Table of Contents
Generation Y won’t pay for these 10 things
Generation Y will not pay for checking, long distance, mail, music, wireless, travel agents, books, news, or directory help. But why?
Examination
Since time immemorial, as students, we have received a free check: Chase, Bank of America, Wachovia, Capital One offer it to us. If we are no longer eligible for full-time study, we have two options: A. Lie and tell them we are, or B. Get a direct deposit. Most banks will extend the free check as long as we do so. Generation Y hate fees and we’re smart enough to compare stores. If someone is going to rob us, it’s easy to go online and find out who is doing it for free. It’s no longer a mom and dad economy – we know there are plenty of banks out there to meet our needs.
long distance
Our grandparents were worried about the long distance. It doesn’t matter how far you are from the person when you call him – all the same, all this must pass through outer space. The expression “this is my nickel” sounds prehistoric. In fact, as long as we don’t spend millions of minutes on our mobile phone, we don’t care. Chances are we have free calls to all our friends and family on the same cell network. Also, if our parents can send text messages, we’re much more likely to leave them notes from time to time.
Fast – how much does a stamp cost? 32, 42, whatever, it changes more often than ever, we need to mail something. Now we don’t even know how many stamps are worth because of the Forever Stamp. By the way, we hate email too. It’s too professional and there are only commitments in our inbox. We know very few email addresses of our friends because they change too often anyway. We’ll just find you on Facebook.
Music
First, we haven’t bought CDs since Jock Jams. Secondly, even if we don’t feel like beating the system with Bit-Torrents or something new like Napster, we’ll take it from YouTube. Forget the radio when we have Pandora Radio – it plays what we like without interruption. FYI: Pandora set a usage limit this week, so check out Slacker Radio.
Wireless connection
Although wireless Internet access is a necessity, this does not mean that we have to pay for it. The first thing we do when we move into a new apartment is to see which of your neighbors we can connect to wireless. Theft? We don’t see it as library theft or panera bread. Oh yes, dear Starbucks, Barnes, and Noble, you really piss us off trying to get us to pay $3.95, but what’s worse is the hassle of registering and entering our credit card number.
travel agents
Let’s be serious – we don’t need help with travel tips or finding the best price. We ask our friends where to go and do some online research. Kayak, Cheap Tickets, Expedia and Orbitz are all we need.
Books
Cookbooks, phone books, diaries – why buy a book if you bought a computer? As far as real books go, reading has been forced on us since we were 5 years old, and it’s just not as mind-stimulating as HDTV, Xbox, and YouTube.
Porn
If you pay for porn, you either A. have a problem or B. have a problem. We all knew this guy who sold porn in high school, but now he’s out of business thanks to high speed internet. The real problem with ordering a pay-per-view movie is that you can’t clear your history on your cable bill.
News
Watching or reading the news used to be a form of entertainment. Fortunately, we have the best options for entertainment. If we really want to know something, we will skip the paper that just reprints what happened and go straight to MLB.com to find out who won the game. An intermediary is not needed. Generation Y gets our news through our friends – if it’s important enough, we’ll know about it. Most of us received 3 or 4 text messages when Michael Jackson died.
Catalog Help
Perhaps there are representatives of generation Y who do not know this term. Calling 411 or getting information for 75 cents is ridiculous. Yes, we have 1800-Goog-411 or 1800-FREE411, but we have Google, BlackBerry, and the Yellowpages iPhone app. The best use we ever got from a phone book was to see which of our friends thought they were superhuman enough to tear it in half.
