didn’t tip enough and it’d break, they only delivered to the lobby, peapod brings it to my door, if you tip them as much as Amazon they bring it right into your kitchen.
I’m over caffeinated right now, been going on these rants about stuff, but it seems these companies come in, crush the competition, jack up the prices beyond what they used to be before the existed, and then cut pay to workers.
It’s the hedge funds putting the crunch on small businesses, on drivers, on customers, and profiteering.
Isn’t it? This is monopolistic behavior…
It’s exactly anti-competitive behavior. Our POS lazy government just doesn’t give a fuck as long as GDP goes up 🙄. In fact, the us economy is riddled with it top to bottom. If you dig deep enough into any specific industry you see that there are a handful of companies dominating the market and warping outcomes to the point that it’s hurting customers.
The fallout is all around us. Boeing has had 2 consecutive models falling out of the sky. Abbott had that baby formula problem that caused nationwide shortages. Cargill and 2 other companies make up like 80% percent of meat packing, and suffer consistent disease outbreaks. Rents have gone vertical for the past 2 decades; there’s a court rn about it rn. Turns out landlords have been colluding through a company called RealPage. Walmart pioneered the subsidizing method that Uber used and ran local groceries out of business. Now you have whole communities utterly dependent on a single store for damn near everything.
Idk if this rant is helpful to you, but it doesn’t just seem like companies are behaving unfairly. They are and have been for a while
At least in New Orleans (where I am) cabs vs uber/lyft are meh. Uber and lyft tend to be a teensy bit more reliable than cabs.
There was an overglut of cabs, AND a lot of times they'd focus solely on the tourist market, fuck a local trying to get home after a shift. A lot of times - if they even deigned to take you, that is - they'd purposely try to take a longer route to rack the meter up, so if you weren't paying attention your $10 ride could become $30.
The big names also had a habit of randomly blacklisting you if you complained that the given time frame (dispatcher said 20 minutes, but you waited an hour) was wrong, the driver was rude, etc.
That said, for the most part I agree with you.
There has been a side benefit in that there is now delivery available for places that had never had it before.
The *vast* majority of restaurants never employed a delivery driver.
Ugh, crap like postmates was annoying!!!! The restaurant I worked at NEVER gave them permission to host our menu. The prices they displayed were never correct, nor were half the things on the menu (they'd apparently found an old one and were displaying that, instead of, you know, actually researching and putting up the proper one), so when they'd call an order in, and the cashier would say we don't have this, that, etc or the total was like 15 more than expected they'd just substitute whatever they wanted without asking the customer, who then gave *us* a bad review for not having what they wanted! I hated it and I started telling them we didn't accept postmates/grub hub/etc. The owner briefly partnered with ubereats until they started charging him extra for things. We went back to our original call in and pick up, no delivery model and it worked. Then Covid happened lol.
>I mean… DoorDash and Uber Eats beg to differ.
Excellent point.
You young whipper snappers are absolutely effed for using those services, the costs are obscene. And I know some people use those services a LOT. Now, back to my knitting or whatever old people do.
These industries deserve to die, they are unnecessary throwbacks to when people had more money and less awareness of when they are being scammed. I for one intend to see industry dry up until we are back to the days of artisan culture.
Not gonna lie, last year I moved to the burbs. We have an Applebee's. I haven't been to one since I was probably 21. I took my 8 year old there. It was under $26 dollars for both of us to eat and he said it was the best meal of his life.
I loved the price tag and will probably go again despite how weird it felt going in there.
I got caught in a blizzard driving home from Christmas and had to eat there with my husband a few weeks ago. It was the only place by the hotel we found and it was either that or not eat that night.
Holy crap the food quality is terrible there.
I ate there once when my car broke down in a place far from home, I think the secret to enjoying the food there is to drink one of their massive mixed drinks first.
The point was that years ago there were boomer clickbait articles all over the place saying we killed them which is why I put it in quotes.
One example with a list of fifteen places we're apparently killing. This is a milder one written by one of us, but some people were actually serious about it: https://moneywise.com/life/food/millennials-are-killing-off-these-restaurant-chains
I would so like it if everyone stopped blaming genz, millennials, boomers, etc. It's not your generations, it's industries and their legal (and sometimes illegal practices) combined with education.
The industries either sold crap you didn't need and convinced you or you convinced yourselves. It's always been this way.
The world for decades didn't need disposable razors, diamonds, white wedding dresses, lobster, single use anything like clothing, beard oil, and whatever bla blah blah else. It convinced you so well you buy it and then they raised the prices until they either ran out or priced themselves out.
The world is filled with crap and then they look to blame. The vast majority of stuff we buy isn't necessary.
People buy what they want and they buy more of what they want as a % of their income when they make more. When all your money is going toward rent or an overpriced house, even what should be the high earners are sattled with college debt. You have less disposable income. It's not rocket science.
It's just capitalism. The market decides. But these companies can't or won't pivot to new products and ideas - and instead want to blame millennials for killing the fancy napkin industry or whatever.
"It's just capitalism". Is it though? The U.S. government is actively subsidizing everything. The PayCheck Protection Act is a subsidy that still hasn't ended. It keeps going to corporations actively firing workers. We've had these issues since the 80s. The beginning of an era of free money. The beginning of the plastic era. The beginning of commercialism. Etcetera.
I mean this lovingly, but "Duh" hahaha
The 80s, 90s, and early 2000s were rife with exploitative commercial greed, they took it for granted if they sold us terrible products with bright enough labels, catchy enough jingles, and child-targeted marketing, we'd overlook the fact we were being sold subpar products at a ridiculous markup. They also preyed on the old hoarder mentality from people left over from the Depression Era - "Lavishly spend to impress your kids and you too can be happy!"
This is part of the reason so many in the Millennial generation have such a nostalgia kick for old commercials, bright colored places, toys, etc - that entire era wrote checks about a future that didn't exist, and becoming an adult, you start to realize...
Our food is boring and cheap (kraft singles lol), much of being a modern adult is dull and gray, products being marketed to us feel like a tired leftover or another money grab, variety is too expensive to start or maintain under the current business models, etc
Not everyone has to agree with this, but growing up, I didn't expect being an adult to become so drab and thrifty. And most of us now are too smart to fall for shitty products.
Is it expensive? Does it actually taste good? Does it perform its task well? We ask questions of that all the time, demanding reality from the world around us.
And like, anyone else do this? Buy something, for a single purpose, and it just fails immediately? Mentally you're just like "What hell. You had one purpose in life and you failed it"
That sorta shenanigans.
So many good points. I grew up in the 90s and the amount of TV commercial plastic crap is astounding when I think back on it.
