"As a college instructor, I see lots of young people in class who clearly hate being there. They don't feel like they were 'made for school'..."

"... they have no idea what they'll do with their diploma once they graduate, they have no particular interest in the program they're in.... My own son was ... pretty lost, after struggling in studies to be a software developer (constantly at home, alone, in front of a computer), then working in customer support for an insurance company (constantly at home, alone, in front of a computer). It wasn't that he couldn't do the work, but he procrastinated, felt many tasks were pointless, and just wasn't happy. But his dad and I both have PhDs and his sister is an MD, and it seemed he felt he 'should' be in university. Then he found out about an opportunity to train as a baker. 8 months of classes and practice in a very good gov't run program (free), then a month as a trainee at a bakery. He lucked into a popular local artisanal place, very well known for their baguettes, croissants and sourdough. They hired him as soon as he was finished, and he's SO HAPPY there! He's interacting with others all day, he's always on the move and always learning, and can see the results of his work immediately (and eat it too!)...."

From a comment at the NYT, on the article "Mom, Dad, I Want to Be a Welder/Gen Z is increasingly turning to trade schools in hopes of future-proofing their careers against A.I. But getting their parents and peers on board can be a challenge."

"Gabi Drunyte, 21, from the Glasgow area, posted her first video, which opens 'I have no friends,' on TikTok in November."

"It received more than 211,000 views and 20,000 likes. 'A really large flood of people said they were in the same position … and that it was refreshing to see someone be so open because they thought they were alone,' she said. 'The biggest comment that I got was that I gave them a new lease of life, like they were really contemplating things, they felt really, really, really poorly about themselves.' Drunyte explained that after school she gave into being 'a wee bit of a recluse,' feeling that her efforts to socialise were futile. After university, she moved home and worked hybrid jobs. She posts 'day in the life' videos of her doing errands, hikes or solo trips to lochside lodges...."

From "The latest TikTok trend for Gen Z? Admitting you have no friends/Behind the perfect skin routine, delicious meal for one and spotless flat, popular 'living alone diaries' highlight a loneliness epidemic" (London Times).

"Across the country, the ancient tradition of Orthodox Christianity is attracting energetic new adherents, especially among conservative young men."

"They are drawn to what they describe as a more demanding, even difficult, practice of Christianity. Echoing some of the rhetoric of the so-called manosphere, new waves of young converts say Orthodoxy offers them hard truths and affirms their masculinity.... Many of the young Americans new to the pews have been introduced to Orthodoxy by hard-edge influencers on YouTube and other social media platforms.... Orthodoxy 'appeals to the masculine soul,' said Josh Elkins, a student at North Carolina State University who was chatting with other young men.'The Orthodox Church is the only church that really coaches men hard, and says, "This is what you need to do,"' said Mr. Elkins, 20.... Some converts report approvingly that Orthodoxy has a more masculine feel than other traditions. Priests, who must be male and can marry, often have large beards and big families. Orthodoxy asks practitioners to make sacrifices like fasting, rather than offering them emotional contemporary music and therapeutic sermons, which critics describe as the typical evangelical megachurch experience...."

From "Orthodox Church Pews Are Overflowing With Converts/'In the whole history of the Orthodox Church in America, this has never been seen,' a priest said about the surge of young men drawn to the demanding practice of Christianity'" (NYT)(gift link, because there's much more to the article, many photographs, and a torrent of negativity in the comments section).

Typical comments over there: "Wearing gilded robes and kissing gilded books is masculine? Having an imaginary friend that you follow rules for is masculine? These guys are desperate for meaning and will bend over backwards and forwards for it. Anything but actual self reflection and growth." And: "What a sad spectacle. Real Orthodoxy is rooted in actual cultures, like Serbia or Georgia or Armenia, and for good or bad you can find an authentic culture there. What this article describes is a ridiculous Youtube phenomenon."

"The neighborhood has, in recent years, transformed into a fabulous theme park for young women of some privilege to live out their Sex and the City fantasies..."

