Most millennials are nostalgic by nature. They say things like, “Do you remember tamagotchis?” or “Do you remember when Full House was popular?” Some of them remember the 90s if they were born on the earlier side of the decade, and they long for the same kind of pop culture toys and television we had during that age. But with the remakes of so many of our favorite TV shows and movies, millennials are slowly realizing that maybe the remakes are more of a curse than a blessing. The first Zoolander movie was a big staple of my own childhood but the remake got terrible reviews and fell utterly flat.
When millennials see things like that, they often say the phrase, “That ruined my childhood.” I’ve heard it hundreds of times and even used it myself several times. The phrase refers to the fact that the memory of the thing they loved and revered as a kid has now been tarnished by the bad remake. But this seemingly harmless phrase can actually cause more damage than it may appear to.
For one, this phrase makes the speaker seem incredibly entitled. Some children's’ childhoods were actually ruined by tragedies or death, and to say that a bad movie remake “ruined our childhood” is rude and simply untrue. There’s a College Humor video that makes fun of millennials who use that phrase and it’s pretty funny; you can find it here:
Sometimes we can put our childhood memories on a pedestal that make us feel nostalgic and when this memory’s validity is questioned, we can feel personally attacked. Our memories can be more precious in our minds than they were in real life, so it can feel like a huge let-down when the pedestal is knocked over, but instead of complaining that our lives were ruined, we can choose to simply focus on the good parts of the memory and remember the good qualities.
Young people often have the tendency to reject change and cling to their memories of a “better time” when they were younger and life was easier and when they had less responsibility and no bills to pay. Instead of positing that change has ruined our childhoods, we can instead try to both keep the past alive and accept the inevitable change in our lives. While we shouldn’t completely accept and submit to new sudden change or completely forget the past, I believe that we can all find a healthy medium that will make us all happy.
