The Millennial 100
What defines a millennial? We’ve been called “Generation Me” for our presumed narcissism and the “Peter Pan Generation” for our delayed adulthood. We’ve been accused of killing entire industries, like department stores and chain restaurants. But the only thing that may really define a millennial is that we’re indefinable. For people born between 1980 and 1995, our lives have been marked by some of the fastest-moving shifts in the world’s economy, political landscape and culture. We were radicalized by profound tragedies like 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, as well as the never-ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We were stung by the financial crisis in 2008, just as many millennials began to enter the workforce — and we’re still feeling the fallout. And, of course, we’re the last generation to witness life before and after the dawn of the Internet age.
The push into an all-digital world has been key to how we’ve grown, matured and consumed the world around us. From the early days of blogs and instant messaging through the arrival of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, we’ve been sharing our lives. Companies like Napster, iTunes and Spotify, Amazon, Netflix and Hulu have democratized entertainment, giving us more choices than ever before. We’re millions of twentysomethings and thirtysomethings, effectively raised on the idea that everything we want can, should and will be available at the click of a button.
At times, this deluge of culture and content feels splintering. Even the difference between “younger” and “older” millennials can seem vast. Those with stronger memories of a pre-digital era feel more grounded in shared experience with our predecessors in Generation X, sometimes longing for the existence of monoculture, while Nineties babies relate more to the faster-paced, still-forming culture of Generation Y, embracing streaming as both a lifestyle and a preference. That divide even within our own generation, and the way millennials have responded to the rapidly changing world we’ve inherited, means we’ve been blamed for the loss of many experiences. We don’t have the same appetite for post-recession luxuries — like diamonds and mortgages — and are threatening to make even smaller indulgences — like albums and movie theaters — obsolete.
It’s not entirely fair, but that blame is a price to pay for our increasing authority and stronger cultural and political voices. For as much as millennials have supposedly taken away from the world, we’ve also given back tenfold. Optimistic and inclusive, we helped elect America’s first black president, Barack Obama — twice. Provoked by tragedies like Sandy Hook and the killing of Trayvon Martin, we’ve started sociopolitical movements to address systemic racism and gun violence. Spurred by social media, we’ve expanded our cultural language, pushing for an increase in minority voices in everything from political offices to media.
As our power grows, time will prove just how much more we can accomplish. While every generation seems to worry about how to adjust to life’s faster pace, we’ve been thrown into the deep end for as long as we’ve been alive. This list looks at 100 moments, artists, events, movements and more that have helped form the millennial identity. How we’ll continue to shape-shift remains to be seen — but you can be sure we’ll defy expectations. —Brittany Spanos
-
MTV’s ‘Total Request Live’
Image Credit: Getty Images First premiering on September 14th, 1998, Total Request Live marked a new era of MTV, tapping into the zeitgeist and a generation of teens’ spending power like never before. Every Monday through Thursday afternoon, Carson Daly hosted a Top 10 countdown of music videos as determined by the votes of the show’s fans. Coinciding with the return of pop — 1999 was really a melting pot of genres — the show made stars out of Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, NSync, Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Lopez, Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit, Eminem, Ricky Martin, Korn, Blink-182, Avril Lavigne, Good Charlotte, Destiny’s Child and Nelly among many, many others in the decade it ran on TV before ending on November 16th, 2008. (Let’s ignore the ill-fated reboot shall we?) — Stacy Lambe
-
The Spice Girls’ ‘Girl Power’
Image Credit: Polygram/Kobal/Shutterstock When Sporty, Baby, Scary, Ginger and Posh dropped “Wannabe,” in America in January 1997, their message wasn’t exactly revolutionary, but their packaging certainly was. Busting onto the scene in midriff-baring, faux-military garb and a mission to teach “girl power” to the tween set, they were initially scoffed at by feminists — in a Rolling Stone interview, Kim Gordon memorably called them “repulsive” — but they struck a chord with young millennial girls, who made them one of the bestselling groups of all time. —Elisabeth Garber-Paul
-
Jon Stewart Is the Most-Trusted News Source
Image Credit: Carolyn Kaster/AP/Shutterstock While Comedy Central’s Daily Show kicked off with Craig Kilborn behind the desk in 1996, it was Jon Stewart who transformed it into more than a late-night comedy staple: It was the place where many young people went to learn about the world. Four nights a week, we tuned in to The Daily Show With Jon Stewart to process the previous day’s events. He’d banter with authors and actors, and — if we were really lucky — rip into Fox News like a rabid dog. There were moments when he would press a guest to explain why something had fallen short of expectations, or call out folks when he felt that citizens were being purposefully misled, or dig into a story with a depth and sense of outraged humanity that the usual news sources hadn’t been able to tap. Stewart constantly told people that he was not a journalist, he was a comedian — yet there were times when he not only displayed impressive reporting and interviewing chops or got to the heart of a tragedy like 9/11, or Charleston, that you also felt he’d beaten the Fourth Estate at its own game.