"... posting and spending their mid-20s away. They all seem to keep impressive workout routines... have no shortage of girlfriends, and juggle busy heterosexual dating schedules. (The boys they consort with tend to be of the fratty variety.) They work in finance, marketing, publicity, tech — often with active social-media accounts on the side. They have seemingly endless disposable income. They are, by all conventional standards, beautiful. Occasionally, they are brunettes. Whatever their political beliefs, their lives seem fairly apolitical; as one 27-year-old lawyer on a walk with her best friend, both wearing identical puffer jackets, succinctly put their collective interests to me one day in April, 'Brunches, coffees, dinners, drinks with your girlfriends — that type of energy.' (They may be more political than they appear: 'You can have a Cartier Love bracelet and still care about immigrant rights,' said one person who lives in the neighborhood.)"

I'm reading "It Must Be Nice to Be a West Village Girl/A new generation has transformed the neighborhood — and reshaped the fantasy of New York City living" (New York Magazine).

For the record: "Sex and the City" was a current TV show from 1994 to 2004. My own West Village experience was long before that: 1976 to 1981.

Back to the article:

Ben Shapiro is disgusted by what may or may not be humor.

 "I don't know whether that's parody or whether that's real," says Ben after watching a TikTok. "Either way, it's the end of our civilization, because some of what this person is saying is absolutely true. Do you think that Gen Z is qualified to defend the country in any serious way — mentally, physically, emotionally? I don't either."

Here's Ben, watching the TikTok:

"Gen Z may like crew socks, but they’ve remained relatively silent on the issue on TikTok, and don’t seem to care..."

"... when asked on other parts of social media. Meanwhile, the most popular TikToks on the trend war are explainer videos and millennials on the defensive. “This country is in a crisis,” wrote menswear writer and commentator Derek Guy on X after a poll from the sportswear company Bennetts revealed 50.3 percent of its voters preferred 'normal' crew socks. Other videos showed Generation Y bravely wearing hidden socks in public, reluctantly wearing taller socks to stay on trend, or, like Spence, creating makeshift ankle socks by folding longer socks under their heels."

I'm reading "Your socks are showing your age/Millennials have cutthroat defenses of their low-cut socks as Gen Z embraces crew socks" (WaPo)(free access link, in case you need pictures).

It's interesting, from my perspective, to watch millennials facing up to a younger generation that regards them as old, especially when the focus is something that — unlike the inevitable decline toward death — is completely trivial — here, the height of the tops of your socks. 

My advice, from the advanced age of 73, is:

"'Following my therapist’s advice, I’m taking a day off tomorrow to recharge my energies to continue giving the best in my sessions. Can we reschedule?'"

"So messaged my 26-year-old spin instructor. When I expressed mild frustration to a twentysomething colleague that our class had been cancelled, she seemed surprised. 'Have you been therapised?' she asked. No, I haven’t, but Gen Z increasingly have. They know how to gatekeep their time, creating boundaries and promoting self-care and are triggered when their feelings have been invalidated or they aren’t given time to heal from toxic relationships...."

Writes Alice Thompson, in "Gen Z need life lessons more than therapy/A sense of purpose and decent careers advice would help youngsters stressed out by global uncertainty and war" (London Times).

She's reading "Bad Therapy: Why The Kids Aren’t Growing Up," a new book by Abigail Shrier (commission earned).

Yesterday, I blogged an excerpt from that book, and I also listened to the Bari Weiss podcast interview with Shrier and am in the middle of Joe Rogan's new episode with Shrier. Here's a excerpt of that:

Shrier is on the move this week, not exactly trashing therapy, but trying awfully hard to cut it down to size. What is the right size though? How much of a role is appropriate? It's not just a matter of the quality of the therapists, for Shrier. She favors working out your own problems, the old-fashioned way, and only resorting to therapy for substantial mental illness.

"They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace. They’re like: 'Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.'"

"Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: 'Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?'"

Said Jodie Foster, quoted in "Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with" (The Guardian).

"By the time the boomers began having kids of their own, in the nineteen-eighties, their countercultural dreams had long since crumbled."

