Cringe! How Millennials Became Uncool

They are mocked by gen Z for everything from their trainer socks to their mom jeans and selfie technique. A maligned millennial asks: how did we get here?

Her right to a naked ankle is, in the end, the hill Natalie Ormond is willing to die on. Ormond, a millennial, simply cannot – will not – get her head around gen Z’s fondness for a crew sock, pulled up over gym leggings or skimming bare legs, brazenly extending over the ankle towards the lower calf. “I stand by trainer socks and I won’t budge,” says the 43-year-old. “The more invisible the sock, the better.”

A proclivity for socks hidden within low-top trainers is just one reason why millennials – anyone born between 1981-1996 – are now considered achingly uncool by the generation that came next: gen Z, AKA the zoomers, or zillennials. According to countless TikTok videos, other sources of derision for the generation that first popularised social media, millennial pink, and pumpkin-spice lattes are their choice of jeans (skinny and mom jeans are out; baggy hipsters are in); an obsession with avocado on toast (gen Z’s green grub of choice is matcha); their excessive use of the crying laughing face emoji (for a zoomer, the skull emoji indicates humour, representing phrases such as “I’m dying with laughter”); and the “millennial pause”, a brief moment of silence at the start of a millennial’s video or voice note, thought to be because – and this really does make them sound ancient – they like to check the device they’re using is actually recording. Millennials, typically self-deprecating, tend to join in, poking fun at themselves under the hashtags like #millennialsoftiktok.