Latest news with #Y2K-era
New York Post
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Post
‘Flip phone summer': Gen Z vows to resurrect low-tech — before their ‘brains turn to mush'
Gen Z is flipping the script this season. Hanging up on the addictive call of the smartphone, tweens, teens and 20-somethings are, instead, going retro, ditching their digital devices for 2000s-era flip phones. 'Flip phone summer,' declared Makayla Aubrey, posing with her throwback artifact in a trending clip. 'Life will be so simple.' 4 Aubrey and her fellow Gen Zers have declared this season 'Flip Phone Summer,' vowing to replace their smart devices with the Y2K-era accessories. Tiktok / @makaylaaubreyyyy It's an ease that comes with less time on screens. The Zs, youngsters under age 27, have recently begun rehabbing their high-tech fixations with the help of low-tech tools. It's a generational effort towards disconnecting from the World Wide Web, and reconnecting with the real world in oldfangled ways. 4 Young adults online claim their lives are becoming consumed by their smartphones. Andrii Lysenko – Forgoing iPhone photoshoots, Gen Zers are virally all in favor of snapping pics on vintage digital and disposable cameras, insisting that 'a camera from 2007 gives off a certain vibe that something like an iPhone can't produce.' The whippersnappers are, too, preferring cassette tapes and vinyl records over music streaming platforms, and Walkman headphones over ultramodern Bluetooth earbuds. 4 Dumbphones, such as flip phone and Blackberrys, offer users a break from the incessant buzz of today's buzzy iPhones and Androids. F-Stop Boy – Their newfound fascination with Y2K-style horns, however, started with the BlackBerry. Nicknaming the once in-demand devices 'dumbphones,' owing to their unique keyboards and limited capabilities, Zoomers have been zooming to sites like Facebook Marketplace and eBay, purchasing BlackBerrys to supplant their more sophisticated cellulars. Now, as flip phones rise from the ashes as the hot months' hottest commodity, Gen Zs are crediting the vintage mobiles with restoring their grip on reality. 4 TikTokkers like AR Justin are popularizing the 'Flip Phone Summer' movement, making the old-school cell phones cool again. Tiktok / @ar_justin 'It's an unplugged summer,' Meni, who admittedly spent 13 hours staring at screens each day, announced in the caption of a TikTok clip. 'I swear that my brain is just mush,' she said, blaming her smartphone, its alluring apps and constant notifications, for the regression. 'I no longer live my life,' continued the brunette. 'I just watch other people live theirs, and feel s—ty about mine.' Meni went on to laud her early aughts flip phone, along with an old-timey e-book reader, praising the resurrected gadgets for saving her from sure destruction. 'I love the freedom.'
Los Angeles Times
6 days ago
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
12 L.A. spots reinventing the classic chicken Caesar wrap
In the 1990s, chicken Caesar wraps dominated lunchtime menus. Aside from the comforting hit of nostalgia for a simpler time, I don't remember them fondly. Often soggy, laden with too much dressing and scant, dry chicken, it was the kind of unfortunate premade meal you'd eat alone at an airport cafe. So you can imagine my surprise to see the Y2K-era sandwich having a sudden renaissance at popular restaurants around Los Angeles. But this time, it's back with some much-needed upgrades: Reputed L.A. chefs and sandwich shops are finally doing the dish justice by using high-quality ingredients and adding their own signature touches — from organic fried chicken to chunks of falafel instead of croutons. While Angelenos' love affair with the Caesar salad has been ongoing since Italian chef Caesar Cardini debuted it in Tijuana in the 1920s, the inventor of the chicken Caesar wrap is a bit more mysterious. California Chicken Cafe opened in 1991 on Melrose Avenue and added a chicken Caesar wrap to its menu soon after in 1993. In 1997, fast food chain Wendy's added its take to the menu (they've since been discontinued), giving the wrap nationwide exposure. At Ggiata, an East Coast-style deli with five locations across L.A., the chicken Caesar wrap is inspired by the ones that co-founders and childhood friends Noah Holton-Raphael, Max Bahramipour and Jack Biebel grew up eating in New Jersey sandwich shops. 'Every neighborhood sandwich shop had a Caesar wrap on the menu — and if they didn't then, they definitely do now,' said Holton-Raphael. Since Ggiata launched its viral version in March 2024, the trend has picked up serious steam, inspiring iconic restaurants like Mini Kabob and Casa Vega to add the wrap to their menus. No longer an afterthought, L.A.'s chicken Caesar wraps are made to order with ingredients like herb-blackened chicken, grain-free tortillas and house-made dressing that borrows inspiration from the salad's Mexican origins. Here are 12 excellent chicken Caesar wraps (including one made with a baguette) to try around L.A. right now.
