The latest Gen Z craze for fetishising iPods can leave those of an older disposition in a bit of a spin. It seems our young people are becoming so disillusioned with their mind-controlling smartphones that they are turning to “vintage” tech as an act of rebellion. It’s that vintage word that bothers me though. Am I really so old that a device first on sale in 2001 is considered vintage? Is it now like rediscovering top hats or a lost play by Sophocles?
Apparently the appeal of iPods is that they are “only” for music and therefore allow you to actually listen without being constantly interrupted by maddening social media notifications. That little slab of plastic seemed so revolutionary at the time, and now it’s just a prop for posers or a sedative for stressed out kids who weren’t even born when it came out.
That’s a bit harsh. It’s not really surprising that tech from even a mere 20 years ago can seem like a gateway to mental liberation. I know as much as any poor Gen Z about what smartphones will do to you if you let them. At least my phone enslaved me in later life: for Gen Z they were born into bondage.
Our connected worlds have reached the point where smartphones do all they can to prevent you from putting them down, let alone turning them off. They don’t want you to do anything else with anyone else – that’s why they bombard you with messages 24-hours a day. That’s why you are trapped by your apps. Your phone is jealous of you.
So I don’t blame Gen Z for looking to the past. My only issue is that it’s my past, and so continues the process of making me feel really, really old. I remember my first iPod and the excitement of uploading all my CDs to the library as well as access to the infinite richness of iTunes. So much of the tech that emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s was the fulfilment of my fantasies of the 1980s. Twenty-five years ago, tech was the culmination of a child’s dream. Now it’s their worst nightmare.
The same is true of games consoles like PlayStation. When I was a child, something as startling as the first PlayStation felt a long way off. But just a few years later the reality was even better than the imagining, with games in the mid-1990s such as the first Tomb Raider and Resident Evil fulfilling the promise of the optimistic 1980s. Toying with old tech in 2026 means you don’t get messages from Sony every five minutes and can’t be coerced into online gaming with incels, scammers, angry Chinese teenagers and paedophiles. You can see the appeal.
So if Gen Z are now returning to old consoles because of their unconnected simplicity and pure aesthetics (they look good as object d’art on the wall or shelves) who am I to disparage it? I think things were better then too.
But as a fifty-three-year-old man, of course I would – I’m old, it seems. Or “unc” as my children call me. What’s hard to take is that what seemed like the white heat of tech – iPods, games consoles, Blackberries with all those lovely buttons and no touchscreen – are now aids to the failing mental health of anxious Gen Z cultural butterflies. My past is the equivalent of an emotional support dog.
Speaking of children, my eldest daughter has jumped on this trend and now parades around with a 1999 Canon PowerShot camera, snapping her friends, plates of food and posing on holiday. There’s no video function, so for Gen Z it gives them the appearance of a real camera, while being conveniently modern enough so if they want to upload the images – and they always do – they still can. It feels more “real” for her than a smartphone, even though the Canon is digital (like the iPod), so it’s hardly a plate mahogany camera with canvas slats.
Instagram is full of Gen Z videos explaining lists of “classic albums you should know about”. I mistakenly thought “classic” albums meant things like Led Zeppelin III or What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye. It turns out I was wrong. Now classic albums are by Portishead and The Strokes. Jesus, think, I haven’t become Homer Simpson; I’ve become Abe Simpson.
I’ll just have to accept that Gen Z’s love of my “old” stuff is part of the circle of life, like Labour trashing the economy or Tottenham Hotspur being awful. One current trend is to post films of someone driving around London in 1999, as if it were a glimpse of the streets of ancient Rome.
I admit that I have an old film my grandfather took of himself driving around east London from the 1960s, and watching that felt like a vision of another world too. So perhaps this is all about a desperate need to connect with the past – it’s just a shame it happens to be mine. Watch as your life flashes before your eyes. It will happen to you too, kids.
