If you're one of the millions of people who were born before the ubiquity of smartphones, you might feel like you're getting old when you go online. When I scroll through TikTok, and I see countless videos that are ⅓ Family Guy clips, ⅓ ASMR slime video, and ⅓ Subway Surfer gameplay, I wonder if I'm out of touch with the youngest generation of online users.
Luckily, I don't think that the millennials and elder Gen Zers have anything to worry about. We were lucky enough to grow up during a time when we weren't constantly stimulated by various algorithmic forces. We were allowed to be bored when we were kids, which served us well. We are far more internet savvy than the kids who have been staring at their phone screens since they were in diapers; We know a life where we had to wait 10 minutes for something to load, and that's a character-building experience Generation Alpha could only dream about. If you're an internet veteran who coded their own MySpace page or Tumblr blog, these tweets and memes are yours for viewing.