Editor’s note: The Sweet 16 polls have closed. Check back on Thursday to cast your vote in the Elite Eight. In the meantime, check out the millennial cringe canon, how millennials learned to love the bowl, and the unique millennial connection with Obama.
The Millennial Canon Bracket is starting to heat up.
After a first round that was mostly defined by blowouts, the round of 32 was littered with difficult decisions for our voters. We’ve been running brackets for five years now, and this round of the Millennial Canon produced two of the closest margins we’ve ever seen: Over in the Cronut Region, 7-seed never owning a home took down its nemesis, 2-seed avocado toast, with just 50.8 percent of the vote. And somehow, even closer than that, 5-seed emo held off the Cinderella 13-seed “adulting” with just 50.1 percent of the vote. In the former matchup, the two entries were separated by 238 votes; in the latter, they were separated by just 38! It’s like millennials always say: Every vote counts.
But a few favorites have also emerged. In the Away Message Region, two pieces of long-gone tech have spent the early rounds devouring their competition. AOL Instant Messenger—which, of course it’s a juggernaut; we named the region after it—has averaged 73 percent of the vote in its matchups against Livestrong bracelets and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, while T9 texting took down two hallmarks of the millennial sound, T-Pain and “hey ho” music, with an average of 70 percent. Emo and quoting Anchorman won’t go quietly, but we seem destined for a face-off between the 1- and 2-seeds of the Away Message Region.
Results From Previous Rounds
And then there’s “Mr. Brightside” by the Killers. The millennials’ answer to “Sweet Caroline” has been dispatching its opponents quicker than Obama won the presidency in 2008. In the first round, the song took in 89 percent of the vote, and it somehow barely saw a drop-off in Round 2 versus a presumably tough opponent in MGMT: By the time polls closed on Tuesday, “Mr. Brightside” had hoovered up 84.2 percent of the vote.
So now it’s big dogs only. The most iconic artifacts of a generation are going head-to-head. The Obama “Hope” poster versus the 2008 financial crisis, a core millennial clash if there ever was one; the sound of the iPod wheel versus LimeWire; skinny jeans versus BuzzFeed. Praise the Knights of Columbus, the Sweet 16 is here.
As a reminder, you can vote here on the website and on Instagram until 6 p.m. ET. —Andrew Gruttadaro
The Cringe Region
(1) Skinny jeans vs. (5) BuzzFeed
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
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
(6) Student loan debt vs. (7) The Office
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
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
The Away Message Region
(1) AOL Instant Messenger vs. (5) Emo
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
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
More Artifacts From the Millennial Canon
(6) Quoting Anchorman vs. (2) T9 texting
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. —Miles Surrey
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.) —Claire McNear
The TRL Region
(1) “Mr. Brightside” by the Killers vs. (4) Superbad
“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. —Tyler Parker
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
(3) The sound of the iPod wheel vs. (7) LimeWire
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. —Katie Baker
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
The Cronut Region
(1) The Obama “Hope” poster vs. (4) The 2008 financial crisis
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. —Aric Jenkins
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
(6) Mean Girls vs. (7) Never owning a home
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. —Julianna Ress
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
