If you’ve ever posted a BuzzFeed list on social media about not having your life together and captioning it: “This is me,” stop.

The pop-culture millennials don’t have a clue. They’re the ones who can’t do their own taxes, the ones who talk too loudly about their sex lives and the ones who mysteriously pay rent without an actual job. In a way, they’re similar to us. They like Netflix, partying and commiserating with friends. Except the pop-culture millennials are exaggerated, more entertaining versions of our generation — not a mold to follow.

We see the charmingly clueless 20-something portrayed on TV shows like “Girls.” We see them reflected in every single “20-something” list article on BuzzFeed. We even see it in the celebrities who are considered “just like us.”

The train-wreck millennials we see everywhere portrayed in the media are entertaining. But entertainment is all we should consider it.

If you look up the tag “20-somethings” on BuzzFeed, though, that’s how all the list articles portray a millennial. In an April 1 BuzzFeed article called “55 questions everyone asks after college” the questions range from “should I get out of bed?” to “should I do laundry or just buy more underwear?” This lazy “I give up” mentality is the theme among all the 20-something articles, and extends into all facets of pop culture.

For example, Lena Dunham’s character in “Girls” is a personified BuzzFeed list. But despite having all of the classic millennial traits, she still manages to afford to live and party in Brooklyn, even when she barely has a real job. Although TV isn’t an accurate representation of real life, it pushes a mentality that acting professional and put-together isn’t important because you’ll still be OK if you’re not.

And our other culture appointed-idol, “real, down-to-earth” Jennifer Lawrence is not who we should aspire to be. One of her most famous pictures was of her flipping off the camera after she won an Oscar last year. Millennial media called her “bad-ass” and empowered, catapulting her into the person we should aspire to be. But those same outlets also write articles about what not to post online, and that includes crude hand gestures. If we actually acted like Jennifer Lawrence, with a bold “I don’t care what anyone thinks” attitude, we wouldn’t be seen as fearless.  We would just be seen as rude.

In the real world — beyond the world of HBO and BuzzFeed — millennials can’t act that way. If we want to be hired for an actual job, we can’t make off-color jokes and have a general air of awkward. If we expect to even find a job, we can’t sit around watching Netflix and complaining about how hard it is to find a job.

That’s the problem I have with the media portrayal of the “I’m in my 20’s and I’m a mess, but I’m still making it” millennial. The average person graduating college or trying to find an internship can’t joke about date rape during a job interview — as Lena Dunham did in the second episode of “Girls”— or have no knowledge of how the world really works. If we want to distinguish ourselves, we need to be more confident, more tactful and less awkward.

No one wants to watch a show or read an article about someone who is always on time, never hung over at work and successful for his or her age, but we should be careful not to make lazy the new cool.

So the next time you feel like saying “I literally can’t,” remember that you can.

Kate Beckman is a freshman magazine journalism major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at kebeckma@syr.edu and followed on Twitter at @Kate_Beckman.

Published on April 8, 2014 at 1:20 am