Millennial Pause

Submission 12,602

Part of a series on Internet Slang. [View Related Entries]

About

The Millennial Pause is an internet slang term mostly used by zoomers that refers to the pause that some millennials take before they start to speak after hitting record on their camera to make sure the video is recording. The term was coined in November 2021 by TikToker @nisipisa and spread over the following years on the platform as users pointed out examples of people exhibiting the millennial pause.

Origin

The idea that millennials take a pause before they being to speak in a video has been shared online as early as 2021. For example, on March 1st, 2021, TikToker^[1] @victoriahammett posted a video captioned, "POV: ur watching a millennial's tiktok" where she pretends to start several videos, pausing for a long time before each (shown below, left). The video description reads, "Like why do they pause so long before speaking babe hit record and GO."

Later that year on November 26th, TikToker^[2] @nisipisa stitched a video by Taylor Swift where, before she starts speaking, Swift takes a brief pause. In the video, the TikToker points out the way she pauses and claims it's something that millennials do, writing in the description, "millennial pause (taylor’s version)" and officially coining the phrase. The video gained over 777,000 views in just over a year (shown below).

Spread

The term "millennial pause" spread over the following years, seeing significant interest in mid-2022 as TikTokers posted videos referring to it and showing examples of the pause. On August 6th, 2022, The Atlantic^[3] published an article about the pause. On August 15th, Junkee^[4] reported on it. On September 6th, TikToker^[5] @jimmy_lo_fi posted a video explaining the term and doing an impersonation of it, garnering over 327,000 views in four months (shown below).

On January 18th, 2023, TikToker^[6] @homegirlzay posted a video suggesting that the gen-z equivalent to the millennial pause is the way they place their camera down to record themselves as a video starts, garnering over 1.9 million views in two days (shown below, left). On January 19th, TikToker^[7] @anotherfitnessaccount posted a video asking how she's not supposed to do the pause, asking what gen-z is doing differently, garnering over 327,000 views in a day (shown below, right).