There's more reasons to feel old than just old memes

Behold! The blogging aesthetics of 2006:
hi every1 im new!!!!!!! holds up spork my name is katy but u can call me t3h PeNgU1N oF d00m!!!!!!!! lol…as u can see im very random!!!! thats why i came here, 2 meet random ppl like me ^_… im 13 years old (im mature 4 my age tho!!) i like 2 watch invader zim w/ my girlfreind (im bi if u dont like it deal w/it) its our favorite tv show!!! bcuz its SOOOO random!!!! shes random 2 of course but i want 2 meet more random ppl =) like they say the more the merrier!!!! lol…neways i hope 2 make alot of freinds here so give me lots of commentses!!!! DOOOOOMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! <--- me bein random again ^_ hehe…toodles!!!!!
love and waffles,
t3h PeNgU1N oF d00m
- I recently came across a blogpost explaining something I was researching, and the comments beneath were exactly like this. Then I looked up from when it was: May 2006.
  The internet is a time machine.
  
  The internet is a time machine.
  Man, it really is and it's so cool to see. It brings back memories you forgot you had!
- The sacred texts, they're so bright I almost need to avert my eyes.
  
  'the sacred texts'
  
  ROFL:ROFL:ROFL:ROFL ___^___ _ L __/ [] \ LOL===__ \ L \___ ___ ___] I I ----------/
- Is it bad that I can still read these shitposts in the correct tone?
  
  I read them in Boxxy's voice, it's automatic
- You truely were random as dice. ;)
- Oh god, I forgot about the spork thing. The sporks seemed a natural part of the foundation. Where did the sporks go? This would have been perfectly at home on the very first forum my child ass ever joined, and I can feel everything I ever loved evaporating.
- holds up spork
  Oh fuck! This caused my brain to reboot after a cascading failure of memories tripping fuses right the way back to 2001.
  
  Did your brain then play the windows XP boot up sound?
- Holy shit what a throwback to the past
- Has there ever been a study from like an anthropologist/evolutionary biologist or something about why the :) smiley won out over the =) smiley? I used to be a =) guy back in the day, but over time felt pressured to switch to :) because everyone else was using it. Now, whenever I see someone use =) I just assume they're a boomer or something.
  
  I've never thought about that. Could it be because :) became the shortcut for emoji?
- I miss MySpace.
- This made my eyes water
- Honestly, I kind of understand why the older generation was afraid of using the internet, they saw this lingo while trying to fix a leaky pipe on a Yahoo Answers thread and said "not my worldwideweb!"
  I didn't talk this incredibly stupid and "unique" on chats during AOL and MSN days but by the time I got to highschool I realized I needed to stop with all the emojis and emphasis in text form because nobody knows how nor cares to decypher what you're saying anyway.
- I used to work with a lot of people who were younger than me, and I knew a few Katy's in my time (in some cases, literally, though not all younger but still - Catherine Kathrine Kathy Cathy Kate and like 3 Katie's were all people I knew in the space of about 3 years lmfao). 😂
  E: to clarify - absolutely nothing against them! I was a closeted goth (already being bullied for but not knowing I was autistic started early and was bad enough) and I wish I could have embraced the weirdness like that.
- Did she ever made friends this day, or is it just a full on copypasta?

Gen X: Haha, those millenials sure looked stupid as kids!
Also Gen X:
- Boomers: Haha, Gen X sure looked stupid as kids!
  Also Boomers:
  
  Given a better quality photo, the women on the left and right really wouldn't be out of place nowadays.
- Give them a break, they had no other accepted way to explore their sexuality
  /s but also not /s
  
  Yeah that's just facts. This Bowie type shit is ANYTHING BUT straight, that's what makes it iconic.
  The straights have always copied/been inspired by queer fashion, just like white america with black american music genres (jazz, rock, blues, r&b, rap).
- And these are the ones scared of gender/LGBTQ politics... We know why now...
  
  Is... is that the rep we have? I sort of thought that was boomers and just, well, bigots from every generation. Gen X was also sex positive feminism 3rd wave and the beginning of intersectionalism.
  
