Are laptops millennial cringe?
Hiding mine in my closet with my house plants and Ravenclaw scarf.
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Sent from my laptop! —Kate
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There’s a kind of post that goes around every year or so about the people who insist on using a laptop to make major purchases or complete important tasks. As a millennial, there are just some things—like buying plane tickets or doing taxes—I cannot, for reasons I’m hard pressed to explain, imagine doing on my phone. While I’m not as cursed as my husband, who watches YouTube Shorts on desktop, I do pretty much everything but my scrolling on the big(ger) screen.
My phone is my Go-Gurt, saved for when I’m out and about or need to fire something off quickly. Otherwise, I work on my laptop, write on my laptop, watch YouTube on my laptop and even, to the horror of everyone who hears about it, sometimes prop my laptop up near the tub to watch HBO while taking a bubble bath. But no one was more horrified than me to come across this recent TikTok about tax season.
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“My personal computer when I revive it once a year to do my taxes,” read the caption on the video, which shows the user booting up their machine for the first time in presumably 365 days.
I expected to open the comments to a spirited debate about whether or not this behavior resonated with viewers, but turns out that I was the odd one out. “Not one original experience,” a commenter wrote.
“Lmao same,” reads another. “Haven’t used my laptop since I graduated school 5 years ago.”
And: “I literally spend every feb-hopefully april lookin for it.” LOOKING FOR IT? Where in your home did you lose it?
The fact that only one person was in the comments disagreeing with this was approximately a thousand people too few for me, so I went investigating—only to find a similar video from 2024.
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“Me once a month when I actually open and use my laptop since I’ve graduated college and have minimal use for it now,” reads the caption. And again, the commenters agreed.
“Omg I’m so glad I’m not the only one,” one wrote. “My MacBook is from like 2018 I have only used it to job hunt since.”
“I bought a MacBook Pro with a touchbar during lockdown and it’s sitting in my closet unused for the last year lmao.” At least they know where it is.
Gen Z has seemingly relegated the laptop to school and work. For a specific subset of them, I can absolutely see why:
