Awkward Awesome

I’m deploying all my Google Fu to try and find the original study here, but MTV Networks apparently hides their studies in a special, special box only accessible if you’re a fair person, which I am not. Anyway, in this piece by Patrick Evans at Media Post on the social media accessibility of Gen Y, there’s an interesting slice:

According to a recent MTV Networks study, 70% of Gen Y consumers said they’d figure out how to make things fair if they feel a company is being unfair with them. The network found that the group as a whole demands fairness, transparency and clear, consistent rules from brands. This often means brands get bombarded with negative Facebook posts or tweets when it increases shipping charges or makes a decision a majority of its consumers doesn’t like.

Can’t figure out how to do a Google search, but IT’S LATTER-DAY ROBIN HOOD TIME B when Netflix changes their pricing model. I wish I could find the study, actually, because I’d like to investigate the phrasing. This passage, when you give a good hard look, offers a terrifying possibility: “makes a decision a majority of its consumers doesn’t like.” Is that what unfairness is now? When a change is made that people don’t like?

And let’s double-down. Here is your intro post for Gen Y, this sentence: “The network found that the group as a whole demands fairness, transparency and clear, consistent rules from brands”? Fairness, transparency, and rules! I know I love to reference this Don Peck Atlantic piece, but the echoes are there:

Ron Alsop, a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal and the author of The Trophy Kids Grow Up: How the Millennial Generation Is Shaking Up the Workplace, says a combination of entitlement and highly structured childhood has resulted in a lack of independence and entrepreneurialism in many 20-somethings. They’re used to checklists, he says, and “don’t excel at leadership or independent problem solving.” Alsop interviewed dozens of employers for his book, and concluded that unlike previous generations, Millennials, as a group, “need almost constant direction” in the workplace. “Many flounder without precise guidelines but thrive in structured situations that provide clearly defined rules.”

BUT THESE ARE THE RULES. It’s not that these are bad things, of course. Transparency, fairness, and clear expectations are good qualities in a business. But if one of the three tenets is built on something so ephemeral as mass good feelings, the structural integrity of the whole thing seems questionable.

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Obviously, this is not a cooking blog, nor will it become one, because my evening palette more or less consists of a lean piece of broiled chicken or fish, a steamed vegetable, and possibly some rice. Eat Boring: A Primer, etc. But, per the fine people at Fine Cooking, I’ve learned how to make awesome sweet potato fries.

The trick is egg whites. The protein crisps the fry. All right, so you need:

• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 3 egg whites (crack the shells in half, then move the yoke from shell to shell over a bowl to catch the whites)
• Cooking spray
• A sweet potato (no kidding)

Preheat the oven to 425. Peel and chop up yo’ potato into fries — the shortcut for this is to cut the potato into a rectangular block of potato, then into slices, then to fries. I like a thinner fry myself, so I go about 1/4-inch by 1/4-inch. So you’ve got your fries.

Whisk the cumin, paprika, and salt into the egg whites. Spray a baking sheet with cooking spray. Dunk the fries in the mixture and then line them up on the baking sheet, like so:

Put the fries in the oven for eight to ten minutes. Take them out, flip them with a spatula, sprinkle some kosher salt while they’re hot. Put them back in the oven for another, like, six to ten minutes. And you’re ready to go!

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