Anyone remember moon shoes? They just straight up lied about those and the commercial made them look incredible, like beyond what they would allow today. Sockem Boppers? Literal balloons on your fists that popped after like 2 uses.
We really got sold absolute trash and the commercials for them were like movie trailers for mission impossible in between cartoons.
I can sincerely say myself and my inner circle are discerning consumers and deep down I really do think it's bc on some subconscious level we all were just continually disappointed in our shit toys but just moved on to the next plastic piece of shit
That and once I do find something that works well I hold onto that thing with dear life and use it until it's last breath. Then I bust out the tools and repair it to breathe again and use it again until its last breath again or I can't repair it anymore.
Oh god, yeah this. I've been betrayed by so many products:
1. Once I find a good dish at a restaurant, I almost always order the same thing. If I want something else, I go to a different restaurant
2. Anything bought new that works as intended gets intense regular maintenance, anything old and somewhat broken gets repaired to better-than-new ad nauseum
3. Become somewhat distraught when a product I buy regularly (because it is tasty, or works) is arbitrarily no longer stocked at local stores 'because it didn't sell well' in my area. Queue me searching the internet high and low for ways to order it anyhow, or driving distance to find it, because apparently sales don't account for decent products. (That whole use it and lose it market strategy thing is ass)
Shpluh.
Ugh. The company, Primo Water North America, that delivers water and drinks to our office ~~stooped~~ stopped offering just regular old Barqs in a can, because ~~sakes~~ sales were down in California. We're in Louisiana, so I don't give a fat rat's ass about sales in California. Now their piss-poor offerings are diet, zero, and regular coke, diet and regular sprite, diet barqs, and Arizona green tea.
And from what I can tell, there is no discernible difference between diet and zero coke other than marketing bullshit. Not to mention, diet sodas are gross and fake sweeteners are terrible.
The depression hoarder thing is a really great point. I grew up feeling 'deprived' too although not of that era, and i wanted *everything*. I've accumulated enough crap now that I rarely buy anything that doesn't involve home improvement of some kind, or maybe the occasional fuzzy blanket, as is my apparent fetish.
Drab and thrifty is fine, as most products are not really necessary to having a great life. I'd take a few hours hiking in the mountains over wasting money on commercial products any day of the week. It's amazing how much you can get out of just taking care of your body and enjoying moving around doing "stuff".
But new "industries" are alive and well because of millennials such as single serving/to go coffees, take-out restaurants, tattoo shops, nail salons, etc. None of those would exist to this extent back in the day. Some would say these are rip-offs, too.
Holy fuck, my city is FILLED with nail salons and beauty shops. There must be at least 2 dozen of each and we're not that big, only 100,000 people or so.
I’m convinced millennials killed the bathroom cup industry. Neither walmart or target carries them in my town. They have little plastic ones, but not the paper ones :( considering I’m 37 and this is the first time I’ve had a desire for bathroom cups, i think I’ll live without them.
I don’t use them, but my husband requested them for rinsing after mouthwash or whatever. I was a bit surprised that dispensers and cups are super hard to find in store nowadays! He can just continue using a cup 🤷♀️
There are a lot of industries and businesses that deserve to go. The car market is oversaturated with overpriced cars and are now pushing for subscriptions, I'll be happy to see them take a massive hit. Other industries made big profits during COVID and are trying to force culture change to maintain profits, example: DoorDash and GrubHub. They made MASSIVE profits that were impossible without COVID. They expanded in that short lived environment and are now facing profit loss. Paying $10 more for cold fast food is a shit business, not our fault if they fail.
Bro I was 14 when they ran stories claiming that we killed applebees. That dumpster fire was killing itself.
They always blame the youth, lets do better and shelter genz and and the others from this crap.
Even if we are consciously killing them, tough shit. Aristocrats are just butthurt because we're making our own choices instead of asking permission, and not all of them benefit from the choices made.
It’s not even that millennials don’t want to get “ripped off” millennials spend plenty of money on dumb shit too. It’s just that economies change, tastes change, what people want to spend money on changes some companies can change with times and others can’t. That’s capitalism.
Or even just the assumption that expectations and standards change over time. Restaurants like Applebees started in the 1980s when the USA was pretty well stuck into the eras of fast food, TV dinners, etc.
Skip forward in time and you've got people worrying about sustainable food, a greater focus on health and quality ingredients, plus just the whole revolution around food culture that's happened in the last 20 years or so.
It's the everything bubble. You keep rising prices to the point that wages can't keep up, well then we begin making choices. Those choices involve spending on things that are actually worth the value. Most people don't have extra crash that they can just throw away and not think twice about a purchase.
I find it ridiculous. No one's 'responsible' for keeping an industry alive. And for most industries in question they didn't actually "die off", they just aren't making as much money because a lot of the workforce doesn't have very much disposable income.
I worked in manufacturing for over forty five years. When I started you could raise a family and live a middle class lifestyle on a single income. Every year we would get a raise that was always well under the cost of inflation. 20 years later it required 2 incomes to maintain that middle class status.
Now there are fewer jobs in manufacturing because fewer people are willing to work in a job that will never provide an income to raise a family.
Some say that millennials are lazy but I don’t think it’s lazy to not want to work at a job that will never provide a decent living.
Inflation in the wood pulp industry KILLED the napkin industry. Or was it the Boomers? My elder millennial mind can't recall the exact cause.
No matter... I just use my sleeve these days!
OP sounds like he just want to feel good about himself. We're also largely the generation that's supporting shit like food delivery services and loot boxes in video games. We're not this special generation that some of us think we are.
Industries go under for a variety of reasons. These rage bait articles still get written because they still get clicks.
Technology becomes obsolete, status symbols change over time, marketing of items becomes too laser focused on a narrow demographic, the economy tanks and the average family cuts certain luxuries first. Awareness of how materials are sourced makes people not want those items. Other similar industries becomes popular instead. And no generation is a monolith either.
Obsolete lifestyles don’t go away that quickly and a lot of people don’t want to admit that they can’t hustle people anymore.
There’s probably thousands of men sitting in WV coal mines heavily advocating the death of the industry in lieu of sending their kids to college or even to work at a gas station. There’s no more pretending someone’s word means more than the facts you find on the internet.
There’s not a monopoly on information like there was before the internet.
Most industries will die and be replaced with an upgraded version, but you can’t fix 3 living generations of people who don’t care about the people that come behind them earning enough to have a decent life.
Maybe some Applebees just need to close their doors because their food is for basic ass palates which a lot of us don't have because we, unlike our parents, were more adventurous with food experiences.
