ICYMI - How “Millennial Cringe” Became “Millennial Optimism”
ICYMI
Slate Podcasts
3.9 • 800 Ratings
🗓️ 13 December 2025
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by Gen Z expert and After School writer Casey Lewis to talk about how Gen Z TikTok users are switching up on Millennials. After years of mocking the generation for being “cringe” online, now people are longing to return to the 2010s and the culture that came with it. But were Millennials really as “optimistic” as the fancams make it seem? And what does Gen Z have, if anything, to be nostalgic about?
This podcast is produced by Vic Whitley-Berry, Daisy Rosario, and Kate Lindsay.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Think about cheese. |
| 0:02.0 | Make your thoughts cheesier. |
| 0:04.2 | Now add 100% chicken breast fillet, |
| 0:06.3 | Chipotle sauce and Amadea cheese melt. |
| 0:08.3 | And it's giving the new cheesy chicken stack at McDonald's. |
| 0:12.0 | Did we mention it's cheesy? |
| 0:13.9 | Cheese. |
| 0:15.8 | Availments at the 4th of Jan, 2026 from 11am. |
| 0:18.1 | Plus and participation may vary. |
| 0:19.2 | Subject's availability. |
| 0:39.6 | Hey, I'm Kate Lindsay, and you're listening to I-C-Y-M-I-M-I, or in case you missed it, Slate's podcast about internet culture. Joining us today, we have Casey Lewis, author of the newsletter |
| 0:45.4 | After School. Casey, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. I have been a follow |
| 0:51.9 | of your newsletter for some time. For those who don't know about after-school, it is a newsletter all about basically teen trends, Gen Z trends in particular. |
| 1:02.0 | Casey curates news, but then she also writes these trends stories. |
| 1:06.0 | And I have to admit, for longer than it is like polite, for some reason, I kept calling your newsletter after school snack. |
| 1:15.6 | I'll take it. |
| 1:20.3 | I don't know where it came from. |
| 1:22.3 | My brain just added that word. |
| 1:24.5 | That's absolutely hilarious. |
| 1:26.0 | I'm not sure what that says about you, Kate. I know. I'm like, |
| 1:29.6 | I think maybe because I'm like, oh, teens. Yeah. And then I'm like, I love an after school snack. |
| 1:35.0 | They're coming up from school and having a snack. And that's like what I'm doing with the newsletter. I don't know. I don't know where it came from. But every time I think of it, now I have to remind myself, there's no snack. |
... |
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