Following a new, hot-of-the-press trend can be extremely enticing. Our need to fit in and belong is perhaps the main reason why. And let’s face it, making a fun little video to a viral song or updating your wardrobe with the latest fashion craze can give us the dash of serotonin we desperately need to get through the day.
But fads come and go, leaving us cringing at our old photos sporting frosted tips or grinning in a room decked out with Beanie Babies. Recently, millennials have been posting about the weird trends they’ve been a part of that don’t look as ‘dope’ today as they did back then.
Fancy a nostalgic throwback? Then all you have to do is scroll down!
#1
I know the young kids have hated on millennials for their skinny jeans but mf you should have SEEN how baggy the pants were in the late 90s/early 2000s.
#2
Jeans so long the bottoms were just tatters. Was a weird matter of pride how destroyed your pants were.
ButImNot_Bitter_ replied:
And god forbid it was slightly damp outside. You were soaked up to your knees.
#3
I remember when bib overalls were fashionable but you were lame if you actually fastened both straps. I remember my grandma calling it hillbilly air conditioning.
What often drives us to adopt popular behaviors is the desire to fit in and be accepted by our peers. Humans are social creatures, and the need for approval is deeply ingrained in our nature. Following trends and keeping up with them fosters a sense of community among people who have similar interests and preferences and can provide a sense of comfort.
There’s also the fear of missing out (FOMO). In a fast-paced and advanced society, individuals may feel pressured to jump on the latest fad to avoid being left out or disconnected from current events. Social media magnifies this by constantly pushing new trends that people would want to imitate and experience.
#4
Whale tail: where your thong was visible above the waistband of your low-rise jeans.
#5
I have a tribal tramp stamp and waxed my eyebrows so thin they’ve never been the same. Good times.
#6
Frosted boy band tips. I’m not proud.
However, this comes at a cost. And no, we’re not talking about you cringing at your photos sporting chunky highlights, but rather about the negative consequences it has on society and the environment.
With so many trends coming and going, the number of times an item of clothing is worn has gone down by around 36% in the last 15 years. It was found that the average American consumer throws out 81.5 lbs. of clothes each year, of which 66% end up in landfills, taking decades to decompose. Such wastefulness is not only a big problem for the environment but also causes rising amounts of textile waste.
#7
Two polos…with both collars popped. I’m ashamed. 🤦🏽♂️.
#8
JNCO jeans. My largest pair had a 69 inch wide leg. I won an award for having the largest pant legs ever.
#9
Those shiny button down shirts in bright colors like lime green that everyone wore for a while. Frosted tips. Those bowling shirts with flames on them. There was a time when I was for all intents and purposes, Guy Fieri.
The need to be “in vogue” can additionally be harmful to our emotional state, leaving us dissatisfied every time we struggle to keep up with the latest fad. People may start feeling insecure when the fashion craze changes and we no longer get validation from imitating others.
It also limits personal growth and independent critical thinking, as people miss opportunities to improve and uncover their unique abilities when they concentrate on copying others.
#10
TYpiNg lyke DiS. What was I thinking? Thank goodness there’s no records of my communications from high school.
#11
Lace-up low-rise pants. There is a picture of 16-year-old me wearing jeans with an orange lace-up fly that I modified myself, and it is terrible. I thought I was so cute ugh.
#12
Those plastic choker necklaces and chunky highlights.
However, it’s possible to find a healthy balance by using caution when following trends. This can be done by focusing on an individual’s unique style, interests, values, and goals and adopting popular behaviors that really fit and resonate with their personal view.
#13
Facebook statuses being song lyrics about your mood. Basically we went from moody away messages, moody MySpace post, to moody Facebook post.
#14
Jeans under dresses 😩.
#15
Posting albums with hundreds of photos on Facebook. Here’s every millisecond of the past weekend everyone! Enjoy!
#16
For me, it’s *I can has cheeseburger* way of talking.
#17
Tribal tattoo.
#18
Weird pointless asymmetry being the only cool way to wear anything. Wearing your backpack on one shoulder only instead of both because that’s for nerds (my poor back!). Wearing your belt with the buckle waaay off to the side. Side bangs. Side ponytails. Baseball cap backwards and off-center.
#19
Gaucho pants and those wide circle belts 😭.
#20
The long sleeve shirt under the short sleeve shirt look 😂.
#21
Clear, neon colored furniture. I either ordered mine from the Delia’s catalog, or bought it at Spencer’s, in the mall. I’d buy a chair, blow it up, it would last 2 weeks, and I’d be out there buying another one.
The “Big Blowup Chair” industry had me by the throat.
Lingerie as a shirt. TY Paris Hilton
Mini denim skirt, leggings, and ballet flats.
#22
Puka shell necklaces or spiky hair probably.
#23
Sweat bands on the wrist, the chain wallet, and safety pins everywhere.
#24
Getting my belly button pierced 🤦♀️ my mom was right that the hole never goes away.
