It sneaks up on you, but there’s no getting around it — at some point, you inevitably become the “older person” in social settings or within your family. One of the big signs of it is that you start noticing generational gaps in conversations, especially when you reference things younger people may have never heard of.
Recently, I touched upon this subject when I asked BuzzFeed Community members to tell us references they’ve made that have completely gone over the heads of younger people and left them shocked (and maybe feeling old AF).
I got, well, hundreds of responses. Below are just some of the dated references our readers have said that have left young people scratching their heads:
1. “A young coworker once said, ‘Did you know Gwen Stefani was in a band?’ I said, ‘Yeah, No Doubt.’ And she said, ‘No, it’s true!’ (As if I was saying ‘for real?’). It took her a couple of minutes to comprehend even after I said that’s the band’s name.”
2. “We were talking about famous commercial jingles, and I started singing the Bagels Bites song, which my coworker had never heard of. I still sing it in my sleep: ‘Pizza in the morning, pizza in the evening, pizza at supper time, when pizza’s on a bagel, you can have pizza anytime!'”
3. “I have a junk email that I give stores or websites so that my primary email doesn’t get bombarded. Anyway, I was asked while checking out at David’s Bridal for a bridesmaid dress what my email was. I say, ‘Blah blah blah at aol.com.’ This girl looked at me and said, ‘Can you spell AOL for me? I’ve never heard of that. Just give me a cane and send me to a retirement home. 😭”
4. “I was hanging out with some of our interns from work. One of them mentioned that their birthday was coming up that weekend. I asked how old they were turning, and they said, ’23’ and with great enthusiasm. I exclaimed, ‘Oh my God, nobody likes you when you’re 23!’ She just looked at me with a blank stare and slightly hurt. I tried to recover by saying, ‘No, because you know, the Blink-182 song? “What’s My Age Again?”‘ More blank stares from her, the other interns, and colleagues. Oof, that one hit hard.”
5. “I asked a co-worker, ‘What’s the 411?’ They had no idea what I was talking about.”
6. “I work at a college. Referenced ‘jumping the shark’ to one of our student workers. Not only did I have to explain the reference, but I also had to explain what Happy Days was. 🙄”
7. “It’s not a reference I made, but I teach 9 and 10-year-olds. The song ‘Eye of the Tiger’ came on, and one of the boys said, ‘Oh, this song is from Big Hero Six. ‘ My ’80s heart was destroyed.”
8. “Said, ‘Ya know what I mean, Vern?’ My niece responded that her name isn’t Vern. My students just look at me like I’m crazy and say, ‘Who’s Vern?’ People have completely forgotten Ernest, but he was such a huge part of my childhood.”
9. “I mentioned Camp Anawana from Salute Your Shorts to some early 20s kids, and they had never heard of either of them.”
10. “I (28) was telling my coworkers about the Diana Ross concert I went to and this girl (who was like 20) said, ‘Who’s Diana Ross?’ It didn’t stop there, she didn’t know who Selena was either. I wanted to die.”
11. “I said, ‘Be kind, please rewind’ to my early 20something coworker after they mentioned remembering going to Blockbuster with their family when they were little and got a blank stare back. I ended up having to explain what that meant since I realized when he went to Blockbuster, it only rented DVDs.”
12. “I’m a teacher, and there was a book that came with a CD for audio read-aloud. The kid asked me what this was, and I said it was a CD. I was told, ‘What’s a CD?'”
13. “An older man came into the very full breakroom at work and greeted a middle-aged woman named Jane (who he didn’t even know that well) with ‘Jane, you ignorant slut!’ and everybody’s jaws just dropped. He was mortified that everyone was mortified. But no one got his ancient reference to, I guess, at one-time popular a million years ago, SNL sketch? Anyway, human resources was not amused either.”
14. “Several years ago, a coworker in another department named Klarissa [started]. I said to another coworker in my department, ‘Oh, like Clarissa Explains It All.’ She had no clue what I was talking about, and in that moment, I felt ancient.”
15. “I was helping students serve coffee and snacks during a holiday fundraiser when we got overwhelmed by the volume of the demand. After the rush calmed down, I said we were ‘kind of like Lucy and Ethel in the chocolate factory’ for a hot minute. The students just stared at me. Not only had they not seen that episode of I Love Lucy, but they actually had no idea who Lucille Ball was. O-O!”
16. “Having to explain to a 25-year-old coworker what a B-side is.”
