Dear Millennials

Coca-Cola

Dear Millennials,

Please, I beg of you: guzzle down 150 calories of liquid sugar daily and stuff your mini fridges at work with the stuff.  900 factories, churning out 1.9 billion cups per day weren’t enough. You guys aren’t going for it; I’m sorry, you all. Now we’ve got millennial faces, twenty-six-year-old actresses who’ve appeared on a few episodes on a Netflix show, smiling through their teeth to get you, you feeling sorry for your teeth before they’ve touched the carbonated bubbles.

Be free, be awesome, be young -- it’s on your super bowl screen, on your office desk staring at your furrowed eyebrows, and in your soul as it decays your bones like it’s been doing to boomers since ‘62.

Applebee’s

Dear Millennials,

The Fiesta Lime Chicken did not die for you to snuff this million-dollar industry. Please eat this knock-off chicken wings appetizer you can make at home. Why be vegetarian when Uncle Jerry wants to take you here for the third time this month, wants to bring the screaming kids, and order the hardened artichoke dip to the table? It’s the time of their lives for married folks who want to enjoy our happy hour at 9:00 in the bar area, bicker about who should pick up Johnny from soccer practice on Monday, and get to bed by 10:00.

Suburban Houses

Dear Millennials,

Who wants to live within a white picket fence and snarl at their neighbors as they water the daisies they never planned on buying, then plummet into a sea of loneliness as they drive from work to home for 50 minutes? You do, my friend! On these drives that take you one inch closer to snapping out of your questionable chronically consistent, almost robotic tendencies, you can simultaneously question if you’ve paid the mortgage on time this month. Get away from those “urbanites,” because apparently 1950s logic that downtown is “scary” and “unwholesome” should still apply in 2018.

Bar Soap

Dear Millennials,

You wanna be itchy and dry? In this weather? Please rub this on your body.

Golf

Dear Millennials,

Those who have been dragged to the course with Dave from sales and your boss who gets paid more than you do for swinging sticks with potential business partners: we hope you’re having a grand ol’ time. Maybe Dave’s jaunty boasts about how much beer he drank at the USA Top Brands conference last month while scoring a hole in one will inspire you to buy $200 worth of golf clubs and perfect your quiet clap. We’re all here for you, especially when you golf for 20 years and use us to escape from the devastating reality that you’re getting a divorce. Please mask your true feelings and vulnerability on the green, because that’s what your father, grandfather, and male ancestors would’ve done too.

Casinos

Dear Millennials,

Grandma Betty is playing the slots and waiting for you to join her. Put some quarters in the slot machines until you lose $10, although that was the $10 you were going to use for groceries and you’re kind of much more broke than you’d thought you’d be at 25. Slap the machine until the casino manager walks over and discreetly tells you that hitting the machine will not pour out rent. Stare at the swirls and booze stains in the carpet until you’ve finally questioned your existence. Blaring sounds of music on loops and “cha-chings” play in the background.

Travel Agencies

Dear Millennials…

Oh, yeah. Okay, maybe we should die out. I mean, Airbnb and flight itineraries are just, like, there on your fingertips.