Earlier this month Princeton professor Christy Wampole published the article “How to Live Without Irony” in the New York Times, sparking heated and lengthy responses to what she calls a generation “investing in sham social capital without ever paying back one sincere dime.” She postulates that Millenials have developed no culture of its own, instead pulling from what others have already created as a mechanism of self-defense. Her argument lies in the assumption that this generation – unlike others before – fears being torn down for its ingenuity.

Journalist Jonathan D. Fitzgerald’s article “Sincerity, Not Irony, Is Our Age’s Ethos” ran in The Atlantic three days later, defeating her classification of modern life as dispassionate with examples of rising artists producing sincere, vulnerable music and writing. He does not believe, as Wampole does, that the 90s were the peak of sincerity, instead remembering his own coming of age decade as apathetic and melancholy. And where she uses generalities to explain her criticism, Fitzgerald makes a point of throwing names and statistics around to support his. One that stuck out to me most was the Knights of Columbus-Marist Poll survey. “Among Millenials,” Fitzgerald writes, “six out of 10 prioritized being close to God and having a good family life above anything else. For those in Generation X [of which Fitzgerald and Wampole are a part], family was still important, but the second priority was not spirituality – it was making a lot of money.”

I hesitate to jump right in and agree with what is largely a defense of my generation, because I, like Wampole, observe with a mixture of distaste and humor the “hipster movement.” Granted, I was a child in the 90s, but I don’t remember hipsters existing back then. It certainly is a new movement and there are members of my generation who choose to take part.

That said, the hipster movement is just a new way to accomplish what adolescents have always sought – protection from the harsh critics sitting across the lunch table. Adolescents are insecure, but their approach to life with “apathy” and refusal to stand out from the crowd is a self-defense mechanism not limited to Millenials, as Wampole intimates. Fitzgerald is right, they were around in the 90s. But they’re around today, distinguished by the label “hipsters,” and these cultural robots were around in the 70s and 80s too. I mean really, are you going to try to tell me that everyone aged 50 was a true fan of disco? I guess you’ve seen That 70s Show too.

I can’t tell Wampole or Fitzgerald what our generation will be remembered for. Perhaps Fitzgerald gets close when he cites icons such as Lady Gaga or Frank Ocean. Or maybe those two will only be remembered as sub-cultures, filed away with hipsters and disco. But every generation of adolescents has got a little sincerity and a little irony in it, and that’s because we’re human and sometimes our fears get in the way of being true to ourselves. If anything, what we once wrote in diaries is now broadcast over blogs, Twitter, and all-too-personal Facebook statuses. We’re more sincere but also more ironic, because we have more places to express. So here’s my nod to remembering our generation as the first to grow up on social media. The distance social media provides also gives us the courage we need to be sincere. And with the rise of cyber-bullying, forgive us a little if we need an ironic tweet or two, or tens of “likes” for “creatively” hating on Bieber, to lift us up when we’re feeling unsure.