-
‘American Idol’ Infiltrates Everything
Image Credit: LUCY NICHOLSON/AP/Shutterstock The thrust of American Idol was always to showcase the best undiscovered American singing talent, but part of the reason you tuned in was to watch someone stumble. In the early episodes, that was a constructed reality, the handpicking of the very best to juxtapose against the very worst of those who showed up hoping for stardom. The first audition ever seen on American Idol is someone who Simon Cowell calls “terrible.” The 15 years of Idol‘s tenure are a microcosm of what America wanted to be and wanted from its culture for a decade and a half. But as the word moved forward, Idol stayed trapped in a past it could never really shake. —Jerry Portwood
-
Napster, LimeWire and the Dominance of Music Piracy
Image Credit: Bruno Vincent/Getty Images If you were born into a world with music-streaming services, it can be hard to fathom the sheer amount of time, stupidity and anxiety previous generations wasted in front of a desktop computer waiting for songs to download. Every. Single. Song. Most of them, we may never have even heard before. Whether you were into Napster, Kazaa, LimeWire, BitTorrent, all of the above, or some more nefarious Dark Web software, pirating music was not only easy in the 2000s, it was addictive. Watching a green bar fill up next to a song was the dopamine hit we craved long before “likes” existed. And unlike a “like,” this was educational. It was about discovery, shaping our identities, feeling less alone, and because it was “free,” the gateways for fandom were flung wide open. The first time we heard our favorite songs, albums and bands was, probably, through some illegal channel. Was it worth the Red Scare-like terror we silently incurred when teenagers were sued by bands like Metallica? In hindsight, maybe not. But at the time, who could’ve predicted Spotify and iPhones were right around the technological corner? And all of our carefully curated download folders and iTunes libraries would be rendered futile overnight. — Sarah Grant
-
2008 Financial Collapse
Image Credit: REX Shutterstock In a similar way to how growing up during the Depression impressed idiosyncratic money habits upon their grandparents — squirreling money away in a mattress because they stopped trusting banks, for instance — millennials’ relationships with money have been shaped by the collapse of the global economy in 2008 in ways that will follow them for the rest of their lives. Those who graduated college during and after the crisis have been shown to have lower-than-average earning potential and self-report a higher rate of savings compared with their Gen X peers. They also developed a healthy distrust (and well-earned resentment) of financial institutions that got bailed out. Unlike their grandparents, millennials have channeled that energy into political action: railing against the One Percent during the Occupy Wall Street movement, filling stadiums to hear Bernie Sanders speak, and backing candidates who swear off corporate contributions, promise student-loan forgiveness and debt-free higher education. — Tessa Stuart
-
‘SATC’ #Goals
Image Credit: HBO/Moviestore/Shutterstock This shoe-porn Manhattan fantasy was ubiquitous, to the point where Jay-Z could rap that Beyoncé wouldn’t talk to him when Sex and the City was on. Nothing could stop fans from feeling the Carrie fever, as Sarah Jessica Parker and her clique — Cynthia Nixon, Kristin Davis, Kim Cattrall — date, shop and quip their way through a borough full of rich straight guys, eventually realizing their only true soulmates are one another. And maybe also Manolo Blahnik. —Daniela Tijerina
-
Black Lives Matter Gives Voice to the Voiceless
Image Credit: Evan Vucci/AP/Shutterstock Years after the death of Eric Garner at the hands of NYPD officers, “I can’t breathe” remains one of the most disturbing phrases in modern American history. After young black men were killed at the hands of police officers whom the criminal justice system failed to hold accountable, protesters took to the streets and the Black Lives Matter movement began to take shape. On the front lines of Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland, in response to the victimization and police cover-ups of Michael Brown, Garner and Freddie Gray’s deaths-by-cops, those once-voiceless masses demanded their social-injustice priorities be heard. The movement also politicized a new generation of artists who are addressing racism, violence and disillusionment in ways that haven’t happened in decades. It helped to shake the commercial cobwebs from hip-hop and R&B, with high-profile musicians issuing anthemic rallying cries (Beyoncé’s fearless “Freedom”) and open-ended conversation-starters (Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ “White Privilege II”). Artists such as D’Angelo and Kendrick Lamar emerged with ready-made, multifaceted statement albums; lesser-known acts such as Houston MC Z-Ro and icons like Prince released songs in response to various instances of police brutality; and even typically apolitical megastars like Ariana Grande and Usher have joined the outspoken chorus. —JP
-
Drake’s YOLO Lifestyle