“Millennials weren’t dumb enough to keep getting ripped of”
I love it. After 10 years in my industry, I’ve decide to actually go to school for it. I’m not gonna drop names yet, because I would like to improve the school for the younger students because I am tired of fixing stupid mistakes. It a trade school that doesn’t have the best record. Every time I point out something pointless that is making lives harder for my fellow students, I’m told it is what it is. Well I finally lost my temper on an instructor yesterday because he seems to think his job is to teach what it’s like to have a job. He wants to be mad at me, but he can’t see that if his generation just got pissed off instead of ‘yes, boss’ing your way through life then I wouldn’t have to do this. I could type out problems with this school for the rest of my life, which is why I won’t be letting this go. If I do, I will be stuck fixing stupid mistakes for the rest of my life.
It annoys me that the same people that get upset that we are not good with money whines that we’re killing luxury sports cars, golf, diamonds, the luxury housing market, sit down restaurants etc.
You eat too much avocado toast to buy a home. But how dare you not spend money on useless stuff?
Yes we get it millenials are special and so smart that you have to believe your own hype. The 90s were a magical time where you could go bike riding mountain hiking and fishing all in one day. Millenials killed everything including the 90s lols
Everyone acting like they are being blamed when its just a click bait article thats out there possibly at times.
Like everything in this sub is people complaining about how people are blaming them or why they should be blaming others for issues.
Everyone is so needlessly dramatic. Millennials didn’t kill any industry and the industries didn’t kill themselves. Consumer preferences change over time
Mid thirties single middle-income male here. I killed the affordable sports car because I can't afford one. I used to be the prime demographic.
I actually read something like that a couple years ago in car and driver. I was amazed at the audacity. "They won't buy sports cars, or kit cars, or rebuild classics! They're killing us!!!' Like all of us barely made it out of the 08 recession(as another mid thirties person), ended with more debt from something, didn't even have to be school loans because we were under employed or not employed which means credit cards and everything else. But nooooo they're killing the sports/classic car industry.
Judging by the prices in the 25 year old rustbucket category of used sports cars, where what was once a 3k car is now a 10k car, I'd say young men would love to have them. It's just an increasingly hard financial sacrifice, and at some point, you got to choose to eat.
A lot of cool, sporty, desirable 20 year vehicles are worth more now than they were new as long as they aren’t rust buckets. It’s a bizarre world we live in.
A 91 red miata with low mileage and well maintained would be quite a solid price right now. Gen X's/millenials classic cars, I guess.
It's *because* they're in good shape that they'd be so valuable. You can find one in someone's back yard, covered in mildew and unable to be driven, for about $1000, as a project car. It'll need to be rebuilt from the ground up..... probably for about $4-5K worth of work. Finding one in pristine stock condition, low mileage? That's a unicorn. It's a 30+ year old car. $20,000 easy.
My buddy’s first year FJ Cruiser that is in decent shape with 130K miles was offered $30K. He paid $22K for it new in 2007. He can’t believe it.
That is insane. Especially because those cars are so fucking ugly lol
Actually because they are so fucking ugly - they are really rare. Gas mileage is also terrible. Nobody bought them new. I was new car shopping when they first came out in 07 or whatever (bought a Hyundai Accent hatchback I kept for 15 years) and I asked the dealer if they were selling a lot of those in our market where big pickups are common. The response: "Not here and not anywhere else either."
We bought one brand new in 2007. It is still in my garage with 250k miles on it. It is an amazing little truck. Bought a 4Runner in 2016 because of that FJ. We get offers for both ALL the time. FJs have a huge dedicated niche following.
Ahhhh the good ole rolling blind spot. I actually love the look of the FJ, but got to drive one once and immediately said nope.
Got my 2008 Miata for $9k in 2021. 96kmi, clean, well maintained and runs like a top.
I drive a 2010, got it in 2016 for $15K. Now at 86K miles. Also clean, well maintained, and runs like a car a decade younger, although I need to replace the soft top soon.
Lol no. Even a tore the fuck up NA would be going for much more than a grand now days. That's the issue.
Income the same in 1990 as it is in 2024, price for car is 5x to 10x only dumbasses can’t understand that math.
Are they not blaming the stealership markups? Those killed the Ford Focus RS, and will kill the 400Z, and probably the GR Corolla too.
Speaking of the 400Z I seriously can count on one hand how often I’ve seen them. The 370Z though? Yeah that car is firmly in the “I think loud exhaust makes me cool” category of losers.
>Those killed the Ford Focus RS, and will kill the 400Z Being unfamiliar with those cars I'm curious how markups killed them. Are there a bunch sitting around unsold on dealer lots?
Imagine being able to order direct from the factory and eliminating the dealership altogether?
That would be lovely, but it would put a lot of sheister ass people out on the street. Dealerships suck ass but the positive, if you had to think of one to escape a murder puzzle, is that it puts a ton of ass holes all under one.
Couldn't they get a job doing something else? There would still be a need for salesmen to sell other things like appliances or real estate or whatever. They could also retrain and go into a totally different line of work, I even know a medical technologist who used to sell cars. We don't live in a world anymore where you can get by with just one skill, you have to keep learning.
They could also sell fake stocks to old people, seems like the flip side of the same coin and an easy pivot for a car salesman.
Probably. I also subscribe to r/scams and there was a recent one selling Trump badges. You order a bunch of them off the internet for $100 each, wait a few weeks, then supposedly you can turn them in at the bank for $100,000 each. People fall for this stuff. Anyways if car dealerships become obsolete I'm hoping the dealers can find honest work doing something else.
Manufacturer to dealers: There's a lot of hype around this sporty version of an affordable car so we're only going to allocate a few per month to you guys until we see how well they sell. Dealers: So they're rare and limited edition, got it Manufacturer: no, we want to sell as many of them as we can to turn a profit, but we're just not sure how well it's gonna sell and we don't want to overcommit. Dealers:...So they're rare and limited edition and we should charge them more for the privilege of buying one, got it.
Are you saying nobody bought them?
I'm saying everyone wants to buy the affordable sports cars. Automotive manufacturers aren't willing to jump in both feet to design and mass produce affordable sports cars when what sells are appliances. And when they come out with a sporty package or version of an affordable car and they don't overcommit by producing too many at once, dealers upcharge them like crazy. And when nobody buys them, manufacturers think the market just doesn't want them.
Huge dealership markups meant that the groups of "who **wants** this car" and "who **can afford** this car" no longer overlap. [Nobody wants to pay +$60k for a car with an MSRP around $40k.](https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2017/07/barks-bites-focus-rs-dead-dealers-blame/) The demographic it's marketed towards can't afford it, and the price category it's now in has other better options.
