‘It’s my grandad’s’: Gen Z’s confronting new trend - and how other generations can rip them off for profit

Gen Z has fired a shot at older generations with a trend that can only be described as confronting and offensive. Top tip: guard your junk drawers.

Gen Z is currently engaging in offensive behaviour that might just be the thing to unite Millennials, Gen Xers and Boomers.

The trend doesn’t involve drugs or an annoying social media platform. And it has nothing to do with a weird new sex position that’s more exhausting than it is enjoyable.

The confronting behaviour involves Gen Zers thinking items from 2007 are prized antiquities.

“It’s vintage!” one peppy 21-year-old held up a digital point-and-shoot camera that was released several years after her 2001 birth.

She was hanging at a party for Rolla’s jeans this week, where the brand’s ‘90s aesthetic was amplified by all the cool-looking people in attendance, armed with their vintage (ahem) cameras from the era.

“It’s retro as f**k,” another girl said of the cameras that millennials with flat-ironed fringes used to take selfies with to post on MySpace while blaring Ashley Simpson’s 2004 debut CD.

If the hot pink Sony Cyber-shot is vintage, then the 2007 Mazda 3 is a classic hot rod.

Supermodel Gigi Hadid made the yellow Kodak disposable camera cool again about two summers ago. Then came the re-emergence of the ‘80s and ‘90s 35mm point-and-shoot cameras with rolls of film. Now, the next It-girl accessory is Y2K tech - those crumby little digital cameras with the tiny blurry display screens.

“Well, this one’s actually my great grandfather’s,” Jade Myriam, a 24-year-old stylist, said about the silver rectangular camera she was holding at the Rolla’s party, as if it was a family heirloom from the 1920s or a kerosene lamp.

“My grandad came to my house and said, ‘We’re gonna throw them all in the bin’.”

That was about a week ago. Jade knew she’d struck gold. She excitedly grabbed the obsolete tech from her grandad’s bag of crap. The photo quality is bad but that’s the whole point.

“It’s sh*tty, but it’s good,” she said.

Jade Myriam strikes a pose with her great grandfather’s antique camera. Picture: Rolla's

TikTok comedian Millie Ford won’t be buying a Y2K digital camera at Cash Converters because she’s still struggling with the disposable camera trend. ‘I’ve always wanted to be a disposable camera girl, but whenever I bring it on a night out, I always forget it’s in my bag,’ she said at the Rolla’s launch.

Phoebe Wolfe, a 21-year-old freelance photographer who regularly shoots events with second-hand cameras, agreed.

“It blurs your skin. The digital camera is worse quality, so it makes you look better,” she said.

But isn’t that what filters are for?

“Digital’s coming back recently because people are breaking their bank accounts trying to afford film and developing - it’s about forty bucks minimum for film, including developing. So, a lot of people still want that imperfect effect.”

And they’ll do anything to get their hands on it. The Y2K cameras have become hot ticket items.

“They’re hard to f**king get,” Sophia Ast, a 20-year-old model, said while running around Melbourne Fashion Week on Friday, wielding a camcorder.

Of course the Y2K bug had infected the city.

“I went to every op-shop, every Cash Converter – there’s none left. Sold out.”

Sophia Ast resorted to bribery to secure this prized possession.

She’d wanted a 2000s-style digital video camera for three months and had to take matters into her own hands.

“JB Hi-Fi were all sold out and I literally rocked up and said, ‘Give me the demo model’. I slipped a hundred-dollar bill over the counter and said, ‘Give it to me right now’.”

She then paid $500 for the demo. It didn’t even come with its cables or charger.

“Is she interested in my old Swatch watch?” author and columnist Kerri Sackville replied when texted from the frontlines of Fashion Week about the latest trend.

“My parents have a desktop computer somewhere. It’s really big and makes a very satisfying whirring sound when you fire it up.”

There’s opportunity for all of us over the age of 30 to corner the Y2K tech market and make those sucker Gen Zers pay through the nose. Let’s rummage through our garages and junk drawers and start selling the relics online at a 600 per cent mark-up.

We’ll be motivated partly by profit but mostly by spite for those kids referring to the hot pink Sony Cyber-shot as vintage. Wait until they discover those tiny MP3 players that don’t have screens.

There comes a time in everyone’s life when their teenage trends are discovered and repurposed by the next generation. One minute, you’re vibrant and youthful. Next, a 21-year-old is asking you about “the olden days” after holding up a TV remote and enquiring, “What’s this?”

Fall Out Boy are the new Rolling Stones. Prepare to see inflatable furniture being sold in antiques stores.

“If you don’t have a camera on you at all times, then you miss that sh*t, y’know what I mean?” Sophia said wisely of capturing life moments.

But don’t iPhones solve that problem? It was part of the reason they were invented. You can slip an iPhone into your back pocket, unlike a cool-looking but ultimately clunky camcorder.

“It’s cringey. It’s cringey,” Sophia grimaced. “Imagine pulling out a phone and holding it in front of someone’s face.”

We looked around the industrial carpark where the Justin Cassin fashion show was about to begin. Everyone was taking photos of each other, holding up their phones... in each other’s faces.

She continued: “Whereas you hold up this and no one even notices that you’re holding it.”

She lugged the chunky plastic camcorder up to her eye.

No one notices?

“Well... they do but it’s kinda cool,” she sighed. “It’s an accessory.”

Twitter, Facebook: @hellojamesweir