Millennial Phantom Zone

How Pop Culture Trapped Millennials in the Phantom Zone

Spend enough time with Millennials, and you’ll notice their conversations often gravitate toward their favorite pop culture franchises. For many, these brands aren’t just entertainment—they’ve become extensions of their identities. It’s not unusual for people of any age to fantasize about being part of their beloved stories, and that goes…
November 22, 20246 Comments
Double Agent Poso

Poso Notices Generation Y

This past year especially, the media blitz trying to psyop people into conflating Generation Y and Millennials seems to have gone into overdrive. But reality always wins. Now, the inherent absurdity of predictive models that lump in kids born oline with those who didn't have cell phones until college is…
November 20, 202411 Comments
Kid Reading

Are Kids Really Reading Less, or Are We Just Measuring Wrong?

Hot on the heels of sensationalist fake news claiming that men hate reading, a recent piece in the Guardian breathlessly reports that reading is about as popular with children as spinach and homework. But are kids really reading less, or are they just measuring wrong? Like the "Men hate reading"…
November 8, 202410 Comments
The World You Were Raised to Survive In No Longer Exists

How Nostalgia is Shaping Generation Y’s Role in Society

As Generation Y reaches middle age, their nostalgia-driven outlook is distinctly shaping their social and political decisions. This cohort, with formative years before smartphones and social media, contrasts sharply with Millennials and Generation Z, who are more attuned to digital trends and progressive social movements. The 2024 election underscores this…
November 7, 20247 Comments
CRT LCD Dracula

Why Millennial Devs Can’t Make Authentic Retro Games

For many gamers who grew up with the classics of the 1980s and 1990s, 8 and 16-bit video games hold a special nostalgic charm. Yet despite the recent surge in retro style indie games, it’s apparent that even talented Millennial developers struggle to recreate the authentic look and feel of…
October 15, 202412 Comments
Millennial vs Zoomer

Older Zoomers vs Younger Zoomers

Over on X, Dylan Smith (@heaveninterface) notices the stark differences between kids born in the 90s and those born in the aughts. He's not wrong. Except about calling people born in 1996 "Zoomers". Related: Lost Generations A model's worth is dependent on its predictive value. As we've seen, demographic models…
September 5, 202423 Comments
Zoomer Science Fiction

Is Science Fiction Doomed After Generation X?

As the literary landscape shifts, we might be witnessing a significant transition in genre dominance. Science fiction, once a staple of speculative fiction, may be losing ground to fantasy, particularly among younger readers like Generation Z. The unique cultural and societal factors shaping Gen Z suggest that science fiction’s popularity…
September 3, 202418 Comments
Marble Hornets

The Link From Gen Y Nostalgia to Gen Z Horror

Our recent post on analog horror brought out a lot of folks to comment. It was especially edifying to get more of the Millennial view on the genre. Related: Analog Horror: The Past as Nightmare, Not Nostalgia The most copious treatment of the subject comes from commenter Rudolph Harrier: This…
August 14, 202410 Comments
Analog Horror

Analog Horror: The Past as Nightmare, Not Nostalgia

In recent years, a fascinating trend has emerged within the horror genre that has captivated the imaginations of Generation Z: analog horror. Cribbing the aesthetics of VHS tapes, public access television, and other analog media, this subgenre is the opposite of retrowave. Becauuse instead of eliciting nostalgia for simpler times,…
August 13, 20249 Comments
Online Nostalgia

Millennial Online Nostalgia

Around here we've spent a great deal of time detailing generational tendencies. When it comes to nostalgia for their long-gone childhood years, Gen Y is notorious for living in the past, while Millennials are notorious for consigning anything from the before time to the memory hole. But recently, a new…
August 7, 202415 Comments