I don't see anything wrong with how we used to be

mid 90s to mid 2000s style was the peak I won't hear otherwise
- JNCO parachute pants, a Korn shirt, wallet chains, and ball-chain necklaces were the uniform of that time period. Gen-Z mushroom tops also have nothing on the all around close shave with long front bangs.
  
  I unironically feel that that era had one of the most iconic youth styles in modern history
  
  @TimeSquirrel @siipale @BudgieMania parachute pants need a comeback. They were the most roomy and comfortable jeans ever
  
  Dude, those styles are all coming back. Maybe not the Korm shirt, but the 90s styles are coming back, and early 2000s are coming back in some forms, but I assume we’ll see a return to those things soon. We’re already seein. The weird ugly early 2000s sunglasses, we’ll see low rise jeans come back eventually…it’s all cyclical.
  As a mid-millennial, though, I don’t see many people making fun of gen Z styles? Which of them are people making fun of?
  
  I don't understand why anybody wouldn't use a chain wallet. You don't have to worry about your wallet falling out or getting pickpocketed.
  
  The fuckin cockatiel hair cut from the very front to the back bangs lol. Either they were Goth into industrial or house heads. The spikey hair with bleach tips as well.

Not understanding and not approving of it are two different things. Millennials love our quirky/scary younger siblings, and I won’t hear otherwise.
- Yeah Zoomers are great and I can even get down with some of Gen X.
  The hate is for boomers only.
  
  We Gen X is just the lost ones in the transition, or so I feel.
- Can confirm, as a millennial I love zoomers and their humor. On god fr fr no cap.
  
  I will never shit on zoomer humour because I used to watch YouTube poops
  
  Don't do this if you're not ironyposting please. It'll be taken that way if meant for humor
- Damn right! I was jealous of these kids who had the courage to express themselves how they wanted and explore their identities outside of what was deemed "socially acceptable" back then, and I will fight tooth and nail for kids to be able to do the same today, even if I don't exactly understand what's "it" nowadays.
  
  I'm almost 40 and sometimes I feel like the only thing I can identify as is a dick. So I try to put that to use for the benefit of others, be a dick to an asshole, save a pussy.
  
  Can they do it without all having the broccoli hair perm though?
- Yes, i will love and protect them forever.

I was so attracted to those type of girls when I was in high school.
Unfortunately, they were never into me :(
- I still am, but nobody dresses emo anymore. :(
  
  I was so attracted to those type of girls when I was in high school.
  In my early 30s. From what I've seen, they've kind of changed it a bit and ditched the clothes, but I've seen them getting into tattoos a lot more.
  As a non-tatted guy, who looks totally different from them, they're still not into me and I'm still into it hahaha
  
  Scene*
  
  Seek women of your own age instead of high school girls ;)

This shit is still cool! I'm not even going to act ashamed! Hell fucking yeah I dressed like that, and It was motherfucking "epic!"
Wear whatever you think is cool zoomers, and stop for NO ONE! The moment you start letting others dictate your coolness is when you stop being young.
- Rawr XD
  
  Rawwwrr XD*
  
  Rawring 20s here we come
  
  Wait, go back
- Eh. As a zoomer (among the older ones) the styles today aren't forged from small local communities and interests like the image. Everything has been seeping into my younger cohorts' brains by social media and conforming to an identity they found online. Personally, it's unhealthy, and only getting worse for the next generations.
  
  Ah yes, the small local interest of a very popular show on one of the 3 main cartoon channels likely purchased from a nationwide chain that was a staple in pretty much every mall.
  
  As opposed to styles being formed by mass media?
  GenX, that was a total old fart comment.

We were copying bands to be edgy. Now explain broccoli.
- What did I do?!
  
  There they are! Get them!
  
  You made all young men shape their hair in your image.
- They are trying. Cut 'em some slack, the age of a common generational culture is dead and they're doing their own thing as best they can.
  Our parents had woodstock/hippies/disco, we had nu-metal and gangsta rap, and they have...whatever they feel like having at the moment.
  
  They're digging into a fair share you cited too.
- They're copying YouTubers and TikTok stars.
- b r o g l e

- The Zim shirt is baller
  
  Could assemble this whole look at a Hot Topic. Throw in a Jack Skellington chain wallet for good measure.
- Stop lying, you know you like it!

- Elder millennial here. Personally I view this as the kind of good natured ribbing that comes from a healthy relationship between an older and younger sibling. I think our generation (and Gen X too) have an overall positive view of Gen Z, but you are out of your mind if you think we're going to pass up an opportunity to give them some shit when it's warranted!
  Rainmanslim's comment doesn't strike me as mean-spirited at all. If anything it's the opposite of condescending because it acknowledges that the cringiness of being a teenager knows no generational bounds. Embrace it and enjoy it, and then enjoy it again when you're old enough to laugh at your younger self!
- ~~last time I checked the youngest gen z are already young adults~~
  The youngest gen z are Indeed in the cringe phase, but many are already over that
  
  A quick Google search puts the birth year range for Gen Z between 1997 and 2012, so between ages 9 and 24. That's like peak teenage years. You have some younger than that, some older than that, but the majority are going to be right in the middle. Plus, as much as 20 year olds like to pretend that that aren't cringey teenagers anymore, that behavior doesn't just change on your 20th birthday, it's a process that happens over time. I'd say I still had cringey teenager tendencies until I was at least 22 or 23.
  I'd say what the person above you said is perfectly accurate. Gen Zs are pretty much in peak teenage years right now.
  Edit: so I think the article Google gave me was 2 years old. Still, it would put Gen Zs between ages 11 and 26. I think the point still mostly stands.

Side note: how in the ever loving fuck did the creators of Invader Zim convince the Nickelodeon execs that it was a “kids show” - and not just once, but for two seasons?
- Are you talking about the same Nickelodeon that showed Ren and Stimpy and Rocko's Modern Life?
- It's pretty crazy. Jhonen Vasquez's most notable work previously was literally a comic about a guy who kidnapped people to murder in his basement, so it's not like they didn't know what they were in for.
  Invader Zim has an episode where he is concerned that a school health inspection will out him as an alien so he begins systematically hunting down the other children and harvesting their organs to stuff inside his own body until he's a bloated monstrosity.
  Nickelodeon Execs: "This is fine."
  The funny thing is that it might have been on the air even longer if the show wasn't costing so much money. They were recording voice lines for some characters while the actor was suspended from a sort of crane-mechanism. Weird stuff all around.
- Nah nickelodeon had weird shows at the time, Zim was tamer than a few shows, what boggles my mind is that someone in nickelodeon even agreed to TALK to Vasquez given his portfolio, like, some exec in nickelodeon read a bit of JtHM and went "yeah, this guy got something the kids would like"
- It was the other way around it seems. Nickelodeon wanted that shit
- I've been playing the ratchet and clank pc port and one of the voice actors definitely vocied Zim. It's so distinguishable.
  
  Richard Horvitz is the man! He also did angry beavers, psychonauts, and alpha 5 on the power rangers
  
  Richard Horvitz is indeed in there. Fun fact: he's also the voice of most of the Alpha robots from Power Rangers.
  
  I'm currently playing Jedi Survivor, and there's a character that was voiced by the same guy.

Invader Zim was the shit
- Grr
  
  https://youtu.be/JXZc-SP0Qbc
- The movie they made recently was damn good as well

That is an aesthetic I can get down with, though.
- E girls are just an evolved version of this that's more feminine

I was that age in 2006 and that style was strange to me back then as well
- Same. Even as a metalhead adjacent to them, they were still a strange breed of kids. They were harmless though. I couldn't stand the kids that shit on them for entertainment.
  It's kinda weird and heartwarming to be 30 something and see that style making a comeback. I hope they live as weird a life as we did back then.
- Same, was in high school '04-'08 and maybe 1% of the kids dressed like that. Most of us just wore jeans and t-shirts, and had short haircuts.

Rawr

Give it 5-10 years and this will be fashionable again.
- I mean... This looks exactly like the 90s.
  
  Totally. Kids are pretty much wearing 90s punk and grunge clothing. My 9 year old daughter will probably start raiding my wife's cupboard of old clothes she kept from that era.
- I thought the point of this post is that the kids are wearing it again these days?
  Honestly I see teenagers in my town and they just look the same as teenagers did 20 years ago. I feel like styles are staying the same.

If you'd told me I'd miss 2006 back in 2006 I'd have laughed.
Let the kids have their cringe phase
- I'm so sad I never had a cringe phase :(

As an elder Millennial, I'm left wondering WTF I missed in 2006?!? All the girls in high school were wearing Doc Martins, turtle necks, and low-cut jeans while sporting streaky highlights in their hair, and all of the girls in college were wearing Uggs and puffy coats with faux-fur hoods. There was none of... Whatever this is.
- This is the "scene kid" aesthetic that was popular in the mid aughts. They barely made the millennial cutoff as far as I'm concerned and they're not very representative of our generation as a whole.
- Scene kids was a period after goths and before hipsters. It peaked before Myspace was taken over by Facebook. So like 2007-2009. By the time most of them moved on to college, hipsters became a thing and a lot of them grew into that or conformed in some way.
  
  Aye. Peak highschool for me.
  Started college in '09 and the scene kid was gone.
  I was actually a little disappointed, I understood it
- Hot topic goths evolved into emo lite
- Same. Sigh.
  I think the world's evolving (or devolving) too fast for these broad generational categories to define us anymore.
  
  Eh. Generations are defined by a lot more than what clothes someone wore or what TV shows were being broadcast. Those things move quickly. Generations are usually marked by larger cultural touchstones.
  There are quite a few ways to try and slice the Millennial/Gen Z divide, for instance. An easy-on-paper ones are things like what generation your parents belonged to (Boomers/Gen X, respectively), for instance, though that just kind of pushes the issue back to a different generational divide. Or there's the "do you remember the world before 9/11 happened?" metric. These point to differences in parenting, or differences in the larger socio-political culture within which one had their formative years, and they're far, far wider reaching than fast fashion.
- Sounds like you grew up in the South
  
  I mean, I guess I'm in the southern part of Canada.
- I was one of those weird raver kids with all the neon colors and intustrial-esqe accoutrements. I remember scene kids but that set was younger than me.
- Yeah this wasn't 2006 really and was more like 2009-2010 when the "scene" scene got "big".

I don't care what anyone says I still think this style is cool and I'm 27 years old. Maybe it's an Enby/Agender thing though, I don't know.

The kids these days look like they are basically just bringing the scene kid look back to me, maybe I'm just old
- I really really want to know what my kids generation is called. Post z - born in like 2017. What's that gen?
  
  It's generation Alpha.
  
  Gen Alpha

I have no idea why the millennial vs gen z debate is trending right now but I just love it
- It's just more divisive bullshit purposely turned into bad memes to catch people's attention. As usual, it puts people in groups and then encourages disagreement between them. It keeps people from looking up. It's so stupid.
  Besides, Boxxxy is just an e-girl. Where are the differences
- Millennials are old enough to be crotchety old farts now.
  Source: am millennial; am crotchety old fart.

The only ones I don't get are the horrible high waisted mom jeans and the curly haircuts on dudes. Those pants look terrible unless you have an absolutely flat stomach and even then, yeesh. The haircuts, I have no idea haha
- I'm in Scotland, mullets and bowl cuts are fucking IN right now.....it's mad. Some things should just be dead and buried....

Well, what I do find hard to understand about youth's aesthetics for the last decade or so is that it's so samey. There is just no one really sticking out. All the subcultures (be it punks, metalheads, hip hop, emo, what have you) have all but vanished, giving way to... Well... Nothing really. It's not that "the youths are bad and weird" no. It's that the youth is not weirdenough for my liking.
- OMG so this! I was rocking out to some old NIN in the car and my 10 year old tells me to "turn it down please." He also prefers button shirts. Did we somehow raise a bunch of straightedge squares? Is it now cool to not be cool?
  
  NIN always bored me too, though. Maybe try some Deathcore or Black Metal?

Shut up, I don't have a gir shirt... You're making shit up
- You want it though
  
  Don't worry he has it already. You can tell by the millennial tone.
- I'm wearing mine right now! :P

It was weird back in the 90s in the Midwest when metal heads got called "weirdos" for hanging out in record shops, wearing comfy baggy clothes, and rocking band tees. But then in the early 2000s, sappy, emotional pop rock became the new trend. The same people who used to make fun of metal heads started dressing like that teenager in the picture and hanging out at Hot Topic in the mall. It was ridiculous.

TO BE FAIR.. That was a minority demographic.
- What were some of the majority demos wearing though?
  
  Yeah you're right but like.. I think the majority were low rise sort of bell bottoms and tight shirts. This would be like picking on the weebs and then bringing it back 10+ years later.

We are big enough for reposts now? Great!
- Always has been

To me these looks are cringe bc they look like the adults when I was a kid /teen (80s,90s) used to look.

I could never work up the nerve to talk to these girls, and I don't think I missed out on much.
- Certainly depends on the individual girl, but this style wasn't called "emo" for nothing. You could have some deep talks with emos.
  Obviously, they're not going to open up to everyone, though, and many of them gladly played a removed to sieve out all the people not worth opening up to. Seems like you got sieved out...

Where I live the goth kids, baggy pants, wife beater looks are completely back, just how it was when I lived in California 20 years ago. I live in Central Europe now and it has given me some serious flashbacks. Hell, I feel 18 again. The only thing missing is Avril Lavigne blasting from the radio non-stop.
- I was in Berlin last year and got some serious whiplash at the styles. Goth-y baggy pants, tanks, cutoff shirts... Being Berlin, I thought "wow everywhere else will be like these kids a couple years."
- https://youtube.com/shorts/tJTJK18Fk9g?feature=share
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/shorts/tJTJK18Fk9g?feature=share
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.

Don't know about the western countries. But this is definitely not correct for India
- It's very American lol

IT WAS ME! I WAS THE TURKEY ALL ALONG!

I don't know if Lemmy has the equivalent of r/blunderyears but I'm calling it right now... the next 10 to 15 years are going to be peak embarrassing photo time as zoomers start turning 35 or so and they post their photos when they were late teens or early 20s.
- I am so glad I became an adult before widespread use of social media. Worst we had was Livejournal. Plenty of embarrassing emo teen entries on there, but at least there aren't many pictures.
- You've just described literally everyone whose fashion ever went beyond jeans and basic shirts. Hell, even some of them have embarrassing haircuts.

Alright, fair.

This shit was cringe back then and I still see it as cringe today, especially the ones that never grew out of it.

I wasn't like that, but got myself a scene gal back in the day (not the over the top hair kind tho), we had nothing in common lol

Gotta wonder what he looks like now

Those times were so much better, no Karens or women with blue hair and shaved heads.
- There were plenty of people with blue hair lmao what are you on
  Or are you using blue hair as an alt right dogwhistle?