Cringe! How millennials became uncool
H er right to a naked ankle is, in the end, the hill Natalie Ormond is willing to die on. Ormond, a millennial, simply cannot – will not – get her head around gen Z's fondness for a crew sock, pulled up over gym leggings or skimming bare legs, brazenly extending over the ankle towards the lower calf. 'I stand by trainer socks and I won't budge,' says the 43-year-old. 'The more invisible the sock, the better.'
A proclivity for socks hidden within low-top trainers is just one reason why millennials – anyone born between 1981-1996 – are now considered achingly uncool by the generation that came next: gen Z, AKA the zoomers, or zillennials. According to countless TikTok videos, other sources of derision for the generation that first popularised social media, millennial pink, and pumpkin-spice lattes are their choice of jeans (skinny and mom jeans are out; baggy hipsters are in); an obsession with avocado on toast (gen Z's green grub of choice is matcha); their excessive use of the crying laughing face emoji (for a zoomer, the skull emoji indicates humour, representing phrases such as 'I'm dying with laughter'); and the 'millennial pause', a brief moment of silence at the start of a millennial's video or voice note, thought to be because – and this really does make them sound ancient – they like to check the device they're using is actually recording. Millennials, typically self-deprecating, tend to join in, poking fun at themselves under the hashtags like #millennialsoftiktok. Avocado on toast … millennials' green grub of choice. Photograph:All of which is to say that, in recent years, millennials, the former hip young things that once seemed so cutting edge when cast side-by-side with the out-of-touch baby boomers and the rather nondescript generation X, have become, well, a bit cringe.
I say this as an (uncool) millennial myself. Born in 1991, I, like many millennials, remember a time before tech took over: I didn't get a phone (mobile not smart) until I was in my final year of secondary school; I wasn't on Facebook – then a social media site populated by my friends, rather than my friends' mums – until I was at sixth form; and remember when Netflix used to post out physical DVDs. But being a millennial hasn't always been easy. We've been called lazy, entitled and overly sensitive. Older generations have, typically, ignored the reality of stagnant wages, student debt and rising house prices and blamed our apparent poor financial habits – and penchant for brunch – for being unable to get on the property ladder. But, I'll confess, being part of a generation that felt so progressive compared with its predecessors, bridging the gap between analogue and digital, felt significant, essential, and yes, bloody cool, actually. It's a shock, then, to wake up one morning and realise you've been usurped. Matcha latte … gen Z's green grub of choice Photograph:Some millennials are digging their heels in, resistant to their new status; 37-year-old Lily Saujani feels particularly affronted. 'It's ridiculous. We have been judged by the younger generation who think they have invented everything,' she says. 'But really, they are just wearing what we wore in our teen years.' Saujani says she first felt uncool when she was scrolling TikTok (an app invented by a millennial, incidentally) and saw that being born before 1992 was considered old. 'There's definitely an unspoken – but sometimes spoken – competition between the generations on TikTok. And yes, I do feel old when I've been on it,' she says, before adding, in a very millennial way: 'But my dogs have gone viral a few times.'
In fact, much of the ire provoked by gen Z's teasing is driven by a sense that the younger generation are merely jumping on a cool and trendy bandwagon built by millennials. 'We paved the way for gen Z to be killing it on TikTok with our crappy Myspace accounts and MSN-ing each other from our university bedrooms,' says 41-year-old Lizzie Cernik, who believes millennials have a strong work ethic and are 'tough cookies'. Meanwhile, Ormond – the trainer sock fan – set up sustainable family store Smallkind in 2019 and is keen to stress that gen Z, famously environmentally conscious, had their eco-friendly way paved for them by millennials who got there first.
But when did this discernible shift from cool to uncool happen? Cernik posits that the pandemic was the turning point. 'Many older millennials (myself included) were coming to the end of our party era around the time of lockdown,' she says. 'The pandemic accelerated that and when we emerged from lockdown, gen Z had taken over fashion culture with new trends.' Beauty editor and influencer Laura Pearson – who is 40 but claims she feels no older than 25 – agrees, saying she noticed an online shift during Covid. 'The internet had been my space before and now there was this whole wave of new people with no experience or credibility being able to build careers on Instagram and TikTok.' Still, Pearson, who adds that she stays relevant by surrounding herself with gen Z friends, says she refuses to be defined by a word. 'If someone is embarrassed by being called a millennial, they're giving a word far too much power.'
