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Beyond the Headlines

The subversives of the 1950s were dubbed Beatniks. For the love children of the ’60s, it was Hippies. The upwardly mobile ’80s gave us Yuppies, the anti-establishment ’90s had Slackers, and the aughts were all about Hipsters. Now, millennials have their own moniker: Yuccies, short for “Young Urban Creatives.” Whether they like it or not, this persona that didn’t exist two weeks ago might be here to stay.

How did this happen? Millennial pop culture writer David Infante penned a long-form argument turned viral Mashable story, opining why he and his cohorts are so singularly different. Infante set out to coin a single new word that would define his generation, and by all counts has succeeded — the word “yuccie” is already listed on Urban Dictionary, which to millennials might as well be the Oxford English Dictionary. And BuzzFeed already has a listicle dedicated to “99 Things All Yuccies Love,” so as far as social impact goes, its permanence — or at least its lasting SEO value — is secure.

The argument for yuccies hit a nerve with three generations, including millennials, who are eager to put an end to all the macro- and microscopic analysis, to finally put a finger on exactly what makes Gen Y so very enigmatic. Infante backed up his new slang buzzword du jour, picked up by most major news sources around the world, citing Bentley’s PreparedU Project (among others) as evidence for the academic validity of what makes yuccies — or the “millen-intelligensia” — so different from the Hipsters with whom they’re lumped together.

“Like any other privileged member of a so-called ‘creative class,’ being called a hipster offends me for its inaccuracy,” Infante wrote. “I demand to be snarked in precise terms . . . in a nutshell, [we’re] a slice of Generation Y, borne of suburban comfort, indoctrinated with the transcendent power of education, and infected by the conviction that not only do we deserve to pursue our dreams; we should profit from them.”

Millennial lifestyle and culture arbiter Refinery29 covered the emergence of this new demographic by pointing out, as many of their peers have on Twitter, that while “there’s plenty about the yuccie archetype . . . that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny,” there’s also “a lot that resonates about this portrait.” Millennial women’s lifestyle site Bustle explains: “[Yuccies have] the same burning desire for individuality, self-expression, and creativity as hipsters, but with the craving for success and, most importantly, validation that marks a yuppie.”

Basically, yuccies are millennial hipsters who aren’t willing to sacrifice their future financial security for their cultural idealism — as Business Insider put it, yuccies are defined by their wishes for “jobs that stimulate their minds and their senses and their passion — but also pay the bills with a little left over.”

We’ve written before about the increasingly pragmatic choices millennials are making, such as their realism in their approach to what to do for a living and where to live, and this blending of hipster and yuppie values seems to be just natural growth for aging and evolving millennials. Or as NPR says, “Yuccies combine an understanding of the economic realities of living in a metropolitan area with a need for creative fulfillment and validation.”

In their coverage of the emergence of the yuccie, CNN featured academic Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class, who says just as industrialization was key to human development in the 19th and 20th centuries, so is creative capital in the 20th and 21st centuries. “Cities interested in growing will want to attract the creatives [nee yuccies] who innovate, launch businesses and eventually move their cities forward.”

So, despite the New York Daily News inclination to be “already over the yuccie,” it seems as though we all might want to embrace them — or one of their two dozen alternative monikers rounded up by TIME — instead.

April Lane is a freelance writer.