Chalk it up as a consequence of hitting Facebook's "like" button too much (A favorite energy drink? Why not. A friend's indie-pop band? Sure. A brave-thinking magazine? Of course). Apparently millennials are having a hard time trying to conjure up anything more than passing interest in corporate brands.

A new research project, aptly titled the Millennial index, polled thousands of people born anywhere from the late 1970's to the early 2000's and found a distinct pattern of how they interacted with these brands. Namely, there were very few love/hate or even "dislike" answers among participants. Most people gave a collective yawn to nearly every brand with a "neutral" or "like" response.

Researchers, for their part, seemed baffled by the results:

But guess what? These ever-positive, uber-idealistic Millennials have screwed up the whole thing. When we looked at our first month’s worth of data, we found almost NO contrast among brands. Not only do the Ms not dislike anything. They seem to think that “Love” is too strong of a feeling for a brand.

Our 5-point scale quickly turned into a 3-or even 2-point scale. It seems that “Neutral” is about the most damning way these Ms can feel about anything.

[Hat Tip: Gawker]

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Erik Hayden