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.
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.
One of my favorite little tidbits is that ancient Roman graffiti is indistinguishable from modern day shitposting.
The entire concept of generations was invented to complain about young people. The only real generational cohort was the post world war 2 baby boom.