I Can't Stop Thinking About How Weird These 5 Millennial Trends Were

Yahoo

05-04-2025

Now that most of us are over 30, a lot of us millennials have found that we are a little... uncool. In fact, you might even say that we are – and were – cringe.
Personally, I am a huge proponent of being cringe-but-free. I don't mind that I am mortifying to my younger Gen Z sisters and I know that I will always have a little bit of twee embedded in my DNA.
However, there are some trends I look back on from the 2010′s that were just a bit... weird? Most of which were before things got really weird, so I'm not sure what our excuse is to be honest.
There was a period of time that we just... started planking on random parts of our hometowns and cities, then uploading the photos to social media.
According to the BBC. while the fad took off in 2011, the earliest practitioners were Gary Clarkson and Christian Langdon in 2000, who started lying down in public places in Taunton in order to be photographed. They called it the lying down game.
I honestly don't know why we did it but it was very, very silly.
Speaking of silly...
For a pre-TikTok era, this was a very TikTok vibe. The meme started when YouTube comedian Filthy Frank took 'Harlem Shake' by producer Baauer and played off a dubstep drop 15 seconds into the song.
The 'dance' involved an otherwise calm environment with one singular person dancing breaking out into dance, often with costumes on, once the beat dropped.
Then... It blew up. Everyone was doing it. Offices, diving teams, even the Norwegian Army joined in.
There was something about it that was so addictive. Just watching it happen again and again across the world united us in a strange way. Briefly, of course.
This 'challenge' was exactly what it sounds like: stand still like a mannequin, no matter what you're doing. It started in a US high school before going viral and even making it onto the Late Late Show.
Weird, but a fun reminder of what it used to mean to 'go viral'.
I will be honest, I think about this one more than any other.
If you weren't around in this era or simply, somehow, don't remember, people genuinely did get pedicures done by fish.
The pampering treatment involved dunking feet in tanks filled with Garra rufa fish that can nibble away dead skin. This usually was done in the middle of shopping centres for some reason.
It was huge! People loved it!
They went out of fashion very quickly but according to PETA, the treatment is still legal in the UK despite being illegal in many other countries.
Ick.
This is a trend I will defend with my LIFE because yes we were so cringe but it's actually very cute to look back on. 3D glasses from the cinema with lenses poked out, t-shirts with the word 'GEEK' or even just moustaches on them, not to mention the moustache finger tattoos people got...
Yes, it's cringe and yes, extremely twee but you know what? Bless us.
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