Witches and millennials are two of the media’s favorite scapegoats.
When you read an article or blog post written by anyone, there is always an agenda. Everyone has an agenda. I have an agenda. I am both a millennial and a Pagan. As such I probably skimmed over the more favorable pieces to find those with inflammatory headlines and those that were sure to prove my point today. Unfortunately, I didn’t have to go past the first page of Google news results to do so.
![[public domain]](https://wildhunt.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/techno-545767_640-500x334.jpg)
[public domain]
Millennials face a similar bias in general life and in the media. Often cast as “lazy” or “self-absorbed” by older generations. Educator Dr. Margo Wolfe wrote, “There is a fear that teens and young people are generally up to no good and that they are all disconnected, just waiting for the next narcissistic opportunity to wreak havoc on unsuspecting adults.” The media does nothing to challenge this perspective and often continues this narrative either through subtle framing or through blatant clickbait.
Coverage of millennials is often nothing short of horrific. In February, Bloomberg published an article titled “ Most Millennials Can’t Do a Single Nice Thing for Someone Else.” The headline is what’s become known as “clickbait” or something that is designed to make you click through even if it’s out of anger or annoyance. Then, after clicking through, you quickly discover that the headline and the data presented don’t match up.
In this article, it becomes readily apparent that the study is measuring volunteerism and not acts of kindness. “Volunteers are defined as persons who did unpaid work (except for expenses) through or for an organization,” explains the article. That’s not a high standard, but certainly a very different standard than set forth by the headline.
As noted, there is a severe dip in volunteerism for the 20-24 age range. That’s the age that a lot of people are in college and often times also working to support themselves. Between classes, a part time job, and homework, I didn’t have time to volunteer. Most of my working time was for an unpaid internship. But that short article doesn’t stop to question that. It simply makes a radical statement and then presents some iffy data to back that up. It goes on to call 16-19 year olds “sulky adolescents” and proclaims later that young people are “too selfish – or preoccupied – to volunteer.”
But what about the intersection of Witches and millennials in the media? How is that treated?
In January, pop culture icon 23-year-old Azealia Banks tweeted that she’s a witch, which prompted The Guardian to offer its two cents in a piece entitled “Season of the witch: why young women are flocking to the ancient craft.”
I’m really a witch.
— AZEALIA BANKS (@AZEALIABANKS) January 8, 2015
After quoting the tweet, the news outlet opines, “Still, even by Banks’s standards, the witch thing was weird. It came out in the middle of a run about black Americans and their relationship to Christianity … Banks then suddenly took a hard left into what seemed like either a joke, or an unexpected embrace of Harry Potter fan fiction.”
Standard terms for practitioners are placed into quotation marks – “‘magical'” and “‘witch'” for example – almost as if the author doesn’t want to give the words more power by saying them without the safety net of quotations. According to The Guardian writer, a Tumblr blog isn’t run by three witches, it is only “purported” to be run by witches.
As mentioned in the earlier Bloomberg article, the Guardian doesn’t back up the headline. Why are young women “flocking” to the ancient craft? The article spends quite a bit of time discussing why women, in general, might be drawn to witchcraft, but the article’s thesis about young women is never specifically brought up. There’s not even a shred of evidence to back up the claim that millennials are “flocking” to the Craft.
The clickbait headline draws you in and then gives you no evidence to support the facts. Additionally, the article does not give voice to young people or even to Azealia Banks. It only rehashes her 140 character messages and mocks the idea of someone being a witch by calling it “an embrace of Harry Potter fan fiction.”
The Debrief instead asks the question “Are More 20 Something Women Turning To Witchcraft? We Asked An Expert” in response to The Guardian‘s article and tries to answer it. The piece starts off by framing the conversion to Wicca as a “phase.’ This is something often told to young people in a variety of forms: “You’ll change your mind when you get older.” “It’s just a phase, you’ll grow out of it.” The 26-year old writer, herself, went through a Wicca phase.
While writer Stevie Martin is herself young, she doesn’t interview any other young women, who are both in their 20s and still practicing Witchcraft. Hers is the only young voice in the piece. Fortunately Martin does speak with Treadwell’s Christina Oakley Harrington, who provides a solid response to the writer’s questions. However, Martin’s headline offers a query into a specific intersection of two groups, and no one currently at that intersection is talked to in the piece.
![[Photo Credit: James Denham / Wikimedia]](https://wildhunt.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Country_crossroads_-_geograph.org_.uk_-_1170630-500x375.jpg)
[Photo Credit: James Denham / Wikimedia]
However there is a veritable desert when looking for things written for millennials by millennials, or even just for millennials. There are pieces about “coming out of the broom closet to parents” or information about college clubs. A few millennial bloggers do exist, such as Conor O’Bryan Warren at Under the Owl’s Wing or Aine Llewellyn at of the Other People. If there are more, they are not openly coming out and saying that they’re are millennial.
