Millennials Aren’t Buying It

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By Bill Maher

Every day I see a new article on something millennials aren’t buying:  Cars. Homes. Cereal. Soda. Designer clothes. Cable TV. Weddings.  The latest comes from a marketing professor in the UK who claims that it’s not just a lack of money: “Lifestyle changes are seeing us moving away from the consumer model which has dominated post-war capitalist economies. Buying more and more things as a source of identity and meaning seems to be gradually but consistently falling out of favour.” 

Is that a bad thing? I guess it is if you’re a marketing professor. But why is everyone acting like millennials are weirdoes because they don’t care about Ralph Lauren clothes or owning a new Lexus? 

This prof argues that the younger generations are more interested in accumulating experiences than things, and that sounds about right to me. Coachella is an experience. Instagram is, for the most part, a catalog of experiences. Maybe watching a few seasons of Hoarders and a little Marie Kondo has taught them that there are better ways of spending their time than shopping and buying stuff they don’t need.