Image Credit: Arthur Mola/Invision/AP/Shutterstock Drake doesn’t just make millennial music — he invented it. The Canadian artist has spent a decade being the most consistent and key voice of Generation Y, singing and rapping about the digital-era blues in the most neatly packaged sounds. Not many people in the pop realm have been able to keep up with the always-evolving trends in both taste and consumption quite like this streaming-era savant. And let’s not forget, he popularized the acronym YOLO, which stands for “You Only Live Once,” in a single, forever changing the way we speak. “Originally, I had a sign outside that said ‘the YOLO estate,’” Drake told Rolling Stone when he was 27. “But it got stolen three times, and it was getting a bit costly to replace it, so I just changed it to the street number. I love that some kid has that sign in his bedroom.” — Brittany Spanos
-
Unsinkable ‘Titanic’ Love
Image Credit: 20th Century Fox/Paramount/Kobal/Rex Shutterstock When Robert Ballard discovered the RMS Titanic wreckage in 1985, James Cameron decided he wanted to check out the ship himself. “I made Titanic because I wanted to dive to the shipwreck, not because I particularly wanted to make the movie,” he told Playboy. We’re glad he did: The 1997 blockbuster — starring Kate Winslet as Rose and Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson — has become one of the most-beloved and highest-grossing films of all time. Whether it’s couples recreating that iconic boat shot or belting Céline Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” at karaoke, it continues to resonate in the culture. Most recently, it served as the theme to Adele’s 30th-birthday party and was parodied in Charli XCX and Troy Sivan’s “1999” video. Much like Jack, we never let go. —Angie Martoccio
-
Classic Rock Resurgence Thanks to ‘Guitar Hero’
Image Credit: Greg Allen/Shutterstock Even if you really did discover Deep Purple, Cream or Jimi Hendrix from rummaging through your dad’s musty record collection, you can still probably play at least one of those bands’ songs on Guitar Hero. The first Sony Playstation 2 game came out in 2005, two years before the iPhone was invented. To be clear, Guitar Hero has nothing in common with playing the actual guitar. You “play” songs on a plastic guitar-shaped controller by pressing a series of colored buttons on the “fret board” in a particular succession and speed as they pop up on the screen. But oh, how exciting it is when someone nails the Tier 6 song “Texas Flood” by Stevie Ray Vaughan. Or you feel a Keith Richards swagger coursing through your veins after breezing through an “axe-grinder” like Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” in your friend’s basement. Guitar Hero helped launch a generational fascination with classic rock bands that got nerdier with each iteration. The game was a great equalizer and a gateway to thousands of albums, and for many, a way to communicate a mutual music obsession — which, for a game that doesn’t give you any legitimate skills, is pretty impressive. — SG
-
Rihanna DGAF
Image Credit: David X Prutting/BFA/Shutterstock Rihanna’s tossed-off vibe and DGAF openness disguise both her musical gifts and remarkable work ethic, borne out in a cascade of hits. Who knew that the young Barbadian singer behind 2005’s “Pon de Replay” would eventually sell more digital singles (100 million–plus) than any other artist? Or that she trails only Elvis, the Beatles and Madonna in Top 10s? She’s one of pop’s biggest hitmakers, but she remains an enigma, partly because she has the ability to successfully depart from that chart-topping streak to create music that is both weird and vulnerable. Not only has her chart dominance been successful, but the quality and trailblazing nature of her singles have been just as consistent.
-
Spongebob Squarepants and Patrick Are the Best Duo
Image Credit: Nickelodeon He’s lived in a pineapple under the sea for 17 years and counting, during which time he became Nickelodeon’s highest-rated, most licensed (and lucrative) longest-running franchise. But the success of the squeaky-voiced, eternally optimistic sea sponge known as Spongebob Squarepants would be unimaginable without the support of his good-hearted, dim-witted starfish neighbor and best friend, Patrick. Voiced by comedian Tom Kenny — a key player in cartoons from Powerpuff Girls to Adventure Time — and Coach‘s Bill Fagerbakke respectively, their (mostly) kid-friendly comedic chemistry proves you don’t necessarily need brains to be brilliant.
-
Losing Amy Winehouse
Image Credit: Richard Young/Shutterstock What Amy’s state of mind was when she took her last gulps of vodka at home in London in July 2011 is impossible to know. She had said there were things she still wanted to do with her life, but she seemed unable to take action. Despite being a remarkably honest and open person in many respects, she had always been cagey about her inner life. Like Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain, she had become a prisoner of her image. And, as with Janis Joplin, her man was glaringly absent at the end. “The more people see of me, the more they’ll realize that all I’m good for is making music,” Amy Winehouse tells the camera in footage included in Amy, the 2015 documentary directed by Asif Kapadia. She’s a gone-too-soon megastar, a cautionary tale. And it’s clear that she won’t be forgotten anytime soon.
