A wrinkled stretch of beige burlap. Languishing around the edges, a clutch of buttons and patches: a microphone, a mid-1970s handheld video camera, a peace sign, a coffee cup with a face, some green lightning, an American flag. They suggest the handiwork of a magpie after a fruitful attic raid. Or an alien emissary making a sincere effort to human person. Or Google trying to be "lit."

Turns out it's the third option. Alphabet Inc. (GOOG) company Google's report – they call it a "magazine," which is pretty lit – has been floating around for weeks, but mostly escaped notice until Monday. It's entitled "It's Lit: a guide to what teens think is cool" (inconsistent capitalization, like magazines, is lit). It finds that Gen Z adores Google's streaming video service YouTube. Netflix comes a close second, but Google's search engine is right behind it. Vice, despite its warmish reception among millennials, barely beats out the Wall Street Journal as the least lit brand on Gen Z's list. (See also: Netflix Domestic Subscriber Growth to Slow Down: Analyst.)

The report plots Gen Z's (13-17) and young millennials' (18-24) perceptions of 122 brands by awareness and coolness, highlighting some interesting contrasts between the two cohorts. For example, while millennials are in thrall to In-N-Out Burger, Gen Z correctly identifies Chick-Fil-A as the coolest fast food outlet. Gen Z has less enthusiasm for car brands "across the board." They really love Oreos though. In general, unsurprisingly, teens are more willing to condemn something as uncool than millennials, whose answers cluster in an apathetic morass at the upper middle of the graph.

Marketers, parents and other denizens of half-forgotten decades can have plenty of fun digging through these unfamiliar new trends – while experiencing a gratingly familiar barrage of 80s and 90s bubblegum angst. Perhaps Google simply accepted that their audience would know "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," "Saved By the Bell" and "Malcolm in the Middle" better than … whatever kids watch on YouTube. That's why guide books for Japan show pictures of Indiana suburbs and tagine recipes show buckets of KFC. Right?

Pages 19 and 20 sport a cork board with Polaroids thumb-tacked onto it. Immediately afterwards comes an obvious rip-off of the Breakfast Club's VHS cover, complete with a Molly Ringwald look-alike, two jean jackets, a garish sweater, some headache-inducing neon pink and blue geometric nonsense, and wristwatches. Three visible wristwatches. Elsewhere we're treated a windbreaker you might have found, already neglected for years, in a closet circa 1998. And what is unmistakably a PlayStation 2 controller (and another). No shortage of chalkboard doodles, either, in case you wanted to relive the opening credits of every late-80s high school movie with 35-year-old actors.

All this misdirected nostalgia has the effect of making the report difficult to read. The text is lost in splashes of Fresh Prince pinks, yellows, blues and greens. Not that it's any great loss. "To teens," you'll be lit to learn, "Google means having all the information you could ever need at your fingertips." That makes Google "remarkable," Google explains, adding, "Teens also think Google is cool because it is popular (search engine), innovative (self driving cars, glass), creative (Google Doodles and easter eggs) and has good values." It goes on like that.

Of course, despite the time-warped design choices and bald self-promotion, this report provides crucial insight into a generation's brand perceptions, so ignore it at your peril. After all, who knows more about these things than Google, the search Imperium to which seekers of all generations go to find the answers to anything they might want to know? 

Oh wait. This data doesn't come from Google. Instead they commissioned a couple of YouGov polls with a combined sample size in the low thousands. Gutcheck contributed results from open-ended interviews. The rest of the data comes from a CDC study on fast food intake from 2011 to 2012 – before the oldest members of Google's Gen Z sample were teens – and five news pieces. Don't let the underlined blue font fool you. The links are all dead.