When We Were Young Festival Memes Are Already Here
Music

When We Were Young Festival Memes Are Already Here

In a sign that the nostalgia train is finally catching up with Millennials and Gen Z (and that we as a generation are, in fact, getting older), the newly announced emo/ pop punk throwback festival, When We Were Young, is already getting a lot of buzz.

Featuring a lineup that reads like the t-shirt wall in a Hot Topic, the fledgling festival is set to take place later this year in Las Vegas with headliners My Chemical Romance, Paramore, Avril Lavigne, The Used, AFI, Dashboard Confessional, Taking Back Sunday and more. The lineup of emo, pop punk and post-hardcore acts ranges from the peak 2000s to more contemporary artists and the festival announcement immediately triggered a wave of gushing nostalgia from former angsty teenagers who spent their formative years posting angsty poetry on FictionPress and fantasizing about their dream Warped Tour lineups as if they were a fantasy football draft.

Amidst the all the reminiscing about the cringey RAWR xD days, the festival has already drawn its fair share of criticisms from the relatively benign, like the glaring omission of The Killers from an event called "When We Were Young," to concerns over pricing and organizers. Given the current climate surrounding festival safety in the wake of last month's Astroworld tragedy, the fact that Live Nation, the same promoter behind Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits and said ill-fated Travis Scott festival, were also the same people putting on When We Were Young did raise a few alarmed eyebrows.

That said, a generation that grew up on platforms like MySpace, LiveJournal and Tumblr processed the news using the only way they know how: memes.

Photo via Getty/ Naki/ Redferns