Millennial cool replaced generational irony with radical vulnerability

Evidence

Despite these critiques, Girls crystallized a key element of millennial cool: the shift from Gen X detachment to radical vulnerability. In an article on post-hipster youth, Vice identified a subset of millennials it labeled “Earnests,” who abandoned irony to pursue “real beauty and experience.” Nearly every episode featured Dunham stripping naked—not as titillation, but as the highest expression of confessional honesty. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 348

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ‘death of the sellout’ and sincerity-as-signaling mechanisms central to the reader’s omnivore monoculture analysis; also the inverse of David Foster Wallace-era irony.
• SEED: Could build toward an essay on nudity and confession as a millennial status-signaling strategy — how exposing oneself became the new premium currency once detached irony devalued.