  Da packages.
- Aw man, I clicked that thinking it was going to be Grunge or even this sort of thing.
  I always forget that gen x also includes people way older than me.
  
  Seriously that's some 80s shit my sister was into but she's 9 years older than me, meanwhile it was more Biggie and Wu-Tang for me when they dropped around 93-94 when I was a teen. It was all baggy clothes.

It's sad they got so much hate back the days. Their style was so awesome and different. I always admired that, but didn't have the courage to go full emo and draw everybodys hate on me.
- Millennial fashion was pretty bad imho. From the emo look all the way down to the lumberjack look. All quite contrived and corny, but that's just my opinion.
  
  In that case, please enlighten us on what acceptable fashion is. I'm dying to hear about what you think everyone should look like.
- Millennial fashion was pretty bad imho. From the emo look all the way down to the lumberjack look. All quite contrived and corny, but that's just my opinion.
  
  Excuse me I exclusively wore preppy clothes from Abercrombie & Fitch thank you very much
  
  The manbun will go down in history as one of the worst hairstyles of all time

That was peak aesthetics.
- Was?
  You too stray far from the light.
  
  But we like the dark.
  Darkness, for dark deeds.
- BY FAR!

Emo/Skater outfit makes everyone over 9000% more attractive.
- 💯
- Helps that the style "hides" a lot, hard to tell what she really looks like under the makeup, loose clothing and accessories.

I’m a millennial, and I still dress all emo even in my 30’s. My 20 year old coworker even complimented my black skinny jeans with zippers in random places the other day. No reason to stop loving your late teen/early 20’s aesthetic! Don’t let the world crush your creativity, do you and to hell with everyone’s opinions!
- I'm with you!!! I'm gonna dress how I feel like I should and now that I'm an adult nobody can stop me!!
  
  At 35 I continue to wear home made stenciled t-shirts and jeans I cut into shorts. If my boss doesn't like it he can go break a hip about it, how I look has no bearing on how well I do my job.
- Same. I stopped dying my hair black but otherwise my style has stayed very similar
- Hell yeha, as long as you're not harming anyone, just do whatever the hell you want without thinking twice.
- Mine is the casual yuppie look. Ha
- Kids these days trying to take away our skinny jeans! Never I say!
  We'll see who is laughing when it snows and their ankles are frozen. Suppose they all have to learn somehow
  
  Skinny Jeans forever. I can't imagine not having a few pairs at home. They are the most comfortable pants I own!
  
  Can we just get a happy medium between JNCO and skinny jeans, please? 😭

This was like, 5% of millennials. Trust me, I was one of them. We got our asses kicked for dressing this way. Most everyone else either did "gangsta" style with low-hanging pants and Timberland boots/Jordans, or "preppy" style with a boring-ass polo shirt and khakis.
- Psh, I saw this and immediately thought " I would have wanted to date that girl back in the day". Now I think.... "If I met a girl who was my age rocking that style.... I would want to talk to them for sure"
  -born in 89'
  
  Yeah the emo look definitely worked for me... We didn't have a lot of them in my country though, the alt style was more punk/dirty techno, or metalheads but the girls didn't look like that. Shame...
  
  Same. Also born in 1989 and I would have had a huge crush on this girl in 2006. Haha
- Emocore stuff was also later on and seen generally as a pop-poser spinoff of punk and metal culture. It got uniquely hated on by both mainstream and alternative cliques because of this.
  I personally went through a pretty extended punk phase and never really got picked on. I actually made plenty of friends with jocks and stoners in high school, while wearing a pretty cringe getup with operation Ivy patches and shit.
  
  I gravitated toward nu-metal/industrial with wide leg JNCO pants and ball-chain necklaces.
  I haven't even heard of "emo" being an actual style until now. I thought it was just goth. Maybe because it's a couple years after my time. I'm an older millennial, graduated high school in 2000.
- Don't forget about thrift store style! Which wasn't a style back then. Advantage though, us thrift store kids could switch styles daily. 'Gangsta' Monday, 'emo' Wednesday, poser Friday.
  
  Wouldn't that just be poser every day?
- I don't know where people grew up that actually had cliques like that. It was just t-shirts and shorts or jeans while I was in school. There was no real trend chasing or trying to look gangster. Southern California here.
  
  I went to highschool in Canada from 04 to 09. Most people when I was on grade 8 dressed casual in t shirt, jeans, hoodie, etc. Aside from that we had a gangster crowd we called the g units, cowboy preppy kids (not Alberta but my town had a rodeo vibe to it) who wore polos blue jeans and cowboy boots and all played football, the skater/stoner crowd, and a tiny goth crowd. Then grade 9 hit and like 30 to 40% of my school went emo. By grade 11 half the kids reverted back to "normal" clothing while the other half went into the scene crowd and later became hipsters.
  
  Same haha. I do vaguely remember people looking like a much, much more toned down version of this, but yeah this shit was mostly relegated to Youtubers and Hot Topic models.
- boring-ass polo shirt and khakis
  I feel attacked.

Alt Teenagers dress weird regardless of when they were born.
- alt adults also do

The Millenials laughing at Gen Z are the same Millenials who mocked emo/scene kids back then.
- Was a goth, mocked emos and scene kids. Learned my lesson, rock on you little weirdos, enjoy your time of experimentation
  
  Goths mocking emos always made me laugh. Which is itself a third layer of comedy because I was supposedly an old school punk but really just another kid with a funny 'do (green mohawk...which I still hold as the most righteous hairstyle known to man, however)

I'll paraphrase a twitter comment: man I did not give a single fuck about gen x as a millenial, these posts are so weird. Maybe we're just more exposed to each other now because of social media
- Demographically there were way more millenials than genx.
  The cohorts that are demographic bulges (boomers, millennials) get a lot of media attention (because advertising) and it plays out.
- I'm convinced that news outlets and big tech intentionally push ageism / generational-warfare to substitute for class warfare, and divert criticism away from capitalists.
  Like who decided to mark off these year ranges and put labels on them anyway, it's completely arbitrary and meaningless.
  
  Allow me to offer a different perspective from the previous reply: holy frickin shit, I honestly never noticed this before. Tbh I'm not sure about the intentionality behind it though.
  I mean, who exactly is intentionally doing this? Intent is important here; if it's not individually-assignable, and say emerges from a complex series of interactions between various other policies, or instances of individual decision-making - for example - then it seems hard to reasonably place "blame" like that.
  This doesn't preclude taking action against the companies which will be salient for them (e.g. puts financial viability in question, rather than BS fines that amount to parking tickets)... I mean corporations are people too, now, right? Just a thought on how to argue/clarify the premise.
  Because otherwise... Yeah, wtf. A lot of dividing lines, a lot of material insecurity, and so on, and nobody has the time - let alone the resources AND perspective simultaneously - to challenge the real dynamic. One which arguably IS being perpetrated with individual intent at multiple scales, and with cancerous impacts (figuratively and literally) on the societies which enable and tolerate them.
  
  I hope you're being sarcastic because that kind of deranged conspiracy theory nonsense being taken seriously is why this country is so comprehensively fucked in the head.
  ...also, the whole genx/millenial/genz/etc labels are specifically a thing from marketing. They teach that stuff in business schools because it actually is useful to divide a population like that. The edges are gray, but people squarely in the middle of one of those demographics are more likely to be caricatures of it.

Gonna be honest, I really like the aesthetic even to this day.
- My wife and I have a standing agreement that we'll get a divorce if either of have a shot with Hayley Williams
  
  I mean, If I could I would do the same, feel u bro.
- I think gen z has done a great job evolving the look too.

I see an Invader Zim T-shirt!
- I'm gonna sing the doom song now! Doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom...
  
  The Tallest: You made it worse!
  Invader Zim: Or beeetteeeerrr!

Sometimes I think that since I still really love goth chicks I haven’t changed that much since the 00s
But then I remember that over that time frame goth chicks went from edgy rebellious teenagers in a ton of makeup to moms in their 30s with a wicked sense of humor that wear a lot of black. They still deal weed and hate authorities though.
- Watching my once fully goth and punk friends raise kids is odd but also wonderful, knowing that they're passing their zero tolerance for societies' bullshit on to their kids (as best they can, considering what we're up against) is heart warming.
  Wouldn't want to do it myself though lol

We're all still emo/scene kids at heart, it was never a phase mom
- I still cry listening to Bright Eyes.
  I don’t care what anyone says though. No one can write like Conor Oberst.
- Preach. If I could be any age forever it would probably be one of the ones from my days as a scene kid.

This is every generation with the generation before them.
- What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
  Ecclesiastes; written over 2000 years ago.
  
  Napoleon Bonaparte

Yeah, you got me. But i don't know what gen z is doing and don't feel like talking down about them for whatever reason. I miss my spiked punk hairstyle, the teased mohawk i rocked and the half covered face emo hair. all of the weird stuff was so much fun.
- was so much fun.
  It still is! I'm over 30 and still having fun with the alternative looks! I also work in IT remotely, so, milage may vary.
  
  I quit looking like i wanted to, because employers basically went: change or get kicked out.
- I never looked like this, but life was so much easier back then.
- Ya what is gen Z

God, I miss that time. Closest you get to that aesthetics nowadays still is some forms of visual kei (stuff like lynch.), but it’s a different vibe.

Genz aesthetic I swear is just depression meets delirium, and honestly, I can’t blame them lol
- Depression Meets Delirium is a fantastic psych rock band name
- That's pretty much what emo/scene was back in the mid 2000s. The more things change, the more things stay the same.

Those complaining ones are boomer converts. I see more of them in retro game groups.
- Yeah I don't get it. Do they not see the irony?
  Just let the next generation be the next generation.

Im an emo kid
Nonconforming as can be
You'd be nonconforming too if you looked just like me
Edit: revisiting these lyrics, this song is an important time capsule
- I've got paint on my nails and makeup on my face
  I'm almost emo enough to start shaving my legs
  
  Have you heard about the emo pizza? It cuts itself!
- Holy shit, I remember now.
- Oh man, that brings back memories

I don't if it's just me but a lot of weirdness was then part of various subcultures, especially music ones. Now it has been decoupled from those onto tiktok. Not saying good or bad.
- That's how I try to keep things in perspective, by saying - was I any different?
  Yes I think it's all stupid and annoying, literally everything about tiktok which the kids are soooo involved with, minecraft, fortnite, however they're dressing these days. Stupid and annoying, all of it.
  But hey there was a time when my dig-pet was the most important thing I owned, my beanie babies were "an investment", could easily play Halo for 12 hours straight, I wore giant jnco jeans with chains on them, and listened to Limp Bizkit.
  So, was I any different? Nah, it's the same.

Rawr xD
Gotta express my uniqueness by dressing like everyone else
- To be fair: The scene was much smaller back then and many emo kids were basically scorned and beaten for the emo and scene aesthetic.
  
  Yup... It was the main reason I stopped wearing make up and dressing like that. The bullying became unbearable.
  Would be fun to try it again now, though... But I'm 30 so it'll probably look dumb lol

I'm old and crotchety. Can someone supply an example of the gen z aesthetics referenced in this post? All I can think of is big ass eyebrows, ultra bold multi colored eyeshadow, and crop tops.
- From the article: Why is it called the ‘Meet me at McDonald’s’? In short, it is not clear why it is called this.
  That's all I wanted to know and there is no answer 😭
  
  Meh. That's not that bad.
  I heard kids think crocs are fashionable now though. That's un acceptable.
  
  this is just big hair again. Let 'em have fun you fucking lunitic school
  
  Lmao that haircut. It's like some haircut from the 1920s
  
  Annoyingly I have the perfect hair for this style. And back in my day it was emo straight fringes, born 15/20 years to early apparently.
  
  Hella bussin'

The use of the word aesthetic as a verb in the last several years blows my mind.
Anyhow, yeah, we dress different when we're kids. I don't think too many people are shocked by this.
- It's used as a noun here? I'm confused
  
  "the aesthetic" was always a noun, dude
- They've aestheticed
  
  I’m aestheticking right now