YOU’RE nostalgic for MacGyver and Eurythmics, so when Gen Z reminisces about The Hunger Games and The X Factor, it makes you feel like a wizened elder. Here’s what they’re looking back on.
The Hunger Games
The prequel movie is in cinemas and Gen Z is going feral with excitement. The first film came out in 2012 which means children who originally watched Jennifer Lawrence catapult a wasp’s nest at some blonde kids can now legally buy Smirnoff. Isn’t it great feeling a billion years old?
Phones with buttons
The humble Nokia is a relic Gen Z only hazily recollects. Their dreams are haunted by vague memories of Snake, and fears of charging their parents £1,000,000 by accidentally accessing the internet. If they hear the first four notes of a 00s ringtone, they’re hurtled back to their childhood like the food critic in Ratatouille.
David Tennant in Doctor Who
Your 20-year-old excitedly yells: ‘He’s back for the 60th anniversary!’ Hold on there, young person. David only left a couple of years ago and then Matt Smith took over. No? It’s been 13 years and three Doctors (or five, six or eleven depending on which nerd you ask) and David Tennant’s ‘Allons-y!’ now reminds grown adults of having turkey dinosaurs for tea.
The Star Wars prequels
It only feels like a few parsecs since Hayden Christensen said he didn’t like sand and Obi-Wan Kenobi lightsabered Anakin’s legs off on Mustafar. Well, that was your average Zoomer’s introduction to Star Wars. Their lingering memory of the prequels is probably the Lego PS2 game, and Darth Maul’s Lego limbs comically kicking Kenobi in the nuts.
The Nintendo DS
Like a Boomer reminisces about the rough-haired Jack Russell they loved as a child, a Gen Zer fondly recalls the pixelated shih tzu they owned on Nintendogs and struggled to train with the DS’s built-in microphone. You can only hope Cooking Mama prepared them to make something other than pesto pasta now they’re living alone.
The X Factor
In 1898, George Bernard Shaw said of composer Richard Wagner: ‘Most of us are helplessly under the spell of his greatness.’ In 2023, TikTok user NoCap2001 said of The X Factor contestant Wagner: ‘bro was robbed. wagner always served major slay.’ History truly does repeat itself. Presumably Gen Alpha will have their own Wagner – and JLS and Steve Brookstein – and the grim cycle will continue.
