The Millennial Canon Bracket: Round 1
Twenty-five years into the 21st century, the millennials’ heyday is in the books. Now it’s time to determine which person, place, event, or even behavioral tic best encapsulates the generation.The Millennial Canon Bracket: Round 1
Twenty-five years into the 21st century, the millennials’ heyday is in the books. Now it’s time to determine which person, place, event, or even behavioral tic best encapsulates the generation.
Editor's note: The first-round polls have closed. See the ultimate winner here! In the meantime, check out the millennial cringe canon, all the submissions we received for the Millennial Canon Bracket, and Brian Phillips's think piece on millennial contradiction.
I need to tell you something. Are you sitting down? You should be sitting down. OK, here goes: Millennials are no longer the dominant target demographic. (I’m taking a bit of a leap by assuming that you are a millennial, but considering that you’re reading an article published on a website, the odds are pretty good.)
We are officially an elder generation. We no longer make all of the popular music. The highest-grossing movie of the year is based on a video game none of us really ever played that has amassed almost a billion dollars at the box office because youths are flocking to theaters to lose their ever-loving shit when Jack Black utters the words “chicken jockey.” It is curtains for Zoosha, and in this scenario, the millennials are Zoosha.
Results From Other Rounds
But damn, we had a great run, didn’t we? Our profoundly unique placement on the line between life before the internet and after it resulted in some truly beautiful, specific culture and behavior and the consistent yo-yoing between boon times and lean times, between hope and disappointment, manifested in an unmistakably millennial concoction of cynicism, righteousness, irony, late capitalist hedonism, maximal minimalism, corny confidence, and anxiety. And if we can no longer claim to be, at least primarily, moving the cultural needle, we can at least revel in looking back on an era that’s starting to be set in stone.
Welcome to The Ringer’s Millennial Canon Bracket.
In an effort to pin down exactly what the millennial experience was, we gathered as many generational artifacts as we could—people, places, music, movies, and TV shows, but also objects, trends, and behavioral tics—then narrowed them down to the most essential and threw them into this bracket. This was a herculean task, and difficult decisions had to be made (for a full accounting of our crop of submissions, check this out). We also had to make definitive determinations about many things with blurry distinctions, two in particular: whether something belonged more to the ’90s than to millennials (e.g., The Simpsons) and whether to include things that arose during the heyday of millennials but then grew to transcend generational classifications. You will not see Taylor Swift in this bracket, so there’s your answer on where we came down on that particular conundrum.
More Artifacts From the Millennial Canon
We’re now asking you to help us determine which thing is the most representative of millennialism—not just which thing was the biggest and most popular, but which thing embodies the true nature of millennialhood. How you define that is certainly a little subjective—millennials are not a monolith!—but if there’s one thing millennials believe in, it’s the efficacy of democracy. So now it’s your turn to rock the vote (millennials will get this reference).
For each round, you can vote here on the website and on Instagram every day until 6 p.m. ET, through Friday. Voting will go as follows:
Monday: Round of 64
Tuesday: Round of 32
Wednesday: Sweet 16
Thursday a.m.: Elite Eight
Thursday p.m.: Final Four
Friday: Championship
Saturday: Winner revealed
Let’s get to the bracket. —Andrew Gruttadaro
The Cringe Region
(1) Skinny jeans vs. (16) No-show socks
Skinny jeans
We didn’t have “outfit formulas,” but we did have skinny jeans, a side part, and a going-out top. The millennial dedication to showing just a bit of ankle rivals only that of the Victorian era, and whether it’s to show off the socks with strips of bacon on them that prove you’re so much funkier than your consulting job or the perfect inch of flesh above a heeled bootie, skin-tight denim was the way to do it before Big Jeans came along. —Nora Princiotti
No-show socks
I may have purged every pair of skinny jeans from my closet and embraced the comfy boot-cut and wide-leg pants of my youth, but you’ll have to pry these no-show socks off my cold, dead, bare ankles. —Lindsay Jones
(8) Myspace vs. (9) Disney adults
Myspace
I can’t be the only elder millennial who can trace that unshakable, deep-rooted feeling that maybe everyone is mad at me back to the fact that we spent our teens and early 20s actively ranking our top eight friends on the daily. Did your BFF drop you into the second row? Your crush has a new girl at no. 1? I’m breaking into a cold sweat just thinking about it. Fuck off, Tom. —Jones
Disney adults
I went to Disney World for a bachelorette trip a few years ago, and during the fireworks, clips from the movies of our childhood played as Mickey intoned about the magic within us. Everyone’s face was wet with tears, eyes aglow with the pyrotechnics and memories of our youth spent in front of the Disney Channel. If Disney adults feel like that all the time, who can blame them for spending 100 percent of their vacation days in Orlando, Florida? —Helena Hunt
(5) BuzzFeed vs. (12) Macklemore’s text apology to Kendrick Lamar
BuzzFeed
Object of ridicule, envy, and millions of track-pad clicks, BuzzFeed was the shining example of the 2010s digital media bubble that burst long ago. The secret about the site was that its listicle factory subsidized an excellent news division (which, depressingly, the company shut down in 2023). Alas, Hamilton Slack is probably dead. Long live Hamilton Slack. —Alan Siegel
Macklemore’s text apology to Kendrick Lamar
The jury is still out on what side of the never-ending beef Rust Cohle would be on, but hip-hop, like time, is a flat circle. Even as far back as 2014, the Grammys, white rappers, and the last vestiges of rap media were weird about Kendrick. In the aftermath of Lamar losing the Best Rap Album Grammy to Macklemore, the “Thrift Shop” rapper sent—and then, most importantly, posted—an apology text to Kendrick. It was cringe in the moment and still is 11 years later. But we all make mistakes. At least Kendrick didn’t drop a GNX on Macklemore’s head. —Charles Holmes
(4) Girls vs. (13) Denver, Portland, or Austin
Girls
The show of a generation. Or at least, a show of a generation. If you were coming of age in the 2010s, odds are you know whether you’re a Marnie, a Jessa, a Hannah, or a Shosh. The show spawned a thousand think pieces in its time, but it’s more than held up through many rewatches as an essential piece of cringey millennial storytelling. —Princiotti
Denver, Portland, or Austin
“Keep _______ weird,” am I right?! At some point, though, if everything’s weird, then nothing is weird, and all you’re left with is way too many food trucks, a bunch of town house buildings that look like this, and a population seemingly composed entirely of contestants from The Bachelorette. —Gruttadaro
(6) Student loan debt vs. (11) Glee
Student loan debt
“Do what you love,” they said, “and you'll never work a day in your life.” And they were right. You’re unemployable. But at least you also have $180,000 in debt that you took on when you were too young to know what “applying for a mortgage” meant! And let’s be honest. Living with four roommates at the age of 37 is a small price to pay for a degree in sustainable microbrewery design that you’ll treasure till the day you die. —Brian Phillips
Glee
When streamers, critics, and podcasters dream about a return to network TV, they tend to bring up the same iconic names: Law & Order, ER, Friends, CSI. But shows like Glee will always be the true essence of that sweet, sweet broadcast television juice. These kids were singing “Blurred Lines” while their white teacher was rapping “Gold Digger” with his entire chest. Teachers were dating students. Prime Jane Lynch was verbally abusing teenagers every other scene. Ryan Murphy was showing his ass week after week, and the world couldn’t get enough. At one point Glee had more entries on the Billboard Hot 100 than Elvis. That’s how serious the suburbs were about these nerdy covers. —Holmes
(3) “We Are Young” by fun. vs. (14) Garden State
“We Are Young” by fun.
There’s perhaps nothing more millennial than going hoarse yelling “WE ARE YOUNG,” never once considering that soon the tenses will change and the “are” will become “were.” (The only thing that may top it is putting a fucking period at the end of your band name.) Honestly, the only one who really set the world on fire was fun.’s lead guitarist, Jack Antonoff, who would go on to burn popular music to the ground as a producer. —Gruttadaro
Garden State
There’s plenty about Zach Braff’s 2004 film that comes across as cringe, but there are two things that hold up incredibly well: (1) the urge to put on a poncho, go out into the rain, and scream into the void and (2) the perfect soundtrack, a 10-out-10, five-star, no-notes collection of songs from the Shins and Iron & Wine and Coldplay and Simon & Garfunkel and Cary Brothers and others that did indeed change my life. —Jones
(7) The Office vs. (10) Netflix and Chill
The Office
“Wow,” I thought circa 2007, “we’re living through an era when people feel trapped in dead-end jobs, towns, and relationships; when we’re losing faith in the American dream but still clinging fiercely to our own individual dreams; when we’re realizing that all we have is one another, a situation that’s both incredibly annoying and profoundly beautiful.
“But surely,” I said to myself, “surely no single image will ever perfectly capture this new millennial zeitgeist!” Then Kevin dropped the chili. —Phillips
Netflix and Chill
For millennials who would like to have sex but just feel like they can’t come right out and say that. In college, I picked up on a vibe from a girl on my floor who’d heard great things about Mad Men, so we made plans to Mad Men and Chill. We got halfway through the pilot. —Miles Surrey
(2) Harry Potter fandom vs. (15) Dubstep
Harry Potter fandom
If you’re a millennial, you’ve probably, at some point, tried to speak in Parseltongue, figured out which house you’d be in, or cast an Accio spell to summon the Harry Potter books your parents hid because you were throwing temper tantrums about being a Muggle. But maybe it was millennials’ capacity for delusion that was the real magic all along—getting us through wars, pandemics, budding dictatorships, and J.K. Rowling being a TERF. Thanks, Harry! —Hunt
Dubstep
Fourteen years removed from the fratty haze and excess of dubstep’s American takeover, the subgenre feels uniquely reminiscent of the Obama years. Only in an era as steeped in neoliberal “hope” and Silicon Valley–assisted techno-optimism could you get music so abrasive, so corny, yet so infectious. Waiting for the drop is sick. Everyone loves hearing a random sample of some obscure YouTube meme that adds nothing to the actual song. Sometimes, when your president is Black, your electronic music gets too cute. If only things were still that simple. —Holmes
The Away Message Region
(1) AOL Instant Messenger vs. (16) Livestrong bracelets
AOL Instant Messenger
When I die and arrive at the pearly gates, I know what sound I’ll hear: that squeaky opening door that announced one of your “buddies” logging onto AIM. There was no greater feeling of hope, anticipation, or opportunity to wow your crush—xXsoccer_guy_sk8rXx—with the new abbreviation you’d learned after seeing them at school but before logging onto AIM on the family desktop to start chatting. “Wuz up,” I’d write, and wait with bated breath for a sign that they also wanted to chat with me. Of course, if things go south for me in the afterlife—I also know what sound I’ll hear. —Jodi Walker
Livestrong bracelets
That yellow rubber bracelet somehow let every middle schooler channel the lactic acid–resistant, podium-mounting confidence of a pre-cancellation Lance Armstrong. Livestrong bands and their proliferating, many-colored spawn were the first status symbol I was aware of, and when my mom finally got me one from the Nike outlet store in Orlando, I felt like I’d made it to the mountaintop, just like Lance. —Hunt
(8) The Olsen twins vs. (9) Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2
The Olsen twins
My earliest millennial years weren’t tracked in weeks, days, or hours, but in the annual films that Mary-Kate and Ashley released like clockwork from 1992 to 2004. Which is to say nothing of their TV shows or prolific musical mystery endeavors in The Adventures of Mary-Kate and Ashley. Whatever time turner Beyoncé has to get all her shit done, the Olsen twins discovered it first. They were movie stars, TV icons, and something even more glamorous: twins. When they marked their transition into adolescence with zigzag parts and spaghetti-strap tops, well baby, so did I. There was no hair accessory, glittery lip gloss, or sassy comeback Mary-Kate and Ashley didn’t get me to try out in the privacy of my own Caboodle mirror. And when they retreated quietly into the less public-facing mediums of high fashion, giant trench coats, and smoking cigarettes on New York City sidewalks—well, good. They deserved it. They had already solved so many crimes by dinnertime. —Walker
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2
Venice Beach, Love Park, the Hangar—what better settings for a quick game of Trick Attack? Just make sure to hit those manuals—might we suggest Rodney Mullen?—and throw in a few specials for that ever-satisfying “dun!” sound. The only thing that sounds better is the game’s soundtrack, a perfect blend of punk and hip-hop that scored countless playing sessions after school with your buddies. —Aric Jenkins
(5) Emo vs. (12) Quitting Facebook but not Instagram
Emo
