Millennials of New York, the parody account you wish you’d thought of first

Millennials of New York, a new Facebook account that lampoons “Humans of New York” with portraits of young New Yorkers and preposterous quotes that touch on the the millennial themes of insecurity, vanity and above all the sad, sad lives we live.

Metro got into contact with the account’s co-creator Alec Macdonald to learn more about the how he and Connor Toole came up with the idea, what people think about MONY and if Brandon Stanton, the creator of Humans of New York has given his blessing.

How did you two come to create Millennials of New York?

MONY originally started off as a Elite Daily article we wrote together. After that, Connor and I decided to make the Facebook page mostly as a joke. We just found the captions so fun to write, so we threw them up on Facebook and the page grew very quickly and organically.

Who are the millennials in the photos?

Most of the people I photograph are coworkers, who are kind and brave enough to let us write terrible things about them. But we've been branching out into friends, and friends of friends, and sooner or later I'll have to go around asking millennials on the street to be in it. I guess I can bribe them with Instagram likes or something.

Please tell us the quotes aren’t real.

Connor and I write all the quotes together. Usually one of us will come up with the first draft, or the basic idea/topic, and then we'll argue for three hours about whether or not to use the word "diarrhea" or, you know, just keep it simple with "butt-lava." They are entirely made up, which we thought was obvious (there is a talking dog in one, after all) but apparently the Internet's barometer for what is and isn't satire is in need of serious repair.

Have you heard from Brandon Stanton the creator of Humans of New York? Do you have his blessing?

Nope, we have not heard from Brandon Stanton. Although I'd like to think he'd give us his blessing, once he is finally finished with making millions of people cry all over their phones. We like Humans of New York a lot, and we basically found that it provided the perfect structure and context for making jokes about Millennial culture--which is really just another term for "modern internet culture."

What do you two think about Millennials?

Millennials get a pretty bad rap for being entitled, lazy sloths--which, in a lot of ways, they obviously are--but they're also the most highly educated generation in American history, who are politically active, ethical, creative, severely underpaid, and funny as sh*t. So the page isn't really about just hating on millennials (Connor and I are millennials, after all). It's about satirizing the parts of modern youth and internet culture that deserve it. But mostly we're just trying to be funny.

Matt Lee is a Web producer for Metro New York. He writes about almost everything and anything. Talk to him (or yell at him) on Twitter so he doesn’t feel lonely@mattlee2669.