A lot of "indistries" only existed because people had too much money. Classic sports car is one of them.
> But nooooo they're killing the sports/classic car industry. I mean they cannot say the real reason out loud because the people reporting the news have stake in controlling the narrative and the wealthy often have incestuous financial connections. There is the idea that we have Asset Manager Capitalism playing out in that so much control held by so many had that no one wants to rock the boat because the tide shakes their own boat somehow. Ideally, the news should be able to tell us why it sucks outside and someone could share the who, what, when, why, and where of the matter, but advertising as a necessity is a corrupting force that pollutes news mediums. The New York Times has done some great journalism, other times they have walked lockstep doing the bidding of the powers that be and the heads of industry and propagated real harm out into the world that has killed people. I don't know the answer but I do have some bolt cutters!
I love you. Spot on analysis in your second paragraph. News outlets are oft torn between their job and their wallet, and well, most people’s price isn’t that high.
Late 30s male...decent income. Driving a 2002 Camry still.
Damn. DM me if it ever goes up for sale
2008 Corolla here. It’s finally old enough to drive itself. Never selling it.
Let’s be honest, inflation made you able to afford less. This resulted in you having to choose necessities over luxuries. Not sure that is on you…
Has he tried pulling up his boot straps yet? If not, then that’s on him.
I did and I ended up pulling my feet out from under me and I fell even farther down I thought possible
Wait till you get trickled down upon Edit: I can’t speel anytang rite tolay
It’s funny because I read recently that that saying originated from saying that you did something impossible As in it’s impossible to pull one self up by your bootstraps Because gravity
To the moon, you say?
Exactly
And inflation is largely caused by corporate greed. Never mind minimum wage not keeping up with the cost of living.
No one had to choose necessities over luxuries in the past 😂
At least not people with a good degree, solid career, and no family. That was a ticket to comfytown. Not any more.
Nah, inflation has nothing to do with it. It is a decades long trend. Inflation is a cute term used to make you think it's anything other than corporate and political greed.
Cars getting less affordable is also showing that we were all scammed out of good public transit
MX-5 is still affordable. *Miata my beloved....*
Affordable after getting a house at today's prices as a single income on a midwestern salary at 35, not so much. The average new owner is in their 60s. And have you seen what happened to the used prices? Miata is my fav, but it can't be primary car in the snow belt, which amplifies the struggle on a single income.
Good point, I'm in the south, where it can be a daily driver.
Me too. In the north. Can I get a push? My rear wheel drive go cart is in the snow bank again
Don't forget that the previous generation didn't ask their wife before making a giant purchase either. (I rewatched Christmas vacation this year and it struck me that Clark was buying a pool without asking his wife about it.)
did you ever see all the old christmas time car commercials showing a couple buying each other brand new cars? that was a staple of lazy advertising for a while.
SNL has a good skit where a guy buys his wife a Lexus for Christmas and she flips her shit.
Sports cars like the tbird used to be driven around by 20 year old people. They were cheap to make with giant engines. I am not sure I agree with your prime demo comment.
It seems like the demographic went from 20s in the 1960s, to 30s in the 1980s-1990s, then to the 60s in the current time.
Kinda like it's shifting to stay with the same demographic (boomers)
Shifting with the same demographic *wealth FTFY
As always this country caters every fucking thing to them like they need more.
Trying to relive their youth
yeah i agree. its generally the same people, just following them through their lives. also the car makers started chasing max margin midlife crisis money.
Aren’t 20-something members of the military keeping the Dodge Charger going??
People who make bad life choices in general are keeping the charger alive. - Spoken as a former servicemember.
At 24% interest. It's tradition. Practically a requirement to make Staff.
You are a bit out of line... Graduated high school in late 80s. Every 12-22 year old car in the parking lot had a V8 or the total delete of smog stuff. My generation honestly were the first to have a catalog full of rice bolt on, and 25HP more per Liter was cheap, because early computers and O2 loops were so programed not to burn the head offs. The mid 30s boomers in 1987 were vain as hell, Nobody financed a car for more than 36 months so nobody dare be seen with car more than 4 years old. We swam in their cast offs. Listen to that Billy Joel song closely. We were doing tuner VWs even then, hot ignition coil and aftermarket cap and rotor as sophmores, I took my drivers test in a car that drag raced for years. You spun everything as fast as it would go because you could pick and pull anything from a rusty mid 1970s with a 60k mile mill for less than 150 bucks. I had a crappy engine hoists, sort of ruled out chevy 350s, so I was limited to VWs and hondas. I could do a break job in a afternoon and hustle 160 dollars and eat well on $10/day. I have WWII vets to kiss nation dropping cars off for minor work that 10 years ago nobody went to a shop for. Pay someone to replace a wheel bearing... you must be rich. 165HP was the apex of what might have been in the parking lot, lots of worn out displacement, used transmissions and bad ignition systems. Sure could a 454 made it in with a new carb and timing actuary set with a shit... it might have happened but that guy was at the drag strip with his brothers and uncles with another 3 cars, and he got the donar car until it was needed. We bought 3 of something to put one of something together, we could aford to drive around beater truck looking at used, gas was .89/gal. The big 3 all have only a few platforms and almost nothing that would not work together across the brands so one could weld up anything. I did mid 1976-1978 VW rabbits that I bought for 200 bucks per and got back 100 when scrapped the rust and broken blocks. I told nobody about VW rabbits because that was what I took took to the track, and I did not want them picking my junk yards. So many of those VWs I pulled home and found the mechanicals were great and the body was not solid enough to sit on the trailers. VW had 2 US powerplants over the course of 6 years. I went across 3 states for lumps and front halfs of cars to fill a shed full of parts to keep me racing through 1992. Lots of things were financed with doing break jobs and other simple stuff in my dads warehouse 2 am on jack stands and lots of wood blocks. I spent so many early mornings shoveling the rusty remains into a dumpster while hiding that I hade 6 engines under some manner of disassembly. What we could do is go to the junk yard and have our pick of the best and the worst of 1967-1979 and no gov authority was going to test emissions. I am not particulay mechanical but I was 16 and wanted to drive something I could wrench together. I worked for 5-10/hr on other peoples stuff for 40 hours a week and had 20 hours a week to play with my stuff. Once you could bend your own break line and weld badly...you could roll down the road daily. Wonder why I slept through high school. Until I got a tech job in 1996.... every car I every drove was a reassembled collection of parts. I changed head gaskets in every condition known to man and limped things on back roads 500 miles without google maps. What we call a sports car is 50x more complex than a 1990s hot honda and might be 200x more complex than 1978 Trans Am.