#25
Sun-in.
WillingnessOk1797:
My gateway drug to being blonde. But also made me think my untoned, box bleached hair later in college looked good bc i was used to the orange from sun in.
After-Leopard:
I can smell this comment.
#26
I planked at the summit of Mt kilimanjaro in 2011 when it was cool. Unfortunately its the only photo of me at the summit.
#27
Skater aesthetic despite not being able to skateboard whatsoever 😂 I was obsessed with Blink-182 and pop punk and wore mostly brands like Hurley, Vans, Quicksilver and wanted my mom to buy my clothes from Pac Sun and Hot Topic. The “t-shirt over a long-sleeve shirt,” puka shell necklaces, and studded and seatbelt belts were frequent parts of my wardrobe. What I really wanted was a “skater” boyfriend. I lived in fear of being called a “poser.”.
#28
The body glitter fad.
#29
The trucker hats that Ashton Kutcher made famous.
#30
All the band buttons on my corduroy vans bag. I recently found it 20 years later and it’s such an artifact.
#31
Backwards pants for Kriss Kross.
#32
Tamagotchi. I didn’t even have the real thing. I had some happy meal knock off.
Still wasted time on that instead of my gameboy.
#33
LiveJournal. I found my old one once which I thought had been lost to time and had the worst cringe I’ve ever experienced.
#34
Those braided rope bracelets that shrunk around your wrist and that you didn’t take off for a few months until it got nasty enough and then you cut it off?
Yeah, I loved those 😆.
#35
I’d roll my socks down into my shoes to create ankle socks because my lame parents wouldn’t buy me ankle socks.
#36
That unspeakable moment in history where every white person was suddenly emo.
#37
I wore the livestrong bracelet but I (hipster voice) wore it before most people because my family are big cycling enthusiasts and we’ve always watched the Tour. So we were already very familiar with Lance Armstrong and supporting him(remember this was before s**t came out) so I was like the first person I knew to have a livestrong bracelet and I wore it for many, many years. Lowkey I wish I still had it for nostalgia sake.
Probably the dumbest fad I engages in was taking edgy MySpace photos lmao. I would go to like, some abandoned construction site or an old building or something “grungy” looking and stand around taking pics at that sky-high MySpace angle lmaooo. The angle where you’re bent over so we see your face huge and then lil legs dangling out below… good times.
#38
Any diet. Not worth it and definitely not worth my mental health.
#39
Wearing a tie with t-shirts a la avril lavigne 🙃 also popping the collar on my polo shirts (we had to wear them for our school uniform, it was my attempt at being ~fashionable with it).
#40
I bought a shake weight. Lol.
#41
Baby doll dresses. I loved them!
#42
At the end of grade 9 I was SUPER HARD into the 60s/70s revival stuff going around. We all made our jeans into bell bottoms by sewing in side panels, we watched Brady Bunch and The Monkees, the Beatles, the Doors, etc. I think the first songs I ever downloaded from The Internet were Joni Mitchell songs.
#43
Mustaches on everything.
#44
Posting dumb s**t like “rawr I’m a dinosaur xD” or “lol I’m so random… cheese,” making and wearing/using duct tape accessories like wallets, purses, bracelets, earrings, etc, those stupid hair feathers, but luckily mine were just clip ins and not the ones that were semi-permanently attached to your hair.
#45
Pogs. The stupidest collectible/game ever invented
“Hey buy these cardboard disks, stack them up and then smash them with a metal disc and see how many flip over!”
“Also they are now worthless!”.
#46
Fake leather pants. Bonus points if yours were bright red.
Also I never wore it myself but those pants with the weird straps between the legs that looked like bondage gear. I was soo jealous I couldn’t wear that in middle school.
#47
Remember when everyone said “epic fail” for everything.
#48
I’m an elder millennial (2/82) and I used to wear purple jeans, a tweety bird shirt and black Reebok’s 😭 that was in maybe 94? By the year 2000, I had graduated and I don’t think my wardrobe was too bad in my early 20s.
#49
I was trying to be punk/goth, and bought a chain dog leash and black nylon collar to wear.
I was poor so i couldnt get a real collar and chain.
#50
Remember when everybody was wearing those thugged out roger rabbit shirts. They’d have Warner brothers characters holding money with gangster quotes….. whoever thought they would be able to make cartoons thuggish.
#51
Planking and Harlem Shake. Does that count? My friends and I have photos of planking at random places but I had fun doing the Harlem Shake.
Also, how did planking become a thing? I’m still not sure why I participated in it.
#52
Wearing superlow jeans with no underwear cuz honestly there wasn’t room for them.
#53
Popping out the lenses on 3D glasses from the movie theater as nerd glasses.
#54
Bleached my hair a couple times in middle school for the Eminem look….
