NEW YORK — Trans millennial Natalie Martinez realized this morning that the overlapping timing of their second puberty with pop culture’s 20-year nostalgia cycle has made it nearly indistinguishable from the first one.
“I thought I felt old the first go-round, watching a bunch of poseurs appropriating the ’80s gamer culture the jocks used to beat us the fuck up over,” said 33-year-old Martinez. “Now I’m watching these damn kids, and — God, I hate myself for saying that — waxing nostalgic over stuff that wasn’t even that good the first time around. I mean, I never stopped wearing flannel, Docs, or chokers… but who the fuck asked for JNCOs, Tamagotchis, and space buns to make a comeback? I wonder if this is what our parents felt like walking through a Hot Topic back in 1997.”
Martinez and countless others are taking this pop cultural revival as a welcome chance to recapture their lost youth.
“It was pretty awesome to see ‘Invader Zim,’ ‘Hey Arnold!’ and ‘Samurai Jack’ get the feature-length treatment, and I’m loving this recent trend of ’90s and ’00s bands touring on old records,” Martinez continued. “I spent most of my first puberty sulking in my room and listening to alternative radio while staring at a ceiling fan — there were so many tours I wish I could’ve seen back in the day. Now I might finally get my chance to relive the childhood I never had.”
Indeed, some noticed that American politics seem to be on the same 20-year cycle as well.
“School shootings are at an all-time high, we’ve impeached another President, and we knocked out that Soleimani guy in Iran,” said Finn Hayden, 37. “I just can’t wait for it to be 2003 again, when a bunch of hawkish conservatives will call me a Communist, a terrorist, and un-American because I don’t support or want to die in an aggressive campaign of American military intervention in the Middle East. It’s like high school all over again… only this time, my acne is the adult kind.”
At press time, it’s rumored that Toby Keith will be pulled out of cryo-storage to serve his country with a “yee-haw anthem” about “kicking the ever-living shit out of brown kids.”