7 Elite Millennial Moments Gen Z Will Never Get To Experience

The Zoomer mind would simply explode if the archive of the XoJane "It Happened to Me" column still existed for them to read.

By Chrissy Stockton

Updated 18 hours ago, January 7, 2025

Watching The OC together may have been the last time we were really united as a country.

Controversial opinion: Millennials are the greatest generation.

Not only did Millennials invent culture, our generation’s values are also superior to those who came before and after us. We were a hopeful, inclusive generation . We had fun without caring about being cringe. You could walk around without worrying that you were going to be filmed and put on someone’s TikTok.

Here are a few moments in time where millennials really had it all. It’s a shame Gen Z will never know this life:

1. Clubbing without iPhones

The golden age of the club was 2008-2012.

Technically the iPhone came out in 2007 but it took a few years for most people to get them (or a similar smartphone). And even when they grew in popularity, there was a grace period where people still knew how to be in the moment. Yes we took tons of photos and curated our social media feeds, but we were documenting the fun we were having, not art directing it in real time.

Additionally, clubbing used to be much cheaper as establishments weren’t hyper focused on catering to the wealthy. VIP sections didn’t take up half of the club and almost anyone could get a table. Drinks were $4-7. Recession Pop and Indie Sleaze music (more on this later) was created with club culture in mind and everything was very dance-able.

Imagine clubbing at the height of Britney Spears’ career, when everyone was singing about being broke in 2008, and during the original Kesha (when she was still Ke$ha) era. Zoomers will never know this joy.

2. Watching new episodes of The OC every week

This will be hard for Zoomers to believe, but a season of a television show used to have more than six episodes. The OC premiered with an entire season of 27 episodes that were around 45 minutes in length each. To put this in perspective, there are more episodes in The OC‘s first three seasons than in all eight seasons of Game of Thrones combine. The OC‘s first episode aired on August 5, 2003 and the first season finale wasn’t until May 5, 2004.

We also had to catch each episode weekly when it aired or you were out of luck. And since there were less options for watching TV, everyone tended to watch the same shows. You would crowd into a room with your friends and all watch together (on a tiny TV by today’s standards). The shared viewing experience made it so much more fun when the soapy show inevitably had a big reveal and everyone reacted together.

Also, before TikTok or even Spotify existed, this show was how we discovered cool new music to download from Apple iTunes or play on Pandora.

3. The Britney Spears/Lindsay Lohan/Paris Hilton triumvirate

The late 2000s was the height of celebrity gossip in America. We all watched Britney Spears react to the paparazzi by shaving her head and hitting a photographer’s car with an umbrella. Later, in her memoir Spears explained that during this time she was so emotional because she was grieving her aunt’s death from cancer and in the midst of a custody battle with her ex. She also said that the paparazzi would heckle her about her weight and her parenting.

As much as we also hated the paparazzi at the time, we also consumed everything they captured. This came in the form of magazines like Us Weekly and blogs like Oh No They Didn’t! (which broke down when Anna Nicole Smith passed as it was unable to handle the traffic from fans). Everything Britney, Paris and Lindsay did was news. Every night out, arrest and feud was front page news. Both Lindsay and Britney wrote songs about it.

We went feral for our ladies. There was no melt down that would have ended our devotion to The Trinity. To this day we can still quote Mean Girls and dance to “Slave 4 U”.

4. Everyone was LGBTQ friendly

In the early 2000s simply being gay was still controversial. It was completely socially acceptable (and common) for people to say they “didn’t agree” with the existence of gay people. Growing up in this era caused even straight millennials to have a lot of empathy for the gay community and staunchly defend people’s right to exist and love whoever they love. We didn’t want to be like our parents, we wanted a better, more enlightened world for everyone.

It’s absolutely wild for us to now see (some) Zoomers going backwards and embracing homophobia, “trad wives”, red pill and all kinds of prudish, intolerant and hateful views on dating and gender identity. Couldn’t be us!

5. Indie Sleaze

After the 2008 financial crisis, Millennials’ job prospects were bleak and Indie Sleaze was a way of embracing being young, broke and fun. It was a hopeful subculture that united people through a shared love of dancing, partying and creating memories. For the uninitiated, pretty much any song off of Kesha’s 2010 Animal album is a great explainer on what Indie Sleaze was all about.

We’d wear American Apparel hoodies and torn black tights, ring our eyes with black eyeliner and drink original 4Loko while dancing to MGMT. We dreamed about moving to Brooklyn or Los Angeles, becoming a photographer or DJ and having our crush like our filtered (Valencia) Instagram selfie. It was a simpler time where we were all adoring fans of culture. If you weren’t there when Lana Del Rey released Born to Die, you will simply never understand.

Above all, Indie Sleaze was fun. This is the time the acronym YOLO (you only live once) became popular. When Matthew McConaughey said L-I-V-I-N, he was talking about us.

6. More thoughtful media

Zoomers have Instagram and TikTok. Millennials learned to code on LiveJournal and Neopets. We are not the same.

Millennials participated in social media to a greater degree because putting up a post on Tumblr took more time and thought than recording yourself doing a TikTok dance does. We were the generation where everyone had a take on everything and for better or worse, this meant we valued critical thinking and creativity.

The Zoomer mind would simply explode if the archive of the XoJane “It Happened to Me” column still existed for them to read. The internet collectively reacted to each gonzo entry including “It Happened to Me: There Are No Black People in My Yoga Classes and I’m Suddenly Feeling Uncomfortable with It,””It Happened to Me: My Gynecologist Found a Ball of Cat Hair in My Vagina,” and “It Happened to Me: My Friend Joined ISIS“. Yes, these were all very real personal essays presented sincerely for public consumption.

Also, this was before everyone had to monetize every hobby they had, so people were creating things because they wanted to. The quality of everything was higher. People were earnest. It was a better time.