The Mindset List has always existed for them

August 24, 2017 9:02 AM

20th in the series, here is the Beloit College Mindset List for the class of 2021, an examination of the culture they grew up in.
posted by ZeusHumms (40 comments total)

Justin Timberlake has always been a solo act.

Truly, we left the world a better place for those who came after.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 9:14 AM on August 24, 2017 [6 favorites]

The image of Sacagawea has always adorned the dollar coin, if you can find one.
Wow, I feel like I've gained insight into a whole generation.
posted by Wolfdog at 9:17 AM on August 24, 2017 [5 favorites]

They never got to see Jimmy Kimmel and Ben Stein co-host a quiz show or Dennis Miller provide commentary for the NFL.

A fortunate generation indeed.
posted by octobersurprise at 9:19 AM on August 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

Something feels off about this year's list to me. It's always sort of silly and trivial, but even last year's seems more well-constructed.

Although the Justin Timberlake thing is super important.
posted by uncleozzy at 9:21 AM on August 24, 2017 [5 favorites]

50. Wikipedia has steadily gained acceptance by their teachers.

Is this really the case? My kids (starting high school through finishing elementary) are still told that they can't use it (as a primary source, at least).
posted by Etrigan at 9:21 AM on August 24, 2017

In reference to the title of this post, I would like to call out my comment from 2009. (I was off by a year.)
posted by madcaptenor at 9:28 AM on August 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

Their cutesy phrasing shtick is hilariously inappropriate for #29
posted by theodolite at 9:30 AM on August 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

I know without even clicking that the list will largely be bullshit, because it's been largely bullshit for a really, really long time -- certainly more years than it was not, anyway.

Reviewing it, I see I'm not wrong. It's rife with things that have been true for years, like the idea of "phone" meaning computer and not strictly a voice tool, or the notion of college as something super expensive they borrowed tons of money for. The ones that are actually uniquely true of the class of '21 are few and far between, such as the idea that they're the last class to be born in the 1900s.

Others are just plain wrong, like the proposed "life cycle" of the word "Blackberry."

I feel like the exercise is another example of folks taking something that worked once and misunderstanding what made it interesting or successful, but repeating it anyway. The keystone example of that idea for me is the SNL "Debbie Downer" skit, which was hilarious and iconic in its first airing really ONLY because everyone was breaking (even folks who didn't ever break). Repeating it never delivered the same snap, but they kept trying.

So, too, with Beloit.
posted by uberchet at 9:32 AM on August 24, 2017 [4 favorites]

2. They are the last class to be born in the 1900s, the last of the Millennials -- enter next year, on cue, Generation Z!

Oh, thank god. Does that mean in a few years people will stop using "Millennials" to mean "kids these days"?

37. Ketchup has always come in green.

Ketchup has never come in green. I mean, you can buy green stuff that says it's ketchup, but it's not.

60. Paleontologists have always imagined dinosaurs with colorful plumage.

Wait, what? Most of my dinosaur knowledge is from the early nineties. Next you're going to tell me there's no such thing as Brontosaurus.
posted by madcaptenor at 9:34 AM on August 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Is this really the case? My kids (starting high school through finishing elementary) are still told that they can't use it (as a primary source, at least).

I think what is changing is that it used to be "Don't use Wikipedia for anything school-related at all ever, don't even go to it, anything on Wiki is probably false" and is now moving towards "Wikipedia is a good jumping-off point for your research, look at the linked footnotes, follow those trails, most of what on Wiki for popular topics is probably curated pretty well, but don't put it in your citations, go to the actual primary sources."
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:35 AM on August 24, 2017 [6 favorites]

What's best about these lists are the phrasings "John F. Kennedy, Jr. has, for the class of 2021, always been dead."

"This just in ... John, Jr. is always already dead ..."
posted by octobersurprise at 9:40 AM on August 24, 2017 [6 favorites]

Peanuts comic strips have always been repeats

This one made me a little bit sad.
posted by Lucinda at 9:59 AM on August 24, 2017 [5 favorites]

Men have always shared a romantic smooch on television.

I like how the wording here conjures up an image of every televised male-male interaction including a romantic smooch.
posted by naoko at 10:05 AM on August 24, 2017 [8 favorites]

Next you're going to tell me there's no such thing as Brontosaurus.

