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
Third Place Mall

After the Mall: Can We Build a New Third Place?

It's hard for Zoomers to believe, but the mall was once not only the preferred place to shop, its importance went beyond a mere retail hub. The mall served as a gathering spot where people connected, interacted, and shared their lives beyond their homes and workplaces. Malls, which began in…
November 19, 202412 Comments
Signs of the Times, The Fourth Turning

How the Fourth Turning Explains the Mainstream Entertainment Collapse

In the past few years, the mainstream entertainment industry has been gripped by an epidemic of costly flops. These failures have spread across video games, movies, comic books, and more. Titles expected to be blockbuster hits—like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Skull and Bones, and Suicide Squad: Kill…
November 13, 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