Much of his early campaign — a 33-year-old dude, standing on a street corner with less than 1 percent in the polls, asking random people why they voted for President Trump for a YouTube video — was objectively cringey. There was something about Mr. Mamdani’s goofy sincerity that younger voters appreciated.

Gen Z-ers might wince at our earnestness, but they also value authenticity. Millennial cringe is somewhat synonymous with millennial optimism, that earnest (and, yes, sometimes naïve) feeling that better things are possible. But it’s worth holding on to — as long as we can divorce it from the clap-stomp music that so often accompanied it.

The writer Anne Helen Petersen rightly says that our generation should be alert to avoiding the cardinal sin of our boomer forebears, in which we “climb the ladder to relative stability ... and then pull it up behind us.”

Or more recently, Charli XCX in her “Brat” era, whose lo-fi aesthetic and collaborations with young artists like Billie Eilish and Addison Rae spoke to the mood of Gen Z — even when her lyrics evinced quintessentially millennial concerns about fertility and finding the best bathroom to do coke in.

In turn, Gen Z-ers are engaging with and appreciating elements of the millennial canon in ways we didn’t always ourselves, whether it’s watching “Girls”with admiration instead of anxious discourse or lining up to see Caroline Polachek and Mac DeMarco in concert. Our generation gave the world some good stuff (“Superbad,” going-out tops, 2000s... See more

Much of the millennial alarmism about Gen Z-ers (“easily offended, lazy and generally unprepared” snowflakes, reports The New York Post) is word for word what older generations said about us. Having lived the past few decades under the microscope, millennials should recognize that generational hostility is often just a way to avoid grappling with... See more

Mostly, though, the demarcation of our generational divide happens in a place that used to be ours to define: online. The internet, once our safe space, has increasingly become hostile territory. Millennials’ very existence has become so embarrassing to Gen Z-ers that they’ve coined a phrase for it: “millennial cringe.” This cringiness includes the... See more