Hype Malaysia
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hype Malaysia
New Balance 1000 Returns In 4 New Colourways, Available Exclusively At JD Sports!
New Balance is bringing back a Y2K-era favourite with the re-release of the 1000 sneaker, this time in four fresh and exclusive colourways available only at JD Sports. First introduced in 1999, the New Balance 1000 is a bold throwback to the turn of the millennium. The latest version maintains its futuristic edge with a refined, tech-inspired design. It features an inverted upper construction with mesh underlays and striking overlays, complemented by ABZORB cushioning at the heel and forefoot, and a Stability Web midfoot shank for enhanced support. To mark the global release, New Balance has launched a campaign spotlighting dynamic creatives who embody confidence and community. Leading the charge is England footballer Bukayo Saka, joined by rising British actor Araloyin Oshunremi and Maryland rapper redveil. Set in London, the campaign celebrates self-expression, friendship and style through a distinctly global lens. JD Sports Mid Valley Megamall will also host a series of exclusive on-ground activations from 16th to 20th July. The event will feature a fun, interactive challenge where participants can win prizes including New Balance 1000 sneakers, JD x New Balance vouchers, stylish utilitarian boxes and limited-edition sticker packs. Terms and mechanics will be available at the event area. Be the first to cop the all-new New Balance 1000 in four bold colourways – available exclusively at JD Sports stores and online starting 17th July 2025. Priced at RM699, these kicks won't wait – so head to JD Sports Mid Valley Megamall, join the launch fun and score your pair (plus exclusive rewards) while stocks last.
Time Magazine
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
Why Is Reality TV Obsessed With Going 'Back to the Frontier?'
'I'm living history right now,' Stacey Loper proclaims in the premiere episode of Magnolia Network's Back to the Frontier. That's not to say she's thrilled about it. A career woman who cherishes the comforts of her 4.5-bathroom home, Stacey has already teared up several times during her first day on a 1880s-style homestead, over such indignities as having to use a decrepit outhouse and feed her family cold canned ham. The assumption underlying this reality series, which transports three families to swaths of farmland near the Rocky Mountains for a summer-long simulation of life on the American frontier, is that such suffering builds character. Does it, though? Executive produced by Magnolia co-owners and lifestyle gurus Chip and Joanna Gaines, Back to the Frontier (which airs on Thursdays will also stream on HBO Max) is the latest in a long line of historical-living challenges that date back to the Y2K-era reality boom. The series bears a particular resemblance to 2002's Frontier House, a quasi-educational program that marked PBS's if-you-can't-beat-'em-join-'em foray into the genre. But whether it's the gamified, mid-aughts MTV's The '70s House or one of the BBC's many hyperspecific period throwbacks (Edwardian Farm! Victorian Farm! Victorian Pharmacy!), the implication always seems to be that it's inherently noble, enriching, and authentic to adopt the ways of our ancestors. It's as though 'real life' ended with the advent of refrigeration or indoor plumbing or, well, TV. Magnolia's version isn't the most persuasive of these shows. Even if it were, though, I'm not sure I would buy the fundamentally conservative message it's selling. To its credit, and although it could easily have chosen to pander to the reactionary tradwife crowd that embraces all things rural and homespun, Back to the Frontier resists going fully retrograde. The show's casting is, in many ways, diverse. The Lopers are a multigenerational Black family; Stacey and her husband Joaquin have two boys, ages 12 and 14, and are joined on this adventure by Joaquin's mom, Shirley. (Contrary to the nagging-mother-in-law trope, Shirley, who spent much of her life on a farm, seems sweet, and Stacey is grateful for her help.) Like Stacey, Hall family matriarch Lina runs a business. She and her husband, Jereme, have two teenage girls and an 11-year-old boy. The sisters are shocked to discover they have to share a bed with their squirmy kid brother. Rounding out the cast is a two-dad crew: Jason Hanna, Joe Riggs, and their twin 10-year-old sons. Hardcore tech enthusiasts, the Hanna-Riggs men are soon in withdrawal from their video games, smartwatches, and robot vacuums. As different as they are, these families have a few things in common. They're all, for some or perhaps no reason, from the South. They also all appear to be middle- or upper-middle class; while Stacey calls the Lopers' lifestyle 'lavish' and the Hanna-Riggs are homesick for their housekeeper, there's footage of the Halls splashing around in a lushly landscaped private pool. In the three episodes I was able to screen, each family comes across as close and caring. Magnolia did not, it seems, cast the show to maximize intra-household drama. Most of the