"They had to figure out what new message about the meaning of work to pass on to their children, the so-called millennials (born between 1981 and 1996). In looking for a compromise between corporate conformity, which they still distrusted, and their own failed attempts to reject work altogether, the boomers came up with a clever solution: telling the millennial to seek work that they loved.... The destabilizing impact of the 9/11 and the financial crises that followed cast doubt on the idea that our jobs should be our ultimate source of fulfillment...."

Writes Cal Newport in "The Year in Quiet Quitting/A new generation discovers that it’s hard to balance work with a well-lived life" (The New Yorker).

"But I offered [my daughter] a bit of unsolicited advice, too: Next time you want to skip school, don’t tell your parents. Just go."

"Browse vintage stores, eat your favorite snack (onigiri), lie on your back in Prospect Park and stare at the clouds. Isn’t that the point of skipping school, after all? To sneak around, to steal time and space back from the arbitrary system that enfolds you? To hell with permission! That’s being a teenager — carving out a private life for yourself under the noses of the authority figures who surround you. Sasha said no, she would not be doing that. Not because she’s a Goody Two-shoes but because she’s too lazy to plan the subterfuge...."

Writes Matt Gross, in "Your Kids Can Handle Dangerous Ideas" (NYT).

"They don't know I'm in a New York Times article."

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A post shared by t <3 (@life.is.not.a.soup)

 

I found that via a New York Times article, "Text Memes Are Taking Over Instagram/Fueled by Gen Z, text-heavy meme posts, often paired with nonsensically unrelated pictures, are turning the photo and video app into a destination for written expression." 

“You just post your thoughts,” said Mia Morongell, 20, a creator of the @lifes.a.bender Instagram account, which has amassed over 134,000 followers. “It’s like Twitter, but for Instagram. It’s like a blog where you’re airing personal thoughts and feelings.”...

In one recent post, Tanisha Chetty, 15, who runs the Instagram page @life.is.not.a.soup, posted an image of a mattress in a graffiti-covered room. Overlaid on it was a message, in chunky black-and-white text, which read: “We should care less about mental help. Girl, go insane! You are valid.”

Teens are mocking Lin-Manuel Miranda on TikTok.

Yeah, I know, Trump is making noise about ending TikTok, so maybe the Trump hating Broadway rapper will be saved by a man he loathes, but it's interesting that the new generation — Generation Z — has a new point of view, and, for them Lin-Manuel Miranda is not a brilliant and completely hip visionary. He's a figure of fun.

New York Magazine explains:

And it’s not just one meme but a variety of them: The most prevalent is the lip-biting meme, which involves mocking the endless stream of selfies Miranda has taken wherein he gazes foppishly at the camera while chewing his lip. There’s also a bit of audio floating around of Miranda reading an erotic excerpt from The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao which has become fodder for endless derision — one teen superimposed themself cringing over a series of lip-biting selfies, nearly vomiting when Miranda accentuates the word “clit.” Another popular video is just a clip of Miranda, tousle-haired and lying in bed, telling the viewer “I’m clutching my balls because they’re warm” — no commentary needed. And, of course, there are the endless parodies of him rapping.

The last 3 links in that paragraph all go to TikTok — so click them while they still work. They're all very funny.

The New York Magazine article relies heavily on this Rolling Stone article, "Why Gen Z Turned on Lin-Manuel Miranda/Teens on TikTok have begun mercilessly mocking the Pulitzer Prize-winning Hamilton playwright."

Both articles try to figure out if the Gen Z kids are targeting Miranda because "Hamilton" is insufficiently woke, in that it doesn't deal with slavery and Native Americans and the female characters are all about wanting to have sex with the character Miranda played on stage, Alexander Hamilton. The TikTok stuff is silly, though. Laughing at “I’m clutching my balls because they’re warm” has nothing to do with a desire for more wokeness. That video is, fittingly, about going to sleep and, perhaps, a man's vanity in thinking people want to watch him get into his sleeping position.

Remarks overheard at sunrise offer insight into the mind of Generation Z.

I wasn't trying to eavesdrop, but I couldn't help hearing when one of the 5 teenage girls suddenly asked:

"Does anyone know what's wrong with TikTok? I'm only getting videos that I don't want to see."