Brontosaurus is back, baby!
posted by sysinfo at 10:13 AM on August 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

2. They are the last class to be born in the 1900s, the last of the Millennials -- enter next year, on cue, Generation Z!

They are certainly not Millennials. Millennials are so-called because the generation came of age around 2000. The generation that grew up with computer technology, but NOT native to the Internet. Cut-offs have included "remember 9/11."

These kids were 2 when 9/11 happened. They likely never had to deal with dial-up. Cell phones are the norm for them. Wi-Fi is the norm. YouTube came into existence when they were 6.

Generational boundaries are always fuzzy, but this year's class is not Millennial.

Now to read the rest of the list and see what else Beloit has gotten wrong to joke at the expense of today's youth to entertain their Boomer readers.
posted by explosion at 10:14 AM on August 24, 2017 [6 favorites]

Oh, Beloit. Love my alma mater. Still think the idea of the list is interesting. Still think the execution of it is not typically great. Phrasing, getting things seemingly blatantly wrong...

Fun exercise though, going back and looking over the one they published for my incoming class... one example? "Electronic filing of federal income taxes has always been an option."

Not only does it not really contribute any helpful frame of reference into the mindset of your typical 18 year old college student it's... also not even right? The first e-filing year was 1986. Most students of my class--something they talk about down at the bottom of the list even--were born in 1984. But hey. I don't have a lot of strong memories about taxes from before I was 2 so I guess I can't be too upset, it just makes what already seem like a pretty pointless bit of trivia seem even more unremarkable.

So in other words I guess, classic list!
posted by suddenly, and without warning, at 10:16 AM on August 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

They are certainly not Millennials. Millennials are so-called because the generation came of age around 2000. The generation that grew up with computer technology, but NOT native to the Internet. Cut-offs have included "remember 9/11."

I don't think that's true. I typically hear millennial used to refer to people born in the late 1980s and early to mid 1990s and (so people in their twenties now) and no one born in that period was "coming of age" in 2000. I think millennial just means people born pretty close to the turn of the millennium.
posted by armadillo1224 at 10:27 AM on August 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Young people will cease being "millennials" as soon as the word applies predominantly to home owners/parents of toddlers/middle-aged people/another category of olds. (See also: "Generation X", or indeed, "baby boomers".)
posted by acb at 10:41 AM on August 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm just barely a Boomer but I definitely remember that generation being the one that old people rolled their eyes at and doubted that they'd ever grow up.
posted by octothorpe at 11:51 AM on August 24, 2017

It's the first day of classes here at a state university in rural South Carolina. Many of the incoming first-year students are definitely not 18, perhaps 1/4 of them or more. I spoke with a pregnant woman this morning who is hoping she can make it through fall finals before the baby is born. She's 38, put in her twenty years in the Marines, it's her first college campus experience. I also spoke with another student who is 65 and always wanted to finish a college degree. Maybe Beloit is different and all new students are young or maybe whoever wrote this is sadly out of touch.
posted by mareli at 11:52 AM on August 24, 2017 [5 favorites]

maybe whoever wrote this is sadly out of touch

I'll let you watch the webcast of the authors discussing their list and make your own decision there.
posted by theodolite at 12:39 PM on August 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

I had the same reaction to this list calling people born in 1999 "millennials." No way. Generational markers lose the (very little) insight they offer if you just tie them into arbitrary years like "born before the year 2000" instead of meaningful shared experiences that could actually define a generation as being alike in some way.

I agree that a marker of the Millennial generation should be remembering 9/11. This also defines the group as those that graduated or became adults right around the recession.

The generation after seems more characterized by being the first group that cannot remember a time before the internet (whereas Millennials were children or young teens when the internet became popular).
posted by Emily's Fist at 12:41 PM on August 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

I should have titled this post "They think 'Star Wars' always started with 'Episode I'".
posted by ZeusHumms at 12:51 PM on August 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

Maybe Beloit is different and all new students are young or maybe whoever wrote this is sadly out of touch.

When I attended the vast majority of students who were at Beloit were straight-from or nearly-straight-from high school and that certainly appeared to be true as of a few years ago as well. It's a very small, liberal arts school.

