Too easy to say, has dozens of connotations and sure hurts feelings when you get the intonation just right.
‘You Gen-Xer!’ doesn’t quite have the same spite in return, particularly when many of us wear that particular badge with pride.
And from my many years of dealing — largely productively I might stress — with the m-generation, I could quote Shakespeare, thus:
‘Their swords and mine are kin.’
Ghosting is the best deployment the m-worders have in their arsenal.
That’s when they don’t reply to texts, emails or phone messages, and sure don’t pick up the phone.
They’d rather cross eight lanes of freeway than pass you on the footpath; and wedding invitations with RSVPs, my goodness — I’ve seen one kid faint.
My children have perfected ghosting into a fine art; however, when a very close friend in my employment simply drifted away from her job with all sorts of almost-half-I’m-leaving type messages instead of the ballsy ‘next week will be my last week, Andy’, it became apparent that us oldies need to accept reality.
She didn’t get a gold watch.
I met half a dozen young people working and studying in agriculture in the past two months and although I need to refer to their age, I won’t use the m-word because they had not one characteristic that I quite consciously associate with those born around the same time.
Mid-twenties, smart, sharp and — above all — engaging.
One is piecing together a PhD that she hopes will revolutionise fertiliser applications (it will); another is new from across the ditch and has done a ripper job at throwing off that accent so I could understand much needed implementation of technology across all farming sectors.
The third one bent over backwards to talk about their tertiary scholarship raised by salt-of-the-earth farmers, arrange a photo shoot with me, a lab visit and share very impressive dreams.
This is the stuff that makes me spring out of bed each morning to get — after decent coffee — into my jalopy to head into work.
I dig it. This is the future of agriculture.
However this is about the m-word, so let’s bring the mood right down, old man.
A handful have not impressed in 2024.
But I need to be clear: people can be as introverted as they are, and it is a journo’s job to read the room and not bother people when appropriate.
However, when folk have been elevated to ostensibly a public leadership role within their field through the benevolence of farmers, an appointment or recognition via the public purse, they can’t become ghosting maestros.
Six m-worders have demonstrated this year an unwillingness to return calls and messages and refuse photo-opportunities, such that the question goes begging: if an ambassadorial position or industry young-person representation does not involve downing tools to get a spot of media coverage, then what exactly does it entail?
I am convinced that those youths I encountered sought only to get that cherished prize, position or appointment onto their CV and nothing else.
Which at best is disappointing but at worst can entail some uncomfortable conversations afterwards.
One event, I believe, had a smaller crowd than last year because key people involved wanted the kudos of leadership bestowed on them and not the responsibilities: how do I plug their gig if they ghost me?
But blessed be: they are outnumbered.
At Halloween I often get a lot of visitors while I sit on my front fence armed with enough treats to fatten some parents’ dental bills.
Last year I encountered witches, Yodas, one skeleton, two Pepper Pigs and more Harry Potters than I could count.
“None of you kids ever gonna dress as — ghosts?”
It fell flat.
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