I didn't notice the rest of the conversation. I, like them, was waiting for the sun to appear. But then one remark stood out, and I believe it was a critique of a short video, not of the sunrise:

"The beginning was kind of anti-climactic."

At the official sunrise time — 5:46 — they all picked up their things and left, though the sun had yet to appear:



I stayed around for another 5 minutes, at which point it looked like this:



The beginning was a little anti-climactic.

Does anyone know what's wrong with the sunrise? This wasn't the one I wanted to come up in my feed.

"Jenzeers."

I turned on the car radio and CNN was talking about "Jenzeers." Jenzeers, in the aftermath of the coronavirus lockdown, were going to decide whether to abandon New York City and leave it hurting for population and economic vigor.

Jenzeers... Jenzeers... who the hell are Jenzeers?

"The enthusiasm of Ms. Eilish’s devotees denotes a striking turnabout, a new generation’s rejection of the flirty babe aesthetic embodied by contemporary idols like Ariana Grande..."

"... in favor of something more crazily improvised and less strenuously sexual. At 18, [Billie] Eilish, who often goes without makeup, favors a pastiche of outsize 1980s and ’90s hip-hop and skater looks. That look speaks assertively to a Gen Z crowd chary of artifice and aggressive displays of sensuality. 'Her look is not about vanity,' said Lucie Greene, a trend forecaster and brand strategist. 'She is flipping the idea of beauty to something surreal, something influenced by gaming and the cyberculture. These are not the filtered images of millennials'....Her style resonates, [Amanda Petrusich wrote in The New Yorker], 'in a cultural moment when we are all trying very hard to sort out real people from the ones who are merely savvy and ambitious enough to know the right way to curate and present an authentic-seeming vibe.'"

From "Billie Eilish: Gen Z’s Outrageous Fashion Role Model/The Grammy-winning artist is reinventing conventional notions of femininity" by Ruth La Ferla (NYT).

I'm glad these kids today are "chary of artifice and aggressive displays of sensuality" (as the NYT puts it).

I like seeing Generation Z rise up and challenge the millennials. Time for millennials to see younger people not enjoying them. It's one thing to feel the older generation's criticism, quite another to have the criticism coming from the new people.

ADDED: "I've never been to school. I grew up homeschooled, stayed homeschooled, never was not homeschooled," said Billie Eilish, quoted in Reason, in "Sibling Grammy Winners Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell Praise Homeschooling."

A tabletop demonstration of the difference between Baby Boomers and Gen Z.

Have you noticed that the term "Boomer" is now being used to refer to anyone at all old, including (at least) Gen Xers?

I was alerted to this evolution of language by this Tik Tok I saw yesterday:



I was reminded of that today when I saw this article in the NYT, "‘OK Boomer’ Marks the End of Friendly Generational Relations/Now it’s war: Gen Z has finally snapped over climate change and financial inequality." Generation Z has snapped and they've got a catchphrase "OK Boomer"...

Teens say “ok boomer" is the perfect response because it’s blasé but cutting. It’s the digital equivalent of an eye roll. And because boomers so frequently refer to younger generations as “snowflakes,” a few teenagers said, it’s particularly hilarious to watch them freak out about the phrase....

But that's not about just us official Baby Boomers, born before 1965. That's about way more older people, people born in the late 60s, the 70s, and maybe even the 80s.

In the end, boomer is just a state of mind. Mr. Williams said anyone can be a boomer — with the right attitude. “You don’t like change, you don’t understand new things especially related to technology, you don’t understand equality,” he said. “Being a boomer is just having that attitude, it can apply to whoever is bitter toward change.”

Anyone can be a boomer — with the right attitude.  "Boomer" is coming to mean something like "oldie." It's a taunt directed at the older generation, and these Gen Z people are probably thinking — as the Tik Tokker points out — more of Gen Xers. Their parents, not their grandparents.

If you look up "boomer" in Urban Dictionary, you'll see definitions that take account of this change in meaning. The second-highest-rated definition is:

A slang term for old farts who hate Millenials [sic] and act politically correct to get back at them.

