If there is one thing I have noticed about Millennials, it’s that we can be very easily united. For some reason we have very strong attachments to the specific media we grew up with, whether it be a television show, a video game, or a popular toy that came out. We are a generation that thrives on nostalgia. We often define ourselves by what our interests were as children. I could probably drop quite a few names and flood the reader with nostalgia, like Hey Arnold, Rugrats, All That, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Doug. All these shows belong to people who share a lot of pride in the things they watched as kids.
I was a Nintendo kid growing up. I played Mario on the NES and Nintendo 64, I also played Banjo Kazooie, and 007 James Bond Golden Eye. If you look up reviews of the last two games I mentioned you will find people who are extremely passionate about these games, because we hold a place for these games in our heart. For some people (not me) Diddy Kong Racing is like one of the best games because they grew up on it.
I could walk up to almost anyone around my age and make a Spongebob reference and they would know exactly what I’m talking about. Then we would likely share a chuckle over events that took place in that episode. Like the Hashslinging Slasher, or when Spongebob needed water in Sandy’s Dome. In fact I personally believe Spongebob to likely be the most quoted tv show for the past ten years.
Another major and appropriate example of this is Pokémon. Pokémon was originally a card game in the 1990’s but it became a cartoon in the year 2000. This show was so popular almost every one of my friends watched it. My brother had playing cards. I used to sketch them in a tracing book I had. Of course there were other kids I knew who preferred Digimon over Pokémon (similar concept, different franchise). Today you can see the power of nostalgia through a more recent development, Pokémon Go.
In case you didn’t know this is a downloadable game you would play on your phone that places Pokémon in our world by having them digitally spawn and despawn in different locations all around the world. The same Pokémon appears for all players (most of the time) and the only way to get them is to go out in the world and look for them.
Through the power of nostalgia, this game has become the most popular app in the history of the world. I wanted to find a statistic that accurately summed up the amount of people who’ve downloaded the game, but from what I can find, I can only say that 10s of millions of people are playing this game around the world. Even I play Pokémon Go and I have had the opportunity to be friendly with complete strangers whom I would not talk to normally. The game is bringing people together.
The fact of the matter is that for us Millennials, nostalgia unites us. We find out who we can trust and connect with better based on our interests as kids. In fact that’s even how we made friends when we were children. I remember seeing a group of kids drawing Dragonball Z characters in the 4th grade and becoming friends with them because I love Dragonball Z. Now we make friends with people playing Pokémon Go because we like Pokémon. I suppose us Millennials will never grow up.