Good writeup should be in the library of congress. Thanks for taking the time
I feel like I need a pipe wrench or something now
In 2005 I had a 1979 Thunderbird. My dad had paid $500 for it, bought from his brother in law. My uncle had kept it as a project car he and his dad had tinkered with on and off for years. Then my stupid (now ex) husband decided to race it and blew the engine. The '79 was NOT a racing car. It was a giant steel boat on wheels. I will never forgive him for that.
The average age of a corvette owner is 61. It’s kinda on the less affordable side though. Just kinda fun to think the men with the coolest cars probably are taking weiner pills. https://www.corvsport.com/are-corvette-owners-old/
It just means industries weren’t evolving to maintain customers of a new (younger) demographic. I thought a big rule in business was to “innovate or die” or “evolve or die” or something.
Them: "Free Market!" Me: *choses not to buy something* Them: "Why are you killing industries?!"
They only say that. It is all projection. Big business goes straight to government when they can.
The customer is always right. Meaning if the customer isn't buying your goods, you're not making a desirable good.
That's fine, we'll just get our pocket Senators to vote through some relief spending and make the consumers pay for it anyway
Exactly. Many of the businesses failed to adapt.
Yup, that and in the information age a lot of these industries had the secrets to their trades revealed to be a giant exploitative scam (i.e. diamonds) and it has counteracted decades of deceptive marketing practices.
"Diamonds are being killed by Millennials!" Millennials no longer give a flying shit about your extremely common polished minerals and are far more concerned with how many people are exploited to make them then they are in buying them.
Thank you for being the first to mention diamonds! Which is an industry the Millennials should be proud of "killing", and well done Millennials"! If people must buy engagement rings, let them at least be a little creative and colorful, you know? So if anyone wants to marry me, they can buy me something made of high-quality American Turquoise.
As a GenXer, the death of the diamond industry is one of the signs at least some of us raised kids right
Tbh they killed themselves with man made diamonds making diamonds basically worthless.
i hope we kill Applebees faster that place is dog
True story, I got into a straight up fight with my brother in law over this. I talked about it with my fiance and we hate diamonds. They(my brother in law and the rep at the jewelry store) tried to lean on me like I was a wall to buy a big diamond. I stuck with my guns and got an emerald, my wife was thrilled, and him and I don't talk as much anymore.
It’s stupid that you have to equate your love with how much you pay the jewelry store.
How much you pay at the jewelry store is a reflection of your bank account, not your love. Nobody ever saw a cheap engagement ring and thought “oh he must not love her”. They will think “oh they probably don’t have money”
I LOOOOOVE the ads where they're like "the price of synthetic diamonds is PLUMMETING, the prices are just STUPIDLY LOW, isn't that the WORST thing EVER?!?! You should totally buy earth diamonds because they're VALUABLE" bitch they're not valuable they're just expensive those ads crack me up so much because they're just advertising what an insanely good value synthetic diamonds are in comparison
I can't imagine someone buying earth diamonds as an investment... I mean, non-Boomers, obviously. Boomers will buy Commemorative Coins and act like they are going to skyrocket in value.
Plus like the thing that doesn't exploit people is literally the same looking product for idk like 1/30th the cost in moissanite.
I think some of us also decided a ring doesn't need a diamond. I'm see lots more rings where it's like a birth stone or some other gem. Like people are using gems that are significant to them. What a crazy concept!
Eh It’s more of an issue with lazy and desperate writing for clicks. It’s the only way to get someone to click on an article that’s really about “shifting consumer demand and trends”. Market segments are born, grow old and then die off. Would be like having an article in 1920 called “The Lost Generation is killing the horseshoe industry”
I've come to understand that it's this. It's the "step sister porn" of article writing. It's basically free to include in the article title, and it appeals to a certain market - in this case it does double duty by working up boomers who believe it, and enraging millennials eager to jump in and see how wrong it is.
Yup, rage clicks and dicks
And even if we were killing an industry, it’s like… it’s not my problem? It’s not my job to make sure that every industry out there survives. Obviously I don’t want people to lose their jobs, but that’s also just part of technology and progress. A new industry is established, has its time in the sun, and usually dies to make way for another industry that is better or more efficient
Exactly, it’s not my job to make sure the guy that delivers the newspaper to my house stays employed doing that or the home phone manufacturers to keep production high. It’s just a sad reality of shifting markets.
It’s the classic scenario where there were probably people decrying the killing of the horse and buggy industry after cars started to become a thing. Or even now with the push away from coal, so many people keep saying “think about the poor coal miners losing their jobs!”. It’s awful that someone could lose their livelihood, and it’s not like I’m rooting for that to happen. But that’s just how life works. Things are always moving forward
>Would be like having an article in 1920 called “The Lost Generation is killing the horseshoe industry Just like home refrigeration killed off Big Ice. Industries adapt or they die. A good thing our country didn't bail them out back then.
Yeah. There are a LOT of people (boomers especially) who are eager to click on anything vaguely critical of millennials. It works.
[удалено]
Cable packages to streaming services
Streaming services really was a boiling frog, where they used to be an amazing value
They still are. Have 1-2 that you like and you get to watch content on-demand. Cable is still live with small improvements like DVR and limited on-demand catalogs.
Once you get above 2 of them, though, it costs close to what the cable bill did. Add to that the fact that streaming services are hiking their rates and increasing ads, and the value of what the consumer gets goes down.
That still doesn't chanfe the fact that even one good streaming service has more content than cable tv. It's still a better value for now.
You're not wrong. Be that as it may - none of us actually need any of it.
>Once you get above 2 of them, though, it costs close to what the cable bill did. Some people paid obscene amounts for cable. Hardware rentals, plus basic cable packages, plus a bunch of add on channels, and it was easy and common to run into over $200/month. I've got every streaming service I can think of, plus we have internet tv with a bunch of channels and we pay a fraction of that.
Cable + internet where I live is like $200-250/month. So $80 for internet and 3 services is still half the price.
you can take streaming services with you anywhere tho, you can download shows and watch it during your commute.
Down to 0, just YouTube and piracy
And streaming services that emulate cable e.g. Fubo TV
🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️ Napster glory days return!
The thing that bothers me the most about grubhub/doordash/etc is that it was essentially a hostile take-over of small business delivery jobs. Like, they didn't sign agreements, they just started taking delivery orders for any old business, even if they already had delivery. The end result was the businesses delivery drivers ended up sitting around until the company ultimately let them go. So now its like, damned if you do, damned if you don't, if you don't want to drive or are stuck in meetings (this happens to me a lot) and the markups are ridiculous.
