The Out-of-Touch Adults' Guide to Kid Culture: 'Millennial Optimism'

This week, young people are longing for a past they were barely alive for, roasting people who dare to read books in public, and sharing videos of the last moments their lives made sense. So, not exactly an uplifting collection of cultural observations, but I threw in some truly banger Christmas carol mashups to lighten the mood. Everything is nostalgic, melancholic, or festive—sometimes all at once.

What is "millennial optimism"?

Nostalgia for Y2K is dying out, replaced by romanticization of the years around 2010, which some younger people are imagining as a more innocent, hopeful time that they missed out on. At the same time, many millennials who were setting those trends then are feeling nostalgic for their lost youth, so both groups are posting TikTok videos about "millennial optimism." You see, supposedly post-2010 was an era marked by whimsical possibility and confidence in a bright future, which is decidedly not how kids feel today. Thus: Nostalgia.

Here are some examples of videos about the time, one made by a young person:

and one by an older person:

So is "millennial optimism" really a thing? Yes and no. While it's hard for an older person to see a decade that included both the fallout from the 2008 recession and the election of 2016 as the best of times, a youth living through our current nightmare might see it that way. And I'm sure many millennial hipsters were having a lovely time back in the late-aughts and teens, growing funny mustaches, going to farmer's markets, and listening to Stomp Clap Hey music.

But whatever fun and whimsy was on order back then wasn't because of some overall cultural optimism; it was because that's when millennials were young, and it's fun to be young. Also, the urban hipsters at the center of these memes were only a tiny percentage of the population; everyone else was just living their lives—which were, more or less, the same lives people have always led. Anyway, if young people you know start talking about the golden age of optimism that was 2010-2020, this is the context behind their understanding of the recent past. It's flawed, but nostalgia for times we didn't live always is.

What is "performative reading"?

The rise of the term "performative reading" could be seen as an indicator that the recent past was actually more optimistic. Performative reading was coined around 2020 and originally referred to people who read books in public as a social status indicator. You might know it better as “acting pretentious” or “being a pseudo intellectual.” As an insult toward people who use books as fashion accessories, "performative reading" wasn’t widely employed back then, but lately, the term is being connected to the insult “performative male,” and is often used to refer to young men who read books written by women authors in public in an attempt to get women to notice/like them. I don't think this actually a widespread trend—it feels like one of those things that is commented upon more often than actually happens. Regardless, the result is the worst type of people posting photos (that I won't link to) of "performative readers" they spot on subways and coffeeshops, so other horrible people can comment like, "look at this jerk, readin' a book! Written by a woman!"

This is troubling on many levels—it’s anti-intellectual, it's sexist, it's bullying, and it’s also part of a larger trend among generations Z and A, who seem reluctant to do anything out-of-the-ordinary for fear of being publicly judged and/or ridiculed for it online. Before everything was online, you could sit at a coffeeshop reading bell hooks and the worst you might have to deal with would have been a smirk from a stranger. Now, a picture of you in a beret could end up online with a hundreds of thousands of faceless strangers dunking on your pretentious ass. The result is a drop in the number of annoying urban attention seekers, but also a drop in the number of people who do anything interesting at all. So maybe nostalgia for the aughts antwenty-d teens is warranted.

What is the white rabbit trend?

In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the main character chases after a white rabbit and is led into a surreal, troubling world. That's the basis of the White Rabbit trend on TikTok. The idea is to post a video of yourself experiencing a moment of happiness right before the "white rabbit" appeared to change the trajectory 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 melancholic mood is driven home by a soundtrack of a metronome counting down, accompanied by a baleful lo-fi piano riff.

Here's an example, in which a TikToker posted a graduation walk, taken two days before her white rabbit showed up in the form of a serious car accident.

Many white rabbit videos don't offer any context, leaving you to fill in the blanks:

It's not exactly an uplifting trend, but if you like the camaraderie of knowing you're not the only person whose life has been suddenly uprooted by forces beyond your control, you can check out over 200,000 videos that use the "white rabbit" audio.

What does "hemmy" mean?

Back in my day, "hemmy" was a word gearheads used to describe the engines in Ram trucks, but among a growing number of young people, "hemmy" now means "homie," but as said by a white person. The originator of the word is Milk, a fan-favorite character in Legends of Chamberlain Heights, an "edgy," crudely animated cartoon that premiered on Comedy Central in 2016 and ran for two seasons.

Viral video of the week: Noteliwood's Christmas Mash-ups

It's Christmas, so let's check out some Christmas carols that are going viral. TikTok DJ Noteliwood is blowing up (as they used to say) for his holiday-themed mash-ups, like this collision of "Linus and Lucy" from the Vince Guaraldi Trio and and GloRilla's "Yeah Glo!" that I cannot stop listening to (along with 3.3 million other people):

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" that's closing in on four million streams: