Like any other generation, Gen Z is struck with that lingering feeling of uncertainty and apprehension when it comes to navigating adulthood. But for many of us, growing up is starting to feel increasingly bleak, especially when compared to the idealized version we absorbed from our generational predecessors.
Many GenZers recall growing up with a dreamy image of adulthood: close-knit community, progressive ideas, and a rapidly expanding digital landscape. Now entering it ourselves, many of us feel disillusioned by the future we were encouraged to expect but never actually guaranteed.
This period between the late-2000s and mid-2010s has since been dubbed “Millennial Optimism,” with figureheads just as satirical, ironic, and of course, hipster as you’d expect.
It’s unusual to feel nostalgic over an era that reached its peak just over a decade ago. But nostalgia cycles are shrinking, mirroring the quick turnover of short-form internet trends and digital micro-phases.
Hipsters make up one of the ruling aesthetics associated with the Millennial Optimism era, especially online. The stereotypical hipster lives in an urban neighborhood — Seattle, Los Angeles, or Brooklyn, New York — and fills their time curating an obscure, taste-driven identity.
These perceptions of Millennial coming-of-age have been circulating my feed for a while now, popping up more recently set to indie classics like “Blood” by The Middle East, flashing images of Zooey Deschanel’s New Girl bangs, New York brownstones, and sepia coffee-stained filters, making an era that ended barely a decade ago feel strangely ancient.
As more of these videos flooded my feed, I began to question: Was adulthood that much better in the 2010s? And, more interestingly: Is Gen Z jealous of Millennials?
Who are Hipsters?
To understand what makes a hipster a hipster, it’s important to first contextualize their namesake. The term “hipster” was born from the 1940s “hepcats,” a subculture centered around jazz music and progressive values.
While the hipsters showcased in these internet edits take some inspiration from hepcats, there’s no direct lineage between them. Modern hipster culture emerged in the ‘90s among young people in urban areas who had retro, refined tastes. Hipster culture oriented itself to be the antithesis of anything mainstream, a natural reaction to the glittery, consumerist 2000s — think Paris Hilton, sparkling text à la Juicy Couture, and rhinestone everything.
Ironically, the commercialization that hipsters so vehemently rejected would inevitably become their future. Like many other popular youth cultures, they ebbed and flowed through the mainstream, eventually becoming a marketable aesthetic with a price tag.
From mustache print tees to overpriced mason-jar burger joints, hipster culture became forever memorialized in the cultural zeitgeist of the 2010s. Big retailers capitalized on this growing aesthetic, repackaged it, and sold it back to the masses.
What do Gen Z and Millennials have in common?
Getting flak from both sides of the generational spectrum, Millennials have often been dubbed the “lazy generation” by Boomers and Gen X, and Gen Z hasn’t held back on calling them “cringe” for their outdated internet practices (enter the Millennial pause). Despite the memes and generational jabs, we actually have more in common with Millennials than we want to admit.
Many Millennials graduated in the heart of the 2008 Recession, facing significant student debt and a daunting unemployment rate that peaked at 10% in 2009. As a result, countless young adults were bouncing between jobs they either didn’t want or were considered lucky to find. But through all of the uncertainty, they still found a way to remain hopeful.
One Millennial, Katie Louise, said in an interview with Newsweek that being a young adult in 2008 was a “totally unique experience.” As Gen Z is beginning to face similar economic uncertainties, Louise draws a valuable distinction between the years, stating that there was “more hope [in 2008] than there is in 2025.”
The hipster era emerged in a moment when not only economic, but technological tides were turning. With sites like YouTube emerging in 2005, the internet was becoming a growing ecosystem unlike anything we’ve seen before. Similarly, Gen Z is all too familiar with living through another massive technological shift with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI).
We’ve reached a level of absurdism where peeling back internet culture and revisiting our favorite comfort YouTubers from middle school feels refreshing, or, at the very least, more carefree and less self-indulgent.
2010s Fashion
While hipsters may be some of the most memorable figures of this era, we can’t forget about the impact of its more exciting older sister, swag. Snapbacks, high-contrast colors, and streetwear were some of the defining features of this era.
Swag had pioneers like Jay-Z, Soulja Boy, and Wiz Khalifa. Fashion boomed with accessible, DIY looks like graphic tees and “nerd” glasses, as well as popular streetwear brands like Diamond Supply and Obey.
Swag also overlapped with indie sleaze (another one of Gen Z’s recent revivals). Heavily intertwined with hip-hop culture, swag peaked from 2009–2011. By 2012, it was already on its way out, and by 2014, we entered the internet’s beloved Tumblr era: Acacia Brinley, Boxed Water, fishnets, Marina and the Diamonds, The 1975, Vans, American Apparel, and white-bordered photos.
Indie sleaze, twee, hipster, swag — you could go on and on categorizing each of these eras before they blur together into one indie fever dream.
So, Why The Revival?
This trend revival is happening for the same reason trends always return: nostalgia.
To answer my earlier question about jealousy, I think Gen Z is inclined to do what every younger generation does with romanticizing the past. Technology makes it easy to travel back in time and immerse ourselves in a perfectly curated timeline of the 2010s. With so many parallels between our generation and Millennials, it’s no wonder Gen Z views Millennial Optimism with more enthusiasm than the intimidating reality of our own adulthood.
Where we once had Williamsburg hipsters, we now have West Village girlies, each generation repackaging the same aesthetic and believing they’re tapping into something new or revolutionary.
Even Vampire Weekend joked about the hipster label in a 2013 interview with ZDF. “If being a hipster means being a young first-world person in your twenties who’s interested in art and music and clothes and eating decent food or whatever, then probably we’re hipsters. But then also so is Taylor Swift, so it’s kind of unclear where you should draw the line.”
The best lesson from Millennial Optimism is the optimism itself. Given the economic and political climate we’re in, staying hopeful and making our voices heard matters more than ever.
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