-
Lizzie McGuire Is Hillary Duff
Image Credit: REX Shutterstock In January 2001, Disney premiered Lizzie McGuire right after the launch of the futuristic TV film Zenon: The Zequel. Lizzie was much more relatable than a teenager living in outer space in 2049 — she was an average 13-year-old in the present, dealing with the awkwardness of everyday life alongside her two best friends and an animated version of herself (plus her dad was Revenge of the Nerds star Robert Carradine). Duff would blossom into a full-blown teen idol, making banger albums and starring in films like Cheaper By the Dozen and A Cinderella Story (“Diner Girl!”). But she remains in our hearts as Lizzie, whose unicorn sweater would absolutely kill in 2018. — Angie Martoccio
-
‘SNL’ With Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Jimmy Fallon, Amy Poehler
Image Credit: NBC-TV/Kobal/Shutterstock Every generation gets their Saturday Night Live cast — which they swear is the best! Near the turn of the century, SNL was pretty magical to millennials. Tina Fey was the show’s first female head writer, and Will Ferrell was our star on the rise. It was the time of the cowbell skit, “Suck it, Trebek” and the Welshly Arms love-ahs teaching us what breaking was as Jimmy Fallon, Rachel Dratch and Will Ferrell cracked up in a hot tub. Amy Poehler had just joined the cast, poised to introduce us to classics like “Bronx Beat” and her friendship and comedy #goals with Tina. What a time to be staying up late watching live-broadcast TV. —AM
-
Video-Sharing Sites Create Their Own Stars
Image Credit: Owen Sweeney/Invision/AP/Shutterstock YouTube launched in 2005, after its founders noticed a need for an online video-sharing site when they couldn’t find footage of Janet Jackson at the 2004 Super Bowl, and it’s now a seemingly unstoppable global platform for music videos and movie trailers, as well as stupid human tricks. In 2013, Vine launched as a platform for short-form comedy videos, lasting until its demise in 2016. Both sites allowed anyone to upload and view videos for free, creating a new type of celebrity as everyone from Justin Bieber to the little girl who thought geese were chickens went viral. In particular, Vine produced a new type of in-touch pop star who was predisposed to harness social-media capabilities and grassroots fandom. Dedicated Vine musicians — like Shawn Mendes and Ruth B — who rose to prominence with six-second covers and originals, have the tools to maintain their popularity and the hunger to grow bigger and better. —Linnea Emison
-
Alexis Neiers and the Bling Ring Thieves
Image Credit: Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images Alexis Neiers’ phone call to Vanity Fair writer Nancy Jo Sales — which aired on her short-lived E! series Pretty Wild — was the the cry heard around the world in 2010. “Four-inch little brown Bebe shoes,” Neiers cried into her flip phone as she contested what Sales had reported that she’d paired with her tweed skirt when she arrived at the courthouse for her arraignment. (“$29.99!” added her Juicy Couture-tracksuited mother, Andrea.) Neiers was famously a member of the Bling Ring, a group of money-hungry California teenagers who had been convicted of burglarizing the homes of the rich and famous, targeting everyone from Paris Hilton to Lindsay Lohan. Note: 2010 was a great year for mug-shot photography, with Hilton, Lohan, and Neiers all posing for the camera. And the fact that Sofia Coppola later adapted the story into a feature film starring Emma Watson was an amazing Venn diagram of millennial perfection. —DT
-
Video Games Become an Inescapable Lifestyle
While previous generations can still remember when playing video games cost a quarter and home game consoles had wood panelling, everything changed as PlayStation and Xbox became a ubiquitous accessory in every household. After Rockstar Games launched Grand Theft Auto in 1997, cute animals who rolled and pounced or plumbers who jumped and flew became a quaint pastime. Now you were driving around killing indiscriminately (often prostitutes), and as the open-world aspect of the game evolved, players were given an enormous amount of freedom to do virtually anything, legal or illegal, they wanted. Games became a way to interact with others globally: Halo wasn’t the first multiplayer shooter, but it combined so many functions into an intoxicating mix that it lured a cohort of (mostly) men to spend countless hours in split-screen competition. This is the period when games eclipsed Hollywood as the dominant entertainment — and we continue to see it evolve in ways that few would have imagined possible just a few years ago. —JP
-
The ‘Glitter’ of Mariah Carey
Image Credit: Getty Images One of the many deeply weird things about Mariah is that she’s never had much interest in growing up: She blew up big in the great teen-pop boom of 1990, and she stayed teen pop all the way to 2001, coming across as a sweet, suburban middle-school girl who’s crazy about hip-hop but always makes it home by 10. After albums titled Rainbow and Butterfly, she arrived with Glitter. As Rob Sheffield wrote in his review at the time: “Only Mariah could make a record with Ol’ Dirty Bastard or enjoy a much-publicized, much-denied public canoodle with Q-Tip and still project herself as such an innocent. Even her fashion sense remains that of a 12-year-old playing dress-up in her mom’s closet, which is one of the reasons Mariah has always kept it real with her devoted pubescent-girl fan base. She never tries to pass herself off as true hip-hop — she’s not stupid, G. Instead, she just comes on as a pop singer who doubles as a true hip-hop fan.”
