Millennials Are ‘Generation Wuss,’ Says Author Of ‘American Psycho’

Millennials are “Generation Wuss,” according to Bret Easton Ellis, the author of American Psycho and other bestsellers.

Ellis penned out his thoughts in a recent Vanity Fair piece after using Twitter to pick on them for a long time.

In the op-ed, Ellis notes that due to the nature of the Internet, much of what “Generation Wuss” creates “goes out into the world unfettered, unedited, posted everywhere, and because of this freedom a lot of the content displayed is rushed and kind of s***ty… but when Millennials are criticized for this content they seem to collapse into a shame spiral and the person criticizing them is automatically labeled a hater, a contrarian, a troll.”

Ellis, who dates a man of the “Millennial” generation, blames parents who “coddled them in praise — gold medals for everyone, four stars for just showing up — and tried to shield them from the dark side of life, and in turn created a generation that appears to be super confident and positive about things but when the least bit of darkness enters into their realm they become paralyzed and unable to process it.”

The author behind books such as Less Than Zero wasn’t surprised that many of his own generation — Generation X — agreed with him.

“The older people wanted to share examples,” Ellis stated, noting “a father related a story how he remembered watching in frustration as his son participated in a tug-of-war game with his classmates on the field of his elementary school and after a minute or two the well-meaning coach announced the game was officially a tie, told the kids they did a great job, and everyone got a ribbon.”

Some of the “darker” examples included “guilt-ridden parents chastising themselves for coddling kids who when finally faced with the normal reality of the world drifted into drugs as an escape… from the normal reality of the world.”

Guilty parents, Ellis said, effectively told him they felt they had “debilitated” their children from coping with “the failures we all confront as get older, and that their children were unequipped to deal with pain.”

He was particularly shocked at feedback from Millennials who actually agreed with him.

The counterpart to Ellis’ thoughts appeared recently on The Telegraph. Essentially, it states that EVERY generation thinks the one before it is too soft.

But what do you think, readers? Are the “Generation Wuss” comments just the thoughts of a grumpy older man, or does Ellis have a point — are Millennials too soft compared to other generations?

[Image via Flickr Creative Commons]