Of course, generation bashing is nothing new – in fact, one could argue it's yet another thing millennials invented, coining, in the late 2010s, the phrase 'OK boomer' to dismiss attitudes associated with baby boomers. But, inevitably, this latest generational warfare, fought by the two cohorts most comfortable online, has a very public battleground: the internet. Illustration: Edith Pritchett/The Guardian
Dr Carolina Are, social media researcher at Northumbria University's Centre for Digital Citizens, says most gen Z conversations about millennials being uncool happen online. Are, herself a millennial, suggests that the two generations' different approaches to existing online is often what makes millennials seem unfashionable to younger people.
'Being online always means mediating oneself through an app or platform, meaning that real authenticity is hard to come by, even for those who claim to be 'no filter',' she says. 'However, while millennials went through years of polished feeds and aesthetics, only showing our best highlight reels and caring about our online persona, gen Z seem to have settled on aesthetics that are a form of understated and chaotic curation. While some of these are great – for example, the 'goblin mode' rejection of anything polished – they are still aesthetics, and denying that pursuing them has an aim (content creation is a lucrative business and aspiration even for gen Z) would be disingenuous.'
When I approach my gen Z brothers and their friends for clarification on what makes millennials uncool (a humbling experience; apparently even my over-cheery message inviting comments was 'very millennial'), one thing that stands out is the way in which we curate our lives. Selfies, for example. My generation takes selfies using the front-facing camera and a downward angle, the photographer's face, large and grinning, in the corner of the shot. Gen Z, it seems, favours the back camera and the volume button, using the 0.5x lens option to create a wide-angled picture with the snapper's giant distorted arm protruding from the bottom of the frame.
While millennial selfies have a certain gloss to them – a quick glance at my own album shows me and my friends leaning in, drinks in hand, stiff and still and self-conscious as we gaze at our own faces – those taken by the younger generation seem more joyful, more self-assured, more spontaneous, more intentionally unflattering. What's more, the fact we still take selfies at any given opportunity (I've recently taken them at the park, at the pub, while breastfeeding, and mid-run) reveals something else intrinsically uncool about millennials. 'Gen Z users seem to be embracing the chaos of our world a lot more, while also being aware of the harms of social media,' says Are. 'The fact that millennials may still post a lot, or care about the way they're perceived, or attempt to keep a professional or polished facade, may appear uncool to them.' Selfies, the gen Z way. Photograph:Maybe, too, the ribbing that gen Z gives millennials is down to our different senses of humour, driven by our lived experiences. While millennial humour is, typically, self-deprecating and relatable, gen Z are more absurdist, ironic, and meta. (Millennials would make a meme; gen Z would make a joke about a meme.) My 25-year-old brother puts gen Z's edge down to a combination of factors: social media, a job market still feeling the effects of 2008, climate anxiety, ridiculous house prices, and a stream of negative and polarised news. 'It's all played a part in gen Z being not just more ironic and absurdist, but also more cynical and a bit angry. There's a vibe of: if I don't laugh, I'll cry.'
Perhaps, of course, it's simply that the mantle of cool has passed to the next generation and we millennials need to get over it. Sam Harrington-Lowe, the 55-year-old founder and editor of Silver Magazine, a publication for 'the generation X-ers and beyond', says generation X (those born between 1965-80) are 'undeniably the coolest generation' because, she says, they don't care. 'The thing about being cool or not is about whether you care about it,' she says. 'The reason why 'OK boomer' hits so hard stems from the delight in firing up a boomer's outrage. It's hilarious! And calling millennials uncool is shooting fish in a barrel.'
The soft life: why millennials are quitting the rat race
One millennial who doesn't care and is – at least in the opinion of this millennial – effortlessly cool as a result is culture journalist and author Daisy Jones, 32. Jones, who studied at Goldsmiths (cool) and writes for Vogue (also cool), doesn't have a single brunch selfie or cute dog picture on her Instagram grid, on which she has only posted 27 times since 2019 (extremely cool). 'I'm personally of the belief that 'coolness' doesn't come from trying hard or caring too much,' she says. 'Being constantly obsessed with what's on trend, or how you're coming across, or whether you're cringe or not isn't very interesting to me. I also never take style advice – or any advice, actually – off TikTok.' Jones adds that, given her followers are around her age, they have the same cultural reference points. 'It would be a bit weird if I started acting and dressing like a 19-year-old or pretending that I don't remember LimeWire or 9/11.' The only thing that does bug her about the generation below is the sense she gets that they think they were the first ones to grow up on the internet. 'I wasn't, like, collecting conkers at age 12,' she says. 'I was on Myspace.'
Really, it's impossible to define cool; what's cool to me won't necessarily be cool to you. Perhaps, then, there's hope for the much-maligned millennials: if we think we're cool, does anything – or anyone – else matter? Perhaps we should all be more like Ormond and wear trainer socks, if we want. 'As you get older, it matters less and you have more of a sense of who you are,' she tells me. 'That's probably the coolest thing about being a millennial right now.'
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