-
Neglecting Tech Pets
Image Credit: Jamie Wiseman/Daily Mail/REX Shutterstock As much as every child may wish for a puppy underneath a Christmas tree or a kitten in a box on birthdays, the financial and emotional responsibility of a furry friend has always been a point of contention between adult and child. Thanks to the magic of Tamagotchi, which is conveniently attached to a key ring, neglect and death can be resolved with a paper clip on the reset button, and it became a morbid game to see how long your friend could go without dying or how long until the pocket-size pal was confiscated by the teacher. Neopets, although limited to the confines of home computer screens, were immortal and opened up a world of possibility to children everywhere as a way to discover friends around the globe through the common link of the bright-eyed mythical creatures. With the recent relaunch of Neopets in 2017 and the resurgent interest in Tamagotchis that was limited to Japan for nearly a decade, people are logging back into their old accounts to feed their starving friends and digging up those dusty keychains from their parents’ basements to relive those strange feelings of attachment to these digital creatures. — Jade Gomez
-
The Olsen Twins Grow Up
Image Credit: Moviestore/REX Shutterstock Full House may have launched the careers of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, but it was really their iconic direct-to-video movies that made every teenage girl aspire to be them. Sometimes these films were centered in America, like when they advertised their single father on an L.A. billboard or found fool’s gold on a dude ranch in the West. Other times they took European excursions, like when they were delegates on a Model United Nations team in London or reluctantly missed their Spring Fling to visit their grandfather (you know, a U.S. ambassador) in France. The Olsen twins have since quit acting but are successful fashion designers. We just wish they’d appear on Fuller House. — Angie Martoccio
-
Pop Punk Is the Teen Soap Opera of Contemporary Rock
Image Credit: Scott Gries/Getty Images Within the cramped confines of hot topics in the late 2000s brewed a new subculture, dominated by young teenage girls. Pop punk blended the angst of the 1990s wave of emo and the appeal of both baby faces and rock stars into something accessible enough for people of all ages to consume outside of punk’s originally underground nature. The 2000s saw Green Day and Blink-182 growing up and pop punk becoming omnipresent, soundtracking teen flicks and filling arenas. Fall Out Boy’s 2003 debut, Take This to Your Grave, ushered in a whole new, genre-blurring scene. With their songs of regret, such as the pop-punk anthem “Thnks fr the Mmrs,” they infected Top 40 radio stations, mall speakers, iPod Nanos and dirty Chuck Taylors, and a whole swath of angsty teens. —Jade Gomez
-
Batman Is a Dark Knight With a Growl
Image Credit: Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock You can’t count on Hollywood for much, but you can bet good money that studio execs will deliver every generation its own superhero franchise reboot — whether they want it or not. While Gen X had Tim Burton’s vision of Michael Keaton as its caped crusader in gothic splendor, director Christopher Nolan took Batman in an entirely new direction with Batman Begins, casting Christian Bale as the dour playboy with his cave of tech toys. Rather than an invincible tycoon, however, Bale gave us a vulnerable hero of flesh and blood. And then with the next installment, The Dark Knight, Nolan switched gears by transforming one of the ultimate comic-book villains into something with a soul. “I don’t want to kill you,” Heath Ledger’s psycho Joker tells Bale’s Batman. “You complete me.” Ledger would earn an Oscar for his portrayal after his premature death, and the movie would be cemented as a millennial classic used as a template to defy entertainment expectations. —JP
-
‘Anchor Man’ and the ‘Frat Pack’
Image Credit: Frank Masi/Dreamworks/Apatow Prod/Kobal/REX Shutterstock After leaving SNL in 2002, Will Ferrell was kind of a big deal. He found success in films like Old School and Elf, but his peak was Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, his funniest and arguably the best of all the “Frat Pack” films. It was hard not to love Ferrell as a 1970s San Diego anchorman who threw raging pool parties at an apartment that smelled of rich mahogany. Featuring a star-studded cast (pre-Office Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, Christina Applegate), nearly all of the movie is quotable and holds up to this day. — Angie Martoccio
-
Wearing Your Heart on Your (Tattoo) Sleeve
Image Credit: AP/REX Shutterstock Why do millennials love tattoos so much? Is it because in the 1980s and 1990s, when most were growing up, they were reserved for bikers and convicts and rock & rollers, disgusting our authority figures? Is it because as we came of age in the early 2000s they were becoming increasingly easier to get, with bans lifted and shops opening at an exponential rate? Was it because of Kat Von D and other tattoo celebrities who turned it into an estimated $3 billion industry? Was it the Internet melding all subcultures together, and young people looking for another way to stand out? Was it one more thing to Instagram? Whatever it was, now more than 40 percent of millennials have one. So much for it being a symbol of the rebel class. — EGP
-
The Dirty Pretty Things of ‘Gossip Girl’
Image Credit: Timothy White/CW Network/Kobal/Rex Shutterstock Gossip Girl — which ran for six seasons between 2007 and 2012 — centered around headband-loving mean girl Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester), bad girl gone good(ish) Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively), and their social circle, a group of wealthy Upper East Side high schoolers and a couple of Brooklyn outcasts. Foreshadowing the rise of social media, the characters’ lives were documented by an anonymous blogger. In 2012, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg named January 26th Gossip Girl Day in honor of the show’s 100th episode and the spike in tourism it brought to NYC. It was one of TV’s most sexily subversive shows — even if the characters were the last people in America living the good life. —Linnea Emison
-
Feeling the Bern
Image Credit: Michael Reynolds/Epa/Shutterstock How did a septuagenarian win the hearts of young voters? Sure there was savvy social media and marketing being run by Bernie Sanders’ campaign staff and volunteers, but the Vermont senator spoke with a passion about core progressive ideas concerning health care and education that pulsed with authenticity. Sure, his presidential run also birthed the idea of the elusive Bernie Bro — “an unrepentant mansplainer, who backs Sanders with a level of devotion matched only by his self-righteousness” as Tim Dickinson explained — but there’s no doubt its inspirational idealism and values showed people that politics ain’t all bad. At least not all the time. — JP
-
From Disney Stars to JoBros
Image Credit: Ken McKay/Shutterstock The brothers Jonas — Nick, 15, Joe, 18, and Kevin, 20 — rocketed to teen-pop stardom in the late 2000s after inking a deal with Disney’s Hollywood Records. In 2008, their record A Little Bit Longer went to Number One on the Billboard 200; and their 2009 follow-up, Lines, Vines and Trying Times, also topped the charts. But Lines, Vines and Trying Times would be the band’s last official studio effort (though they did release two soundtracks for Jonas L.A. and Camp Rock 2), and they announced a hiatus after wrapping up a world tour in 2010 so that each brother could pursue his own musical projects. The band reunited in 2012 for a one-off show at Radio City Music Hall, and the band released two singles (“Pom Poms” and “First Time”) for a potential fifth studio LP, eventually calling it quits in 2013. Since then, Nick and Joe have continued to make headlines, crafting their own paths and music brands.