To be fair, talking with a minor about these things can be problematic if their parents take issue. However the internet, overall, seems to be lacking in articles about issues that are unique to or primarily affect millennial Pagans, Polytheists and Heathens, whether they are minors or over 18.
Representation is important. It’s critical to be able to see people our own age achieving things that were once relegated to older generations not only as a form of motivation – look at what my generation can do now – but also being able to connect on a different level when the author has had a similar background as the people they’re writing about. Millennials need more positive representation in all media, more opportunities to share their voices, and the will to step forward when given that chance.
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In the 90’s it felt as if there was nothing written by Generation X for Generation X. It wasn’t until the Wild Hunt was established in 2004 did I feel as if anyone from my generation had a voice within Paganism. I think that’s just how these sort of things trend.
The last thing in your piece is really important here, they need “the will to step forward.” No one is locking Millennials out of PaganSquare or Patheos Pagan, but those voices are hard to include when no one is stepping forward. I get lots of inquiries to write at Patheos Pagan, I have yet to get one from a Millennial.
America has been afraid and envious of its young people since I was a teen in the Fifties, and reputedly going at least as far back as the Twenties. (Good heavens, in five years I’ll have to specify which Twenties…) It’s a perennial angst that is constantly being rediscovered.
I am happy that I was born just a few months too early to be part of the Baby Boom generation. Goddess knows a lot of horrible stuff was written about that generation.
The Millennials probably know of the Baby Boom generation as the one responsible for all the evil things wrong in this world today. Now when the Millennial First Quarter generation starts becoming teenagers I wonder how the Millennials will write up the articles on them.
Always remember what it felt like at each age of your life. It might just make you a little easier on the young people when you are the older generation. Amazing how many of us older people seem to have forgotten. Meanwhile Millennials, follow Mary’s example and speak up. Who else knows you better than you do?
I’ll be honest, as a Boomer, I fully understand, yet have a tough time sympathizing with the plight of the maligned Millenials.
The older generation didn’t stop at bad-mouthing us. They shot and killed us. Look up Kent State sometime.
This is something i have been contemplating for a long time now! Being both a millennial and long time Witch, I’m pleased to see more and more articles written by people my age (23). I absolutely agree that we get a bad rep, but to some degree its deserved, its also a product of our time, so cut us some slack (i for one feel i work pretty hard but its relative). I feel having a voice can be a bit difficult both outside the web, such as in COG meetings in Southern California (rarely meet, and older), or even to other young pagans as some are serious and some just fluffin around trying to find themselves. That being said around the net you must either be already established to really be known or get any kind of coverage, or you must somehow be deemed worthy to write a column or two every once in a while by an already established site i.e wildhunt, patheos (opinion PLEASE TELL ME IM WRONG I WOULD LOVE TO WRITE).
There is also the simple fact of knowledge, a lot of millenials may not have access or much time clocked studying the craft/paganism/magic/occult etc etc. So do not necessarily feel comfortable writing up something they DO KNOW about. Knowledge of any kind given in good will and with sincerity is a holy act period; and not many people know this, and are simply to nervous to raise their voice and share their experiences.
Lastly we MUST be willing to stand tall and say I AM WITCH, SHAMAN, MAGI, HEATHEN, AND PRIEST, or any other name you might identify with. Speak with confidence, humility and knowledge of who and what you are and people WILL take you seriously.
I am Talisien, and i am a 1st degree (for whatever thats worth) Witch, A Shaman, A Scholar and Magi. I am 23, a college student, a teacher, and a business owner. Most of all, i still have so much to learn.
Merry Meet and Blessed Be
Personally? I think labels and our fast-paced world are a big part of the problem, here – so many of us shut ourselves off from the rest of the world by clinging to one label or another, or by reciting a veritable litany of labels when shaking hands with someone for the first time (you know, to save people the time it actually takes to get to know us). The tendency is to ‘drill-down’ to specifics when identifying ourselves, which causes us to exclude a lot of people by separating ‘us’ from ‘them.’ The media isn’t really the problem, either – the media is little more, in my opinion, then a shallow and distilled reflection of our various cultures or societies. It is a function defined by the expectations of its audience. The problem is, as time progresses, it seems we (as a society) demand less and less depth of information from which to form our opinions. Look at the Internet, as an example: it used to be entire Web sites that were the rage (because books were too big and inconvenient); then all that reading in one chunk took too long, so blogs came to the fore; but blogs also started getting tedious, and now it seems like if you want to get your point across, you have to settle for tweetering or whatever blurbs of fact or wisdom you might be able to fit into other forms of fast-paced, ‘micro-blogging,’ social media.
