Best rant on PC I have seen for awhile...long, but worth it.

[Act_of_Reparation]

97. Let's be honest, here:

We returned bottles.

We return bottles now. I'm 33 years old, and I been returning bottles (either directly myself or indirectly through my parents) for as long as I can remember.

Milk came in bottles that the "milk man" collected on his deliveries.

This is hardly a generational triumph. These bottles were reused because someone came to your house to retrieve them, and only for as long as it remained cost-effective to do so. This procedure ceased when refrigerated shipping allowed for consolidation of the dairy industry and the pricing out of local delivery services.

Incidentally, the millennials didn't do this. It was the CEO's of the big dairy chains. You know, old people. The same old people we are to believe are eco warriors for indirectly "returning" their milk bottles.

We used paper bags until the at least the '80s

Same story as above. The decision to change from paper to plastic bags was made by people of power. Unless tattooed and pierced smart ass kids from the future took their flying DeLorean back to 1980-something, we can safely assume those selfsame old folks who decided plastic milk bottles were cheaper than glass also decided that plastic bags were cheaper than paper.

Water bottles are a fairly new phenomenon. Again, probably in late '80s-early '90s.

Not many teens and young adults today owned water bottling companies in the late 1980's and early 1990's. I think this another mistake we can safely pin on the Boomers.

Disposable diapers didn't have widespread use until mid to late 60's.

See above.

Although we weren't using fountain pens, many of the pens I used in school had replaceable ink cartridges.

See above.

I walked to school all the way through high school. It was rare for for a high school kid to have a car. Most middle class families only had one car when I was growing up and that was for the Dad to get to work.

Who decided to move their families into McMansions in the suburbs? Young people?

We only had one TV my whole life at home for a family of 6.

Was concern for the environment the limiting factor there, or was it the cost of a television?

We did use public transportation to get to and from school and work. I walked to the train station, rode the B&M train into Boston, then took the subway to get to my final destination..

And people are still doing that, if they live close enough to do it.

The whole point of the post was to point out how things have changed and not necessarily for the better in terms of the environment.

And here's our biggest source of disagreement: that's not what the story is about.

Not even a little.

The story is about millennials -- tattooed, pierced, and smart-assed, as all millennials are. The author doesn't like millennials because millennials are comfortable in a world he or she finds increasingly unfamiliar. That pisses them off, so they've brewed up some half-cocked justification for feeling their own generation superior to those that will succeed them. Which is funny, because, as I've noted, millennials don't have any power. They didn't decide to start using plastics, or moving to the suburbs, or any of that stupid shit mentioned in the article. That shit's on the author and their generation.

If you're an adult and don't like the way things are, you might want to take a look your generation's aggregate contribution to society instead of railing full-tilt against young people.

And if I sound upset, it because this shit is profoundly insulting.