Now that Saiyaara has become a smash hit, and Gen Z is being ridiculed for liking such cringe, let me tell you a story about how Millennials dealt with their hormonal years.
In the summer of 2009, I downloaded a copy of the previous winter’s sleeper hit, the moody romance Twilight (2008), eight times. It was on a boy’s recommendation, so I thought the movie cannot be too sappy—teenage me was still grappling with gender and genre misunderstandings.
I kept playing it on the wrong media player—all I needed was VLC—and deleting it again and again, thinking the fault was in the files. The broadband bill was sky high that month.
That is how Millennials survived their hormonal, puberty-stricken, lovesick teens: by devouring every romcom, gothic romance, doomed lover story they could get their hands on.