“millennial sincerity is tiptoeing back into fashion,” pointing to the surprise revival of Noah and the Whale’s 2008 ultra-twee pop duet “5 Years Time” as the soundtrack to a pivotal scene in the new Superman , “its cringe” — whistling, nursery-rhyme lyrics and all — “wholly recuperated as commodity.”

many of the artifacts once mocked as peak “millennial cringe” are being reappraised in an age of polycrisis, hyper-mediation, and political polarization.

On TikTok, you can find montages of hipster imagery under the hashtag #2010snostalgia, including one eulogizing summer, 2012, “when life felt like an indie movie.” The images are all heavily filtered, as on early Instagram, and everyone in them has bangs. One TikTok simply features a series of yellow-tinted photos taken at Starbucks in 2010; it has... See more