Millennials are starting to get a little bit older. They’ve reached an age where some of the things they used to think were cool have now been revealed to be embarrassingly not so.
Unlike with previous generations, there is a long record of these failures on the internet that can be reviewed and laughed at. In this article, we look at 35 such examples of this.
Posting Every Single Thought You Have On Facebook
It used to be standard practice to just post every single thought you had on Facebook. This was in the before time, however, in the long long ago when Facebook was very different from how it is now. Back then, it was more common to see your friends sharing their thoughts about nothing in particular than it was to read news articles from questionable sources.
one like and I’ll start tweeting the same way I used to post on Facebook 10 years ago pic.twitter.com/zp9ZooCw4s
Some millennials will likely remember just how funny they thought those Chuck Norris memes were. If every person who ever posted a Chuck Norris meme on the internet in the 2000s actually went and saw a Chuck Norris movie in the theaters, that man would be a billionaire.
Every 19th of September is “International Talk Like A Pirate Day.” Don’t ask us how we know that, we just know that. Some of you may know that too. Many millennials have celebrated this holiday in an unironic way. Yar t’is a fine holiday to celebrate with bountiful booty!
Once upon a time, when voicemails were a more important thing in society than today, someone had the idea to prank people who called them. They recorded a voicemail that made it sound like they had picked up the phone but the other person’s voice wasn’t coming through. A lot of people thought this was really hilarious and did the same on their voicemails.
Debating Whether Pirates Could Beat Ninjas In A Fight
Millennials, especially when they were younger, have been known to debate some truly meaningless topics. One of those that became a rather big deal was a debate between who would win in a fight between pirates and ninjas. This is a silly debate, as ninjas would win on land and pirates at sea, but that’s not what’s important anymore.
People from Generation Z have probably heard of MySpace and think it was something of a prequel to Facebook or WhatsApp. It was its own thing, however, and it contained a function where you could allow people to own pictures. Obviously, this trend did not age well.
Remember on MySpace when you posted a new picture and ppl would b like “let me own this” and you’d change the caption to “______ownz this pic xD”
Posting To Facebook (along with others) When You Lose Your Phone
For several years, losing your phone meant you posted to Facebook that you had lost all your contact numbers. In fact, it seems like all social media was in the beginning was a way to get your contact numbers back if you had lost your phone.
Using Blingees (Like The One Below) As Your Profile Picture
Do you remember Blingees? Lots of people would put little images like this as their profile picture online. They must have thought they were so cool when they did so. They weren’t, however, and now with the benefit of hindsight, we are all able to see that.
Taking A Bunch Of Pics From The Olive Garden or Ruby Tuesday’s
In the early days of social media, anything was cause for a new photo album to be uploaded onto Facebook. Maybe you just went with your friends to the Olive Garden or Ruby Tuesdays, but this was treated at the level of a wedding or a funeral in terms of social media presence not that long ago.
do gen z know we used to upload 90 photos to a facebook album after every single night out? they’d be so mortified for us.
Then Putting Together An Album Of Those Same Pictures
The photo albums mentioned above were then put together with captions that seem to rotate between upper and lowercase letters with no rhyme or reason and particularly cringe-worthy captions. Yes, your awkward early social adventures are something to be embarrassed of now.
Remember being a pre-teen and making these albums on Facebook captioned ‘~aDvEnTuRes~’ where you were just walking to the corner store w/ your buds takin pics like ✌🏼😬 all edited by Piczo captioned ‘you’re gonna catch a cold from the ice inside your soul.’ WHAT A FREAKIN TIME
Maybe some of your photos looked like the one here. These were all over the Internet for some reason. A group of friends would put their feet or their hands together and it was some type of bonding moment. One can only assume that all these khaki-panted friends are still soulmates today.
Millennials aren’t the only generation of people to decide at one point that 3D movie glasses were a cool fashion accessory, but they are the generation that will be made fun of the most for it, however. Other generations have the benefit of not having had social media around to document their giant stylistic failures.
Proudly Yelling Out Quotes To “Borat” Or “Chappelle’s Show” At Each Other
Before memes or twitter, a great way to get attention on yourself was just to yell out quotes from the original Borat movie or from Chappelle’s Show. Almost nothing from that movie or TV show is acceptable to yell in public but not that long ago, we were all doing it! In the not so distant past, there seemed to be a lot of people named Rick James too.
Typing Like This and Not Being Embarrassed About It
Evidently standard text was not appealing to younger millennials back in the day. What could easily be communicated in standard syntax was often replaced with random characters and even more random switching between upper and lower case letters. We have emojis and GIFs now so this is less of a problem
I used to text people and type on myspace like this and it haunts me
Putting “XXX” Or Similar Before Or After A Username
In similar fashion, millennials used to love adding the old XXX before or after a username. The feeling back then was each additional “X” added a layer of coolness onto the person. Recent research suggests that this may not be true, however.
Gigantic shoes, especially for millennial skateboarders, used to be all the rage. Granted, these shoes were incredibly comfy. They were like you were wearing pillows on your feet at school all day long. Were they the greatest fashion trend ever? Certainly not, but comfortable feet should not be underrated.
Remember how we were just talking about MySpace? The social media platform that didn’t make it too far into the 21st century? It had a function that made you publicly rank your friends from one to eight. It’s a wonder why nobody is on there anymore.
Spending Hours Manually Changing Artwork On Itunes
You know how nowadays if you want to listen to a song you just press a button or tell some automated computer that you want to hear that song? Things were way different back in the day. How about spending hours manually changing the artwork on iTunes using images you found on Google? It’s like we were living in prehistoric times!
