Why is the "Mall" suddenly back in style? 🛍️📈

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]Different people might have different answers to that question, but if we're just looking at what Gen Z is doing, then I think there's really only one answer. [music] Everyone seemingly wants to go back to the early 2000s. Y2K nostalgia is a very real thing. I just read an article in USA Today that said Gen Z is bringing back [music] mall culture, and foot traffic in malls has increased a whole 5% from [music] last year. Then I read another article in Fortune that reported Google searches for Y2K [music] aesthetics have gone up 891% in the past year. [music] And in the article, the author interviews a 19-year-old university student who says, >> [music] >> "I am nostalgic for a time when I was present, when my generation was between 5 and 10, [music] when we were still doing things in the real world." Now, this is actually an important concept for us [music] to key in on. It's called anamoya, and it means longing for a past you never lived. I've talked to a lot of younger people who yearn even further back in the early 2000s [music] to a pre-9/11 world that they obviously never lived in. So, maybe that's what we're trying to rebirth, this dream of the past. Although, I actually think this renaissance is even [music] more vague than that.