I’ve been posting a lot lately over on my other blog about the “gimme money” aspect of a lot of hobbyists and it  goes beyond just collecting things. It seems like today, people can’t just collect things for the sake of collecting them, they have to do it to make a buck and that bugs me to no end.

It strikes me that much of this comes from the modern Millennial mindset because most of the people that I see pushing this thing in most hobbies, they tend to be very young.

So let’s talk about it.

Before we get started, I want to say that I almost sympathize with the Millennials. Almost. To a certain, small degree, some of them got a raw deal. Kind of. What’s really happened, from, say, the mid-to-late 90s on, some of that hasn’t been their fault, but not all of it.

See, people used to have to get jobs in their teens. You turn 16, you go and get a part time job. If you want pocket money, that’s what you do. It teaches you about the real world, it gives you a work ethic, it shows you how to be responsible and take your obligations seriously, etc. It gives you a head start on life because you have to start at the bottom and learn how to earn your way up, no matter when you get out there.

Most Millennials and later don’t do that. Now some of that isn’t their fault. As far as getting a part-time job in high school, a lot of that has gone away, mostly because companies realized what a pain in the ass it was to deal with school schedules and legal requirements and, most importantly I think, having to put up with obnoxious parents who wanted their kids to be treated like they’re special. Therefore, most businesses stopped hiring minors. There were adults who were willing to work for minimum wage who didn’t have any of those problems. That part, I don’t blame the Millennials for. I just blame their parents.

Unfortunately, since the early-to-mid 80s, we’ve had this thing called “helicopter parents”. Those are the ones who have raised their kids to think they’re special and deserving of special treatment, even if they haven’t earned it. Instead of pushing them to go out and get jobs and earn their own way and learn how the world works, they just handed over credit cards and cell phones and cars and never held their kids accountable for anything. Then, they gave their kids a free ride through college, further putting off adult responsibilities and if they couldn’t afford it, they voted for politicians who promised to give away free government money so nobody had to take any responsibility at all.

So now, these people are coming out of college in their mid-20s with a piece of paper in one hand and entirely unrealistic expectations in the other. These spoiled brats think that, because they’ve got that degree, you ought to give them a lot of money. It doesn’t work that way. They never learned any of those lessons they should have learned in high school. They don’t have a basic work ethic. They have no idea how to work for someone else. Yes, a lot of that is the fault of their parents, but you can only blame your parents and society for so long.

So now, you’ve got these Millennials who never learned anything, having kids that they’re incapable of teaching anything to because they just don’t know. So now, they’re whining “we can’t afford a house!” and other things like that, not because they can’t, if they worked hard enough, but because they’ve been given wholly unrealistic expectations of what life is really like. If they had learned those basic lessons when they should have, if they’d have gotten started on the road to success earlier, they’d be fine now.

Instead, a lot of these people are absurdly driven by the pursuit of money. They think they ought to have it and therefore, everything revolves around it. It’s why I’m never that happy to hire people straight out of college. Come back when you’ve got some work experience under your belt. These people are self-centered brats most of the time. “Do this thing that’s part of your job description.” “What will you give me if I do?” Well how about the money we’re already paying you for the job you’re supposed to be doing? These people tend to be lazy, doing the absolute dead minimum possible for the maximum reward that they can get.

This is where we have a problem because these people are so absurdly money-driven that they can’t figure out how to turn it off. It’s not just about hobbies, it’s about every aspect of life. I had one tell me that they wanted to write a book, but not unless they had an absolute guarantee that it would make money when they were done. That’s not how this works. You have to put in the effort. You have to learn how to do it well and even then, there are no guarantees of success. In the end, they just weren’t going to try because it was a “waste of their time.” No, you’re just a waste of a human being.

These also tend to be the same people who want to control others from behind the comfort of their keyboards. Why? Because they’re lazy. They want to get their way because they haven’t earned any power and no respect whatsoever, they just scream at people online and expect that’s how to get what they want.

Sadly, that’s not how any of this works and luckily, the world seems to be waking up to that fact. Woke companies are realizing that they’re going into bankruptcy because virtue signaling doesn’t make a profit. It just makes the people who have money to spend on their products, often people who were out there before free college and cell phones were a thing, don’t have any desire to be preached to. It’s why Disney is being forced to change. It’s why Warner Bros. is being forced to change. Otherwise, they’ll be out of business.

The one thing that needs to change though is the mindset of the Millennials and their offspring. When do you think that’s going to happen? It can’t be soon enough.