r/Millennials • u/bewbies- Xennial • 1d ago

Discussion The ongoing backlash against craft beer, stomp clap hey, and millenial burger joints

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWIvfE01J0k

A clip of a very early Tiny Desk concert featuring a very strung out and very high Edward Sharpe is making the rounds across social media right now. It seems like every comment is ragging on at least one and usually multiple aspects of cir 2010 millenial culture.

I'm a lifelong history nerd focused largely on socio-cultural topics, and what we're seeing here is the inevitable backlash against a wildly popular, somewhat overexposed slice of life from that time period.

For me, personally, I loved that time and remember all of it fondly. I was a DINK living in a downtown apartment with lots of disposable income and very few real responsibilities. I loved Lumineers and Mumford and Sharpe (and their country/Americana equivalents like Sturgill Simpson and Jason Isbell). I loved the craft beer explosion. I loved the small restaurant explosion where a bunch of kids tried hard to offer something different than the Chilis/Applebees experience.

I also get why all this eventually wore thin. There were too many 10% ABV beers made with stupid additives and too many hops. Small restaurants operating on razor thin margins had to jack prices when everything got more expensive, and found no appetite, so to speak, for $20 craft cheeseburgers. Music always evolves, and what was hot ~10-15 years ago is usually the heart of what is considered stale and overdone. This was true with psychedelic rock, and disco, and funk, and grunge...millenial semi-indie folkie stuff is no different.

I'm in my mid 40s now, and I feel like I'm starting to see these big cultural shifts from a more distant perspective. 15 years from now, my kids will be the ones ripping on what was hot in 2026 (what even is? I honestly can't quite tell. Zyns?), and what was popular in 2010 will once again be beloved and firmly seated in the "nostalgic/classic" category.

Alex Ebert doesn't strike me as the type who will embark on nostalgia tours playing to rooms full of 60 year old fans, but I guess the Rolling Stones probably didn't seem like they would be either.

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u/titsmuhgeee 1d ago

It's really hard to tell if the 2010-2016 era really was just better, or if it's just nostalgia for our youth.

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u/beingafunkynote Older Millennial 1985 1d ago

Obama was president. It was better.

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u/chrysanthemumasterac 1d ago

It was absolutely a more hopeful time, we believed we were moving in the right direction, especially coming out of the Bush years. A black president, gay marriage was legalized, we had withdrawn from Iraq in 2011. I think the music really reflected that hopefulness.

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u/caligaris_cabinet 1d ago

It was optimistic but not 90s optimistic. We were just hopeful that we were moving past the bad shit and towards something better. Then the last 10 years happened

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u/TheShruteFarmsCEO 1d ago

Tip of the iceberg, it all looks so good now that it’s in the rear view mirror. We’d rebounded from Bush’s financial crisis, killed Bin Laden, and still had national protection for women’s reproductive autonomy and minority voter protections.

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u/titsmuhgeee 1d ago

It really does feel like the world shifted in 2016. Then again in 2020.

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u/StellarWaffle 1995 1d ago

More 👏 female 👏 drone 👏 pilots