Burn your monstera plants in a cleansing bonfire.

Photo by Yaroslava Borz: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-a-woman-with-a-hat-sitting-on-grass-with-white-flowers-10012829/

As you mom may have heard on NPR recently, we are in the midst of a vibe shift. What is a vibe shift, your mom may be asking (she was making pesto while the segment was on and not really listening)? A vibe shift is all things to all people: it’s a spring cleaning of the mind and an obvious ”swingin’ on the flippety-flop”-esque youth culture prank being played on media dum-dums. It’s a collective process of re-awakening from our cultural hibernation and an excuse for 22-year-olds to buy Von Dutch hats. But I mean, duh, it’s mostly just a standard cyclical change of trend cycles, the same kind that happen every few years — you know, the time when all the ads and fashion sites switch over from being like, “You dumb asshole, buy these gladiator sandals, your life is a fucking tragic nightmare without these gladiator sandals, you’re lucky we don’t just shoot you in the back of the head WHICH, TO BE CLEAR, WOULD BE AN IMPROVEMENT ON YOUR CURRENT GLADIATOR SANDAL-FREE LIFESTYLE” to being like “You dumb asshole, you’re lucky we don’t throw you in jail for those fucking disgusting gladiator sandals you’re wearing, BUY THESE WHITE PLATFORM SNEAKERS IF YOU WANT YOUR CHILDREN TO LIVE.”

But this one right now is happening in a more explicit way than usual, probably because we’re all just at home poking at our phones now, instead of doing whatever people were doing during the last vibe shift (going to some restaurant where the waiter is like “Have you ever dined with us before? Our concept is ‘small plates’”). I don’t recall any NPR segments explaining why you had to start or stop wearing gladiator sandals, anyway. So I can draw from all that that people give more of a shit right now, for whatever reason.

I mean, I give a shit, obviously, though perhaps for different reasons than some of the other people writing about this. Because a lot of the media I have seen about the “vibe shift” is written for aging millennials who are presumably terrified of change, presumably because they believe that art and culture attained perfection in 2014, or whatever year it was when Zooey Deschanel was president.

We used to have real leaders in this country (Fox)

So many of these articles talk about “surviving” the vibe shift, as if the old vibes are precious, beautiful, priceless family heirlooms (priceless family Toms?). But I would like to encourage you to look at the vibe shift in a new way: as an amazing opportunity to get rid of our current vibes, which are absolute garbage and always have been. I speak, of course, of millennial corniness.

I don’t know when this shit happened, man. I feel like everything was fine, we were all rolling along, wearing American Apparel tube dresses that made anyone who put them on look like a discarded condom, and then suddenly, one day, I just looked up, and realized two things:

1. Gen X had finally handed over the pop culture keys to millennials

2. When I walked down the street in New York, every person my age was wandering around in harem pants and baggy linen and woven leather sandals, looking like a recently-divorced art therapist on vacation in Santorini circa 1997.

Photo by Kelsey Sky: https://www.pexels.com/photo/back-view-of-a-woman-meditating-by-a-lake-8353574/

From the moment it took center stage, the millennial aesthetic — neutrals, a kind of spiritual sagginess, an impulse to dress like your mom does on days when she needs to move some mulch — has been wretched. In its most generous reading, this aesthetic signifies exhaustion. In its least generous reading, it signifies an embrace of (or at least resignation towards) all the shittiest parts of mass culture of the past decade: sexlessness, blandness, a lack of point of view, an interest in comfort over creativity.

Whatever, I’m sure you saggy linen fanatics have good reasons to feel exhausted and comfort-craving! You had your youths disrupted by 9/11, came of age during the financial crisis, and lived through whatever the fuck the past six years have been. I understand that many of you were misled to believe that deprioritizing your own needs and working hard at jobs you didn’t care about would lead to a pleasant, easy life, and I am genuinely sorry that you were scammed. I get how all that could make a person long for the safety of neutrals and direct-to-consumer sheet brands.

But that’s been the bummer of being a millennial thus far. Student loans and an unsteady job market and houses only being for millionaires, that was us getting fucked by previous generations. But a necklace with a gold rectangle charm in the middle that says “peace” in lowercase script? Home decor shaped like hands? Pretending that Eileen Fisher is cool? That font (you know the one)? WE DID THAT TO OURSELVES.

Photo by Sunsetoned: https://www.pexels.com/photo/crop-woman-with-sparkler-in-decorated-room-6618564/

But we can move on! Even elder millennials are still young enough to embrace something new, something active and exciting, something to make up for all that time spent crawling back into the linen womb. We can move on. We can shift our own vibes, and do something creative and honest and real with ourselves and our clothes and our spaces.

Or, I mean, you can keep wearing a rollneck sweater and carrying a tote bag that says “Voting Is Awesome.” I’m not your boss, because I don’t want to be anyone’s boss, because wanting to be a boss is just the spiritual equivalent of pampas grass in a neutral vase. You don’t need either of those things. Go, be free.

And now, in no specific order, here are some artifacts of Millennial Corniness which must be banished forever, in order to hasten the Vibe Shift:

-LCD Soundsystem (or, as they are sometimes known, Arcade Fire)*

-light wash baggy jeans that inexplicably stop right at the ankle

-pairing said jeans with a white baby T, white Stan Smiths, a leather motorcycle jacket, and that hairstyle where it’s straight on top but then has barrel curls that abruptly start around your ears, making you look like a Toddlers and Tiaras contestant who has just taken off a snow hat

-Parks & Rec

-getting hooked on Adderall to work harder (!) at your job (!!)

-having “The Handmaid’s Tale” be literally your only point of reference in any political situation

-novels where nothing happens and the narrator is like, “I don’t FEEL anything, it is probably because of the internet”

-constantly talking about the internet like it’s a singular, constant thing that everyone experiences in the same way, like a can of garbanzo beans or an enema

-monstera plants

-referring to all your vacations as “adventures,” even though you just stayed in some Airbnb by the beach and got hammered on an air mattress every night

-buying dresses specifically created to be sold on Instagram

-performative excitement about cheese

-Twitter

-fake MCM furniture

-wearing 10,000 tiny thin gold rings at once

-taking stock options instead of asking for more salary

-leather sandals that look like something that the one teacher at your high school who wore her hair in a looooooooong braid every single day would wear

-those big baggy cardigans with the floppy parts in the front that look like labial folds

-hot takes

-saggy linen pants

-describing things as “aspirational”

-Rothy’s

-talking about “burnout”

-whatever the fuck this shit is:

Photo by cottonbro: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-touching-an-ornament-in-a-ceramic-figurine-6739699/

-dentist’s offices where there’s all this blond wood furniture and Edison bulb lighting and it’s like, dude, are you gonna fix my teeth or try to sell me a fucking Casper mattress

-Casper mattresses

-anything with RBG on it (this should have ended when Casey Anthony started wandering around in an RBG shirt, dummies)

-anything that’s called something like “rebel girls” or “ferocious girls” or “tales of freedom for girls who want more!” and then it turns out it’s just a picture book about how cool it is for women to go to law school

-having just one tattoo on your entire body and it’s like a fucking outline of a heart behind your ear or the word “courage” on your big toe or some bullshit like that

-people whose entire personality is liking Beyonce, but you’re not even sure they actually like Beyonce that much

-taking a picture of yourself dressed up for someone else’s wedding with the caption “we clean up nice” (see also: “Never a dull moment with this one” and the picture is just someone’s boring boyfriend eating a plate of nachos)

-that font (you know what I mean)

*this guy wrote three okay-ish songs in 2007 & you all still like him enough that you let him give you all omicron in December. It’s truly a testament to something!