Revisited: Cringe! Why millennials became so uncool

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:32Today, why are millennials suddenly so deeply uncool?

0:44Somewhere back in the halcyon 2010s, millennials were the bright young things. A generation of digital pioneers defying our dire economic outlook by frittering away any savings we might have on flat whites and short-haul flights. Well, I can't afford a house. Why bother even trying? Let me have my Starbucks. Let me have my avocado toast. Let me have my Netflix subscription. Let me have my... Boomers and Gen X derided us as self-absorbed snowflakes, and I think we could live with that. But now we have a much more dangerous enemy, Gen Z. In the eyes of our successors, millennials are not just over the hill, but deeply and achingly cringe.

1:26A quick scroll through TikTok shows rinsing us is a favourite Gen Z pastime. We're millennials. We talk about our pets like they're our children. And our children like they're our pets. We're millennials. Everyone's a narcissist except for us. So I just did a thing. I bought pumpkin chocolate chip muffins in true Hufflepuff fashion. The list of what irks Gen Z about millennials is long. Harry Potter, the cry face emoji, pumpkin spice lattes, our choice of skinny jeans, and bafflingly, the length of our socks. I actually was on holiday last week and I ran out of crew socks. I bought this backup ankle sock, which I then had to wear.

2:12And I was like, how did you feel? I really was like, I'm going to be Miss Red as a millennial. Anyone looks at my ankles and I was like, this is so stupid. Journalist Chloe Hamilton and I, both as peak millennial as you can get have bravely sat down, so you don't have to with a panel of modish Gen Zs Guardian journalist Emma Lofhagen and comedian Will Owen to try to get to the bottom of this intergenerational beef From The Guardian, I'm Lucy Hoff Today in Focus Why do Gen Z find millennials so embarrassing? And is there any hope of cross-generational harmony?

2:53Well, let's start with you, Chloe Hamilton. You are the only other millennial on this panel, which I guess in technical terms means that we're from a demographic that was born somewhere between the early 80s and the late 90s. But as we both know all too well, it's a term that's attracted all kinds of internet tropes and derision from the generations above us. I'm just wondering, first of all, what it means to you to be a millennial and your relationship with that term. So I left school in 2007, left sixth form in 2009, went to university just after the financial crash. So when I graduated from university, the job market wasn't great.

3:30And a lot of my friends really struggled to find jobs. And I know that's something that is happening right now with Gen Z. I think maybe there's a lack of understanding that that happened to us first. And so a lot of my generation were delayed in their growing up, I guess. Millennials, why did it take you so long to grow up? Back in the 20th century, every time we came to a big key life moment, something stopped us from making that next step. So, for example, for my life, I didn't get married because the pandemic got in the way. So every time I tried to make this jump into adult life, I was prevented from doing that.

4:04Yeah, I can definitely relate to that. Every time it's felt like I should be making a big economic decision, I felt in some way that I can't. Like when I graduated from school and tried to enter the jobs market that had contracted because of the recession. when I wanted to go into my 30s and start to build a more sort of adult life when you're in the pandemic. I feel like when the pandemic happened when was that so 2020 so I was 29 just like still going out with friends I was in a workplace I was walking around feeling great and then suddenly I was locked up for like however long and then when I came out I'd grown up like that it was like overnight suddenly I went from feeling quite cool feeling like the young people around like even saying young people on the block feels really lame but you know what I mean I felt like the youth and then suddenly lockdown happened and immediately I was thrown into growing up behind closed doors and then when I came out I had a baby like so much had changed in that time and it was as if it just happened overnight yeah and we went into the pandemic as our yeah party years came to a sort of twilight era yeah I regret that a lot I felt like I missed out on some stuff okay so you bravely set out on this very humbling piece of reportage about why millennials have now become the uncoolest generation in the eyes of their Gen Z successors.

5:17I'm just wondering why you decided to write that piece. I have two Gen Z brothers and they always seemed a lot younger than me and suddenly as they kind of came into adulthood I suddenly felt very old. I think I'd bought myself a pair of sort of barrel leg trousers and I was like oh my god these look amazing and I felt great and then was seeing on TikTok that actually, no, no, I was already like a step behind. No longer are we tucking in our clothes just to give ourselves a bit of shape. Bin bag, bin bag is in. They've lost their minds. And I've always considered myself to be quite, you know, up to date on trends and fashion.

5:53And I felt very old when I saw that. I decided to find out if I was alone in this and whether there were any other people that also felt like very old millennials. And I did find plenty.

