“The Founders” might not seem like a moniker reserved for a generation that can’t remember life before social media’s stranglehold on culture or 9/11 — but that’s what MTV has coined those born after the millennium, according to Newser.
Gen Z, iGen and Homeland Gen are all unofficial names for the group following millennials, but Jenn Gidman wrote for Newser that MTV polled more than 1,000 kids born after December 2000 on “what they thought the ideal name for their generation would be.”
Newser reported the kids surveyed picked the Founders over options including Navigators, Builders and Bridge Generation.
And David Sims wrote for The Atlantic why the entertainment channel is touting a title already associated with America’s Founding Fathers and the villains of “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.”
“According to [the survey], the children of the new millennium will rescue the world from the sins of the past, and befitting this worthy mission, they get maybe the most self-important name imaginable,” The Atlantic’s report stated.
What’s their end goal?
The Atlantic indicated “founding the new world.”
“No pressure, kids,” the article read.
Rafi Schwartz wrote for Good magazine among the positives of such a title is “it’s a name that connotes a sense of optimistic purpose — that theirs is the generation which will create something great.” However, MTV’s effort to name the group of youngsters might mainly be a business move, Good’s piece read.
The bottom line: If MTV defines the “upcoming viewership,” it will “plant its flag.”
Don Kaplan for New York Daily News gave a more scathing take on what MTV has to gain.
“Arrogant marketing dolts at the increasingly basic cable channel had the audacity Tuesday to declare a nickname for an entire generation of their would-be viewers — a group that no longer pays them much mind,” Kaplan wrote. “… It’s a term dreamed up by the MTV marketing department.”
Kaplan continued that the Founders is too obtrusive to stick and that the move “comes off more like a bid to advance the network’s own self-promotional agenda.”
MTV plans to gather the information to tweak its shows to reflect those born after 2000, Josh Sanburn wrote for Time magazine. Also, experts see the group in question as more similar to millennials than the moniker would indicate.
“We do not expect this next generation is going to be anti-millennial,” generational theorist Neil Howe told Time. “You have a whole generation that is going to represent the extreme endpoint of where millennials were going in many respects: risk-averse, team-oriented, well-behaved.”
Still, Griffin Picciani, 14, told Time he doesn’t feel like a millennial and recognized numerous contrasts between his experiences and those of his cousins born before 2000.
For him, the Founders sounds about right.
“It definitely describes our generation,” Picciani told Time. “And considering the other names out there, it’s a lot easier to remember.”
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