D.C. hardcore bands in the ’80s hated being called it. Teens in the ’90s with swoop bangs and Hot Topic band tees embraced it. The journey to acceptance was paved with tears, 7-inch singles, and voicemails from an ex, but we’re still not sure anyone can define what emo actually is. (Though we certainly took a stab at it back in 2022.) Perhaps it’s best to paraphrase the Potter Stewart doctrine when determining whether something is or isn’t emo: We know it when we scene it. —Justin Sayles
Quitting Facebook but not Instagram
They’re the same company! But admit it: For about 10 years, you saw one as “the only social network that’s still good” and the other as “a toxic slurry that’s radicalizing my uncles.” You were too authentic to stay on Facebook (propaganda, surveillance) and too authentic not to stay on Instagram (you looked so hot in that shirt). Well, congratulations. Now you’re a lifestyle influencer with $4 million in credit card debt and a brand built on arguing that contact lenses are woke. —Phillips
(4) Blogging vs. (13) “Adulting”
Blogging
A special website? For all your special thoughts? Like a private diary? That you’d publish on the internet? With no filter? And anyone could just … read it? Including your parents? What an amazing idea with absolutely no potential downsides! Honestly, the blog era was the peak of the whole internet, the time when the web was at its most creative, freewheeling, unpredictable, silly, smart, and human. I’m really sorry you didn’t get that job at Merrill Lynch. —Phillips
“Adulting”
Every generation bastardizes the English language somehow. It is our God-given right. But holy hell, did millennials do a number on it: Thanks to us, any noun can now be a verb if you want it badly enough. Did you know that Panera’s new slogan is “It Just Meals Good”? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, MAN?! —Gruttadaro
(6) Quoting Anchorman vs. (11) Tinder
Quoting Anchorman
One might say the Anchorman hype escalated quickly. This aughts comedy had so many iconic lines that it became part of our vernacular. Overnight, it seemed like everybody could recite its script from memory. Do people still recognize Anchorman quotes in the wild today? Sixty percent of the time, it works every time. —Surrey
Tinder
With love and respect for those still fighting the good fight, I am surely not alone in saying that I am very, very glad to no longer be dating. But there was a glorious era when Tinder broke out, eschewing the cringey long form of dating sites like OkCupid and catapulting “swipe right” into common parlance. My go-to move for a long time was to send anyone I matched with a single top hat emoji to see what they would do. I enjoyed it thoroughly, though oddly, I can’t say it led to any particular romance. —Claire McNear
(3) The Motorola Razr vs. (14) Donald Glover
The Motorola Razr
I got my first phone at 16, around the same time I got my driver’s license. It was a flip phone: silver clamshell, a stunner, the Samsung SGH-X427. It was made of adamantium and meteors. Key features included Java downloadable applications, liquid crystal display, 40-chord polyphonic ringtones. The one I picked was “Bird.” It sounded like a bird. And I loved that phone every day … until I saw a commercial for the all-new Motorola Razr. At that moment, my old cell became decrepit, a dino phone, bones. The future had arrived. —Tyler Parker
Donald Glover
A.k.a. Childish Gambino, a.k.a. the millennial Leonardo da Vinci. He made you laugh in Community, made you recoil at times in Atlanta, and then, as a rapper, made you realize: Wait, it is because of the internet. Or maybe you’re more of a Camp truther. “I guess meet me at Pianos, they cross-fadin’ off of Nanos.” Doesn’t get more millennial than that. —Jenkins
(7) #NoFilter vs. (10) “Hey ho” music
#NoFilter
The early years of Instagram were a heyday for the grainiest, most burnt-toast-looking filters you ever laid your eyes on. So, naturally, in opposition to the Earlybirds and Kelvins of the world, came a new philosophy: What if the most powerful filter is no filter at all? Sharing a photo of your de-Valencia-fied face was nothing short of an act of bravery. (OK, maybe there were a couple of small edits, but that’s it.) —Julianna Ress
“Hey ho” music
Marcus Mumford pretended he was some kind of Appalachian guitar hero, and we millennials imagined we were shouting those folksy “hey hos” in some log cabin in West Virginia instead of our cinder block–walled dorm rooms. We had no shame about our sepia-toned fantasies, and the Lumineers, Of Monsters and Men, Mumford & Sons, et al. let us live our homesteading, flower-crown-wearing daydreams out loud. —Hunt