#55
I don’t know if this happened everywhere, but around the early teen years (for me, a younger millennial) my area had a big wave of teen nightclubs. Basically adult night clubs would open just to teens (12-17) on usually a Friday night once or twice a month. There’s were enough of them you could go to one just about every Friday night. The issue was that since the majority of the demographic didn’t have IDs yet, they just didn’t ID anyone, so there were plenty of teenagers, but also a lot of early 20s folks who happened to look a bit younger, and other then the person letting people in there was literally no adult supervision, looking back it was super unsafe.
#56
Torn designer jeans in high school. I guess people still like those, but I think they’re kind of ridiculous now. Also, guess and express tshirts with all the patterns and shiny prints on them + gel in my hair.
Another fad I got caught up in later was the barbell piercing.
#57
I did the ice bucket challenge. I was broke at the time, so I didn’t actually donate though. I just did it because everyone else was doing it.
#58
Brightly colored skinny jeans. I’m sure I looked like a clown.
#59
Warheads. I don’t know anyone who actually liked the taste of them.
#60
Did anyone else’s school go through a phase where they snorted the sugar from pixie sticks? 🤦🏻♀️.
#61
Getting a Charlotte Hornets starter jacket in fourth grade because I really liked the colors and a couple of 6th grade girls I thought were really cool also had them
we were all from Cleveland.
#62
Belt over shirt over skirt over jeans. Very Lizzie McGuire.
#63
I wore a bandana under my flat-brim ball cap for a bit…… I’m white and from northern Canada.
#64
In my high school there was a foxtail keychain fad going around. I ended up clipping 3 different colored tails to my belt loops. People liked mine because they were colors that nobody had. My girlfriend at the time was the one who made and sold them.
#65
Yo yos.
#66
Got a tattoo of an Asian symbol. Luckily it means what I thought I was getting so I’ve been told by two unrelated Asians and in a spot where it’s easily hidden.
#67
Toe shoes…………. I still walk around barefoot a lot in places where it’s unexpected, but looking back I feel like the shoes got me even more weird glares than just properly having my dogs out in weird places.
#68
I was a console fanboy for a few years. I still love Nintendo, and I think a lot of my fandom was warranted because the gamecube has some of the sickest games of all time and they were criminally underrated at the time. However, it was like identity politics for me, and I took it too far. I was unironically going to get a nintendo tattoo when I turned 18. I’m glad I snapped out of it. S**t, I totally need a nintendo tattoo though.
#69
My sister and I physically fought over safety pins. To pin our pants. One morning, I couldn’t find ANY. Then she comes out of her room with all the pins in the house on her pants from ankles to knees. Ffs. You only needed two per leg, max. I almost pushed her down the stairs.
#70
Drawing X’s on the top of hands with a sharpie to show off my straight edge affiliation. Jesus Christ it hurts just to type it.
#71
The Game.
#72
My hip hop phase😅everything i wore from high school to college. Yes the xxl t-shirts op mentioned is part of it. Too much “rap city” and “106 & park” in my formative years lol.
#73
My mom really got into McDonald’s mini TY Beanie Babies. I helped with her collection.
I don’t really remember any fads I was really into. I didn’t have money, I was depressed, and I didn’t fit into the popular groups.
#74
Bowl cuts.
#75
Earring in one ear, can’t believe i talked my mom into it 7th grade.
#76
Cut-off jeans otherwise known as “jorts”.
#77
Kony 2012 😶🌫️😶🌫️😶🌫️.
#78
Ed Hardy hat 😭. Biggest peer pressure buy of my life.
#79
Rolling up one pant leg for BMX biking. Mostly done while actively biking, but one might keep it rolled up longer than necessary as a middle/high schooler that wanted to look cool. Not sure if it’s something that was very widespread, but definitely was a thing in my school district.
I’ve always been mostly anti-fad. Not entirely sure why, but this has been consistent for much of my life. Was always a bit of a contrarian, but I don’t think I’ve ever really been a d**k about it. My wife always talks s**t (jokingly) about it when I do it nowadays, like when I was losing my mind during the Stanley cup phase recently. Fads always felt weird and circle jerky to me, even as a kid. Makes me think of those chimps that started putting grass in their ears. Couldn’t really afford to buy new s**t often until I was probably mid 20s, so that likely played a big part.
Definitely missed out on some things I’d have otherwise enjoyed, but I don’t mind. I like my interests/style/etc to be slightly niche.
#80
RWAR…. enough said lol.
#81
Italian charm bracelets.
https://preview.redd.it/bdsev4nqlgyc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4574e07583430c35b4bffbd36157ba8e9945224c.
#82
Lee Pipes. I can’t believe my parents let me do that.
#83
I was really into bad indie rock in the early 2000s. If Pitchfork Media said it was amazing then I pretended it was as well. In hindsight, most of that stuff is completely unlistenable.
I also had frosted tips in the late 90s.
#84
That milk challenge where you chugged till you puked.
#85
Men’s skinny jeans 2006-2017. Now if I see any guy that is 30+ wearing them I question their life choices.
#86
Self cut side bangs 🤮.