6 Major Trends We're Going To Have Trouble Explaining To Our Kids (Photos)

Many members of various generations seem to take an inordinate amount of pride in the traits they think set their age group apart from the others, but Baby Boomers and Millennials have more in common than they'll probably admit.

One of the most obvious similarities is the tendency to list the reasons every other generation is responsible for the world's problems and actively tries to screw you over, but that's far from the only unifying theme.

My personal favorite has to be the inevitable stream of regrettable trends and fads each generation latches onto before moving on and looking back a few decades later in embarrassment.

We might hold our parents accountable for their ill-advised mustaches, multicolored windbreakers and the success of Duran Duran, but in a few years we're going to have to explain our own embarrassing trends to our children.

Here are some speeches you should probably start practicing.

You only have a decade or so before the inevitable occurs.

Selfies

People used to just take pictures of things on their own -- sunsets, skylines, latte art, cats -- but after a while it became harder and harder to differentiate between all of these incredibly generic photos. That's when we decided to start sticking our faces into photographs where they'd traditionally never appeared, and once the forward-facing camera became the norm, it became easier than ever to find the perfect angle to hide your double chin. Some people even bought sticks to call even more attention to themselves in public. If it sounds incredibly narcissistic, that's because it was.

CrossFit, SoulCycle and other exercise trends with random capitalized letters in their names

No one actually enjoys exercising, and people were obsessed with finding out a way to maximize their workout while minimizing the amount they hated themselves while exercising. Everyone had their own idea about what diets and routines were the most effective, and it was virtually impossible to figure out which theories were based in reality versus those that were steeped in pseudoscience. The only reasons trends like these were popular was that people somehow became convinced you can burn even more calories when you never stop talking about working out. It turns out the difference was negligible.

Reality Television

There were two types of reality television: the shows that made you envious of other people's lives and those designed to make you feel so much better about your own. In college, I learned about the dangers of mixing stimulants and depressants when I woke up with my fist stuck in a toilet after making too many mixed drinks with Red Bull. It took the rest of the world a bit longer to realize what they were doing themselves, but we finally figured it out. There's a reason the finale of 'Keeping Up With The Kardashians' was the highest-rated show of all time -- it was the one where they forced the entire family onto a space shuttle to Mars.

Twerking

One word: butts.

Icing

There was a brief period in 2010 when society suddenly decided it was fine to chug an alcoholic beverage anywhere, at any time of the day -- as long as that beverage was a Smirnoff Ice. It was a wonderful time. Sure, it could be kind of embarrassing to have to take a knee in front of everyone, the carbonation usually made your nose hurt and there was nothing worse than having to down an entire bottle of warm Green Apple. But it was also free booze, and drinking at work was not just allowed but encouraged in certain instances. No one was happy to see it die. Some say it never really did.

Planking

Humans tend to do a lot of things on other things. We sit on things. We lie on things. We do parkour on things. The list goes on and on. However, we realized that apart from people who frequently pass out drunk on the floor, almost no one was lying facedown on things. This injustice could not stand. I know what you're thinking: 'Why?' And that's the same question most people had when they heard about it the first time. They usually had about a week before they demanded their friend take a picture of them sucking face with a dirty sidewalk. I can't actually give you an answer. I assume it had something to do with Facebook likes, which we all know were classified as an addictive substance by the FDA seven years ago.