17. “I asked my 17-year-old nephew to burn a CD for my mom since her car only has a CD player. He looked at me as if I was crazy and asked, ‘Does she want to have a bonfire? Why does she want to burn CDs?'”
18. “At work, we needed a plumber, but maintenance tried to ‘fix’ it. I said it had been ‘MacGyvered,’ and no one knew what I was talking about.”
19. “Gen X’er here, and I had to explain to my daughter what Gwen Stefani meant by ‘screen my phone calls’ on No Doubt’s ‘Spiderwebs.’ She’s never lived in a world where caller ID hasn’t existed, and I’m pretty positive that she has never seen an answering machine.”
20. “When I was in nursing school last year (2023), our professor mentioned singer T-Boz (from the girl group TLC) being open about having sickle cell anemia. After class, one of my classmates shared with us her confusion as to why our professor mentioned the TV station TLC with our lecture on sickle cell anemia because, at 20, she had no clue who the group TLC was. Just for reference, I’m 32.”
21. “I was at the doctor, and while describing sinus pressure, I told the very young nurse practitioner I see, ‘Sometimes I’ll stand up from the couch and get TV snow in my vision.’ She looked at me blankly. I said, ‘You know, black and white static like on an old TV?’ Nothing. She then called it ‘snowflakes’ the rest of the visit 😂.”
22. “I’m trying to explain to young people that the Netflix series Wednesday is based on The Addams Family. All I got was a blank stare!!! Even tried with the names of the characters… NOTHING.”
23. “My son’s friend was wearing Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars. I told him I liked his Chucks. He politely corrected me and told me they were called Converse [they no longer call them Chucks]. I’ve never felt so old.”
24. “I said something about a new program we started using looking like Napster, and then had to explain to my coworkers what Napster was.”
25. “I recently saw Boys Like Girls in concert, and Tom from the Plain White T’s opened for them. He closed with ‘Hey There Delilah.’ I mentioned to my friend that I think every millennial knows that song. The girls in front of me turned around and said, ‘Not just millennials! Gen Z appreciates classic rock, too!'”
26. “I am Gen X and landed a part-time job. I told a 20-year-old coworker that it provided me with my ‘mad money.’ He had no idea what I meant.”
27. “It had been a long week at work, and the Gen Zs that I work with looked at me funny when I said, ‘TGIF.’ They legitimately didn’t get it. I had never felt so old!”
28. “I mentioned La-Z-Boy, and a 15-year-old boy I teach tried to insist it was a game console. He had to google it to ‘prove me wrong.’ His father and I were mortified.”
29. “A coworker of mine would say, ‘Homie don’t play that,’ and the ‘adults’ would laugh, and the ‘kids’ would look at us like we are nuts. I’m 41, and the youngest of the adults. Then there is a gap and a few under 30 kids.”
30. “I’m a therapist in my mid-40s. I had an initial telephone consultation with a new client who was in their early 20s. We agreed on a future video session, and I told them I would be wearing a headset microphone, a bit like Madonna. Absolute silence.”
31. “I work down the street from our city’s downtown square, where many different festivals take place. Last year, at one festival, there was a ‘Mrs. Roper Parade.’ Out of over 100 people there, only one other woman knew who she was. I have never felt older in my life!”
32. “I was on a trip with some 20-something young people and I mentioned I had thousands of ‘Kodachromes’ from past trips. One asked, ‘What’s a Kodachrome?'”
33. “I was hanging with a younger millennial friend. He said, ‘See you later.’ I replied, ‘Same bat time, same bat channel.’ My friend had no idea what I was referencing.”
34. “I said, ‘You’re killing me, Smalls.’ They responded with, ‘I’m not short.'”
35. “I’m a 4th grade teacher. When I was teaching my students about informational texts, the curriculum suggested I reference a cable guide. When I explained to them what it was, one student raised his hand and said, ‘Why wouldn’t you just put on the shows you like?’ They were all horrified when I explained that streaming didn’t exist back then.”
36. “I teach in a medical school, and over the years, I have made references to Austin Powers and Mini-Me (with the pinky and everything). About a year ago, I started to get blank stares.”
37. And lastly, “Not a reference, but I wrote a note on a Post-It and left it for my assistant. He came up to me later and said he could not read the note I had left on his desk. I quickly apologized for my sometimes less-than-legible handwriting. He told me that was not the issue — it was that he could not read cursive. I was floored. Schools are not teaching D’nealian (cursive) writing in school anymore. How do you learn to sign your name???”
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