Third-highest-rated:

A person over the age of 30 that likes 80s Rock and Monster Energy Zero Ultra, that wants things to go back to the way they were.

That's clearly Gen X (or even millennials).

Fourth-highest-rated is a long list, so I'll put it on page 2, but it comes right out and says you don't have to be in the "Baby Boom generation" to be called a "Boomer":

"I wouldn’t put it 'the world is falling apart' phase yet. But the trend that we see is really concerning, and it’s consistent among all demographic groups."

Said an expert on consumer sentiment, quoted at The Hill in an article about how people aren't spending so much money on Halloween anymore. Halloween is not a necessity, so willingness to spend on it is some indication of how wealthy people feel and also how wealthy they want to look: "Halloween is the expenditure-visibility holiday."

But, come on, it's just Halloween. Halloween had become stupidly important to adults in recent years.  I'm hoping the change isn't about consumer confidence generally but cultural change. Maybe the new adults — Generation Z — will look on Halloween as something that only an embarrassingly old adult would get excited about. When I was a young adult, Halloween was a children's holiday, but then adults younger than I am got enmeshed in Halloweenery. Now those adults are old and there are younger adults. Perhaps the pendulum is swinging back. The things your parents did tend to look out-of-date and awkward, so you may find your way back to your grandparents' attitude.

Imagine being in your 20s now and having grown up with a mother who dressed up as "sexy [whatever]" every Halloween. You might think I'll get some candy in case any kids come around. That would be what your grandparents probably did.

The joke is good, but what it jumps off of — intended as dead serious (I think!) — is funnier.

you know gen z is getting older when they’re selling alcoholic tide pods https://t.co/rJ0RBMRDYu

— jabookie (@jaboukie) October 5, 2019

"After years of neglect and boomer dominance in popular culture, someone had finally noticed us, in the sweetest way... 'Friends' was comfy, adorable, yet sharp."

"The hate-watch became a secret pleasure and, soon enough, we all had their haircuts... What nobody could have envisioned in the 1990s was the way children in the 2010s and '20s — born after 'Friends" first started to wear off — would form their own fixation on the show... My nearest frame of reference to this sort of cultural inertia would have to be 'The Brady Bunch,' the 1970s sitcom that, in reruns and brief revivals, acted as Gen X’s security blanket.... Irony was the key to it all.... But irony seems to have no place when it comes to the nonstop streaming of 'Friends'... [It is] slavishly re-watched with what appears to be an authentic and uncomplicated sincerity. Nobody watches [it] to make fun of the clothes or mock the message.... 'Friends'... acts as a soothing gateway to a time when people aren’t constantly looking at their phones. They sit on their Central Perk sofas and just talk, maintaining eye-contact. They listen to one another. They hilariously relate, in a constant state of mutual care. Their idea of stress is almost touchingly benign. No wonder people still want to hang out with them.... As the 'Friends' theme song goes, 'I’ll be there for you.' But those words referred to the bond among its characters. They were not an eternal promise to generations yet to come, and they should not have to be your friends forever. Let television take you somewhere, anywhere, everywhere else."

From "Do you really want to live in a world where ‘Friends’ and ‘The Office’ are TV’s most valuable shows?" by Hank Stuever, the WaPo TV critic.

Stuever is over 50, a Gen Xer. He thinks irony is key and these kids today are making a big mistake longing for sincerity and friendship. Something a quarter century old feels too "eternal" for him, and whoever wrote the headline for his column turned his dictate — "Let television take you somewhere, anywhere, everywhere else" — into a question — "Do you really want to live in a world where ‘Friends’ and ‘The Office’ are TV’s most valuable shows?" The market always answers that question. These shows are phenomenally valuable commercially. "Valuable" isn't really what's nagging at Stuever. He's objecting to the feelings and longings of younger people. They're not thinking right. The question — if you want to rephrase Stuever's opinion as a question — should be:  "Do you really want to live in a world where ‘Friends’ and ‘The Office’ are TV’s most emotionally rewarding shows?" And then it becomes easy to see that it makes little sense to tell young people to watch something else on television. The problem is in the real world, which is wearing on people in such a way that "Friends" feels restorative.