Hello friends, if you’re a Zoomer like me (Well maybe, I was born in '96 so I’m either the last Millennial or the first Gen Z) you may have noticed that we’re often the butt of many jokes. “The worst generation of snowflakes ever” or something of that nature. I will admit, we seem a little strange compared to old folks but when you actually take a step back and look at the facts it makes perfect sense.
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Zoomers have dumb language. One of the biggest things Zs get mocked for is lingo: Skibidibop rizz with the gyatt, deadass smh at my goofy ahh uncle. Took me a while to realize it, but when’s it’s not just memespeak the reason there are so many nonsense words floating around now is because big tech and social media has become so ludicrously censor happy that you need to talk like a fucking baby to avoid getting your post flagged for one reason or another. Even saying too many normal words in the “wrong order” is enough to get shadowbanned these days.
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Kids are inside and on their phones too much. What the fuck else are you expecting them to do? Putting aside the 2 year lockdown due to a pandemic, there’s not many options for outside activities. Parks and playgrounds and other things just aren’t safe a lot of the times. Whether it’s animals, shady characters, or the jungle gym being delapidated. Teens can’t go to the malls anymore because they’re all closing and anywhere they gather is immediately swarmed with the cops. Nowadays, you go to any big city and the most happening spot is a McDonald’s or something because at least you can eat and socialize without getting dirty looks.
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Z’s are immature and rely on their parents for everything. I had a professor tell me that a not insignifigant amount of zoomers show up to job interviews with their parents and that’s bad. I’ll admit that everyone needs to grow up eventually but…when did attentive parents become a bad thing? Most older people I know had a bad relationship with their folks or they passed away early, so they were forced to mature sooner. Now this one is purely subjective because I can’t speak for every 20 something and their parents but this just seems like another generational gap that’s caused by shifting social values.
I can go on but I just had to jot all this down. The kids aren’t crazy, you’re just just not noticing how hard they’ve been hit by the downward spiral of the western world.
As a millenial looking in, I think point 2 is due to the fact that you guys have even less wealth as a whole. You can’t afford to do anything besides be on your cellphone and play videogames.
I and many other millenials were lucky enough to be able to go to concerts, clubs, travel, ski, etc. if we came from median income families in the west and went to college. Your gen, whether through the fruits of your own labor or from the support of your standard white/blue collar parents, cannot really afford that.
We were able to blow $200 on a weekend for fun once in a while, but I don’t think most of your gen can do that anymore. Also the same activities are much more expensive these days so it’s more like $350 I imagine.
350 might still be low
Too busy blowing $200 on toilet paper, rice, and cat food every grocery shopping trip.
Maybe, but people have also said this about the new generation since forever.
I don’t know if she was hyperbolizing, but my Ancient Greek professor told us about how in ancient Greece people complained about a new generation lazily writing and reading everything instead of memorizing it. This would be the downfall of memory, performance, and all civilization, so on and so forth.
There is a good post somewhere with articles going back hundreds of years of people complaining that the new generation just ‘doesn’t want to work anymore’ and how ‘no one knows the value of whatever’. It’s honestly always happened. My advice to you as your elder Generation Y’er: Try not to internalize it, Generation Z and Alpha. It’s not you. It’s them approaching their death.
danged kids reacting to material conditions! back in my day we were motivated by pure ideology and that’s the way we liked it!
I had a professor tell me that a not insignifigant amount of zoomers show up to job interviews with their parents
I will never be convinced this happens with any frequency. I remember reading the original story and it screamed bad methodology and interpretation in service of creating another “kids bad” story.
The claim was something like “10% of interviewers reported having a zoomer bring a parent to their interview.”
- What does “bring a parent” mean? If it can be stuff like “got a ride from a parent,” then this is completely meaningless.
- Even if they’re measuring the actual weird thing of having a parent sit in on the conversation part of the interview, the actual incidence could be nowhere near anything significant. Say they surveyed 10 interviewers who did 100 interviews each with zoomers. One person – out of 1000 total zoomer interviews – bringing a parent is now laundered to “10% of interviewers report.”
I’ve had a job interviewer call a tow truck on me because ‘my ride was an eyesore’, so I’d be 100% convinced it means they got a ride from a parent.
Yeah it sounded like bullshit slander honestly. Especially if the kids is like 18 and it’s his first interview, of course his parent or guardian is going to be nearby.
I remember when people were saying that texting and abbreviations like LOL were the end of books and language as we know it.
A lot of this is just old people looking to blame the woes of society on a group they are definitively not part of. Can’t be because of capitalism that people are living with their parents, if that were the case then maybe old people would have to accept some blame.
My view is that every generation has a definining trait (or several) that is result of qualitative development from the development of society, in this case boomers defining trait is having no accountability.
Everything they say about GenZ is also things they said about millenials, of which I am, and which I’m sure they said about Xers and before as well.
Especially going to job interviews with your parents… I actually learned it was super common for Xers to have their parents negotiate everything for them, including jobs. Sometimes they might not even take you to the interview with them lol, at least there’s some progress.
When I was young it was the walkman that was gonna be the ruin of society. You actually had psychologists on TV giving their theories as to how the youth uses the walkman to further alienate themselves from society or whatever. And in the 80s they had the Satanic cults panic lol.
They also said we were lazy, that we wanted everything handed to us, that we didn’t want to work… and the same people that said that 10 years ago are saying that again but against GenZ. 20 years ago we spent too much time on the TV and it was gonna rot our brain, and now kids apparently spend too much time on the phone and it’s gonna melt their eyes lol.
You actually had psychologists on TV giving their theories as to how the youth uses the walkman to further alienate themselves from society or whatever.
Capitalism systematically atomizing society in a coordinated drive to extract profits: I sleep.
Young person listens to music while outside: REAL SHIT.
I teach 16-18 year olds. This group is the hardest working group of teens I’ve ever seen. Well, they have to, the way the job market is going. Also they seem to have the lowest level of bigotry (queerphobia, racism, etc) that I’ve seen. Fuck anybody who’s shitting on this generation.
They’re gonna need PhDs to get a retail job with the way capitalism is unfolding lately
I completely agree with what you’re saying. When I look at my teenage kid’s friends I get optimistic about the future in lots of ways. Kids today are much nicer and better than they were when I (early millennial) was their age.