parents have trouble getting their kids to work hard on the farm, but beyond that, the only real friction that emerges early in the season is between stubbornly independent Jereme and the more community-minded Lopers. (The harmony-loving Hall daughters are mortified by their dad's prickliness, which culminates in a ridiculous bidding war at a mock livestock auction.) As artificial as its setup might have been, Frontier House packed in lots of information about rarely discussed aspects of pioneer life. Participants—and, by extension, viewers—got genuinely illuminating crash courses in, for instance, 19th century contraception and how frontier women handled menstruation. Back to the Frontier has a few experts, historian Dr. Jacob K. Friefeld and 'modern homestead' influencer Melissa K. Norris, on hand to dispense occasional tidbits of relevant info. But, to its detriment, the show isn't as frank or curious as its predecessor. When you consider how much mileage it gets out of cast members' disgust at human and animal waste, its avoidance of reproductive-health issues in particular suggests a post-Roe squeamishness about birth control and women's bodies. Magnolia may not be openly courting the trad contingent, but it's certainly taken measures to avoid alienating that audience. Back to the Frontier comes alive in the moments when pioneer problems are met with contemporary flexibility and open-mindedness. While the moms of the cohort often fret about women's limited autonomy in the era, we observe Jason and Joe constantly negotiating, based on skillsets rather than prescribed roles, which of them will take on each traditionally gendered task. More often, though, the focus is on reenacting the past as faithfully as possible. We're frequently reminded, sometimes by folksy-voiced narrator William Hope, that children as young as the Hanna-Riggs boys would do farm chores from sunrise to sunset; that men bore the burden of construction, agriculture, and defense; that a mother who hadn't cooked a delicious meal on her finicky cast-iron stove by the time everyone returned from the fields was a failure. Each new challenge is framed as a test of whether the participants could hack it in what we're supposed to believe is a harder but somehow truer, more rewarding, and—in an assumption about the division of labor that veers disconcertingly close to essentialism—more natural world. It's easy for a show to make this sort of case when, like Back to the Frontier and many of its antecedents, it is transporting cast members not just back in time, but also several rungs down the economic ladder. Class-wise, the 1880s equivalents of the Halls, the Lopers, and the Hanna-Riggs would have been merchants or professionals or, at the very least, yeoman farmers, who owned land and employed laborers and maybe servants. They would not have needed to make the arduous journey west to claim the 160 acres of land guaranteed to them (if they proved they could cultivate it) by the Homestead Act of 1862. Their homes would not have been drafty, one-room shacks. They might even have enjoyed indoor plumbing. It makes you suspect the pioneers' lawyer or shopkeeper contemporaries would have been just as frustrated on the homestead as these present-day families. To look at the situation from a different angle, a person struggling to pay bills in a 21st century United States plagued by soaring prices, stagnant wages, and a death of manufacturing jobs might rejoice at the chance to become a subsistence farmer on land they would eventually own. Which is to say that, while it's always easier to be rich than poor, I'm not convinced that people in the past had inherently tougher—and thus more virtuous—lives than people in the present. Problems change over time. New technology is a curse as often as it's a blessing. Since the 19th century, progress has brought us cures for once-fatal diseases; it has also facilitated new pandemics. Workers have faced a litany of 'labor-saving' innovations that threaten their livelihoods. Teens on the homestead might've harvested corn and mucked out chicken coops, but they didn't lose sleep over the threat of climate apocalypse in their lifetimes. By papering over class divisions and presenting modern life as a breeze, historical reality shows create the illusion of a purer, more honest past, as though it's performing old-fashioned physical labor and traditional gender roles that makes us better people. Watching Back to the Frontier, it occurred to me that the specific tasks these dads, moms, and children were charged with completing, by virtue of their age or sex, were kind of immaterial. What mattered was how much they were required to stretch themselves, as individuals and as families, in order to do them. Because what really builds character is the expanded perspective that comes from inhabiting real (or real-enough) experiences that differ greatly from our own. Plunk down Little House on the Prairie's Ingalls family in New York City ca. 2025 with a studio apartment, an iPhone, and less than $1000 in the bank, and the transformation you'd observe might be just as inspiring.
