As a member of Gen Z, I was in middle school during the Millennial hipster era. I wanted my future life to be like Glee or New Girl, I scrolled through Tumblr like it was my job, I perfected a messy bun and, tragically, I even remember getting my first pair of galaxy-print leggings. (I hated typing that.) But now, instead of younger generations calling those trends “cringe,” it seems like a lot of them are…yearning for it.
On TikTok, people are making montages of photos from this era that are racking up hundreds of thousands of likes, all set to the 2009 song “Blood” by the Middle East. It’s got that particular high-pitched sing-along quality that feels like a calling card of the whimsical indie-folk music that dominated during the era, when groups like Bon Iver, Of Monsters and Men and the Head and the Heart reigned.
Many of the montages include riffs on the same photos: Aubrey Plaza with a ukulele; scenes from Away We Go, Juno and Girls; Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield; mugs with mustaches on them; fingers with mustache tattoos on them. If it screams “hipster,” then you’re right on target.
“Idc I miss the 2010s,” reads the caption of one such video, posted by @millennial.ca, which currently has 1.7 million views. Many of the comments agreed: “[The] adulthood I was promised,” wrote one user. “No one else will ever understand what it felt like to be in college in the 2010s,” wrote another. Another user reflected on listening to the Lumineers in their $700 two-bedroom apartment. What a dream.
“How it felt growing up watching millennials in their optimistic hipster era & wanting the same lifestyle,” reads the overlaid text on another video, by @christina_anne. Yet again, the comments rallied together in agreement. “How did millennials go from this to beige moms,” one user wrote. “I was so ready for my [BuzzFeed] career,” wrote another. “Milennial indie will always be a part of me,” said another.
Even the official Tumblr TikTok account got in on it.
Naturally, this nostalgia for the late 2000s, early 2010s has a name, too: the “Millennial optimism era.” And many Gen Zers are ready to teleport back in time. Millennials themselves are also now speaking out about living through this period. In the comments of this video, some are sharing stories about living in Williamsburg, maybe the best place to be a hipster in your 20s, during this period.
One user wrote about meeting the musicians Matt and Kim, of “Daylight” fame, in Brooklyn’s McCarren Park in 2013. “[It] was peak,” they added. “I was unironically watching an adult kickball game in a red lip and winged eyeliner. I can say I really lived.”
“It was a dream!” wrote another. “Rent was $750. $2 PBRs. $5 falafel. Affordable rehearsal space. Pre Instagram. Pre dating apps. You could walk out into the night with no plans and see where life wanted to take you.”
I’m living vicariously through all of these first-hand perspectives, but with great romanticization also comes a bleaker side to this era that some Millennials are speaking out about.
“[No] because I need y’all to understand we were so depressed but ultimately romantics,” reads one video. “[The] music was great, but the lyrics were devastating. millennial optimism is borderline an oxymoron. nostalgia is a knife.”
Millennial user @neek4freaks also made a statement about the so-called optimism of the era, saying he “assures” people that he was the most pessimistic he’s ever been during this time period. “I did not think that I was going to make it to my 30s, and a lot of my Millennial optimistic friends didn’t,” he says. He also acknowledges that the actual lyrics to the song “Blood” are rather depressing — and no one making the videos realized this since the clip being used doesn’t have lyrics in it.
Comments from Millennial users in both these aforementioned videos highlight some of the ways that life was particularly difficult then. The job market was rough, the cost of living was still high compared to what many jobs were paying and several people mentioned their undiagnosed or untreated mental-health issues, which seemed to be not so uncommon. “We were literally living through the Bush era and Iraq war,” one user wrote. “Idk about you guys but, my friends started dying from alcohol and drug abuse,” wrote another. “Some of them are in their mid 30s and still struggling. It wasn’t optimism it was coping.”
According to a Pew Research Center report from 2014, Millennials were the “first in the modern era to have higher levels of student loan debt, poverty and unemployment, and lower levels of wealth and personal income.” They were also experiencing additional economic hardship in the wake of the Great Recession, as well as effects from “rapid technological change on the American workforce,” according to Pew.
Maybe the grass isn’t always greener on the other side, but it makes sense why Gen Z is romanticizing this era. As a generation, we are increasingly overwhelmed by many different factors, from the news to social media fatigue to mental-health issues, according to a study from UNICEF. There are also specific elements that younger generations would love to rewind to, like a time when housing was remotely affordable. Going back to a time where you could get $5 beers and an apartment for under $1,000? Send me there now. Most of us in Gen Z were also young enough to not realize the other macro-level impacts that the economy and mental health were playing on these optimistic Millennials, so of course the lighthearted, carefree impressions given from the photos on TikTok are immensely desirable.
My final question: Outside of the challenges, how do we get back to living with such freedom and whimsy? The resurgence of flower crowns and BuzzFeed News? Beats me, but while I wait patiently for the answer, I’ll queue up some Matt and Kim.
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