-
Jim and Pam Are the Ultimate ‘Office’ Love Story
Image Credit: Vivian Zink/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images When The Office began airing, millennials would’ve been too young to know Sam Malone and Diane Chambers from Cheers. But if you say “Jim and Pam,” the recognition is instant. Jim Halpert and Pam Beasly are the ultimate millennial love story. They found love in a hopeless place. And they got through the day by playing pranks on all the other miserable cubicle-dwellers in the office of a paper supplier in Scranton, Pennsylvania. It makes perfect sense that a TV romance between two overeducated, underpaid and painfully bored co-workers would’ve struck a chord between 2005 and 2013 — the golden age of unpaid college internships that straddled the financial crisis. If you were “funemployed,” like many were during this time, you probably got through it watching “The Dundies” or “Booze Cruise” or “Casino Night” — the Jim and Pam early-relationship trifecta — at least once. — SG
-
Protesting With a SlutWalk
Image Credit: Broadimage/Shutterstock Before the Women’s March, there was SlutWalk. A global protest against victim blaming and rape culture, SlutWalk was born in 2011 after a Toronto police officer named Michael Sanguinetti offered a bit of frank advice about staying on safe on the York University campus: “Women should avoid dressing like sluts,” Sanguinetti said. His words struck a nerve in Ontario, where 3,000 seething, scantily-clad demonstrators turned out in protest. That first demonstration sparked dozens more marches across Latin America, Asia, Europe, Africa and Australia. It’s now an annual tradition in many parts of globe, including Los Angeles, where model, actress and ex-stripper Amber Rose has presided over a SlutWalk renaissance of sorts on the West Coast. — TS
-
The Rise and Fall of Lindsay Lohan
Image Credit: Shutterstock From the moment she and her digitally-imposed doppelgänger scammed their way into our hearts in Disney’s 1998 Parent Trap reboot, Lindsay Lohan’s life was a slow-motion car crash unfolding before our eyes — not entirely unlike the regular-speed car crashes in which the teen star would famously be involved. The decade that followed that breakout performance was pure Lindsanity: starring roles in Freaky Friday and Mean Girls, a best-selling album (featuring the raspy, auto-tuned single, “Rumors”), critical acclaim — followed by a spectacular belly flop from grace. Lohan went from hosting SNL and the MTV Movie Awards to running out on a $42,000 bill at the Chateau Marmont, crashing multiple Porsches and undergoing several unsuccessful stints in various rehabilitation centers. Now, she’s trying to make a go of it with the Lohan Beach House — because why not? — TS
-
Harry Potter’s Magic Formula
Image Credit: Warner Bros. From the moment he was left on the doorstep of Privet Drive, Harry Potter — the boy with a lightning-shaped scar — captured the hearts and minds of young readers everywhere (if you didn’t line up at the bookstore for each release or carry a wand in your pocket, shame on you). The magical saga, which turned 20 this year, has become a worldwide phenomenon and even inspired a genre of indie music. Now that it includes a movie franchise, a Broadway play and even an Orlando theme park — where you can sip butterbeer and forget that you’re a Muggle for a while — it’s nearly impossible to imagine a world without J.K. Rowling’s touch. — Angie Martoccio
-
‘As If’ the Vocab of ‘Clueless’ Could Keep Up
Image Credit: Elliott Marks/Paramount/Kobal/REX Shutterstock Released in 1995, Clueless came out just as many of our generation were coming into our own — about to navigate the tribulations of high school. Starring Alicia Silverstone as Cher, Stacey Dash as Dionne and the late Brittany Murphy as Tai, the film would become the first of many teen films to serve as a guide to the highs and lows of teenage life while also providing us with the vocabulary to express our complicated emotions. Based on Jane Austen’s Emma, it’s become a timeless (and always hilarious) classic, even if Cher’s virtual closet was never fully realized. As if! —SL
-
Janet Jackson Super Bowl Wardrobe Malfunction
Image Credit: AWOUT DAVID PHILLIP/AP/Shutterstock Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction” Super Bowl halftime show happened in 2004. But the scandalous event has had a life long beyond the nine-sixteenths of a second during which Janet’s breast was bared after Justin Timberlake tore a piece of fabric off her bustier. Until that point, she had produced 10 Number One hits, but this derailed her career, and nearly 15 years later, we finally discovered that now-disgraced CBS CEO Les Moonves was obsessed with ruining the pop star. The way Timberlake was treated versus the onus placed on Jackson empowered a cohort of fans to reject the entertainment monoliths that controlled music and pop culture. —JP
-
Chris Hansen’s Mission ‘To Catch a Predator’
Image Credit: NBC News To Catch a Predator was trying to protect minors from online sex offenders, but the show was also a perversion of the way the criminal justice system is supposed to work. Chris Hansen hosted the Dateline NBC segments in which creepy sexual predators were lured into a flytrap so that they could be chased down by cops. Did it scare young boys and girls? Sure! Did it catch some scary deviants? Probably. But it also created some of the strangest, most hostile laws against sex offenders that ended up affecting people they were never intended to hurt — and continue to warp our ideas of what is right and wrong. —JP