(2) T9 texting vs. (15) T-Pain
T9 texting
Let’s say, hypothetically, that you have noticed that those of a certain age are not particularly adept at typing on their phones. Imagine if instead of a bubbly miniature QWERTY keyboard, our elders were forced to contend with a 12-key riddle in which buttons had to be smashed repeatedly to get to the right word. It was, perhaps, the millennial generation’s first true shibboleth—texting was for the kids, duh. Those raised in the sacred, lo-fi hellfire of T9 tended to be so adept that it was no longer necessary to glance at the keys—a zippy shortcut for some and a questionable mid-driving pastime for those busting out their shiny new driver’s licenses. (I am still not over BLAIRE and—seriously!—BLAIRF placing ahead of CLAIRE in the T9 prediction rotation.) —McNear
T-Pain
The third time I heard T-Pain I was in my truck, driving into Muskogee, headed to my friend Chris’s. I was listening to 106.9 KHITS, Tulsa’s no. 1 hit music station. He was singing about a girl with butter pecan eyes descending from the ceiling, and let me tell you something—I turned up the volume. She sounded like a great hang, like a sweet, lovely lady. He sounded like an extraterrestrial songbird of paradise fed through some exoplanetary synthesizer. He had the cosmos in his voice. He rhymed “right thang” with “night thang.” This was a creative giant. —Parker
The TRL Region
(1) “Mr. Brightside” by the Killers vs. (16) Going back and forth between liking and hating Anne Hathaway
“Mr. Brightside” by the Killers
Gaudy and powdered and lush, a force of nature. A fake, kitschy sort of nature, built inside a casino, where the trees are huge and dramatic and beautiful, made of plastic and covered in sequins of various neons. A Hitchcock studio lot sort of nature, a forest floor made of gold metallic fringe, picnicking on the back of an afterfiring Eldorado. —Parker
Going back and forth between liking and hating Anne Hathaway
Poor Anne, the avatar of the millennial urge to incite a backlash against someone who’s committed the crime of earnestness—and to then incite a backlash against that backlash, and back and forth, back and forth. “#Hathahaters” was an actual thing that happened in the 2010s. Currently, we’re in a very pro-Anne era, but do not underestimate us. The tides can change at any moment. —Gruttadaro
(8) MGMT vs. (9) Vampire Weekend
MGMT
Travis Kelce gets it. (Even if he doesn’t quite get the spelling.) So does Emerald Fennell. (Even if she doesn’t quite get the timeline right.) MGMT may not have the aloof coolness of the Strokes or the other circa-2000 bands that emerged from New York’s Lower East Side, but their brand of whimsical Williamsburg rock became the rallying cry for a subset of a generation that gravitated toward keyboards, neon, and Hype Machine remixes. It doesn’t matter that they never made another album as big as their first or that said album has at most three or four good songs. In fact, the latter point just makes them the perfect fit for the iPod era. —Sayles
Vampire Weekend
A sensational band led by a besuited former blogger who discovered the Oxford comma in a Facebook group, wrote a song inspired by it, and released it as a single backed by a Wes Anderson–esque video? Yeah, I think they belong in this bracket. Eclectic, cultured, and capable of eliciting strong reactions from haters and lovers alike, Vampire Weekend owned indie rock from the Great Recession to the pandemic. Omitting them might provoke major “millennial unease.” —Ben Lindbergh
(5) The Old Kanye vs. (12) CollegeHumor
The Old Kanye
Kanye’s last truly great moment came in 2016, with an album where he worried about a model’s bleached asshole ruining his T-shirt. Perhaps there were signs all along that we’d end up where we did. At least we’ll always have those sunglasses and that Friday when Yeezus leaked. —Sayles
CollegeHumor
The viral sketch-comedy empire that preceded YouTube, nurtured emerging Hollywood talent (Josh Ruben, Sarah Schneider, Kelly Marie Tran), and shrank like so many digital media ventures of its ilk. The CollegeHumor of yore might be gone, but it’ll never be forgotten. We’ll always have “The Six Girls You’ll Date in College.” —Surrey