6:10Okay, and before we come on to what your reporting revealed, I want to bring in the Gen Z cohort in this studio. How does that sound to you guys as Gen Zs? Do you buy this millennial sob story? And tell me about your experience, your own experience of the economic world that you've stepped into as adults. I graduated in 2020, so I graduated in the pandemic and it was like, there were no jobs and it was awful. And again, like, I think I missed out on a sort of different part of my life to you, but it was still something that I felt I really mourned for. And, you know, like the housing situation, like rents are just totally out of control.

6:51And I guess some millennials are now in a home ownership stage, I suppose. But like for my generation, it just feels totally out of reach. Like none of my friends are even like considering that as a possibility right now. Like Brexit, I mean, Trump, Trump too. All of this stuff I think has made us really cynical. Like for me, so much of my political consciousness has just been like terror and like horror and just awfulness. So I think that does make you dark in your humour and edgy and less inclined to that wholesomeness that maybe millennials have more of. That for me is what sort of cements my identity as Gen Z because I'm an older Gen Z.

7:36I'm 25. So sometimes I... That's just a humble. I got shivled. Well, for the Gen Z cohort, I'm old. Millennial humour, I just don't get it. I think there's a certain element of not wanting to be earnest that comes out in our humour and the rejection of wholesomeness. Day in the life on the battlefield. So after waking up to the sound of air sirens, I got myself up and had my morning rations of eight beans and a slice of bread. Usually we're only allowed six beans, but I think the sergeant fancies me. And what about you, Will? I think that the way that Gen Z are online comes from the fact of being, I hate to kind of use this buzzword phrase, but digital natives.

8:15when you're online everything is to some degree curated you can literally delete the sentence that you're typing out even when you're messaging a close friend you can edit what you're saying to change your point to make it come across in a different way and so often I actually read through like past conversations that I've had with a friend and I'm like what on earth are we talking about because you get into this like high speed conversation which is also not actually direct there's kind of this obviously the screen between you and so I think that the online element is like a crucial part of that humour because you end up ironising yourself completely.

8:50Gen Z's must always display main character energy but do so in an ironic detached way that makes it look like they never wanted to be the centre of attention in the first place.

9:09Will and Emma I just you know obviously this is going to be quite hard but go go forth on what you find cringe about peak millennials in particular um I think there are the kind of like more superficial things like the fashion which again this hurts this hurts this really My heart's racing. I also want to preface by saying like, I don't like sit at home and stew with hatred about millennials. And I, you know, I am very live and let live. It's just not my personal aesthetic. I mean, the jeans, not that all millennials wear skinny jeans, an ankle boot. I can't, I can't get behind an ankle boot. Will, what about millennials most makes you cringe?

9:53And I'm talking about like a real bodily cringe. I have noticed that there's two sets of printed stuff at the table with the two millennials. It's a love for printing that I feel like has slightly left our generation. Like both of you also have laptops. We just got our smartphones here. So millennial. I think this is just not wanting the tech to let us down. But it won't. And what about emojis and I suppose our online communications more broadly? because as I understand it, millennials, and very much including myself here, use emojis quite literally. So if something's funny, you would reply with the cry face emoji.

10:30If you're having fun, it might be the dancing girls or that quite annoying clinking Prosecco one or maybe the sparkles. The laughing face emoji, I'm very guilty of. But I just wouldn't use the crying laughing. I don't know why. I do when I text my mum. Do you write ha-ha? H-A-H-A? Yes. Would you? See, if someone sent me that, I was like, that person wants me dead. That you want to kill me. Why? That is the most passive aggressive thing a person could ever. Ha ha. You have to put another H at the end. And one other thing that you, Chloe, brought to my attention in your piece is this concept of the millennial pause.

11:08Tell me what that is and how it's defined and do I do it? I didn't think I did the millennial pause, but now I'm very aware that I'm doing it. which is the pause that every millennial or millennials, some millennials, will make before they start speaking when they're recording something. I'm a millennial and the cringy millennial pause is so freaking funny to me. The premise is that... So you might hear it in a voice note, you might hear it on a video on TikTok or Instagram. They sort of hit record, they wait, and then they start talking. And I was talking to a few people about this and one person, this suggestion that because we're not digital natives, Although I will say that I spent quite a lot of time on my space.

11:46So we did have technology back then, way back then. I guess when I think about this sort of, you know, these tropes of millennial aesthetics, I think of like a group of four gals who grew up watching Sex and the City, sort of holding their Prosecco glasses up to the camera lens, all smiling with their best photo face. And if it's a selfie, it would be taken with, you know, the front formal selfie lens, as opposed to the Gen Z selfie, which is the phone turned around using the back lens. on 1.5 zoomed out which when I've tried this and I have tragically tried this I just have an incredibly long arm.

