Generational Con Man

I read an article this week by Mark Liston. He's a recruiter and he is also a generational traitor and a pathetic social masochist.

Here's the essence of what he says:  I'm a baby-boomer and we're awful. Why? Because we're workaholics. We love blackberries. We can’t text message. And we have old Beatles records in the garage.

We have old Beatle records? Is that a sin now? No, but he treats it like one just so he can suck up to Gen Y.

He goes on to say: You guys are better than us. We had race riots. We went on peace marches. We went to Woodstock. We ducked bullets at Kent State.

Does anyone really think that Mark Liston ducked bullets at Kent State? Or that he was involved in a race riot? Of course not.

Mark is just an ordinary guy -- and so is his audience. In fact, there's probably less difference between Baby Boomers like Mark and Gen Y than between any generations in the last 100 years.

The proof is in the pudding because for the rest of his article Mark gives advice to Gen Y and none of it has anything to do with generational differences at all. Here's a sample of what he says:

• The most useful class I took in school was typing.

• No one asked to see my report cards at any job I ever had.

• Don’t worry about knowing what you want to do 20 years from now.

           All of us who thought we knew changed our minds

• Don't worry about working with people older than you. It's no big deal

It's not bad advice but I was in a rage for three days after I read this article because of the oily, contemptible, cowardly way in which Mark rushes to appease the barbarians.

Then I started to think: Hey, this is actually a fantastic article because it's so stupid that it undercuts its own lies. First the guy says, "I'm dumber than you" and then he says "So, why don't you take my advice?".

Then I realized something else. My friend, The Funny Banker, tells me that when you come right down to it, selling is lying.

Mark is a salesman and, apparently, he knows that if you flatter people you can feed them any kind of baloney you want.

In the comment section underneath this article, the Gen Whiners lap this stuff up. "There's a sucker born every minute," said P.T. Barnum and Generation Y is proving him right.

Audio version

Reference: Back to the Future — A Recruiter’s Thoughts

Mark Liston has many more articles of the same calibre. His blog is here

Comments

[humanresourcespufnstuf]

Animal, I liken the so called "Generational Experts" to modern day snake oil salesmen. It's a quick way to make a buck (as you mentioned above, see Barnum, P.T.), and no one can prove you wrong, because there are no single generational truths.

Thanks for calling this dude out!