(4) Superbad vs. (13) Tha Carter III
Superbad
How many T-shirts pulled over long-sleeve henleys is too many? In 2007, there was no upper limit. Incredibly, Superbad is one of the only comedies of its era that remains watchable—doubtless helped by enduring stars like Seth Rogen, Emma Stone, and Bill Hader, but heavily seasoned with the twee anxiety of ur-millenial Michael Cera. Gen Beta will doubtless find many horrible ways to mock their parents therein. —McNear
Tha Carter III
Lil Wayne had a generational run from the late 2000s to the early 2010s, and Tha Carter III was Weezy’s crowning achievement. After an absurd stretch of mixtape releases, this opus transformed underground success into mainstream appeal. In this era of rap, Lil Wayne was inevitable. —Daniel Chin
(6) Britney Spears vs. (11) Going-out tops
Britney Spears
“ … Baby One More Time.” “Oops! … I Did it Again.” Albino python. Crossroads. “Toxic.” “Piece of Me.” Justin, Kevin, and Christina. Shaved head. Leave Britney alone. #FreeBritney. “Womanizer.” Vegas residency. Conservatorship. I’ll stop there, but I could keep going. If some or all of those words or phrases don’t instantly summon sounds or images in your mind, you might not be a millennial. “Iconic” is an overused adjective, but in Britney’s case, it applies perfectly. —Lindbergh
Going-out tops
It’s Friday in 2003. “Hey Ya!” is on the radio. I’m in the back seat of a Jetta in my finest low-rise boot-cut denim, heading to the mall. My mission: re-up on “going-out tops” at Forever 21. (I’m 20.) The gold tunic, indistinguishable from a negligee—or the tube top meant to look like a bandanna? Slinky, backless, and black—or empire waist, with beadwork that’s already unraveling? My decision: yes. Let the pregame begin. —Katie Baker
(3) The sound of the iPod wheel vs. (14) “Crank That (Soulja Boy)”
The sound of the iPod wheel
Before the iPod was wholly 2000-and-late, holding one felt like the future: sleek, simple, probably stocked with Dido tunes. And at the center of it all was that scroll wheel. So infinite, man! A perfect circle under your thumb, a whole sonic universe in the palm of your hand! Click-click-click-click, it went, part alien communication and part metronome on the Metro. It was the sound of music; it was a glorious time. —Baker
“Crank That (Soulja Boy)”
“Crank That” was not just a hit song by Soulja Boy released in 2007—it was a movement. Long before TikTok even existed, Soulja Boy inspired an entire generation to move their bodies and broadcast their performances for the rest of the internet to see. Just hearing a single loop of that steel-pan beat will awaken something within any millennial to this day: Even if they’re not outwardly dancing on cue, just know that some part of their brain is screaming “YOUUUU.” —Chin
(7) LimeWire vs. (10) LeBron James
LimeWire
Now. It is, of course, illegal, and reprehensible, and—did I mention—illegal to pirate music and other vaunted art forms using the World Wide Web. But there was a time—particularly if you were, say, 12 and short on babysitting gigs, much less credit cards—when it was strangely tricky to procure the entertainment your preteen lizard brain demanded. Enter a parade of shady peer-to-peer platforms, of which Kazaa and LimeWire were the most hallowed among the generation whose cultural awakening came at their hands. Also, though: Sometimes you got the film or show or song you wanted, and sometimes you got a virus, or something completely different and mislabeled, or something so preposterously wrong that it’s hard to imagine that its creation and P2P placement were not malicious. I can neither confirm nor deny that I unknowingly watched a copy of There Will Be Blood in which all the scenes were out of order. —McNear
LeBron James
Born in 1984, LeBron James is a longtime elder millennial king, one of the greats who went through a baggy shorts phase. (Meritocracy and fashion!) Posting up on the court or posting online, he’s got generational range: calling the president “u bum,” Smiling through it all!, fully using that wingspan for the proper millennial selfie angle. What was The Decision, really, but a LinkedIn post before its time? All-Stars: They’re just like us! —Baker
(2) Sexy vampires vs. (15) Josh Schwartz’s TV shows
Sexy vampires