At any rate, despite the list's faults, from the webcast theodolite links, at least there is this:

[...] the Mindset List is designed to be a conversation starter, not a set of pronouncements. In truth, the list is not really about 18 year olds nor is it really about old fogeys like us. It's about how we can come together to talk about interesting cultural phenomena and share our experiences and perspectives. It's the conversation started by the Mindset List that is the true purpose of doing it ever single year. Rather than be some kind of holy writ or statement of judgment, the Mindset List is a vehicle for thinking about how what we've seen and what we know might look different from someone else's vantage point.

posted by suddenly, and without warning, at 1:21 PM on August 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

It's rife with things that have been true for years, like the idea of "phone" meaning computer and not strictly a voice tool,

Their point is that this is a group of people for which a "phone" might primarily not mean "thing you talk into attached to a wall" as the iPhone was released 10 years ago when these little shitheads were 7 and 8 years old.
posted by Automocar at 1:43 PM on August 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

It's about how we can come together to talk about interesting cultural phenomena and share our experiences and perspectives.

Yeah, despite the jokes that can be made about it, it's useful for measuring a 50 year old's cultural perspective against an 18 year old's. I still think of, say, The Avengers as a "recent" movie, where someone entering college this year probably thinks of it as a movie they saw as a kid. The list may not have much of a use beyond stimulating such realizations, but it does have that.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:49 PM on August 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

Does anyone know of any better versions? I think it's a strong concept but agree with the poor execution. For one thing, kids under 6 aren't aware of much of anything so 2005 is a more reasonable marker for developments.

To my eye, the striking thing for this group is that all phones have been smart phones, which are just phones, with an odd sub-category of "flip phones" for grandmas, hipsters and the very poor. Hash tags were always a thing. And video has always been available on demand, with a few small exceptions, via YouTube and other providers.
posted by msalt at 3:15 PM on August 24, 2017

Okay how about this

Next year's graduating class will have lived in an America always at war in the Middle East.
posted by The Whelk at 4:14 PM on August 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

Next year's graduating class will have lived in an America always at war in the Middle East.

Yeah, but you can say that about every graduating class of the last decade or so as well.
posted by Etrigan at 5:01 PM on August 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

Does anyone else remember the National Lampoon's "Stupid" issue, from March, 1974? The Stupid Aptitude Test kept telling people who got certain questions wrong to not bother applying to Harvard and go directly to Beloit College. Of course they were mostly Harvard grads being insufferable, and I'm happy to see Beloit found its place on the map.
posted by morspin at 5:29 PM on August 24, 2017

I don't think that's true. I typically hear millennial used to refer to people born in the late 1980s and early to mid 1990s and (so people in their twenties now) and no one born in that period was "coming of age" in 2000. I think millennial just means people born pretty close to the turn of the millennium.

I don't know what "coming of age" means to you, but I believe the idea was originally that "millennials" were the kids who would graduating high school around the turn of the millennium. "Around" seems to have become "at or for ten or twelve years after" (occasionally more like fifteen but that's pushing it) but if you were born in the 00s I definitely don't think you're a millennial.
posted by atoxyl at 6:16 PM on August 24, 2017

Their point is that this is a group of people for which a "phone" might primarily not mean "thing you talk into attached to a wall" as the iPhone was released 10 years ago when these little shitheads were 7 and 8 years old.

My point is that the phone thing has been true of incoming freshmen for several years now. It's not unique to the high school class of 2017. It's another example of Beloit's laziness on this trope.
posted by uberchet at 7:21 PM on August 24, 2017

Then again, since the purpose is to orient professors and other olds at the college, focusing on items specific to this year doesn't seem necessary. Most important shifts don't happen in a single year.

As the parent of a 17 year old and a 20 year old, things that strike me (but are obviously anecdotal) are

- They consider a voice call incredibly intrusive, but Facetime not so much. Texting preferred
- everyone in high school had a phone
- Facebook is more for old people
- video has always been on demand, as I mentioned before. It has never been otherwise.
- couple dating in high school was rare, group dates more common
- driving is a chore that they don't understand the attraction of
- Shopping has always been primarily on the internet (aside from food shopping but they don't do that, grownups do)
- music is not purchased, it's streamed. Nobody "owns" a unit of music.
posted by msalt at 8:23 PM on August 24, 2017 [7 favorites]

My point is that the phone thing has been true of incoming freshmen for several years now.

