Back in October, I thought that Bernie’s revolution was impassioned, but unlikely. I believed that Hillary was almost definitely the only logical candidate. Then, somewhere in the past several months, I realized that I’d changed my mind. In fact, it took me passionately commenting on articles about why as a millennial woman I should be voting for Hillary to realize how much I’d begun to feel the Bern.

That said, this article is not about why millennials like Bernie. A lot of millenials don’t. This article is about why the impassioned pleas to millennials popping up all over the Internet aren’t achieving anything. This article is about why it seems to older generations that millennials are not listening.

Hillary Clinton is attempting to connect to millennials by Snapchating us debate highlights, tweeting us slang words and emojis, and making awkward pop culture references. It seems like she is speaking down to us, that she believes we have our own language and will not understand hers and that of an older generation. After all, millennials don’t read the news anymore, right? It seems logical to many millennials to wonder: If Hillary is this out of touch with pop culture, and if she is this dismissive of our intelligence as voters, then perhaps she doesn’t care about us for anything but our vote. If she can’t communicate with us, then how can she connect with us? How much will she care about what we care about once in office?

While Hillary seems unable to communicate with millennials as normal adults because she is assuming we speak only in Harry Potter references and internet abbreviations, Bernie addresses us as what we are: the youngest voters, with a tremendous amount of power, who care deeply about issues of police brutality, prejudice against non-Christians, and college loans, and who are following the progress of the Syrian refugee crisis, recovery from the recession, and climate change with careful, worried eyes. He refuses to appeal to us as walking iPhones. He approaches us as what we are: voters. That’s why we’re listening to Bernie.

And why we aren’t listening to these appeals from older Democrats.

The arguments millennials are being given for why we should consider Hillary are inherently insufficient because they are based on our lack of intelligence and interest as voters. They assume that we care too little about our vote, that we are unrealistic, that we don’t know what we’re doing. And that’s unfair.

We are being told that Bernie won’t win the general election and so we should vote for Hillary. If you think that independents and moderates will absolutely not be taken in by Bernie, particularly if he is running against Trump or Cruz who would both bring exclusion to the White House, then you need to pay more attention. People who want change from the current establishment are still considering Bernie Sanders. But also, voting for who will win is a stupid way to use your vote and a waste of the democratic system in which the goal is to vote for the best candidate for the job.

It isn’t idealistic to say that this is how a democracy is meant to work. We are meant to vote for the ideal candidate. The reasons being given to us for why we should vote for Hillary are that we are being foolish and naïve in rooting for Bernie, in believing in his presidency or his political revolution. We are being told condescendingly by older Democrats that a vote for an ideal is a vote wasted. We are being told to put to the side what we believe and where we feel our principles lie to vote for the pragmatic candidate we don’t know if we can trust over the candidate we feel is listening to us. We are being told to vote for “the best we can hope for” instead of the candidate who makes us feel hopeful. That is not how voting works.

In four years, we might be disappointed and grumbling about the lack of revolution. But every president is moderated by actually being in office. So let’s picture Hillary in that scenario. She can’t communicate with millennials now and appears to be computer-generated when she attempts to. If she’s elected into office, perhaps she’ll stop listening to any millennials at all. Bernie is listening to us. He is listening carefully and he is responding. So maybe we won’t have a revolution, but we could still benefit from what changes Bernie can bring. And Bernie is listening to us—so we are listening to him.

I’m not entirely convinced on Bernie. But I find it difficult to listen to older generations make assumptions in their articles about millennials—wondering aloud why young voters are voting against their own interests or pleading to us to reconsider Hillary—when they aren’t listening to us back. Why do you think Bernie’s “revolution” has any support at all? Because millennials are dying for change, perhaps, but also because Bernie recognizes that we are not technological fiends who never look up from our iPhone games. We are a computer generation trying to get jobs in a rough economy and live in a world in which our friends might get shot for being black or attacked for wearing a hijab.

I am not leaning toward Bernie over Hillary because I shrugged my shoulders and wished for a revolution. I am unconvinced because I can’t tell if anyone on Hillary’s side is listening, because all of these articles are just screaming at us about our lack of facts, of our naivete. If Hillary wins the primary, I am not going to drop my vote and let it go. I will use it for Hillary, too, and I think she would be a great president. I feel I can safely speak for my fellow millennials by saying that if Bernie doesn’t win the primary, the millennials won’t just not vote.

Older generations worry constantly that younger people don’t appreciate the vote—and then when we show up in large numbers to use it, excited and passionate about a candidate, they spend their time disdaining our choices. For an example, see where a Wall Street Journal opinion section asked the other day in its subhead, “Why are young people voting against their own interests?”

Trust us with our vote. We do not use it lightly. We know its value. We know we will have to live a long time with the consequences of that vote. We are considering both candidates carefully. Millennials take their vote seriously. Take us seriously. We hear you campaigning for your candidate too—and if you stop talking down to us, we might even listen.

Leah Rachel von Essen is a senior at the University of Chicago responding to the many opinion pieces and articles being shared around the Internet discussing millennials and their vote, and why they need to change their tone before they can be successful.