Rollingstone looks back at the people, music, cultural touchstones, movements and more that have shaped the millennial generation.From Beyoncé to Bernie Sanders, we look back at the people, the music, the cultural touchstones and more that shaped Millennials https://t.co/Y2KNwFisoCpic.twitter.com/BSSQ3jXqki
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) October 17, 2018
70. Hot Topic Rebels
“So you decided to become a tweenage rebel. As any alternative kid knew in the late Nineties through the 2000s, the most rebellious thing you could do was buy yourself an identity completely based on the inside of a store at the mall... Identifiable by their gratuitous piercings, Manic Panic hair dye and obscure band tees, Hot Topic employees played cultural oracles to nascent bad kids in the suburbs... The nostalgic metal tees and fetish-lite wear have more recently gone the way of the mainstream, becoming sartorial essentials for Top 40 artists such as Lil Uzi Vert and Justin Bieber.”— S.E.
60. AOL Instant Messenger Alter Egos
“Enter America Online, the revolutionary pay-based online service with built-in browsing, e-mail and, best of all, its instant-messaging system, where you could pester as many classmates and Internet strangers as your parents permitted. You could tell a lot by somebody’s AOL Instant Messenger screen name... But you could deduce even more by their away message, which functioned as the proto-subtweet for millennial teens. While “offline,” one would typically leave an away message to passively convey a crush, or an enmity, usually through a verse from their favorite emo or R&B song. Yet as broadband advanced, dial-up went the way of the dinosaurs, and eventually AIM would be eclipsed by Apple’s iMessage, Google Hangouts and Facebook Messenger.”—S.E.
47. Selfies, Self-esteem and Narcissism
“Taking photos of oneself with a smartphone become widely popular with the invention of the front-facing cellphone camera in 2003. The phenomenon has since become one of the most common types of posts on social media, allowing people to easily share informal images of themselves, gain access to the lives of public figures beyond paparazzi photos, and (in lieu of autographs) document their own interactions with celebrities. Is it harmless navel-gazing or hyper narcissism run amok? Awkward portraits of young people have disappeared and now it seems everyone has duck lips or a perfectly angled upshot... Even if self-obsession isn’t new, it’s taken on a life of its own.”— Linnea Emison
38.Rom-Com Expectations
“If Nineties rom-coms gave millennials unrealistic expectations of high school, the early-2000s rom-coms gave them unrealistic expectations of the real world. Films like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, 13 Going on 30 and The Wedding Planner featured a quirky female lead who stumbles into a situation she doesn’t quite know how to get out of. They made you believe that once you were “30, flirty and thriving” you’d be living in Manhattan with a bounty of stylish clothes and a curly-haired nice guy as your suitor.”— A.P.
5. Napster, LimeWire and the Dominance of Music Piracy
“If you were born into a world with music-streaming services, it can be hard to fathom the sheer amount of time, stupidity and anxiety previous generations wasted in front of a desktop computer waiting for songs to download. Every. Single. Song. Most of them, we may never have even heard before. Whether you were into Napster, Kazaa, LimeWire, BitTorrent, all of the above, or some more nefarious Dark Web software, pirating music was not only easy in the 2000s, it was addictive. Watching a green bar fill up next to a song was the dopamine hit we craved long before “likes” existed. And unlike a “like,” this was educational. It was about discovery, shaping our identities, feeling less alone, and because it was “free,” the gateways for fandom were flung wide open. The first time we heard our favorite songs, albums and bands was, probably, through some illegal channel. Was it worth the Red Scare-like terror we silently incurred when teenagers were sued by bands like Metallica? In hindsight, maybe not. But at the time, who could’ve predicted Spotify and iPhones were right around the technological corner? And all of our carefully curated download folders and iTunes libraries would be rendered futile overnight.”— Sarah Grant
Were you a hot topic shopping, Rom-Com watching, selfie taking music pirator sitting on AIM in the early 2000s, ONTD?
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