-
Kim, Kourtney, Khloe and the Rest of the Kardashian-Jenner Clan
Image Credit: NBCUniversal Before Keeping Up With the Kardashians premiered on E! in 2007, Kim Kardashian was largely known as Paris Hilton’s pal and the daughter of OJ Simpson’s lawyer, the late Robert Kardashian. Oh, yeah, and for that sex tape she made with Ray Jay, too. Since then she’s become a social media mogul worth an estimated $350 million. But before the millions of followers, makeup line and Kanye, Kim was just one of the five Kardashian-Jenner sisters — Kourtney, Khloe, Kendall and Kylie — who we watched grow up (in the form of DUIs, marriages, divorces and pregnancies) in the comforts of their Calabasas home under the supervision of an Olympic superstar and a relentless “momager.” Say what you will about them, but they have kept us invested in their family dysfunction for more than 10 years now. —DT
-
Rom-Com Expectations
Image Credit: John Clifford/Paramount/Kobal/REX Shutterstock If Nineties rom-coms gave millennials unrealistic expectations of high school, the early-2000s rom-coms gave them unrealistic expectations of the real world. Films like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, 13 Going on 30 and The Wedding Planner featured a quirky female lead who stumbles into a situation she doesn’t quite know how to get out of. They made you believe that once you were “30, flirty and thriving” you’d be living in Manhattan with a bounty of stylish clothes and a curly-haired nice guy as your suitor. Oh, if only we were all Jennifer Garner. —AP
-
Lady Gaga’s Disco Stick
Image Credit: BDG/REX/Shutterstock Ten years ago, Lady Gaga came on to the scene with her disco stick. She wore a meat dress and bled on stage, and we were all in awe because we never saw a pop star get so raw. She is our Mother Monster, who told us we were beautiful the way we were born — and we really believed it. She might’ve hung up her Alexander McQueen Armadillo heels for now, but she’s still one of the most exciting acts of the millennium. —Alexa Pipia
-
The ‘Twilight’ of the Vampires!
Image Credit: Moviestore/REX Shutterstock Before dragons, and even before zombies, there were vampires. Starting in 2008, they were everywhere. And unlike Dracula, they were hot and bothered. On TV, Anna Paquin played a Bon Temps, Louisiana, blonde beauty who was chased and craved by local vampires, notably the 173-year-old Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) and the even older (and hotter) Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgård) in HBO’s True Blood. The CW had its own teenage version thanks to Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec’s The Vampire Diaries, starring Nina Dobrev and Paul Wesley. Meanwhile, on the big screen, Stephenie Meyer’s YA saga Twilight was adapted into a franchise, starring Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. All the series were marked by their forbidden lust and fandoms. Were you #TeamEdward or #TeamJacob? #TeamBill or #TeamEric? (Let’s be real, we were all #TeamPam. God bless Kristin Bauer van Straten.) —SL
-
There’s No ‘Waiting’ for Jennifer Lopez
Image Credit: CHARBONNEAU/BEI/Shutterstock She’s got the voice of a Bronx angel, the moves of a Fly Girl and, for a point in the late-1990s and early-2000s, it was impossible to escape Jennifer Lopez. She was Jenny From the Block and J.Lo. She gave us Selena, “Let’s Get Loud,” the Versace dress, and one-half of Bennifer. If you weren’t listening to her music or watching her on the big screen, she made sure you were dressed in her clothes or wearing her perfume. More than 20 years later, she makes us want to dance and love and dance…again. —Alexa Pipia
-
The Bluths of ‘Arrested Development’
Image Credit: Courtesy Twentieth Century Fox Television There are so few shows you can quote among strangers and be certain the reference will land. Fortunately, our entire peer group blue ourselves for the Bluths. We got to consume Ron Howard’s AD while it actually aired (Sundays on Fox!), and our instant obsession with the ensemble comedy helped make the world of light treason, candy beans and “No touching!” cult gold, not to mention an endless font of trivia-team names and memes so beat-to-death that a show writer once begged Twitter to stop using the narrator’s “He didn’t” joke. Perhaps most importantly, we will never forget where Michael Cera got his start, as a frozen-banana salesman/child. —Andrea Marks
-
Online Dating Apps Ruin Our Love Lives
Image Credit: Shutterstock / Mr.Whiskey Among millennials’ darker claims to fame is being on the forefront of online dating going mainstream. We saw it transition from creepy to kind of socially acceptable. Soon it wasn’t just acceptable, it was expected, and we were on our laptops making OkCupid profiles. A deluge of smartphone apps brought a momentary peak — so many options to choose from! — before smashing the entire dating scene to smithereens. Turns out, endless swiping and texting makes us care less about each other. Who knew? Everyone still does app dating, but everyone hates it. We may have destroyed faith in love for Gen Z. Oops. —Andrea Marks
-
Growing Up With Blink-182
