Millennials: Where Are They Now?

Fame is fickle, and no one knows this better than millennials. Once, they were everywhere—in television laugh tracks for “The Big Bang Theory,” in breathless think pieces about social-media narcissism, and acting the fool in 360p YouTube comedy videos. Then—poof! Gone like yesterday’s avocado toast.

Here at BuzzCrunch, we once published more than seventy-five millennial-related listicles per hour. Now no one cares about millennials or thinks about them at all. Crazy, right? But what happened to these millennials who once lived large in our hearts and in our online conversations? We’ve hunted them down for old times’ sake.

Many of them are dead.
Millennials are now very, very, very old. Although some of them are desperately hanging on to life, trapped in cubicles and still trying to pay off their grad-school loans, lots of millennials are now retired or expired. In fact, the oldest living millennial is more than a hundred years old. Time marches on! And, while everyone else was distracted by pandemics and politics and TikTok, the cold, skeletal hand of time pulled the millennials into the abyss. Oh, snap! (That’s something millennials used to shout when they were still capable of sassy, youthful excitement.)

A lot of them are stuck in limbo on dating apps.
According to our research, the male millennial mascot is a silver fox named Josh, who just turned forty, has been on six hundred and seventy first dates in the past three years, and hasn’t found a woman he “vibes with.” Then, there’s Denise, on Bumble, whose profile says, “Most ‘men’ are boy-children who are intimidated by my boss-babe business. I’ll only date a guy who’s over 6’1″, owns (doesn’t lease) a helicopter, is a progressive pro-choice activist who goes to therapy weekly, and has the physique of a cowboy-lumberjack.” This explains why so many millennials are still alone: they’re imprisoned in their own sky castles. Oh, snap!

A huge mess of them are hiding in the ocean.
This freakin’ shook us, but there is a secret underwater base called Brunchreef, which is home to a million millennials who have forsaken the land-based society that has barred them from middle-class homeownership. They’ve even adapted to their aquatic environment and grown gills. Really cute. Also, Taylor Lautner is their Mer-King, and he rules them benevolently. Lit!

Some of them got lost in a maze while trying to find their passion.
Millennials were the first generation to grow up with the wild idea that we all need to pursue our passion and be famous on the Internet. That idea turned into a giant hedge maze that really did a number on them. Someone forgot to tell the millennials that we can’t all be the C.E.O. of a carbon-neutral tech startup or have a million Instagram followers. Someone has to do the very important job of guarding the doors to the server farm that runs the A.I. that writes these articles. Bazinga!

A couple of them are happy.
This is pretty out there, but we managed to track down two millennials, Ryan and Stephanie, who claim to be totally happy and satisfied with life. They run a chain of cupcake trucks—in Austin, Denver, and Brooklyn—that stayed profitable even after people got bored of cupcakes seven years ago. Ryan and Stephanie have no debt, a healthy retirement savings, and two unmedicated kids. The family is excited to spend next summer in Amsterdam, where they will bike around, enjoy the canals, and not obsess about making more money or growing their podcast, called “Ryan and Stephanie’s Date Night Silly Stuff!” They are a real couple, and they completely satisfy each other emotionally and sexually, and we did not make them up. Boom shakalaka! ♦