idea of being a cog in the wheel. They understood general production. They saw true depression and poverty, so the idea of a factory worker or teamwork was gold. Then the war hit, and again, it was do your part, be a cog in the huge American war machine. After the war the economy surged, people flooded factories and again this idea of being a cog in something greater than themselves was true. I think this idea began to die, in the era of the Gen Xers who grew up on television. Brad Pitt in Fight Club said it best....

"an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy crap we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

So what started with Gen X has only snowballed into the millennials because what was literally unattainable to Gen Xers actually was attainable for Millennials. Social Media in a way did make everybody celebrities. The difference is they haven't really figured out that it's all an illusion, they are still stuck in it, living in it daily, like an addiction. Gen X'ers didn't have that pitfall. They learned that TV lied to them the first day they got a true 9-5 and life kicked them in the teeth. They didn't have an instagram with 1k followers to feed them an illusion.