I kind of disagree? I was 12 (in 1993) when my family got our first computer. While I have been using the internet for all of my teenage and adult life, I remember a world without it, which wouldn't be true if we got that first computer when I was 8.

I think a similar thing is probably broadly true here.
posted by Automocar at 8:27 PM on August 24, 2017

C'mon, folks, the #1 reason the list exists is to remind people annually that Beloit College exists. So, yeah, it's not as useful as all that or even really for its ostensible "this is what youngs are like, olds" purpose, it was always just a tongue-in-cheek marketing effort.

the idea was originally that "millennials" were the kids who would graduating high school around the turn of the millennium

Very much exactly that, particularly for Strauss and Howe who coined the term and largely created this idea of cultural "generations" that can be distinctly taxonomicalized to begin with (although they didn't publish their first book, Generations, until 1991, and the idea of the Baby Boom as a distinctly different tendency in American culture was already well established, they suggested the idea of cyclical changes to Generations X, Y (Millennials), and Z (or whatever they end up being known as when they start to have adult lives soon). The whole thing is now tainted by Bannon's obsessive interest, of course. But anyway, 2000 is an accepted cut-off for the Millennial generation, even if 9/11 is really the defining historical event.

Generational markers lose the (very little) insight they offer if you just tie them into arbitrary years

And yet, at some point, you have to arbitrarily decide what you're defining, if you're going to do this at all. I get your point, it's like how I caught flak here a while back for insisting that the type of movies we call "70s movies" begins with Bonnie and Clyde (1967) -- with a bang -- and ends with another bang with Blade Runner (1982). It's saying that from this point here things are different. (Somebody said I was just trying to extend the definition to include things that I liked. Which was so far from my point that....) But things like the Vietnam War bubbled up over a number of years and their aftereffects were similarly attenuated -- it's rare that you get an event like a Pearl Harbor or 9/11 to really define things in historical terms.

And though I was there some years earlier, suddenly is correct. Beloit is just exactly the prototypical small, liberal arts school with a very traditional incoming class. Adult students were a sliver of the 1000-strong student body, likely single digits and thus well below 1%. (I was a rare transfer student, having started community college at 17. I cannot possibly exaggerate how much that still leaves me feeling like an outsider, even when some of my friend group includes people who I was barely in school with at all.) The school hasn't made any noises about "leveling up" to a university for largely prestige branding purposes, either. And yeah, I think the goofiness and overall inscrutability of the list is in some way what the school wants as an image. Lord knows that that webcast is the very opposite of, oh, Appalachian State University is HOT HOT HOT. Oh, God, that may be even MORE cringeworthy 12 years later. Be warned.
posted by dhartung at 2:22 AM on August 25, 2017

"Maybe Beloit is different and all new students are young"

As suddenly, and without warning said, Beloit is a small, private, liberal arts college. They overwhelmingly recruit traditional-age students.

Yes, adult learners are growing in numbers, and might soon become traditional, as opposed to nontraditional (fun term). But SLACs are old school.
posted by doctornemo at 6:23 AM on August 25, 2017

"Amazon has always invited consumers to follow the arrow from A to Z."

Oh good grief, I had never figured that out. It's like that damn Fedex arrow all over again.
posted by Kattullus at 8:22 AM on August 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

I don't get the point of #56 about the Melissa computer virus. Can someone explain the logic of that entry? And maybe a little about some virus named Melissa?
posted by Snowishberlin at 12:07 PM on August 25, 2017

Melissa was the filename given to a macro virus that propagated within e-mail systems (well, almost exclusively Outlook) and was largely responsible for a new, more responsible anti-virus approach worldwide. It was a huge media event at the time, though quickly subsumed by pre-existing Y2K concerns. I worked for a big global insurance company at the time and some of my colleagues spent a sleepless weekend fighting it off. It was probably the first exposure to a non-floppy-type computer virus for much of the public.
posted by dhartung at 2:30 AM on August 26, 2017

- driving is a chore that they don't understand the attraction of

Yeah, my nearly-at-permit-age son does not want to start the process. What's the deal? Is it just because hanging out with your friends doesn't mean being in the same place with them anymore?
posted by Etrigan at 6:08 AM on August 26, 2017