Image Credit: Nigel Crane/Redferns With a cathartic flaming “FUCK” as their tour backdrop, Blink-182 were the whiney, potty-mouthed voice of middle-school rebellion. Who cares if your dad was chaperoning from the back row? You were alive! Pop punk peaked with Blink’s career, right around the time we were laughing at masturbation jokes, going on first dates and later, going away to college and realizing being 23 indeed does not make you an adult. Their snot-nosed lyrics literally defined “growing up.” Bonus: Being there for the height of Blink gave you O.G. bragging rights that — at least in teen time — you were jumping up and down to power chords way before the new generation of emo groups started getting big. —Andrea Marks
-
Pitbull, Mr. 305
Image Credit: MediaPunch/Shutterstock The Miami rapper is proud of his hometown — naming his record label Mr. 305 after the South Florida area code. “If you don’t know where you’re from, you don’t know where you’re going,” once said Pitbull, whose real name is Armando Christian Perez. “Believe me, I know where I’m from. I love it. I wear it on my chest. Everywhere I go, everybody knows Mr. 305, Mr. Dade County, Miami boy representing.” But ever since he cemented his cred as a global hitmaker, he’s pivoted to a wider audience, later dubbing himself Mr. Worldwide — yet his Cuban swagger and sweltering Caribbean dance beats will forever have made their mark on American pop music. —Suzy Exposito
-
SuicideGirls Bring Body Positivity to Porn
Image Credit: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images SuicideGirls seems so mainstream now that it’s hard to imagine a time, 17 years ago, when scantily-clad, tattooed women were a novelty on the Internet. When Missy Suicide started in Portland, Oregon, in 2001, she was sick of seeing two types of women portrayed as hot — the stick-thin Kate Moss, or the XXX-tra curvy Pam Anderson, she told Racked in 2015. “The girls I knew were some of the most beautiful women in the world,” she said. “They were pierced and tattooed and had interesting stories and interesting bodies.” SuicideGirls was body positivity, of a type, teaching women that they could be as alt as they wanted and still be sexually attractive. As of 2015, nearly half of the site’s 5 million users were women. —Elisabeth Garber-Paul
-
Selfies, Self-Esteem and Narcissism
Image Credit: Swan Gallet/WWD/Shutterstock Taking photos of oneself with a smartphone become widely popular with the invention of the front-facing cellphone camera in 2003. The phenomenon has since become one of the most common types of posts on social media, allowing people to easily share informal images of themselves, gain access to the lives of public figures beyond paparazzi photos, and (in lieu of autographs) document their own interactions with celebrities. Is it harmless navel-gazing or hyper narcissism run amok? Awkward portraits of young people have disappeared and now it seems everyone has duck lips or a perfectly angled upshot (curated from thousands of discarded shots, obvi). Selfies was named the word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries in 2013, and then, in 2015, Kim Kardashian released Selfish, a coffee-table book featuring her selfies dating back to 1984. Even if self-obsession isn’t new, it’s taken on a life of its own. —Linnea Emison
-
Taylor Swift’s Boyfriends
Image Credit: Frank Micelotta/PictureGroup/Shutterstock The moment she released her debut single — 2006’s “Tim McGraw” — Taylor Swift claimed the undisputed throne as the poet laureate of junior-high melodrama. For anyone stumbling into puberty and adolescence in the mid-to-late 2000s, Swift’s early singles (“Fifteen,” “You Belong With Me,” “Teardrops on My Guitar”) served as vital roadmaps to navigating the unbearably intense and inevitably awkward realities of teenage angst. Those songs — usually grounded in some mix of realist country storytelling and wide-eyed pop fantasy — helped convert an entire generation into lifelong fans. —Jonathan Bernstein
-
Jennifer Love Hewitt Is a ‘Hero’
Image Credit: Stephen Danelian/Columbia Trista/Shutterstock For his 2001 Adult Contemporary chart-topper “Hero,” Enrique Iglesias enlisted A-list pop director Joseph Kahn for his famously over-the-top crime story featuring Jennifer Love Hewitt as Iglesias’ love interest and Mickey Rourke as his enemy. The song, released shortly before 9/11, would soon take on a newfound gravitas after its release, but it will be forever remembered as the unrivaled middle-school slow-dance showstopper of its era. Years later, Enrique admitted that that had been his goal all along: “I thought about what would be the song I want to slow dance to with my prom date.” —Jonathan Bernstein
-
Believing in ‘Toy Story’
Image Credit: Moviestore/REX Shutterstock Yes, Toy Story was Pixar’s first feature film. And, yes, it was the first film to be completely computer animated, but that’s not why we love it. We love it because in 1995, seeing Woody and Buzz Lightyear peek an eye open as the bedroom door closed was sheer wish-fulfillment — that our toys really did hear us when we talked to them, and really did have the complex lives and thrilling adventures that we imagined when we played make-believe. And then in 2010, when Toy Story 3 came out, those of us who watched the original in elementary school were now well into college and starting to try on our adult pants. Watching Andy pass Woody down to the next generation was the closure that none of us needed, and we’re still crying about it. —Hannah Murphy