Why Millennials Can’t Let Go of These 20 Surprisingly Outdated Obsessions

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Case in point, 16 of the Top 20 highest-grossing movies of the 1990s were either stand-alone or entirely original movies, with only four spinoffs and sequels (Star Wars: Episode 1, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Terminator 2 and Toy Story 2) listed alongside the likes of Armageddon, Ghost, Twister, and Independence Day. 

So far in the 2020s, the exact opposite is true, with only four of the current Top 20 (The Odyssey, Barbie, Michael and Oppenheimer) not belonging to an existing movie universe. 

DISNEY ORIGINALS

The live-action remakes of Disney classics might be proving big business, but for Millennials—who grew up on hand-drawn and painted classics like The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast—there’s really no comparison. 

PRACTICAL EFFECTS

Is it fair to say Millennials grew up at the best time for movie effects? Millennials had the best of both worlds in the 90s and early 2000s, with movies like Jurassic Park and Terminator 2 seamlessly blending practical effects with cutting-edge CGI, while others, like The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter movies, built stunning practical sets and used real-world locations to bring their universes to light. Modern big-budget extravaganzas that increasingly rely on green screen and LED backlots just don’t seem to match up, and don’t have quite the same immersive quality. 

EMO MUSIC

If you’re a Millennial who fell deeply into the emo subculture of the early 2000s, then you might have heard your parents say that it was just a phase. Not so, it seems, as Millennials are still proudly holding on to the bands, artists, and music that defined them more than two decades ago and supporting their music still today. 

VINYL RECORDS

On the subject of music, though, Millennials have long been the driving force behind the recent resurgence in popularity of vinyl records, too, all but single-handedly steering the decades-old format through the choppy waters of the streaming era. Having brought LPs and record players back from the brink, however, more recent research is showing that Gen Z are catching up too and are jumping on the Millennial bandwagon as the biggest buyers of vinyl records in the mid 2020s.  

MIXTAPES

Curating a Spotify playlist just isn’t the same as burning a bespoke CD or recording a uniquely compiled cassette tape, is it? 

PHYSICAL MEDIA

It’s not just vinyl and mixtapes, either. Millennials and Gen Z alike are increasingly expressing a preference for physical media of all types—from CDs and DVDs to old-school gaming consoles and cartridge games. Turns out paying for streaming platforms that don’t stream the movie you want to watch when you want to watch it (and can delete it even once you’ve bought it) isn’t the best business model. 

BOARD GAMES

The pandemic made board games fashionable again, leading to a resurgence of interest among Gen Z, but for Millennials they never went out of favor. Two-thirds of Millennials admit to being board game fanatics, with almost 40% claiming that they enjoy regular board games as a hobby. 

ARCADES

Not that Millennials only played dice-rolling games back in the day, of course. A pocketful of loose change was all you needed to have a good time when video game arcades were everywhere—although these too, it seems, are starting to enjoy a renaissance as the edge continues to wear off in the digital age.

PEN AND PAPER

In an era when you can make a note of absolutely anything on your phone, there’s a growing trend among Millennials and Gen Zs for re-embracing pen and paper. As well as giving the opportunity for some much-needed time away from a screen, there’s something satisfyingly tactile in making a to-do list by hand and scratching each job off as you do it. 

ONE-TIME PURCHASES

Speaking of things that used to be simpler back in the day, it used to be the case that if you needed, say, a new program for your computer, you would buy it, install it, and it would be yours in perpetuity. Nowadays, everything is a subscription service—so that one-off fee has been switched to a steady and increasingly infuriating drip-feed of monthly payments and constant downloadable upgrades.

WORKPLACE PROFESSIONALISM

From the “Gen Z stare” to the rumbling debate over whether or not you can take an iced coffee into a job interview, much has been said in recent years of the different social mores of Millennials versus Gen Z and beyond. With Boomers now retired, and Gen X not far behind them, Millennials are becoming the elder statesmen and women of the workplace—and in that capacity are steadfastly defending the professional etiquette of the past against an ever more relaxed and less demanding style of professionalism that’s emerging among the generations behind. 

AN AI-LESS INTERNET

Use a search engine today, and chances are you’ll be shown an AI-curated overview of the search results, rather than the results themselves. Scroll a social media feed, and you’ll likely end up wading through a morass of AI slop. Try to order something online, and you might get an AI chatbot asking you what you’re looking for and if there’s anything they can do to help (if it hasn’t already made things worse). Things really were better, easier, and more human back in the day. 

ONLINE ANONYMITY