So this is an actual thing that has garnered an insane amount of “notes” on Tumblr. (20,000+!) Tweenz are getting nostalgic for the late 90’s/early 00s! I need to right the wrongs (so many wrongs!) that are going on in this (hilarious) quote. Dear sad emo tweenz of Tumblr: I was a tween/teen during this “magical” time you speak of — and you know what? Even though Blink 182 and Green Day were on the radio, kids still wore belly shirts, cell phones and computers existed (!!!), girls put on a ton of makeup every day and teenagers were still very much interested in sex. (Also, last time I checked, Blink 182 and Green Day are still played on the radio. A lot.)  We also had our own version(s) of Justin Bieber; they were called boy bands and they were pretty damn awful. We also kinda-sorta had our own Rebecca Blacks in these nascent days of the Internet and meme culture — William Hung, the Hamster Dance, the Dancing Baby, etc. We also had to wait 30 minutes for a damn QuickTime video to download over our dial-up connections, so we appreciated stupid Internet junk! No YouTube! Now, young disillusioned youngsters, I know it’s easy to yearn for a time you never lived through — but let’s be real. The period of time from around 1997 - 2004 kinda sucked. Pretty sure that’s the general consensus of everyone who was a cognizant human being during this time. I think the only cool things to come out of this period were Pokemon for Game Boy (awesome) and text messaging. Everything else? Lame. (Especially New Found Glory.) Only in the early 90s, when you were a blip in the mind of your future parents, was being “grungy” cool. The punk kids of my tweenage years were still looked at as “weird” by the kids who liked whatever our equivalent of Justin Bieber was; in fact, I think that comes with the “punk rawk” territory. You’ll always be weird, you’ll always hate everything and everyone associated with “mainstream” culture will be (to you, at least) a fucking moron. Welcome to being 13 years old! Don’t let the door hit you on the way out! You’ll grow out of it. You’ll develop into an equally disillusioned twentysomething (like myself) and look back upon the year 2011 and laugh at all the stupid things you and your peers liked. You’ll realize that things weren’t so bad in the 2010s — I mean, you never had to live through the hell that was an AOL Chatroom in 1996 or Windows 95 or TRL.  So, go hang out at Hot Topic (or whatever your kids do these days) and please, for the love of all things unholy, stop wishing you could have been a kid when there was no such thing as an iPad or wireless Internet.

So this is an actual thing that has garnered an insane amount of “notes” on Tumblr. (20,000+!) Tweenz are getting nostalgic for the late 90’s/early 00s! I need to right the wrongs (so many wrongs!) that are going on in this (hilarious) quote.

Dear sad emo tweenz of Tumblr:

I was a tween/teen during this “magical” time you speak of — and you know what? Even though Blink 182 and Green Day were on the radio, kids still wore belly shirts, cell phones and computers existed (!!!), girls put on a ton of makeup every day and teenagers were still very much interested in sex. (Also, last time I checked, Blink 182 and Green Day are still played on the radio. A lot.) 

We also had our own version(s) of Justin Bieber; they were called boy bands and they were pretty damn awful. We also kinda-sorta had our own Rebecca Blacks in these nascent days of the Internet and meme culture — William Hung, the Hamster Dance, the Dancing Baby, etc. We also had to wait 30 minutes for a damn QuickTime video to download over our dial-up connections, so we appreciated stupid Internet junk! No YouTube!

Now, young disillusioned youngsters, I know it’s easy to yearn for a time you never lived through — but let’s be real. The period of time from around 1997 - 2004 kinda sucked. Pretty sure that’s the general consensus of everyone who was a cognizant human being during this time.

I think the only cool things to come out of this period were Pokemon for Game Boy (awesome) and text messaging. Everything else? Lame. (Especially New Found Glory.)

Only in the early 90s, when you were a blip in the mind of your future parents, was being “grungy” cool. The punk kids of my tweenage years were still looked at as “weird” by the kids who liked whatever our equivalent of Justin Bieber was; in fact, I think that comes with the “punk rawk” territory. You’ll always be weird, you’ll always hate everything and everyone associated with “mainstream” culture will be (to you, at least) a fucking moron. Welcome to being 13 years old! Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!

You’ll grow out of it. You’ll develop into an equally disillusioned twentysomething (like myself) and look back upon the year 2011 and laugh at all the stupid things you and your peers liked. You’ll realize that things weren’t so bad in the 2010s — I mean, you never had to live through the hell that was an AOL Chatroom in 1996 or Windows 95 or TRL. 

So, go hang out at Hot Topic (or whatever your kids do these days) and please, for the love of all things unholy, stop wishing you could have been a kid when there was no such thing as an iPad or wireless Internet.