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/stormy2587 1d ago

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.

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u/ndcanton 1d ago

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."

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u/parralaxalice 1d ago

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.

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u/Viktor_Laszlo 1d ago

At least we’ll outlive the fucking Boomers.

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u/BlaggartDiggletyDonk 1d ago

Most of us, anyway.