Stories about bloodsucking creatures have existed in culture for centuries. But millennials knew something important about vampires that differentiated our many contributions to the canon: that they are sexy and we should make them kiss. —Princiotti
Josh Schwartz’s TV shows
Josh Schwartz knew the power of a pair of blond and brunette best friends with diametrically opposed personalities, bridged by an unbreakable bond forged in the fires of family trauma and financial gaps. The O.C. taught us how to throw themed parties, avoid any and all settings scored by Imogen Heap, and really see that toxic relationship through to the bitter end (and/or secretly pine long enough to make your soulmate fall in love with you). Likewise, Gossip Girl taught us how to wreak social havoc, sow anonymous internet chaos, dramatically snap a flip phone closed after a cutting one-liner, and that it’s perfectly fine to just forget the final and most important reveal of a genre-defining TV show if that’s what you need for your mental health. In ways both aspirational and abhorrent, the dramatic mind of Schwartz defined a generation of teenage behavior, fashion, and obsession with Death Cab for Cutie. —Walker
The Cronut Region
(1) The Obama “Hope” poster vs. (16) IPAs
The Obama “Hope” poster
The face that launched a thousand (million?) wannabe graphic designers. You see this poster and think it’s the last time you ever felt optimistic about anything. It was a time of innocence, a time of Facebook without your parents on it, early mixtape-era Drake, and Tom Brady being thwarted by the Giants. Ahhh, those were the days. —Jenkins
IPAs
For those who believe that craft beer should be punishing, not enjoyable. OK, I concede that I have a personal bias against India pale ales—they give me bitter-beer face—but I’m not going to apologize for making fun of my generation’s fetishization of it. There will always be something funny about bros who think that drinking beer with the same ABV as a cabernet will put hair on their chests. —Siegel
(8) Williamsburg vs. (9) Chipotle
Williamsburg
Let’s face it: The entire 2010s indie aesthetic can probably be traced back to those two square miles on the Brooklyn waterfront. These days, Williamsburg stands as more of a testament to shameless corporate luxury. But hey, every hipster has to evolve into a yuppie eventually, right? Now bring me my matcha flat white mixed with dehydrated yak’s milk—I’m late for hot yoga. —Jenkins
Chipotle
For decades, fast food meant a greasy, artery-clogging meal on the go. Then fast-casual chains like Chipotle burst onto the scene and made us all consider a different food delivery system: eating meals from a bowl. Now, we have our pick of the Cavas, Prets, Nayas, Dig Inns, and Honeygrows of the world—but let us not forget about the Mexican-inspired eatery that converted so many of us to Bowl Culture, even if it occasionally led to gastrointestinal armageddon. —Surrey
(5) Original recipe Four Loko vs. (12) Serial
Original recipe Four Loko
One of the greatest losses of any young millennial’s life. Loss of an entire evening’s worth of ABV inside one single can, loss of cases and cases of pure Four Loko when the FDA ruined our good old-fashioned fun, and, well, mostly the loss of so, so, so many memories to the siren call of “energy beer” that tasted like the spectral whisper of a watermelon. I once hosted a Four Loko party in college that resulted in a stickiness so intense that a friend simply lifted an entire kitchen tile clean off the floor with the sole of his shoe. How do you know you’re in the good old days before you’ve already left them? Easy. It’s the final faint taste of Blue Razz right before your mind goes black. —Walker
Serial
The podcast that birthed the true crime craze. And I’d argue that none of the seemingly millions of whodunits or cold-case examinations did it in more gripping fashion than Sarah Koenig and Co. did when Serial launched in 2014, investigating the 1999 murder of Baltimore high school student Hae Min Lee and the conviction of her former boyfriend Adnan Syed. Oh, that voice. (We will pretend that subsequent seasons of Serial do not exist.) —Jones
(4) The 2008 financial crisis vs. (13) Urban Outfitters
The 2008 financial crisis
Most millennials were teens or in their early 20s, just trying to watch The Hills in peace, when the global financial crisis greeted us with a sneering “Welcome to the real world, pal.” So many abandoned half-built cul-de-sacs! Such Sad Guys on Trading Floors! From Bernie Madoff to ZIRP, from The Big Short to Margin Call, the Great Recession left its mark on a generation like some formative ex. We’ll always have our parents’ basement. —Baker
Urban Outfitters
The mall was gone. Returns made online shopping too cumbersome. What was left? The almost painfully curated edifice of Urban Outfitters, where you were as likely to find a T-shirt proclaiming that “not everything is flat in Kansas” (which I owned—why; why?) as ironic Christmas vinyls, inflatable chairs, and hot-pink felt Jesus figurines (see previous parenthetical). If someday some wayward teens decide to use their glitching cartoon AI torsos to explore the past, there’s not a much better place to sample full-strength millennial identity than Urban Outfitters’ self-consciously spartan concrete floor circa 2009. —McNear
(6) Mean Girls vs. (11) Open floor plans
Mean Girls
“That’s so fetch,” “You go, Glen Coco,” “On Wednesdays we wear pink.” Need I say more? Mean Girls is so, so quotable that you might even think its plethora of memorable lines are played out, but they’re played out for a reason! Tina Fey’s pen at the peak of its powers is what turned the Plastics and Co. into Clueless for the T9 generation. —Ress
Open floor plans
You know millennials weren’t prepared for the pandemic because we’d spent the years prior knocking down walls and doors and turning our homes and offices into one big room. —Princiotti
(3) Bacon vs. (14) Girl Talk
Bacon
Every generation has its trendy foods (and alcohol), and millennials claimed bacon like no generation had claimed a food before. (It was the quiche of the 2010s.) Bacon was a fashion statement on Urban Outfitters T-shirts and a novel delight in places you least expected. It’s not that it was healthy, or photogenic, or even cool; it’s just that it inspired paroxysms of enthusiasm, a trademark of millennials if there ever was one. —Hunt
Girl Talk
When it comes to Girl Talk, it’s the whole album or nothing at all. The student activities board I was on in college brought Girl Talk to campus my freshman year; he played to a room of maybe 100 initially perplexed liberal arts students who soon generated an unanticipated flood of euphoria so intense that I genuinely believe the power of our sweat compelled an entire generation to abruptly imprint on Gregg Gillis’s sample-based genius. Even if just for a moment in time. It is not possible, at least not in this brain, to hear Phoenix’s “1901” without immediately hearing Ludacris holler, “She can go lower than I ever really thought she could / Face down, ass up / The top of your booty jiggling out your jeans, baby pull your pants up.” —Walker
(7) Never owning a home vs. (10) Vine
Never owning a home
Is it spending too much money on avocado toast or a collapsing economy and an exponentially expanding wealth gap that’s wiping out the middle class? Who’s to say?! Either way, splitting rent with one to three roommates well into your 30s is both a necessary lifestyle choice and the epicenter of endless generational discourse. —Ress
Vine
It’s a little silly to call a short-form video platform with 200 million monthly users quaint, but that’s what Vine felt like. Creators made funny shit, they posted it there, and that’s really all. Vine was where I discovered Conner O’Malley. And where I saw the “Back at it again at Krispy Kreme” guy do his thing. But the fun didn’t last. Twitter bought Vine in 2012, then killed it. A lot of the best Vines have ended up on YouTube and TikTok, but they just don’t feel quite the same. —Siegel
(2) Avocado toast vs. (15) Kale
Avocado toast
I wouldn’t exactly say that millennials identify avocado toast as an essential artifact of our generation—it’s more an association proliferated by boomers who don’t know ball. At this point we should all be capable of acknowledging that there are myriad other, more legitimate reasons why so many of us are forever renters drowning in debt. That said, I’ve never seen an old person eat avocado toast. I don’t even think my mom knows what an avocado is. —Gruttadaro
Kale
Once relegated to garnish and salad-bar display status, kale had such a glow-up it got Beyoncé to go vegan for a moment. Avocados get all the credit, but don’t underestimate the downward force that ubiquitous kale Caesar salads, green smoothies, and fast-casual superfood bowls had on millennial savings accounts. —Princiotti
