Is “Millennialism” A Crime?

The term “millennialism” has many associations, though in the technical sense, it’s a theory about Christ reigning for one thousand years before the final judgement. But what the “millennialism” in this article refers to is a hyper-awareness of the time ranging from 1995 to 2005. Most of the time, it pertains to white people referencing what others outside of their time or race would consider esoteric (e.g. Spyder Games, a soap opera that used to be on MTV, but then randomly got cancelled after 9/11). This is a common trend among the current generation, which can’t help but be further fueled by the pop culture-centric likes of BuzzFeed, Flavorwire and Jezebel (Perez Hilton too, but I don’t think anyone wants to admit they still read that).

It can be said that the larger reason for the push toward millennialism is the fact that most of said millennials are sitting in an office all day pretending to work and have nothing better to do but fall prey to the nostalgia-oriented ways of articles like “The Most 90s Things That Ever Happened.” Not to say that there’s anything wrong with nostalgia. For the most part, things were better before, so why not reminisce when the moment strikes you? The only problem is, at what point does millennialism become overly annoying?

Maybe it becomes obnoxious at the juncture when someone says the word “juvenile,” and you feel the need to say, “I feel like listening to ‘Back That Ass Up’ right now” or if you’re on hold to talk to customer service for more than five minutes, you feel the need to reference the Friends episode “The One With the Screamer” where Phoebe waits on hold with a phone company for countless hours.

Millennialism is a phenomenon that no other generation before has really experienced–because no other generation has had the same level of desire to look backwards with such longing. That, and pop culture reached something of a zenith in the 90s and early 00s (though many would argue that it reached its lowest point) in terms of the surfeit of iconic moments available to reference. Either that, or the Baby Boomers were too modest (though they, too, were called hostile names like the “Me Generation”) to talk about how amazing the 70s and 80s were and the Gen X and Yers were simply too apathetic to talk about anything. And Christ (forgive the insinuation toward pure millennialism) knows the Lost Generation had nothing to allude to pop culturally. Thus, millennials are in quite a unique position, one that has given them the license to bring up things like Christina Aguilera’s strange physical evolution or boast about how, yes, they saw every episode of Dawson’s Creek. Is it a crime to show such arrogant pride in one’s pop culture heritage? Perhaps. But so be it.