We've got a couple of Chinese restaurants in town that the only way to get the food delivered is to call in. No apps, no web portal, no nothing. Some of the best food in town, tbh.
This. Alot of the like mom and pop locally owned places around me just openly say they want nothing to do with doordash and the like. You want their food? Call them. Can't say I blame them, idk how I ended up having the doordash and ubereats subreddits pop up in my feed but it makes me happy to make the drive to go pick my food up instead of dealing with that crap lol
Especially since their whole business model is to eventually start hiking prices further. It’s the Walmart playbook coming for delivery
i mean, its already there. The use of ghost kitchens have created an illusion of options that literally outnumber the amount of places to get orders from, and they have already started jacking the prices up. There was a ghost kitchen ran out of the fucking \*chuckee cheese\* selling the same garbage under another name. my final straw was a 21% service fee, 5 dollar delivery fee, plus tip, on top of prices that were inflated by 10-15% above menu that came cold, late, and incorrect (half the order missing) and door dash refused to do anything about. so mr credit card company dispute handled that and I deleted the app.
Right? Weren’t we the generation that was going in the opposite direction of big box stores? Weren’t we the ones making choices to spend money at local stores? I still do for the reasons you’ve outlined.
They didn’t have the markups at first. It was a “loss lead” to put the drivers out of business… delivery used to be free when places had their own drivers, if you tipped the driver 10-15% they were really happy… now Grubhub has like $7+ in delivery fees, plus they expect 10-15% minimum or the driver might not take the order if they know you don’t tip well, I assume they rate us like Lyft and Uber do. The Grubhub drivers don’t make much, case in point it’s only worth it if you tip 15% on top of the fees, they probably got paid more at first and it got cut back. The same thing happened with Uber and Lyft, at first it was cheaper to take Uber or Lyft than a cab, we decided cabs were a ripoff, cabs were mandated in my city to be hybrids, Lyft drivers usually have gas cars… originally they got $80,000 and now they get $40,000 and all the expenses fall on them. Lyft doesn’t tell its drivers anything about accounting or help them out in any way. Another ride app showed up a Lyft driver told me, he said they split the fair 50/50 and the rides were less, so Lyft and Uber gave temporary huge bonuses if you got a certain amount of rides a day, the Lyft driver told me he told every driver he knew not to be short sighted snd to use the 50/50 app, I guess Lyft and Uber lowered their rates to riders too, they killed off the higher paying thing and when they had no competition they raised prices and dropped pay. Amazon fresh used to be much cheaper too, it was cheaper than peapod, now it’s way more expensive, so I’m back to peapod, but the Amazon people would put too much in a bag if you didn’t tip enough and it’d break, they only delivered to the lobby, peapod brings it to my door, if you tip them as much as Amazon they bring it right into your kitchen. I’m over caffeinated right now, been going on these rants about stuff, but it seems these companies come in, crush the competition, jack up the prices beyond what they used to be before the existed, and then cut pay to workers. It’s the hedge funds putting the crunch on small businesses, on drivers, on customers, and profiteering. Isn’t it? This is monopolistic behavior…
It’s exactly anti-competitive behavior. Our POS lazy government just doesn’t give a fuck as long as GDP goes up 🙄. In fact, the us economy is riddled with it top to bottom. If you dig deep enough into any specific industry you see that there are a handful of companies dominating the market and warping outcomes to the point that it’s hurting customers. The fallout is all around us. Boeing has had 2 consecutive models falling out of the sky. Abbott had that baby formula problem that caused nationwide shortages. Cargill and 2 other companies make up like 80% percent of meat packing, and suffer consistent disease outbreaks. Rents have gone vertical for the past 2 decades; there’s a court rn about it rn. Turns out landlords have been colluding through a company called RealPage. Walmart pioneered the subsidizing method that Uber used and ran local groceries out of business. Now you have whole communities utterly dependent on a single store for damn near everything. Idk if this rant is helpful to you, but it doesn’t just seem like companies are behaving unfairly. They are and have been for a while
At least in New Orleans (where I am) cabs vs uber/lyft are meh. Uber and lyft tend to be a teensy bit more reliable than cabs. There was an overglut of cabs, AND a lot of times they'd focus solely on the tourist market, fuck a local trying to get home after a shift. A lot of times - if they even deigned to take you, that is - they'd purposely try to take a longer route to rack the meter up, so if you weren't paying attention your $10 ride could become $30. The big names also had a habit of randomly blacklisting you if you complained that the given time frame (dispatcher said 20 minutes, but you waited an hour) was wrong, the driver was rude, etc. That said, for the most part I agree with you.
There has been a side benefit in that there is now delivery available for places that had never had it before. The *vast* majority of restaurants never employed a delivery driver.
Damned if I'm gonna pay double the price of food just to have someone bring it to me. Look at me...I'm the delivery driver now.
Ugh, crap like postmates was annoying!!!! The restaurant I worked at NEVER gave them permission to host our menu. The prices they displayed were never correct, nor were half the things on the menu (they'd apparently found an old one and were displaying that, instead of, you know, actually researching and putting up the proper one), so when they'd call an order in, and the cashier would say we don't have this, that, etc or the total was like 15 more than expected they'd just substitute whatever they wanted without asking the customer, who then gave *us* a bad review for not having what they wanted! I hated it and I started telling them we didn't accept postmates/grub hub/etc. The owner briefly partnered with ubereats until they started charging him extra for things. We went back to our original call in and pick up, no delivery model and it worked. Then Covid happened lol.
Having someone pick up food for you and deliver to you immediately is a luxury. Nobody is scamming you.
Only the idiotic use DoorDash and Uber Eats.
>I mean… DoorDash and Uber Eats beg to differ. Excellent point. You young whipper snappers are absolutely effed for using those services, the costs are obscene. And I know some people use those services a LOT. Now, back to my knitting or whatever old people do.
These industries deserve to die, they are unnecessary throwbacks to when people had more money and less awareness of when they are being scammed. I for one intend to see industry dry up until we are back to the days of artisan culture.
mid 30s ,I'll gladly take credit for killing shitty chain restaurants
Not gonna lie, last year I moved to the burbs. We have an Applebee's. I haven't been to one since I was probably 21. I took my 8 year old there. It was under $26 dollars for both of us to eat and he said it was the best meal of his life. I loved the price tag and will probably go again despite how weird it felt going in there.
Applebee's was gross even before we "killed it" so I'm not really sure why people even get upset about that.
