Hi millennials. I hope you’re having a great day.

Remember the ‘90s? I don’t.

I was born in ‘97, the same year Batman & Robin, Anaconda, and Men in Black came out.

I don’t remember 9/11 either—I was 4 years old. I was far too young to have watched Friends when it was originally airing.

By every official cutoff, I’m Gen Z, and yet, I still feel like a millennial who got held back a year, whether it’s my obsession with reminiscing about a world before smartphones, or the feeling of being excited for the future back when everything seemed brighter. Back when we didn’t have to worry too much about technology growing too rapidly, or global wars looming over the horizon.

Hey, remember being bored? I do.

Bored was coming home from school at 3 in the afternoon, to an empty street without kids of my age around.

It wasn’t such a terrible time in hindsight.

I just watched whatever’s on TV while I ate Lucky Me Pancit Canton with Coke. It was simpler and easier to entertain yourself back then.

Bored was waiting to borrow Mom’s Nokia so I could play Snake or Space Invaders, or it was waiting on weekends for Lola’s program to end so I could watch cartoons the whole day instead.

That or MTV. I love music—if I weren’t where I am now, I wish I could’ve been a musician instead.

One of my earliest purchases (with Mom’s money, of course) was Maroon 5’s Songs About Jane on CD, so I didn’t have to wait on MTV or MYX for This Love or She Will Be Loved to play in between Toxic by Britney Spears, Complicated by Avril Lavigne, or, God forbid, anything by Westlife.

No, kidding, I loved Westlife. I may have been just a kid, but I still had two working ears connected to a heart.

Oooh, remember when Harry Potter was the biggest thing?

You guys had the last mono-culture—everyone waiting for the final book to drop, and then the movies after. Everyone I knew, even the ones who hated it, has watched it, and the ones who didn’t watched The Lord of the Rings instead.

I was right in the middle of it all, and I even had a Pottermore account. My wand was mahogany with a dragon heartstring core. My patronus was a salmon. Salmon!

Remember High School Musical?

We’re All in This Together was virtually inescapable. It was so in fashion that for a time, people who grew up with grumpy Gen Xers forgot that musicals were lame.

Even TV was the same. Remember Glee? Gossip Girl? Whatever Paris Hilton did this time? When the height of television humor was The Office, South Park, The Simpsons, or Family Guy, for the edgy little teens at least.

I remember everyone in high school waiting for the finale of How I Met Your Mother—everyone had an opinion, and the wrong one would get the die-hard fans huffing and furiously brushing aside their bangs.

Oh, speaking of, everyone had bangs.

What was up with that, right?

I guarantee, almost every millennial reading right now groaned in retrospective embarrassment.

It’s alright, I was right there with you, sticking my hair up in the back and brushing it down in the front. My monthly overhead was spent on hair wax and cheap studded leather bracelets that kept breaking.

I didn’t have much of a social nightlife—I was 10 or 11 at the time—so the posturing was mainly for Friendster, at least until 2009 when Facebook came along and stole both Friendster’s and Myspace’s entire customer base.

Oh, the early social media, when the most negative thing we had to worry about was the awkward poke from that guy who just won’t leave us alone. I know because I, uhm, was that guy. For a time. Let’s move along, nothing to see here.

Remember when the internet was still funny? Right, how could I talk about millennials and their contributions to the world, without talking about their crowning achievement: memes.

You guys may not have invented the concept, but you guys perfected it, at least, that’s what most of you think. Early YouTube, 4chan, and Reddit were your old stomping grounds, and we Zoomers owe our internet culture to you.

Speaking of embarrassment, Y2K fashion is so in today, even with millennials, yet remember when you guys all wanted to wear skinnies instead of low-rise boot cut jeans, or muted flannels over hot pink blouses?

I’m sorry, millennials, but I remember the hipster era too well, and you guys were at the center of it all.

You guys single-handedly brought coffee and Tumblr culture to life; this blog definitely owes you a debt of gratitude.

I remember my first Tumblr blog—it was called the Russian Stormtrooper (because my photo was a stormtrooper wearing an ushanka hat), and I thought I was ready to write my way to millennial stardom. Alas, all I ever did was publish shoddily written short stories and reblog Emma Watson photos.

#justtumblrthings amirite?

Just know, millennials, that even if those things are cringe now, brushed under the fridge by Zoomers who just want to fixate on the ‘90s as if they invented pop and grunge, I was with you that entire time.

I remember the indie revolution, the cloying positivity of what we now call “Millennial Core” music—oh God, the ukuleles and that annoying stomp-clap rhythm— and hanging out at Starbucks pretending to write the next great YA novel.

I can’t grow hair on my face, but I’d gladly wear that ironic mustache with you if I could.

What’s even up with the ’90s and Y2K revival?

Remember when everyone and their grandmother all but tried to erase the late 90s and early aughts era of design? Everything 3D became flat, and the word “retro” was everywhere.

I suppose these kids could be forgiven for reviving the ‘90s and thinking they were cool for doing so—I mean, you guys did the same with the ‘80s. Short of bringing back hairspray, massive pompadours, and glam rock, the 2010s saw a cultural revival of the ‘80s that made Gen Xers roll their eyes and wonder why you’re making their childhood your own.

Remember when listening to The Smiths was a personality? Or watching The Breakfast Club, for that matter. Everything was in neon.

It’s actually no surprise, honestly. Around 2010, the older millennials who were kids in the late ‘80s took charge of pop culture. These were the kids born too late to sit with their cool older siblings at the seniors’ lunch table, told to wait for their time, and when it came, they found the lunch table, and the entire cafeteria for that matter, closed off and torn down, because the ‘90s are here, and the neighborhood has gentrified.

When Stranger Things first aired, these were the kids who pretended that that was their childhood, even though they were just in grade school when the decade ended.

Hey, I’m not judging. I’m the same. Look at me—born too late to be a hipster on Tumblr, and so now I’m starting a blog in 2025.

Look, all I wanted to say, millennials, is that I understand you.

You were the last generation that grew up being told that the world is your oyster, unaware that your parents and grandparents had already squandered it all.

When they ruined the economy, you bore the brunt of that burden, fresh out of college, and when you discovered that you’d been misled about how hard it is to survive out in the real world now, you were told to shut up and stop whining.

When you started in your career, you strived to have the same hunger as your Gen Xer bosses did, agreeing to shitty pay just to have a job, believing that you would be given your due once your time came.

Now, you’re confronted by the fact that Zoomers demand a way higher starting salary than what you accepted, for way less work (not that that’s a bad thing).

Hey, you did it all anyway. If you’re a millennial reading this, kudos to you.

You made it, shitty starting salary, the rising housing cost, and uppity zoomers co-opting your childhood as their own, notwithstanding.

Now that the current pop culture has begun pandering to Gen Z tastes over your own, don’t feel forgotten.

I’m a Zoomer, telling you I remember you, warts and all, and by warts, I meant emo bangs, hipster glasses, man buns, fedora hats, and that sickening “Millennial Core” era of music I still couldn’t get out of my head.

And yes, I will never let you live it down.