Millennials have dusted off the 33 laps. Gen Z is resurrecting the foldable phone. Not the newest soft-screen gadget, no: the good old “pocket phone” of the early 2000s. Take that, metaverse!
The year 2023 would be the new Y2K (year 2000). That’s what the fashion industry calls the trend. Perhaps in reaction to a glut of new technology culminating in the metaverse, Gen Z these days prefer to go back 20 years and embrace the disposable 24-frame camera and the phone. flip from the beginning of the millennium.
The trend is noticeable on social networks: young adults unboxing their most recent purchase in great fanfare. Their brand new phone. A device paid for at most 100 dollars and unlocked, so without a mandatory overpriced monthly plan. A boon !
Leet speak
In return, they inherit a telephone with characteristics dating from another age. The display isn’t two inches wide. Literally: stick your two thumbs together and they’ll hide the whole screen. This occupies the upper portion of the device. At the bottom is a numeric keypad as in time: from 0 to 9, with the star and the square.
No video calls on these phones. There is no front lens. Forget augmented reality. The single lens sensor on the back of the phone is 2 megapixels. Photos are blurry. The lens carefully retains fingerprints, which often mask it since it is in a place where you naturally put your hand when you take the camera out of your pocket.
On the other hand, we can exchange text messages. But it takes forever! On a numeric keypad, “hello” is written “2-2-6-6-6-6-6-5-6-6-6-8-8-7-7-7”. You might as well write “bjr” (“2-2-5-7-7-7”). That’s a journey through time: the return of the writing “l33t” (or “leet”, or “1337”).
Bring out the ASCII art, it’s urgent!
Acute metaversitis
This return to the year 2000 takes place in different ways. Clothing fashion, a generational cycle that constantly bites its tail, is also revisiting the end of the 1990s these days. A glorious era when humanity just connected by telephone modem feared only one thing (or almost) : that the end of the world occurs on December 31, 1999 at 23:59:59.999.
At the end of the XXe century, when a personal computer crashed and its clock was reset, it would automatically revert to 1er January 1970. Computer systems were designed like that. For some reason, tell Gen Xers, even in the early 1990s the year 2000 was still far in the future!
To such an extent that we only thought at the very last minute of worrying about the reaction of the computer systems which were however the latest in the technological evolution of the moment. Were they really going to go to the year 2000, or were we going to fall back into the 1970s?
It will have caused a lot of noise for nothing. Above all, seen from here in 2023, it is a very ridiculous anxiety in the eyes of the youngest generation, the Z. Aged at most 5 years in the year 2000, the Z have never lived without the Internet. They entered adolescence with the alerts constantly pushed on their fully touch-screen telephones. Alerts that come every two years from a new social network, to which you absolutely have to subscribe to stay cool: Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok…
And there, boom: a pandemic. To date, it represents the first major social crisis experienced by Zs who have become adults. What we offer them to escape? The metaverse. “Hey, young people! Is digital keeping you up at night? Here is the solution: total immersion in a virtual and 100% digital world! »
THE Truman Show, a sweet comedy when it was released in 1998, looks like a prescient horror film 25 years later.
cargo pants
We understand the desire of the Z to want to pick up. We would blow a tick for less than that.
The rising generation really needs to pick up. It’s for his sanity. When we compare the adoption rate of smart phones since 2004 in North America to the number of cases of depression among adolescents, we observe roughly the same upward curve. This year, at least twice as many teenagers will suffer from depression as 20 years ago.
Living in a permanently connected environment quickly becomes stressful. Especially if you don’t really know how to pick up from time to time. Gadgets from another era are for some an acceptable compromise: they don’t totally disconnect, they slow down.
Not stupid.
This return to the fashion of the year 2000 will also have at least one other unsuspected benefit: it creates intergenerational bridges. IT specialists who haven’t changed their wardrobe since graduating from computer school in 1998 might be up to date today.
Fashion experts say it: cargo pants are back. All that’s missing is the multi-pocket vest and the polo shirt, and it will be the perfect trifecta.
Obviously, if that happens, it’s proof that there was a bug in the machine…