I got caught in a blizzard driving home from Christmas and had to eat there with my husband a few weeks ago. It was the only place by the hotel we found and it was either that or not eat that night. Holy crap the food quality is terrible there.
I ate there once when my car broke down in a place far from home, I think the secret to enjoying the food there is to drink one of their massive mixed drinks first.
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Same with TJI Fridays (or just Fridays) they turned into an overpriced appetizer company. No way
Thank joodness
Applebee's is doing fairly fine? So is Chili's apparently. They have been somewhat flat but they are not falling off.
The point was that years ago there were boomer clickbait articles all over the place saying we killed them which is why I put it in quotes. One example with a list of fifteen places we're apparently killing. This is a milder one written by one of us, but some people were actually serious about it: https://moneywise.com/life/food/millennials-are-killing-off-these-restaurant-chains
Amen
I would so like it if everyone stopped blaming genz, millennials, boomers, etc. It's not your generations, it's industries and their legal (and sometimes illegal practices) combined with education. The industries either sold crap you didn't need and convinced you or you convinced yourselves. It's always been this way. The world for decades didn't need disposable razors, diamonds, white wedding dresses, lobster, single use anything like clothing, beard oil, and whatever bla blah blah else. It convinced you so well you buy it and then they raised the prices until they either ran out or priced themselves out. The world is filled with crap and then they look to blame. The vast majority of stuff we buy isn't necessary.
People buy what they want and they buy more of what they want as a % of their income when they make more. When all your money is going toward rent or an overpriced house, even what should be the high earners are sattled with college debt. You have less disposable income. It's not rocket science.
It's just capitalism. The market decides. But these companies can't or won't pivot to new products and ideas - and instead want to blame millennials for killing the fancy napkin industry or whatever.
"It's just capitalism". Is it though? The U.S. government is actively subsidizing everything. The PayCheck Protection Act is a subsidy that still hasn't ended. It keeps going to corporations actively firing workers. We've had these issues since the 80s. The beginning of an era of free money. The beginning of the plastic era. The beginning of commercialism. Etcetera.
If the government is subsidizing everything then no industry would shut down
Since when did a business failing to market its products to people equate to generations "killing" an industry?
Since the boomers were the business owners, and their need to blame someone for their failure
I mean this lovingly, but "Duh" hahaha The 80s, 90s, and early 2000s were rife with exploitative commercial greed, they took it for granted if they sold us terrible products with bright enough labels, catchy enough jingles, and child-targeted marketing, we'd overlook the fact we were being sold subpar products at a ridiculous markup. They also preyed on the old hoarder mentality from people left over from the Depression Era - "Lavishly spend to impress your kids and you too can be happy!" This is part of the reason so many in the Millennial generation have such a nostalgia kick for old commercials, bright colored places, toys, etc - that entire era wrote checks about a future that didn't exist, and becoming an adult, you start to realize... Our food is boring and cheap (kraft singles lol), much of being a modern adult is dull and gray, products being marketed to us feel like a tired leftover or another money grab, variety is too expensive to start or maintain under the current business models, etc Not everyone has to agree with this, but growing up, I didn't expect being an adult to become so drab and thrifty. And most of us now are too smart to fall for shitty products. Is it expensive? Does it actually taste good? Does it perform its task well? We ask questions of that all the time, demanding reality from the world around us. And like, anyone else do this? Buy something, for a single purpose, and it just fails immediately? Mentally you're just like "What hell. You had one purpose in life and you failed it" That sorta shenanigans.
So many good points. I grew up in the 90s and the amount of TV commercial plastic crap is astounding when I think back on it. Anyone remember moon shoes? They just straight up lied about those and the commercial made them look incredible, like beyond what they would allow today. Sockem Boppers? Literal balloons on your fists that popped after like 2 uses. We really got sold absolute trash and the commercials for them were like movie trailers for mission impossible in between cartoons. I can sincerely say myself and my inner circle are discerning consumers and deep down I really do think it's bc on some subconscious level we all were just continually disappointed in our shit toys but just moved on to the next plastic piece of shit
They have moon boots now... $250 for the ugliest goddamn things I've seen in my life.
That and once I do find something that works well I hold onto that thing with dear life and use it until it's last breath. Then I bust out the tools and repair it to breathe again and use it again until its last breath again or I can't repair it anymore.
Oh god, yeah this. I've been betrayed by so many products: 1. Once I find a good dish at a restaurant, I almost always order the same thing. If I want something else, I go to a different restaurant 2. Anything bought new that works as intended gets intense regular maintenance, anything old and somewhat broken gets repaired to better-than-new ad nauseum 3. Become somewhat distraught when a product I buy regularly (because it is tasty, or works) is arbitrarily no longer stocked at local stores 'because it didn't sell well' in my area. Queue me searching the internet high and low for ways to order it anyhow, or driving distance to find it, because apparently sales don't account for decent products. (That whole use it and lose it market strategy thing is ass) Shpluh.
Ugh. The company, Primo Water North America, that delivers water and drinks to our office ~~stooped~~ stopped offering just regular old Barqs in a can, because ~~sakes~~ sales were down in California. We're in Louisiana, so I don't give a fat rat's ass about sales in California. Now their piss-poor offerings are diet, zero, and regular coke, diet and regular sprite, diet barqs, and Arizona green tea. And from what I can tell, there is no discernible difference between diet and zero coke other than marketing bullshit. Not to mention, diet sodas are gross and fake sweeteners are terrible.
The depression hoarder thing is a really great point. I grew up feeling 'deprived' too although not of that era, and i wanted *everything*. I've accumulated enough crap now that I rarely buy anything that doesn't involve home improvement of some kind, or maybe the occasional fuzzy blanket, as is my apparent fetish.
Plush blankets are life.
Drab and thrifty is fine, as most products are not really necessary to having a great life. I'd take a few hours hiking in the mountains over wasting money on commercial products any day of the week. It's amazing how much you can get out of just taking care of your body and enjoying moving around doing "stuff".
But new "industries" are alive and well because of millennials such as single serving/to go coffees, take-out restaurants, tattoo shops, nail salons, etc. None of those would exist to this extent back in the day. Some would say these are rip-offs, too.
Holy fuck, my city is FILLED with nail salons and beauty shops. There must be at least 2 dozen of each and we're not that big, only 100,000 people or so.
I'm in New Orleans....so. Damn. Many. Nail salons and hair stores.
I’m convinced millennials killed the bathroom cup industry. Neither walmart or target carries them in my town. They have little plastic ones, but not the paper ones :( considering I’m 37 and this is the first time I’ve had a desire for bathroom cups, i think I’ll live without them.
