Every decade has its own identity: The 60s were all about the Beatles and bellbottoms, the 70s are known for disco and free love, the 80s for MJ, permed hair and shoulder pads, the 90s for boy bands and cartoons we’re nostalgic over to this day, and the 2000s for the rise of technology and fateful fashion choices (jean-on-jean? Terrible). Whether we realize it or not, there are decisions we make today that will turn into the “fads” of tomorrow. Yeah, we may pretend to be all hipster chic and culturally un-basic. The truth is we are all guilty of doing things that are so undeniably millennial…
1. Judging personality based on profile pictures
The other day my 17-year-old brother told me that he selected his freshmen year roommates for the fall. He is going to a school 600 miles away, does not know a single person, but has managed to find three guys to live with before graduating high school. Their decision process was completely based off each other’s profile pictures. They analyzed their looks and determined, from one picture, if the person was cool enough to live with. Sounds superficial, but I can’t deny I’ve done the same thing. Have you ever seen a picture of someone and thought, “Oh, she looks like a nice girl” or, “He seems like a jerk who’s going to lead me on, make me like him and then break my heart into a million pieces”??? Honestly, how can we actually get all that from a picture? Yet somehow we do. Regularly.
2. Going somewhere just for the Insta pic
A new ice-cream shop opened up near my hometown last summer. Okay, that’s a lie. It was a 45-minute drive from my house, but everywhere in Connecticut seems so close compared to New York. Anyway, this place was all the rage for a while. A lot of people from my town made the trip, only to be severely disappointed. Turns out, the best quality of the ice cream is that it’s photogenic. The actual product sucked, and the ride is obviously not a selling point. But after learning the subpar quality of the ice-cream, people still went. It didn’t matter that it tasted bad, it mattered that the picture was Insta-worthy. People are really doing the most ridiculous things these days for likes.
3. Abbreivating words for no apparent reason
Every generation has their own lingo, so that’s not a surprise. 2017 slang includes: “lit,” “fire,” “dope,” “salty,” “slay,” “the plug,” “aesthetic,” “ship,” “low key/ high key,” “savage,” “ratchet,” “woke,” “finesse” and so many more. But millennials are extra AF and take slang to another level. We have the tendency to abbreviate words that actually make no sense. For example, “V” because “very” is just too long a word. “Sus,” when someone or something is being “suspect” or “suspicious,” “suh” because “what’s up” is sooo 2010 and “fam” to refer to your biological family or closest friends AKA your squad. If any part of this paragraph does not make sense, then you need to ~*get up with the times*~.
4. Being broke & boujee at the same time
Millennials love to complain about how poor we are. College is leaving us in thousands of dollars of debt, our part-time jobs are barely covering rent and we can’t (unfortunately) rely on our parents for all of eternity. Even with bills piling up, we continue to splurge on unnecessary purchases to make our troublesome lives just a little bit easier. After all, that $6 caramel macchiato from Starbucks isn’t going to drink itself. And are you even wearing sneakers if they’re not Vans or Jordans? Sometimes you just need an impulsive shopping spree to forget about the impending doom that is adulthood. Ball out one day, tweet about the three dollars in our pocket the next.
5. Obsessing over the 90s
Okay 90’s babies, time to fess up. Do you actually remember the 90s at all? How old were we? Five or six? Is that even old enough to be a real person? Now that we’re (kind of) adults, we reminiscence about old Nickelodeon shows, the peak of Backstreet Boys and NSYNC, and when Britney Spears and JT were the power couple. But I would argue that most of the things 90’s babies miss are really from the early 2000s.
6. Strategically responding to messages
Throwback to the days when it took so long to get in contact with someone that we responded to missed messages ASAP. Then again, that was a world when phone calls and email were the only forms of communication other than, ya know, talking face-to-face. With so many social platforms, privacy and “me time” are treasured more than ever before. As soon as a response is sent, the world knows you’re awake and what you’re doing. This explains why millennials will purposely wait to text back: to get another much needed hour of sleep, to save a well thought out, time-consuming reply for later, to dodge someone who we already told we’re busy (9/10 times we’re just being lazy). Other times we’ll specifically open a message only to ignore it, telling the person 1. I don’t want to talk to you or 2. I’m mad at you for some reason. Texting and social media have become a game, and millennials are Division 1 athletes.
7. Snapchatting everything
The best part about Snapchat is millennials can share what they’re doing every second of every day and people only half-mind. Unlike Facebook, today’s activities and incessant posts disappear by tomorrow, so there’s no evidence of your slightly annoying over-usage. Plus if people aren’t into you’re 200 second snap story, no one is forcing them to watch it. 90% of my followers probably don’t care that I got coffee this morning, I wore this outfit and love it, I went to the gym in the afternoon, my friend did this embarrassing thing at dinner and I couldn’t sleep at 4:26 a.m. BUT that’s not going to stop me from publicizing the information for a mere 24 hours.
8. Relying too much on zodiac signs
When did everyone and their little sibling become experts of astrology? Horoscopes suddenly have more control over our lives than our parents do. Zodiacs are taken so seriously by millennials that we’ll actually decide not to pursue a friendship or relationship based on someone’s sign. We use our signs to defend any personality shortcomings, lack of compatibility or questionable decisions. Because putting the blame on ourselves is just not an option.
9. Embarassing our friends on the daily
If you don’t attempt to turn your friends into memes, are you even really friends? Millennials define their closest friendships by the people who publicly embarrass them on a daily basis. The weird thing? We don’t mind. If I have a major blonde moment or manage to do something comical, I half-want my friends to share it with their social worlds. It’s almost rewarding for your friends to think you did something funny enough to share with their hundreds of followers. And sometimes it works in your favor, goes viral, and all of sudden you’re rich and internet famous for mocking your friend’s white Vans or threatening a Dr. Phil audience to “Cash me outside.”
10. Spending too much time watching Netflix
It’s not just an obsession, it’s a sickness. If millennials spent as much time working as we do watching Netflix and Hulu, we would all be millionaires. I’m lowkey waiting for a job to exist where you get paid for watching an entire season of a show in one day. We’d all rock at that. At this point, you could put me in a career related to the field I’ve been studying for the past four years and I’d still struggle. But put me in an ER with attractive surgeons and a woman lying half-dead on the table? I got this. Push one of epi!
Face it. We’re all more basic than we’d like to admit.