Millennial Makeover: The 2008 Presidential Elections

The new and improved technologies that all Millennials grew up with have given us the ability through internet applications to access information at any time whenever desired. One such program, YouTube, allows the viewing of actual videos of essentially any topic desired. For this year's Presidential race, YouTube set up a section on its site for covering strictly the Presidential candidates. This site has videos of all the debates that have occurred between the opponents available for viewing as well as all of the ads developed for each of the candidates campaigns. Many of the videos look more like ads than anything else, most of these not presenting any specifics and shying away from any of the actual details of any plan, essentially the usual you can expect from most if not all politicians. However minimal in information these ads tend to be, all the ones made by each candidates campaigns are very professionally done. However, ads can be found for each candidate made by amateurs that for the most part tend to have a more personal touch towards each candidate. Some examples include: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TiQCJXpbKg , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH0xzsogzAk
In this situation I think an amateur ad would be more convincing than anything put out by the candidates as it potentially presents multiple perspectives to compare rahter than just a single viewpoint. Finally, as to the older campaign ads available they would have been more convincing to people voting at the time. As current events and issues change so do the ads and their effectiveness at drawing the attention of voters of the time.

Millenial Makeover: Generational Theory

In the book Millennial Makeover many of the books main arguments are based on the generational theory of the authors for each individual generation. Each generation by their standards spans about a forty year period with each being dominated by certain beliefs and ideals of the people born in that generation. The last three generations according to the book are the Baby Boomers, Generation X, and then the generation I am included in, the Millennials. According to the book, Millennials are more self-absorbed than any other generation to date while also being more connected to each other and information through cell phones and the Internet. Millennials represent the most diverse group of people for any generation so far and also are said to be the most accepting of others. I definitely agree with many of the ideals presented for my own generation as I am rather self-minded and definitely have the ability to be more connected to anyone or any bit of information I feel through dialing a number or the click of a button online. Anyone today with access to a cell phone or to the Internet enjoys this same degree of connection. In this way I feel the greatest cultural touchstone for describing the Millennial generation is the Internet and some of the networking sites used today to connect people around the world.