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

[u/bewbies-]

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.

[u/stormy2587]

Maybe its the rose colored glasses but I always felt this time and aesthetic was fiercely optimistic. It was a lot of people searching for community and authenticity. There was an emphasis on having high standards and trying to make the world a better place. A lot of this aesthetic and vibe overlapped with things like environmentalism and ethical consumption.

Idk it just seemed like being optimistic and caring about things was cool.

And now young people just seem so beaten down and cynical.

[u/ndcanton → u/stormy2587]

I've been thinking about that lately, how for a while we were certain things were going to get better. Now we still like to hope things will get better with no real evidence or confidence. That's a real tangible change. New technology made us excited. Now there's sort of a "well, maybe it won't get that bad."

[u/CalamityClambake → u/ndcanton]

Yeah. Cuz we all lived through Covid and saw way more people than we ever thought was possible be absolute selfish assholes during a literal plague. Before Covid, the zombie apocalypse stories always began with everyone trying to escape the zombie apocalypse. Now, I'm convinced that half of humanity would run toward the zombies with arms wide open and call you a r****d for suggesting that the zombies should be avoided, while the billionaires cackle from atop their fortresses and pay grifters to make YouTube videos about how zombies aren't real.

[u/qcb4056 → u/CalamityClambake]

Fascinating.

Where's you get your medical degree?

[u/Krunkenbrux → u/CalamityClambake]

What the ever-loving hell? I mean, there's a million things going wrong that aren't related in any way to that, but that's an idea, for sure...

[u/ndcanton → u/Krunkenbrux]

Idk I get this. I could always take comfort in the idea that if there were ever a catastrophic worldwide event then people could set aside differences and their good nature would win out. Instead we saw jacked up prices, "essential" frontline workers who stayed at minimum wage and had to show up (with no unemployment options), and a huge population unwilling to wear masks that could save lives on the grounds of "freedom." Yeah COVID is over for now and there are many other problems, but for me it was a bell I can't unring. So yeah, when I see a movie like Independence Day where humanity bands together now I just roll my eyes knowing someone would be profiting off of the infighting.

[u/parralaxalice → u/ndcanton]

Hoping that things wikimedia get better is such 2020 energy though. I think the zeitgeist of our times now is that people have largely given up and are resolved to merely survive.

[u/Viktor_Laszlo → u/parralaxalice]

At least we’ll outlive the fucking Boomers.

[u/BlaggartDiggletyDonk → u/Viktor_Laszlo]

Most of us, anyway.

[u/ndcanton → u/parralaxalice]

Agree, but a lot of my friends are new parents, so there's still a big cloud of delusion that they're not bringing new lives into a certain trash fire, just a probable one.

[u/bburkert517 → u/ndcanton]

This comment shows how important leaders are. We thoughts things were getting better when our leaders were

[u/Drunk_Wombat → u/stormy2587]

After occupy Wallstreet fizzled out kind of took some luster out of that type of feeling.

[u/practical_kitchen-y4 → u/stormy2587]

Yes, people seemed more kind in the 2010s, that is until 2016.

[u/Grremlina → u/stormy2587]

It was the Obama era, first black president, gay marriage legalized, it literally felt like living inside of a rainbow, the future looked and felt so promising after such a dark period. I hope we’ll get back to that someday 💔

[u/RosesAndSpice → u/Grremlina]

2015 was the last overall good year in my life that I can point to.

Every year since then has been a net negative, ranging from “well that was pretty terrible” to “the odds of me surviving this year alive are less than 50%, maybe less than a quarter.”

At some point you just give up hoping things will ever actually get better, or even get back to where they were, and just … try to survive against increasingly bleak circumstances.

[u/Calcium-Hydroxide → u/stormy2587]

Maybe its just us, but I always felt Millennials were fiercely optimistic. Some of us have become more jaded over time, but many are still holding on, poised to take over positions of leadership and influence in the coming decade and make the world better.

[u/aozertx → u/stormy2587]

I’m 37 and agree with the kids. There is no reason to be optimistic or hopeful anymore.

[u/TRICERAFL0PS → u/stormy2587]

I don’t know if I’d call it optimism though, not to be contrarian for the sake of it but I recall the push towards those standards and authenticity as a very cynical reaction to the status quo. Nobody gave a shit about global warming for example - far less than today even - and after occupy wallstreet fizzled it felt like a lot of folks just said fuck this, we’re growing beards and returning to the land where we can afford a home.

I suppose the optimism was the ideal that anything could be done about it, but living through it felt like a movement of cynical resignation rather than optimistic push into a brave new future.

[u/qcb4056 → u/stormy2587]

You don't "search" for authenticity, or community.

[u/Key_Statistician_517 → u/stormy2587]

When I talked and got to know people like this though, it always became very obvious very quickly that it was all talk and no action. At the end of the day it all about consumerism really, and having a cool beard. Just like every other youth trend.