Fellow Millennials—for the past decade, our generation has held on to our fading youth by our fingertips. Many of us attempted to appear younger by overusing Gen Z slang, parting our asymmetrical hair into trendier middle parts, and peeling off our skinny jeans to slide our chafed, suffocated legs into the wide-legged trousers that have come back into fashion. (Are we fooling anyone or is it giving cheugy?) Our attempts were fruitless, but it didn’t matter so long as a subset of the generation in their Twenties anchored us. However, our collective youth has dwindled with each passing year as Millennials have aged out. And on December 31, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. Alaska Standard Time, the unthinkable will happen: the last of us turns… Thirty.
It feels like just yesterday we were all Twenty-Something, so full of hope and healthy joints. The world was ours, then. Internet content popped off when we developed the listicle. We turned avocado toast into a commodity on par with gold. We left the decimated ruins of countless industries in our wake. As the kids say, Millennials were that girl. Older generations hated us, yet infamy fed our power. Naively, we thought we’d stay young forever, lithe and omnipotent. But then we became trigenarians, then tetragenarians, severed from our Twenties and our youth.
Age is just a number, but it has done a number on us all. We can’t hit the dancefloor like we used to; our decades-old geriatric bodies would fall apart. Getting low now requires a contingency plan and Life Alert. I stopped listening to my heart and started listening to my cardiologist. My neck, my back, my pussy, and my crack have become an inventory of pain. We can barely survive a night out nowadays, much less a cataclysmic generational event.
Once Twenty-Something Millennials have been completely yeeted, Gen Z will replace us, and we will become totally obsolete. When that happens, Millennials will go the way of the generations before us: either we will be harshly and unfairly mocked for our age like those decrepit Boomer dinosaurs, or we will be completely forgotten like the generation before us, whatever they were called.
Some of you refuse to believe our obsolescence is underway. You’re Thirty-Something, but you insist that you’re still flirty-something and thriving. I’m sorry, but you’re delulu. Neither you nor those cusper Zillennial traitors so desperate to distance themselves from us will be spared from becoming 20th-century artifacts.
While some were in denial about our impending expiration, the rest of us tried to resist being replaced by Gen Z. We took a page from the Boomers by antagonizing the younger generation, calling them entitled narcissists who are glued to their phones. In return, Gen Z ratioed us by calling us sensitive little snowflakes, which really hurt our feelings.
If only we had spent our Twenties preserving our youth, lathering ourselves in sunscreen and gorging on glucosamine. Maybe then, we could’ve rebranded Thirties and the new Twenties. Alas, it’s too late for us now. Each day, we lose more Millennials to the Middle Ages (ages Thirty to Forty-Five). We’re going from slaying to slain. With a heavy heart and waning relevance, I must admit we have to take the L and accept defeat.
But obsolescence doesn’t mean we’ll be forgotten. So many things born from 1981 to 1996 have left indelible marks on society. Take, for example, 90s media. What if Boy never met the World? What if Whoopi had never posed as a nun and given Lauryn Hill the confidence to sing? What if Backstreet never came back, alright? They endure not just in our hearts, but in the hearts of some Boomers, Gen Z, and the other one. Nostalgia is love that has survived antiquity. After we’re gone, I trust people will be nostalgic for Millennials, too.
This isn’t our end; it’s our retirement, and the New Year is our send-off. We’ve committed almost our entire lives to this planet, and it’s time for our next chapter. May we relax into irrelevance. May we find peace in being passé. And now may we finally let go of youth. At midnight on December 31, let’s all squeeze back into our skinny jeans, re-part our hair to the side, and finally stop overusing Gen Z slang—I’ve never used it, but those of you who do are highkey cringe, ngl.