This is the third instalment of Drew Austin’s VICE column, MILLENNIAL PAUSE. Read his previous column here and in each issue of VICE Magazine—subscribe here.

It’s better to burn out than to fade away, Neil Young once sang. Today, millennials face a different quandary: Is it better to be remembered as cringe, or forgotten altogether? Never mind how you answer; you probably won’t get to choose. Or worse: You might get both.

In August, a viral tweet that posited “Home” by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros as the “worst song ever made” exploded into a weeks-long internet conversation revolving around a brief clip of the band’s 2010 Tiny Desk performance. It wasn’t just that the song was bad (and maybe it wasn’t even bad) but how it was bad: Why did the singers look that way, and why were

See Full Page