A Disconnected Adult’s Guide to Kids’ Culture: “Millennial Optimism”
This week, young people are pining for a past they barely had a chance to experience, mocking those who dare read books in public, and sharing videos of their final moments of life finding meaning. So, it’s not exactly an uplifting collection of cultural observations, but I’ve thrown in a few really cool Christmas carols to lighten the mood. Everything evokes nostalgia, melancholy, or a festive mood—sometimes all at once.
What is millennial optimism?
Nostalgia for the year 2000 is fading, giving way to a romanticization of the 2010s, which some young people see as a more innocent, hopeful time they missed out on. At the same time, many millennials, who set these trends at the time, are nostalgic for their lost youth, leading both groups to post TikTok videos about “millennial optimism.” The idea that the post-2010 era was supposedly marked by bizarre possibilities and confidence in a bright future is completely at odds with how today’s teenagers feel. Hence the nostalgia.
Here are some examples of videos from that time, one of which was filmed by a young man:
and one written by an older man:
So what exactly is “millennial optimism”? Yes and no. While it’s hard for someone of an older generation to consider the decade that spanned both the 2008 recession and the 2016 election a better time, a younger person living through our current nightmare might see it that way. And I’m sure many a hipster millennial had a great time in the late 2000s and 2010s, growing funny mustaches, going to farmers markets , and listening to Stomp Clap Hey .
But all the fun and whimsy that was in fashion back then wasn’t due to a general cultural optimism, but to the fact that millennials were young at the time, and being young was fun. Besides, the urban hipsters at the center of these memes made up only a tiny percentage of the population; everyone else was just living their lives—which were, more or less, the same as always. In any case, when young people you know start talking about the golden age of optimism from 2010 to 2020, that’s the context in which they understand the recent past. This is a misconception, but nostalgia for times we didn’t always live in is a misconception.
What is “performative reading”?
The proliferation of the term “performative reading” can be seen as an indicator that the recent past was actually more optimistic. The term “performative reading” emerged around 2020 and originally referred to people reading books in public as a sign of social status. You might recognize it as “acting pretentious” or “being a pseudo-intellectual.” As an insult directed at people who use books as fashion accessories, the term “performative reading” wasn’t widely used back then, but recently it has become associated with the insult ” performative man ” and is often used to describe young men who read books by female authors in public in an attempt to attract attention from women. I don’t think this is a truly widespread trend—it’s more of one of those things that gets talked about more often than it actually happens. Either way, the result is that the most vile people post photos (which I won’t link) of “show-off readers” they spot on the subway and in cafes so that other vile people can comment like, “Look at that idiot reading a book ! Written by a woman !”
This is alarming for many reasons—it’s anti-intellectual, it’s sexist, it’s bullying, and it’s also part of a larger trend among Gen Z and Gen A, who seem reluctant to do anything out of the ordinary for fear of public judgment and/or online ridicule. Before everything went online, you could sit in a cafe reading Bell Hooks, and the worst you’d encounter was a stranger smirking. Now, a photo of you in a beret can end up online, where hundreds of thousands of faceless strangers will mock your pretentiousness. The result is fewer pesky urban attention-seekers, but also fewer people doing anything interesting at all. So maybe the nostalgia for the ’20s is justified.
What is the white rabbit trend?
In Alice in Wonderland, the main character chases a white rabbit and finds herself in a surreal, unsettling world. This is the basis for the “White Rabbit” TikTok trend. The idea is to post a video of yourself experiencing a moment of happiness just before the “white rabbit” appears, changing the course of your life. It’s the calm before the storm, the tragic equivalent of the “photo taken moments before disaster” meme, but with the confessional intimacy of TikTok. The melancholy mood is heightened by a soundtrack of a metronome counting down the time, accompanied by a somber lo-fi piano riff.
Here’s an example: one TikToker posted a photo from her graduation, taken two days before her white rabbit appeared in the form of a serious car accident.
Many videos about white rabbits lack any context, leaving you to figure it out on your own:
It’s not exactly an uplifting trend, but if you enjoy the camaraderie of knowing you’re not the only one whose life has suddenly been turned upside down by circumstances beyond your control, you might want to check out the over 200,000 videos that use the “white rabbit” soundtrack .
What does the word “hemmy” mean?
In my day, the word “hemmy” was used by car enthusiasts to describe the engines of Ram trucks, but among a growing number of young people, “hemmy” now means “homie,” albeit in the white man’s interpretation. The originator of the word is Milk, the beloved character from the animated series “Legends of Chamberlain Heights ,” a raunchy, crude cartoon that premiered on Comedy Central in 2016 and ran for two seasons.
Viral video of the week: Christmas mashups from Noteliwood.
It’s Christmas, so let’s listen to some Christmas songs that are trending. TikTok DJ Noteliwood has become incredibly popular (as they used to say) thanks to his holiday mashups, like this mashup of “Linus and Lucy” by Vince Guaraldi Trio and “Yeah Glo!” by GloRilla, which I (and 3.3 million other people) can’t stop listening to:
If that’s not enough to get you in the Christmas spirit, how about “Money in the Sleigh,” a mashup of Wham!’s “Last Christmas” and Drake’s “Money in the Grave,” which is approaching four million streams: