Millennial core started as a taunt. It was an entire trend dedicated to making fun of millennials for simply existing. Zoomers built collections of edits of millennials’ annoying quirks. Accidentally dropping oversized coffee cups or laughing a little too hard at something unfunny. Unironically loving Harry Potter and being so earnestly goofy, it borders on humiliating.
It’s part of a larger Gen Z pastime: dragging millennial fashion while quietly dressing exactly like us. Baguette bags? We invented those. Earphones with wires? We had no choice. Digital cameras and blurry photos? We weren’t being quirky, we just didn’t have iPhones with portrait mode.
But something strange is happening on TikTok. Millennials are no longer just a punchline; they’re being glamorized. And not by themselves but by Gen Z, the very generation that spent years humiliating them.
Nostalgic edits now reference Girls, High Fidelity, New Girl, and Master of None, often captioned with some variation of “All adventurous women do.” The phrase, taken from an infamous episode of Girls, is Shoshanna’s unintentionally poetic response to learning that Jessa has HPV: “All adventurous women do.”
Reflecting on a Less Optimized Time
What was once a moment of chaotic millennial absurdity has now been reclaimed as an aesthetic. A longing, a symbol of a time when life seemed more carefree, more messy, more real.
Under these videos are comments from Gen Z women openly admitting they wish they were a millennial in Brooklyn in 2013. Living off iced coffee, aimless ambition. The unshakable belief that their 20s were meant to be experienced rather than optimized. The very era that was mocked as cringe is now, somehow, aspirational.
Is this just the natural nostalgia cycle? Is 2014 “vintage” now? Usually, younger generations romanticize the past through fashion and aesthetics—just look at our millennial obsession with the ‘70s and ‘80s in the early 2000s. But how can anyone be nostalgic for 2014, a time that, objectively, wasn’t that long ago?
The nostalgic bump, the psychological phenomenon that makes us remember things more fondly as time passes, usually takes decades to kick in. But for millennials, it’s happening in real time.
The year 2014 wasn’t just a different time; it was a different world. Barack Obama was the leader of the free world. Donald Trump was a washed-up reality TV star, not a politician with multiple felony indictments and a cult-like fan base willing to punch cops on his behalf. Facebook existed, but it wasn’t a wasteland of boomer memes and political conspiracy theories.
It was where you posted bad brunch photos, not where your aunt shared articles about Jewish lasers. The loneliness crisis was something people associated with senior citizens, not something plaguing teenagers.
Social media was a distraction, not a full-time surveillance job. Young people had the opportunity to mess up without it being broadcast to the entire world and ruin their Google searches for the rest of their lives.
Longing For a Millennial Core World That’s Gone Away
The world wasn’t perfect, but it was freer, looser, lighter.
And while the internet was important in 2014, what happened in the real world still mattered more. Just take our career aspirations. Millennials grew up wanting to be astronauts and marine biologists. We wanted jobs that made a specific tangible difference in the world. And now? A whopping 86% want to be influencers.
Not writers or directors, just the main character. Creating the world is less important than being seen by it. Only a decade has passed, but given how much our world has unraveled, it feels like it’s been far longer. So, of course, Gen Z is looking at us like we are relics of a different time.
Our blackberries and side parts feel 400 years old because, in feeling years, they are. Time hasn’t just passed; it’s collapsed in on itself. The world we came of age in isn’t just outdated; it’s unrecognizable.
So yeah, maybe millennial hate was never hate. Maybe it was just internalized envy.
They called us cringe. But maybe it’s because they knew it meant we were free, and they were born into a world where they never would be.
Because, at the end of the day, all adventurous women do.
