More Than 40 Million People Have Watched This Angry Facebook Rant About Millennials

[facebook ]https://www.facebook.com/AlexisBloomerTV/videos/1203578969652506/" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen="true" allow="autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture; web-share">​

Alexis Bloomer, a Texas anchor at Channel 7, "watched as a young man stepped in front of a limping elderly man and didn't hold the door open for him" last Friday and was so angered by what she'd seen she posted a video about how that young man is all Millennials' spirit animal. On  Facebook, the video, which is captioned, "Dear Elders, I'm sorry. Sincerely, A Millennial," has been viewed more than 40 million times, has 1 million shares, and thousands on thousands of comments.

"I pretty much realized that we're just existing, we're not contributing anything to society," Bloomer begins. We don't address our elders with "no ma'am" and "yes ma'am," we listen to music that glorifies drugs and crime, we "use words like 'bae' to describe someone we love, and we idolize people like Kim Kardashian and we shame people like Tim Tebow," making us ungrateful as a whole. Millennials are lazy, entitled, and when they want to be activists, they "[go] on Facebook and [post their] opinion." The second half of Bloomer's caption on the video, by the way, is "#‎GenerationwhY‬ ‪#‎YouthToday‬ ‪#‎SorryElders ‬‪#‎MyOpinion‬."

Every stereotype you've heard about yourself as a Millennial, Bloomer repeats and promptly apologizes for on your behalf. She hopes we, as a generation, can "start pulling our pants up and actually start contributing to the society we love." Quickly after she posted the video, Bloomer commented on it saying she did not mean to offend anyone by it and that "[she knows] that not all Millennials are bad."

Clearly the video is resonating as it's being massively shared and thousands of commenters are thanking Bloomer for "getting in" and her "refreshing take" on our no-good, very-bad generation. Plenty of others, though, take fault with her logic and I stand with them. Millennials are not terrible. (Look, I wrote an essay on it!) I hate that people think we're terrible.

What you saw last Friday, Ms. Bloomer, was an asshole in action. A twentysomething asshole. The thing with assholes is they come in all shapes, sizes, and ages. Of course the kid who didn't hold a door open for a limping elderly man is a jerk. You know who else is a jerk? My totally sexist, very middle-aged super who only answers my fiancé and not me. The creepy older dude who did hold the door open for me this morning but leered while he did it. Maybe it's just men who are jerks? Even so, none of the first men who come to mind are #Millennials.

It doesn't help to immediately assume that because a person is a certain age, he is automatically fulfilling the stereotypes being blasted. What if this dude really had to use the bathroom? What if he shouted back, "I'm so sorry, old man! I'm really not gonna make it!" and you didn't hear him from afar? What if he seriously got a call with some terrible personal news? To shame someone for a three-second glimpse of his life is wrong and irresponsible. I (you, he/she, and everyone) have moments I'm not proud of, but you can't spend time thinking of how your every move might affect the people around you. You have to do the best you can and just, like, live.

Of course there are plenty of Millennials who deserve the labels that Bloomer is thrusting upon them. For every principled and upstanding Youth I'm defending, there's an entitled snot one as well. But throwing a ~truthbomb~ like this and stepping back from it, apologizing for everyone your age but reminding everyone how different you are from them yourself, is not helping shatter twentysomething stereotypes. It's enforcing the biggest one of all: that we all think we're special and beautiful mf'ing butterflies.

You, reader friend, are a special and beautiful butterfly. You ​are not the entitled and lazy hot mess everyone believes you to be or that you ​think ​everyone believes you to be. Prove Bloomer and them all wrong. Go sign a Change.org petition called "#NotAllMillennials" or something. Post this rant on your Facebook instead. Make a real difference.

I'm kidding. Just live your best, best life and DGAF about what anyone else thinks.