Every generation gets nostalgic. That’s not a millennial thing; that’s a being alive thing. Your grandpa misses when gas was a quarter. Your Gen Z coworker is somehow nostalgic for TikTok trends from eight months ago, which is a concept of time I refuse to accept as real.

Nostalgia is just what happens when your brain gets tired of the present and starts editing old footage

But millennials aren’t nostalgic just because the past was better. We’re nostalgic because the past was explainable. I could take apart a Nokia, understand every piece of it and put it back together like a confused little raccoon. Now I own a fridge that has wifi and I have never once asked it to. Nobody asked for that. The fridge just showed up one day already connected to a network, like it unionized without telling me.