As a society, we have lowered our expectations not just with the junk food we put in our stomachs, but also with the junk data we attempt to fill our heads with. Taking aim at a generation still not established enough to properly defend itself is part and parcel with this sort of (lack of) thinking. Not that this sort of (lack of) thinking is new: “The crops have failed and our cow won’t give milk, we’re scared and we don’t know what else to do … let’s go dunk a witch!” – we’ve been doing this for a long time, after all.
As a generation, Millennials have the same chance every generation has had before it: namely, to be the last generation to repeat the same negative behaviors as its forebears, rather than just the latest one to do so. Young people today have grown up with unparalleled access to information and technology. What will that access be used for? How might that access, and what it’s used for, make the difference? That is the history young people are expected to start writing; but, as has been pointed out in other comments to this article, the younger generation will have to step forward and start doing so. Not because they are the ‘Millennial Generation,’ and have to stand against the older generations; but because, like the rest of us, they are human beings, and entitled to do their part to make our world a better place.
Oo, oo, I’m Millenial and I care! But I feel like my problem with writing or speaking with Millenials is that I primarily don’t associate with Millenials, especially Pagans. I’m 26, but I already have 2 kids (most Millenials are waiting until later to have children), we own a house and don’t plan on moving, and my husband at least is established in his career. While I feel out of place with Gen X, I also don’t know where I fit in with the Millenials.
And Millenial Pagans, at least in our area, are majorly flaky. When an acquaintance and I first started holding meet-ups last year, attendance was an issue. People would RSVP and then not show, or those who did really didn’t care to discuss Paganism or any sort of spiritual anything (it ended up being manga fan meet-up). But after not having meet-ups for a few months, somehow a whole new group of Pagans caught wind of the meet-ups. They show up, they talk, and they care about establishing a community. And they’re Gen Xers. I wish more Millenials would be involved, I just don’t know how to meet them where they are.
Same problem here in SoCal, either flaky and fluffy or their heathens, which doesn’t work when im looking specifically for witches ya know.
The same crap was being written about Generation Xers as well as about Paganstwenty five years ago . There was huge explosion in interest in people getting into Paganism or interested in it back in the 1990s and it’s seems to be continuing.
In my opinion, Paganism is the default spirituality of European people and without Christianity being inflicted upon by force and by law, people seem to be gravitating back to it.
n my opinion, Paganism is the default spirituality of European people and without Christianity being inflicted upon by force and by law, people seem to be gravitating back to it.
Word !
The old ways always find a way back, just as the wheel turns so does human consciousness reaching a higher place come in waves, its ebs and flows are long and deep but there is a shift coming within our lifetime.
I can relate to the “its just a phase” ideology in your article. Even now that I’m in my forties, many of my peers in the Pagan community find it hard to believe that I got my start in Paganism in my early teens. Especially when they find out that the area I grew up in was and still is a “Christians Only” community. They thought that it was a phase and left it at that. Now I’m a ordained Pagan minister with over twenty years of experience. This doesn’t come without some difficulties though. Many people with as many years in the faith as I are much older than I and many distance themselves from me. They also try to influence the younger generation from not talking to me or coming to me with questions, because they think that there is just no way that I started at the age I did and without help or influence. Hang in there, you will find your way. Be true to yourself, that is what is important.
There are actually a lot of millennial based publications like Thought Catalog, Elite Daily, XO Jane and the various microblogs on Tumblr. However I’m just wondering. When I was younger, Generation X got into Paganism through movies like The Craft, but it was mostly the teens older than me (like 12th graders when I was in 9th grade).
I’m admittedly on the outside of this but I wonder, are Millennials and Generation Z even into Paganism that much? Because what I’ve seen is a rise in popularity of Richard Dawkins’ new atheism – and, knowing Azealia Banks’ track record, I don’t know if she’s being serious or just saying she’s a ‘witch’ for shock value. I’m not criticizing but just curious.
Oh its a huge craze especially with generation Z and those who are within the 13-16 rage, BUT its all about cursing and this spell or that spell. The nitty gritty understanding of the forces at play in the universe and the even deeper connection to the gods seems to be lacking alot.
I say this from having spoken to high school students who were doing a project for the exact reason of exposing what REAL witchcraft is from someone older and already experienced in the craft with elders and self study.
I a sure that there are people ready to interview millennials when they are ready to be interviewed. Wild Hunt already has. I have done a bit of it myself for ACTION one of a person raised Wiccan who has become Heathen and another a Polytheist who is studying to become hopefully a full time Priest someday and establish a temple to take care of.
I believe Wild Hunt has already brought up the subject of how difficult it is for younger Pagans to get taken seriously by elders and to get a chance to take responsibility for important things with Pagan groups.
So it is more a question of millennials willing to write articles and willing to be interviewed. Don’t be shy speak up, get our attention, show us what you are capable of. Meanwhile as I remember all to well being your ages and the problems that I had with older people and their games, I will do my best to not to play any of the old man games on you. After all, you are our various communities’ future, no matter what stage of training or experience that you are right now. myrddin@zianet.com