Screenshot/TikTok - brittany.xavier
A 36-year-old mother and her 16-year-old daughter have gone viral with a TikTok quiz about technology and trends from the 1990s. After the Gen Z daughter said she did not know key brands and staples of the era — namely AOL, LimeWire, and answering machines — a wave of people flooded the comment section saying it's made them feel old.
In the video, which has been viewed 5.7 million times since it was posted on September 18, mom Brittany Xavier, who has 5.2 million followers, asked her daughter Jadyn, who has 1.2 million, a series of questions.
Brittany told Insider she was inspired to film the video after talking to her husband about VHS tapes, and Jadyn asked what that was.
@brittany.xavier asking my gen z daughter questions about the 90s ???? #genz #millennial #momanddaughter
♬ original sound - Brittany Xavier
"Asking my Gen-Z daughter questions about the '90s," Brittany, who identified herself as an elder millennial, said at the start of the clip.
She first asked if Jadyn knew about Walkmans, the portable Sony audio device that played cassettes. Jadyn guessed that they were walkie-talkies or a video game.
"No," her mom replied.
Brittany asked if Jadyn knew about AOL, the popular email service, or AIM, its instant messaging program. She said she didn't know either of them.
"Bro, what are all these abbreviations? A-I-M? Aim? I don't know," Jadyn said in the clip.
Brittany asked if Jadyn knew why people would add "star 67" to their phone calls — a method to make your number appear anonymous to receivers — and she incorrectly guessed that it meant merging two phone calls.
She also asked her daughter if she had ever heard of LimeWire, the peer-to-peer program often used to trade illegally obtained music files. Brittany explained that she used it to get bootleg music, but Jaydn was confused about what that meant.
"What's bootleg music? Like country?" she asked.
Brittany asked her daughter about a slew of other things, like Pogs (a game of little discs covered with images that were popular in the '90s), burning CDs, and answering machines. She said she didn't know any of it, and she hypothesized that burning a CD for someone meant screwing them over.
Brittany told Insider she thinks Jadyn expected the game would be simple and didn't anticipate being stumped by the questions.
"The language and lingo that I was familiar with growing up really is a thing of the past," Brittany said. "I was truly shocked that she had no clue what bootleg music was. It's never something she's had to experience, music is always easily accessible to her by her apps … it was eye-opening for me that we really have a generational gap," she added.
The comments were filled with responses from people who said the video made them feel tragically old.
"I'm 25 and I feel SO OLD watching this," one person wrote in a comment with over 5,000 likes. "I'm 26 and used to always burn CD's with music from limewire now I feel old," another user said.
Brittany told Insider she was "shocked" by how many people related to feeling old because of the generational technology gap.
Still, some people were in disbelief that Jadyn didn't know any of the subjects of the video. "Bro the ANSWERING MACHINES?!" one person reacted.
Other users who identified as Gen-Z themselves said they grew up knowing these terms and technology, while some shared Jadyn's dubiousness and said this video taught them a lot. One commenter said they're 23, and all they knew from the video was answering machines.
The video was so viral that viewers have asked for a sequel and started suggesting more subjects for Brittany to ask Jadyn about, like MySpace, MapQuest, and Ask Jeeves.
Over the last year, TikTok has been rife with generational discourses. Posters have made clips gesturing at the absurdity of Gen Alpha humor and accused millennials of having a cringe comedy style. Other internet users have coined terms like "millennial gray" to describe a specific but uninspiring aesthetic popularized by the generation.