Newsweek
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Newsweek
Millennial Aunt Plays Iconic Song for Gen Zers—Their Reaction Says It All
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A millennial mom has left internet viewers in stitches after sharing her Generation Z son and niece's reaction to an explicit Y2K-era banger. Stefani Schuetz (@notaregularmomimakewlmom), 37, from Sarasota, Florida, posted a TikTok showing her 18-year-old son Adryan Schuetz and 17-year-old niece Kira Kim reacting to Lil' Kim's explicit 2000 track "How Many Licks?" The video quickly went viral, racking up almost 60,000 likes and thousands more views. "Adryan was absolutely stunned and his jaw dropped; Kira screeched, which obviously you can't hear in the video," Schuetz told Newsweek. "The lyrics continued to shock them line after line, and there was a mix of screaming, cringing and just yelling 'nooooooooo' and 'ewwww'." In the video, Adryan looks visibly embarrassed, burying his face in his hands and shaking his head, while Kira grimaces, shakes her head, and even puts her fingers in her ears at one point. Meanwhile, Stefani sits in the front seat, enjoying the show. A split image of Stefani Schuetz and her son, Adryan, left, and niece, Kira, right, listening to her favorite Y2K anthem. A split image of Stefani Schuetz and her son, Adryan, left, and niece, Kira, right, listening to her favorite Y2K anthem. @notaregularmomimakewlmom/@notaregularmomimakewlmom Schuetz said that "How Many Licks?" has long been one of her favorite early-2000s songs. She said Lil' Kim was a staple in her music rotation growing up, and that the track instantly takes her back to an era when "you could dance to almost every song." Schuetz said that it took "everything in me to not sing the lyrics and dance." She added: "I was literally holding my breath and biting my lip so I didn't sing it. It reminds me of the early 2000s when you could dance to almost every song, and we would run to the dance floor for this one." The teens were reportedly shocked that the song had been played on the radio back in the day. "They had no idea that music like this has been around for over 20 years, which is why my caption read 'Lil' Kim walked so Cardi B could run.' "WAP" was not the first song of its kind," Schuetz said. Cardi B's "WAP," released in 2020, sparked widespread debate for its explicit lyrics—but as Stefani pointed out, provocative tracks like it have been around for decades. Schuetz described the moment as a "mixture of emotions"—a blend of discomfort, nostalgia, and a struggle to keep from joining in. "The discomfort of listening to the lyrics with my son and niece, checking to see if they heard how nasty the lyrics are, and trying not to sing them myself," Schuetz said. Lil' Kim's "How Many Licks?" featuring Sisqó, was released in 2000 as the second single from her The Notorious K.I.M. album. Known for its explicit lyrics and provocative theme, the song details Kim's sexual prowess and preferences. The track peaked at number 75 on the Billboard Hot 100 and helped cement Lil' Kim's status as one of hip-hop's most daring and influential female voices. Its music video was just as bold, showcasing futuristic fashion and tongue-in-cheek visuals that matched the song's raunchy reputation. On TikTok, viewers were quick to relate—and reminisce. "The audacity of me getting mad at my kids for WAP … When this still plays in my truck," shared Anna. "Millennials had the best music ever. Prove me wrong," posted Vanessa. "We had no business knowing every single word in middle/high school," added another viewer. "Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown were dangerous in the 90s," one user commented. "One of the best for sure!! When my teen students start talking about music and asking about what I listen to I'm like 'y'all have NO clue'! I've always listened to a little of everything, but late 90s early 2000s bring back the BEST memories!!!" said another. "I'm singing this in my kitchen. Kids today don't know anything about good music. 90s and 2000s R&B was EVERYTHING!!!" wrote Jill. Do you have any viral videos or pictures that you want to share? We want to see the best ones! Send them in to life@ and they could appear on our site.
