Today’s Millennial Pins: March 25, 2016

Good morning, it’s March 25, a Friday! Here are today’s pins.

location_pin_sphere_red Refinery29 co-founder and CEO Philippe von Borries spoke about Millennials at SXSW, and published a portion of that keynote at Business Insider. The piece speaks to the very theme of the week – how much people deride Millennials. More on this in a bit.

location_pin_sphere_red So this happened Thursday: Microsoft launched “Tay,” a bot designed to learn from Millennials on social media. She’d converse with Millennials over social, and develop an AI by learning what they were saying and how.

Boy did it go wrong. Apparently some 4chan users trolled the bot by baiting it into making bold and ignorant comments about, oh, the Holocaust, transgender people, GamerGate and atheism, among other things. Sounds pretty predictable.

Why? Because this is a major corporation trying some ridiculous idea aimed at impressing its understanding of the Millennial user. Microsoft forced the issue with Tay. It rigidly defined Millennial while pledging false authenticity. And people spotted the attempt a mile away.

Microsoft has pulled Tay for now. That’s a good idea. The lesson, as always: Don’t try to be like what you think a Millennial is. Because you’re probably wrong.

location_pin_sphere_red T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas isn’t open yet, but when it’s finished, it’ll be a temple to FOMO, according to this Populous report. Seriously. The venue has VIP clubs, retail, restaurants and entertainment, and outdoor spaces that include a “selfie spot” and concert stage (its first show includes Nicki Minaj and Ariana Grande). One big swipe to get Millennials in the door. Like Microsoft’s Tay, it feels very inauthentic.

location_pin_sphere_red DataFox says “unicorns” (startups valued at at least $1 billion) in Silicon Valley are hiring at a rapid rate. The intelligence company’s survey of the last 30 days finds more than 1,500 jobs posted at unicorns. Another indicator that a bubble could be bursting at some point in the near future; until then, hey, get your jobs!

location_pin_sphere_red Nielsen’s newest survey looks at the TV watching habits of Millennials. To do this they broke Millennials into three groups (smart): living with parents, living alone, living with new family. Nielsen found that those living alone watched the least TV per day (3 hours, 38 minutes), while those in new families watched the most (4 hours, 40 minutes). That feels … normal?

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