12:21I mean the thing that I found strange about the selfie is it really felt like it encapsulated so much of what is so embarrassing about millennials or what I feel is so difficult for millennials. The selfie where we can see our faces it is kind of this pursuit for perfection that we want to see what that photo looks like before we post it. We want to see what it looks like as we are taking it and I think this a lot of this comes from our upbringing through the noughties when that quest for perfection was everywhere you know we were brought up with magazines you know body shaming women constantly and so I'm sure that has some link to why we are kind of obsessed with this idea of curating these perfect lives and maybe don't feel quite so comfortable with the goblin mode nihilism of Gen Z.

13:01So this is the kind of goblin mode aesthetic that very Gen Z appropriated state of being quite feral, semi-dressed in your pyjamas, eating things out of packets, etc, etc. I would feel sort of self-conscious in some way that people would think my life had fallen apart if I even attempted a type of goblin mode aesthetics. What do you guys think of that? And if you were to say, you know, scroll through the Instagram of a millennial cousin or something, What do you think when you see that very sort of curated perfection type aesthetic, whether it's the sort of cliched avocado on toast or the Fitzcarraldo book placed artfully next to a flat white or whatever it is?

13:43Is there stuff that we think looks really good that just really doesn't? I mean, I think, you know, dare I say some of my best friends are millennials. But like I have plenty of millennials in my life. And if I was like to scroll through their Instagrams or like see their Instagram stories or whatever, I find it quite like freeing and maybe it's maybe it's a misread but to me it feels like you are not that worried about what people think of you I think Gen Z are far more self-conscious I think it's like a kind of curated nonchalance that Gen Z have I do sometimes look at my millennial cousins and friends and think wow like you might be cringe but you seem really happy if you're on a nice holiday you could just post a picture of the pool and like that would be fine say happy monday and that's fine just jump in here ever and say we're absolutely not not aware of what people think about

14:42so how do you guys feel in offices and workplaces where maybe your superiors are millennials how do I think that's not that dynamic and manifest. I was having a think about this, and I think, like, there's a lot been made of Gen Z's work ethic or lack thereof. It seems to me that there's a greater proportion of what you call lazy people. I think that the problem is that they feel entitled to have much more... Entitled. There it is. There's the word. We are entitled. Gen Z are entitled according to you. You feel entitled that the world owes you a living. This is ridiculous. The world does not. You have to work hard.

15:19The idea that going back to the economic situation that we've grown up in and just having a more realistic understanding that nowadays you can kill yourself at work, like working all these extra hours, et cetera, and still you're not going to be able to reap the rewards and basically the drudgery that often workplaces demand is not actually paid out in being able to buy a house. The problem is the housing crisis and your generation of blocked housing for my generation. I do think that there is something in these trends of quiet quitting and just doing your 9 to 5, doing it well, but not having to make your work your life.

16:02But I don't want to lean into the idea that Gen Z are lazy because I don't think we are. I think we're just realistic. Also, if my bosses are listening, I work really hard. You've been very punctual responding to each of my emails. But having said that, like, I don't think there's a massive gulf in the way that we work. I think the biggest thing, honestly, is older people in offices that I've worked in coming to me and asking me to do tech things for them. Like saying, oh, can you fix this? Can you do this? And expecting that. Oh, no. And sometimes I do. But I'm not IT. I'm just 25.

16:41so this this idea i think that you could sort of make hay in your 20s in order to have a good and safe life in your 40s that's kind of gone i think it feels like it's gone yeah i don't know how many of my peers love work like i definitely think people are ambitious but i also think that people the things around work are as important to people i feel like our generation are really like looking for love i don't know if your peers are getting married much but i feel like marriage is gonna come back because the world's so chaotic having those kind of basic foundations is appealing again to people but there's also a quite lot of polarization within gen z isn't there in a way that perhaps there hasn't been in recent generations so i'm thinking here about the kind of right split the manosphere misogyny the stuff all the conversations that we've been having in the wake of adolescence versus you know what we sometimes think of this kind of earnest um climate obsessed you know progressive gen z what do you make of that how does that manifest in your lives there's obvious like gender split i think you know gen z is quite divided by gender in terms of our political leanings but i also think that what we were saying earlier about that sort of irony and lack of earnestness and jadedness i think that also feeds into our political leanings i mean if you're just totally jaded and nihilistic about everything I think you're probably more likely to go down that manosphere path or the sort of far right path.