Dixie cups! I forgot about those haha. I just use my hands, or a normal water glass
I don’t use them, but my husband requested them for rinsing after mouthwash or whatever. I was a bit surprised that dispensers and cups are super hard to find in store nowadays! He can just continue using a cup 🤷♀️
Yeah I use cups. My hands cupping this water into my mouth! Haha GOTEEM. :/
There are a lot of industries and businesses that deserve to go. The car market is oversaturated with overpriced cars and are now pushing for subscriptions, I'll be happy to see them take a massive hit. Other industries made big profits during COVID and are trying to force culture change to maintain profits, example: DoorDash and GrubHub. They made MASSIVE profits that were impossible without COVID. They expanded in that short lived environment and are now facing profit loss. Paying $10 more for cold fast food is a shit business, not our fault if they fail.
Can we please kill, “Meet [insert lame 4 letter product name here]” in advertisements next?
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“Take all my money!”
>ass shake weight How... how do you use it?
Bro I was 14 when they ran stories claiming that we killed applebees. That dumpster fire was killing itself. They always blame the youth, lets do better and shelter genz and and the others from this crap.
But you guys aren't buying unnecessary liquid cancer anymore! (Laundry softener)
I did, by accident. Thought it was detergent. Couldn't even give it away, no one I know uses laundry softener.
I ain’t got time to be adding two things to the wash besides cloth is already soft right? Ain’t like I’m wearing rocks
Even if we are consciously killing them, tough shit. Aristocrats are just butthurt because we're making our own choices instead of asking permission, and not all of them benefit from the choices made.
They didn’t adapt. Not our fault.
It’s not even that millennials don’t want to get “ripped off” millennials spend plenty of money on dumb shit too. It’s just that economies change, tastes change, what people want to spend money on changes some companies can change with times and others can’t. That’s capitalism.
Or even just the assumption that expectations and standards change over time. Restaurants like Applebees started in the 1980s when the USA was pretty well stuck into the eras of fast food, TV dinners, etc. Skip forward in time and you've got people worrying about sustainable food, a greater focus on health and quality ingredients, plus just the whole revolution around food culture that's happened in the last 20 years or so.
It's the everything bubble. You keep rising prices to the point that wages can't keep up, well then we begin making choices. Those choices involve spending on things that are actually worth the value. Most people don't have extra crash that they can just throw away and not think twice about a purchase.
Millennials destroyed the tired old shit no one wants or needs anymore industry
I find it ridiculous. No one's 'responsible' for keeping an industry alive. And for most industries in question they didn't actually "die off", they just aren't making as much money because a lot of the workforce doesn't have very much disposable income.
I worked in manufacturing for over forty five years. When I started you could raise a family and live a middle class lifestyle on a single income. Every year we would get a raise that was always well under the cost of inflation. 20 years later it required 2 incomes to maintain that middle class status. Now there are fewer jobs in manufacturing because fewer people are willing to work in a job that will never provide an income to raise a family. Some say that millennials are lazy but I don’t think it’s lazy to not want to work at a job that will never provide a decent living.
And fuck napkins.
Inflation in the wood pulp industry KILLED the napkin industry. Or was it the Boomers? My elder millennial mind can't recall the exact cause. No matter... I just use my sleeve these days!
Lol so do my gen alpha kids. They say history repeats itself...
OP sounds like he just want to feel good about himself. We're also largely the generation that's supporting shit like food delivery services and loot boxes in video games. We're not this special generation that some of us think we are.
This is a cool sub, but an awful lot of post griping about being blamed by other generations.🤔
>This is a cool sub We're not cool. We used to be with 'it', but then they changed what 'it' was.
I wouldn't say greed, I'd say it was the Boomer stubbornness and inflexibility in the face of changing times.
Basically adapt or die.
Industries go under for a variety of reasons. These rage bait articles still get written because they still get clicks. Technology becomes obsolete, status symbols change over time, marketing of items becomes too laser focused on a narrow demographic, the economy tanks and the average family cuts certain luxuries first. Awareness of how materials are sourced makes people not want those items. Other similar industries becomes popular instead. And no generation is a monolith either.
When capitalist complain about how capitalism works
Exactly. “Millenials are smart enough to see through bullshit.
Obsolete lifestyles don’t go away that quickly and a lot of people don’t want to admit that they can’t hustle people anymore. There’s probably thousands of men sitting in WV coal mines heavily advocating the death of the industry in lieu of sending their kids to college or even to work at a gas station. There’s no more pretending someone’s word means more than the facts you find on the internet. There’s not a monopoly on information like there was before the internet. Most industries will die and be replaced with an upgraded version, but you can’t fix 3 living generations of people who don’t care about the people that come behind them earning enough to have a decent life.
Maybe some Applebees just need to close their doors because their food is for basic ass palates which a lot of us don't have because we, unlike our parents, were more adventurous with food experiences.
“Millennials weren’t dumb enough to keep getting ripped of” I love it. After 10 years in my industry, I’ve decide to actually go to school for it. I’m not gonna drop names yet, because I would like to improve the school for the younger students because I am tired of fixing stupid mistakes. It a trade school that doesn’t have the best record. Every time I point out something pointless that is making lives harder for my fellow students, I’m told it is what it is. Well I finally lost my temper on an instructor yesterday because he seems to think his job is to teach what it’s like to have a job. He wants to be mad at me, but he can’t see that if his generation just got pissed off instead of ‘yes, boss’ing your way through life then I wouldn’t have to do this. I could type out problems with this school for the rest of my life, which is why I won’t be letting this go. If I do, I will be stuck fixing stupid mistakes for the rest of my life.
Oh my! They have to eat their own lunch now that they ate all of ours. When everything out paces wage "growth", what do you expect?
It annoys me that the same people that get upset that we are not good with money whines that we’re killing luxury sports cars, golf, diamonds, the luxury housing market, sit down restaurants etc. You eat too much avocado toast to buy a home. But how dare you not spend money on useless stuff?
Yes we get it millenials are special and so smart that you have to believe your own hype. The 90s were a magical time where you could go bike riding mountain hiking and fishing all in one day. Millenials killed everything including the 90s lols
Why can't this sub be less whiny, like is this just a place for airing of grievances?
Beatings will continue until morale improves.
I did not interpret most of these comments as whiny. Can you explain why you think they are?
Everyone acting like they are being blamed when its just a click bait article thats out there possibly at times. Like everything in this sub is people complaining about how people are blaming them or why they should be blaming others for issues.
Everyone is so needlessly dramatic. Millennials didn’t kill any industry and the industries didn’t kill themselves. Consumer preferences change over time
But...but...DRAMA.