Some weeks you just need a laff.

At first I thought this meme was just shitposting and silliness. Then I looked closer.

Ah yes, pogs.

I will never forget the time that my brother and his friend challenged each other to a six-pack-of-Surge challenge during a Superbowl. (I think they made it to four.) Or the framed Pikachu card I have in my kitchen (yes I’m serious), gifted to me by my brother after he moved on from dominating the Pokemon card came.

Personally, I had a—briefly—a collection of pogs.

My brother is Core Gen Y (he’s younger than me).

I’m Early Gen Y.

I’ve never loved thinking of myself as a Millennial, but I’ve come to terms with it. As a generation, they’re too whiny and short-sighted (at least as described by Boomers) to be something that I wanted to identify myself with. Birth years don’t lie, and no matter how much I hate thinking about myself in that way, my life trajectory is quite Millennial.

The best descriptor I’ve found for myself is “Old Millennial.” There was a time in my life when I didn’t know what the internet was, and I became an adult without owning a cell phone. Most of my childhood was spent reading books or running around in the woods or at ballet class. Growing up, our household was wired—my dad loves computers and we had a lot of PC games—but my first encounter with high-speed internet or AOL messaging was in college. My folks still had dial-up well into my undergraduate days (I would connect to open wifi when I was home for breaks, otherwise my blossoming internet habit tied up the phone line for hours).

Anyway.

I love how memes can convey such depth of truth with such brevity. The best memes refine a complex concept or set of symbols to a very fine point, presented in such an unrefined manner that they demand that your mind do the work of assembling the pieces back together.

That’s why they’re so sticky. The meme only sets the stage.

You still have to do the work.