18:07And I also think that there's something in the fact that millennials probably have a greater memory of those sort of progressive wins for social justice. You know, gay rights and the Me Too movement and all of these things, which were so formative and important, because I remember that kind of thing. but I think younger people within the generation probably don't and then probably don't have so much of a sense of why those things are important and things that we have to fight for and are not just given. Yeah, because when you and I left school, Clary, that was 2008, so it was this kind of dawn of the Obama era.

18:42I'm thinking with fondness about that scene in Fleabag where Phoebe Waller-Bridge masturbates to an Obama speech and in many ways I think that's reflective of the hopefulness of that time. What are you doing? Nothing. Obviously we have been disappointed in many ways but we did know and grew up under a lot of progressive values There was hope there wasn't there and I think that certainly in my early years like early voting there was a real hope that we were able to make a change and yeah again having spoken to Gen Zers even just voting feels pointless to them whereas for me and people of my generation voting feels like of the utmost importance and I don't really know anyone of my generation certainly in my sphere who has said they wouldn't bother voting whereas I've spoken to quite a few Gen Z who just say, well, what is the point because no one is listening to me?

19:29Coming up, how will Gen Z deal with the rise of Gen Alpha?

19:46You know, clearly this discussion involves a lot of generalities about our two generations, but I think what unites us is the sense that we're talked about in spaces like the media, like on social media, as a body, and that can feel reductive. How's that been for you as you head to the end of your 20s and into your 30s? Yeah, I think it's interesting because what you were saying, Chloe, about the kind of perpetual victim nature of being a millennial, I think that there's a lot to be said for that focus switching to Gen Z now because, yeah, we're the, I suppose, up and coming generation who are like I don't know not wanting to join the army or whatever it's like always like something some headline about how Gen Z are going to destroy the country and it's kind of cyclical like you know older people will always say this about young people that they're lazy and and I mean I hope I don't become an older person like that um you know fingers crossed but maybe it's just a reminder that these things are universal and and we need to unite against the common enemy that is boom i'm joking i'm joking i love yeah because i was going to ask is there any millennials you think are cool in popular culture someone like charlie xcx for example is an example is a millennial but she would be someone i think that would resonate obviously with a huge gen z audience and sets a lot of trends she's definitely got the kind of nihilistic quality and you know her whole thing around partying non-stop and like her lyrics are very direct you know her lyrics are like i want to dance to me me me i want to go to the club club club taylor swift i would associate actually slightly more with millennial yeah culture not necessarily millennial like people in that age group but the culture that we're kind of talking about as millennial i think it's the kind of like i don't know it's almost like this like christian girl autumn leaves pumpkin spice latte um girl boss and also like feeling deeply but in a way that's like actually not very self-ironic in the end

21:50I think I'm going to ask on both Chloe and I's behalf about how we should manage the sort of further descent into being uncool and is there an uncringe way to manage that situation I think you should lean into it lean in, that's so millennial because we grew up in the Sheryl Sandberg lean in girl boss no, not lean in a Sheryl Sandberg way lean in in a making fun of yourself way Not in a girl boss sleep. I'm not, I'm not even sure. I feel like, what's the frog in like boiling water thing? You know, when they don't realise that they're being kind of boiled because it's happened so slowly. I feel like that's me as a millennial because I don't realise what is uncool.

22:30I know, but I don't realise, I haven't noticed. And then suddenly, you know, oh my God, I'm suddenly uncool. Well, I think cringe is in the eye of the beholder. So I also think that cringe, like making fun of millennials only works if they take the bait. Like, I think, you know, Gen Z will post these videos and be like, oh, this, you know, these ankle socks, this side part, this whatever jeans. And then these furious millennials will respond and it's like, well, there you go. What would your advice be, Will? The thing I'm actually most struck by is how constantly I'm reminded by older people that I'm so young.

23:04If I perform to an older audience, they don't want me to have figured anything out. If I ever try and say something that seems too didactic or like, and then I realise this, it doesn't resonate with an older crowd because they're looking at someone in their mid-twenties and being like, well, you don't even know the half of it in a way that's actually empathetic and be like, kind of relaxed. You don't need to have it all figured out. And that is a lovely note to leave things on, Will. There is a shared humanity in this room and cross-generational peace. Thank you all so much for coming to this discussion.

23:39Thanks again to my panel, journalists Chloe Hamilton and Emma Lofhagen and comedian Will Owen. If you haven't read Chloe's brilliant and humbling piece, Cringe How Millennials Became Uncool, do find it over at theguardian.com. That's it for today's episode and for my bygone youth. This episode was produced by Eleanor Biggs and Olivia Lee, sound design by Ross Burns, and the executive producer was Homa Halili.

24:11This is The Guardian.