Every generation thinks their childhood was the golden era. Boomers miss a time when a house cost the same as a sandwich. Gen Z is somehow already nostalgic for 2019. That’s just how memory works, it’s a filter, not a fact checker, and that’s fine

But here’s where I and every millennial I know draw a line in the sand:  We grew up during the last stretch of human history that made sense. The dial-up internet was slow, but you understood why. You waited for a page to load the way you’d wait for a bus, annoying, but logical. 

We’re the last generation that got a real before-and-after photo: Before, landlines, VHS tapes, and a card game on a beige computer that ate your entire Tuesday. After, everyone in your pocket, all the time, forever, no off switch. We got to watch the whole transformation happen in real time, like a nature documentary where the gazelle slowly turns into a smartphone.

And it’s not just the tech. It’s that every few years, there is a new apocalypse to casually absorb into your personality. We were promised a linear timeline where everything is pretty much predictable by parents who still thought you get a Rolex when you retire from the one workplace you had for 30-something years, and what we got instead was 2001, 2008, 2019, and pretty much also every year in between, and its own reality-altering «once-in-a-lifetime» crisis.

Each one arrived, restructured our entire understanding of normal, and then the news cycle moved on before we even processed it. We didn’t get closure. We got a sequel.

So when a millennial says «I miss the 90s» we’re not asking for Blockbuster back specifically. We’re asking for a version of reality where things had rules. Where a pizza could just be a pizza and not a supply chain crisis. Where the biggest problem of your day was your AIM or ICQ or  MSN Messenger away message not being clever enough.