Waiting An Entire Day For A 3-Minute Song To Download
Similar to the previous entry on this list, downloading anything used to be a far more difficult task than it is today. The Twitter user here evidently has not been able to shed themselves of the memory of waiting 8 hours to download one Limp Bizkit song to Limewire (haha, Limewire).
Writing Lyrics To Your Favorite Song In Tiny Handwriting
Perhaps the best way to become super embarrassed at your younger self is to review how obsessed you were with song lyrics. Take the person from this Twitter post who decided to write lyrics to Blink-182 songs on her shoes in handwriting. That’s probably not the most fun thing to look back on when trying to feel good about yourself.
How insufferably wannabe emo I was at 13 – writing Blink 182 lyrics on my Converse. Good one, past Becca. pic.twitter.com/06UG98JDRY
We don’t want to spoil anything for you here but the musical group Alvin and the Chipmunks weren’t being totally honest with you. They aren’t actually chipmunks. It’s just voices sped up and then slowed down so that they sound like they are chipmunks. Evidently, plenty of millennials seemed to enjoy it when a new song would get an Alvin and the Chipmunks remix.
we really survived through that era where every new song would get an alvin and the chipmunks remix
Posting Depressing Song Lyrics And Worrying Your Family
Going back to the treatment of song lyrics by millennials, it used to be fairly standard to see someone you know having posted the lyrics to a song on Facebook without mentioning that they are the lyrics to a song. Sometimes these lyrics were very depressing and might make your family members worry about your emotional well-being.
the height of social media was like 2008 when you’d post “I hate everyone to the bitter end, nothing turns out right, there’s no end in sight, I hate my life” (mad about geometry homework) and your aunt would comment “you need to call me” and you’d reply “lol it’s song lyrics”
Riverdance was a big thing with people old and young in the mid to late 90s and in retrospect, we have no idea why. For a fleeting moment, everyone seemed to love Irish folk dancing. Have fun reliving those memories millennials, we’re sure you won’t cringe with embarrassment upon reviewing any home movies of you dancing a jig.
The first iPods weren’t released until the early 21st century. Before then, these gigantic boomboxes were the most portable way to bring your entire music collection with you. These innovative technological designs could fit up to five CDs that you could rotate. They don’t sell too well these days, however.
Yelling “Don’t Tase Me, Bro” In Public Because You Think It’s Really Funny
On the University of Florida campus in 2008, a rather unfortunate young man was forcefully escorted out of a John Kerry speaking engagement. He was quoted as loudly saying to the security officers, “Don’t Tase Me, Bro!” The video went as viral as something could in 2008. Many millennials would repeat the same phrase anytime they even saw a security guard for several months afterward.
Listening To Music That You Arguably Shouldn’t Have Been Listening To
No matter what generation you are from, you likely listened to music as a kid that was about things you were far too immature to understand. Take this user from Twitter who posted a photo of a 12-year-old her listening to Lana Del Rey songs about cocaine, old men, and death. When she’s older, the songs will mean so much more.
me at age 12 listening to Lana Del Rey sing about cocaine, old men, and death pic.twitter.com/5We8fJ5Zx4
The movie Catfish came out in 2010 and focused on people who pretend to be things that they are not online. That’s where the term catfish comes from. Lots of people were catfishing before they even knew that catfishing was a thing.
When Your Ring Tone, Like, Totally “Defined Your Personality”
Ringtones used to be far more important to your sense of self than they are today. It was not unheard of for someone to spend an entire afternoon searching for the perfect ringtone that really defines them.
Do you remember when virtual pets used to be a big thing? Whether it was a Tamagotchi or a dog on Nintendo DS, some millennials might be a little embarrassed of their past virtual pet ownership. Now, we just catch different virtual Pokemon and that’s good enough.
Acting “Edgy” But Really Just Being As Much Like Guy Fieri As Possible
For young people, it can be really difficult to be edgy and cool. Unfortunately, for many male millennials, they would grow up to find out that they weren’t really edgy or cool when they were young, they were just ripoffs of Guy Fieri.
Rocking Multiple SillyBandz Because You’re Cool Like That
Our society will never move away from silly trends. Our desire to be cool and stay up to date with what the hip kids are doing is a key driver of our economy. Take SillyBandz, we don’t know if they would have been as cool if they hadn’t replaced the “s” at the end of bands with a “z” and quite frankly, we don’t want to know
Do you remember that weird-looking “S” everyone drew? This thing was on binders, desks, the back of chairs in middle school, and everywhere else. Somewhere, there is somebody named Steve, Scott, or Samantha that started a trend that will never die.
In the mid-1990s, Mentos had these commercials where people would do ridiculously dangerous things like getting into the cars of people they don’t know after having eaten a Mentos. This led to some seriously dangerous stunts by countless teenagers trying to recreate or one-up the commercials.
Purchasing, Owning, and/or Using A Blackberry Phone
Try and type on a Blackberry today, we dare you! Blackberries used to be the Cadillac on the smartphone market. Now we don’t even know what the company is up to. It just feels so retro to use actual buttons to text.
Carrying Around An Ipod and Cell Phone At The Same Time
People used to carry around iPods and cell phones at the same time as if nobody had ever even thought of combining the two devices. Well, that’s because, for a while, nobody had even thought to combine the two devices! Now, our phones do everything and nobody has even heard of a discman.
35 Things millennials used to do that they thought was normal but now find super embarrassing
By Ian Carey | Culture
Millennials are starting to get a little bit older. They’ve reached an age where some of the things they used to think were cool have now been revealed to be embarrassingly not so.
Unlike with previous generations, there is a long record of these failures on the internet that can be reviewed and laughed at. In this article, we look at 35 such examples of this.
