Just remind yourself that teens bet other teens to do really really stupid and often inane/dangerous things. We were all there. (And sure, not all teens) but a lot have need to be still watched by an adult so they don’t kill themselvs attempting what most adults do. Getting to the point, it isn’t worth any self esteem damage if they call you basic.
Of the list of things I’m struggling with as I’m getting older, this is pretty fuckin low on the list.
Like, I understand the adults in my life as a teenager and why they didn’t really give a shit about what I thought about certain things. I was young and stupid and didn’t know shit about shit.
I was stupid when I was a kid, especially at times, but also I clearly remember situations where I was like 8 and still know to this date that the adults were drastically in the wrong and I was completely right. It was insanely early for me when I learned that adults were wrong as shit sometimes. What took me a very long time to accept though, is that often people do not care if they’re actually wrong, they’re more concerned with feeling/acting right. When you’re a kid especially, these types of people love to steamroll you.
Businesses care very much so they can extract their and their parents’ money from them. Sadly, it’s working very well, fellowkids posts mocking cringy corporate ads are the exception and not the rule.
Despite having been one less than a decade ago, I definitely refuse to keep up with the trends as I feel most of them are either dangerous (tide pod challenge), illegal (property damage in your school bathrooms), absolutely tone-deaf (all those people pretending to have xyz disorder because it’s quirky), or just flat out dumb (think fortnite and such if that’s still even a thing and the slang as well). The slang they use feels like a foreign language and I refuse to learn it just like I did with a lot of slang from my time.
I feel most of them are either dangerous (tide pod challenge)
You say most and then cite only the most overblown, ridiculous example. I haven’t seen a single death actually linked to the tide pod challenge, it was just a meme that a select few idiots took too far and got hospitalized. That happens with literally any popular trend. Don’t forget millennials had plenty of “dangerous” trends (planking, off the top of my head) that the mainstream media blew out of proportion.
illegal (property damage in your school bathrooms)
This has been happening to school bathrooms for a very long time, it just wasn’t on social media prior. I remember a trend in my area of kids fucking up their school bathrooms.
absolutely tone-deaf (all those people pretending to have xyz disorder because it’s quirky)
So millennials didn’t do all sorts of incredibly tone-deaf impressions and jokes back in the day?
or just flat out dumb (think fortnite and such if that’s still even a thing and the slang as well)
“Fortnite dumb” like okay. Fortnite isn’t dumb, it’s just not made for you. I don’t enjoy it, but I love playing it with my nieces and nephews, and while again it’s not my speed, it’s definitely not dumb.
The slang they use feels like a foreign language and I refuse to learn it just like I did with a lot of slang from my time.
If you just hate using slang that doesn’t mean gen z slang is dumb, just means ur a hipster.
There’s plenty of totally enjoyable, innocent gen z trends as well as some obnoxious ones, gen z slang is just an evolution of millennial slang, and gen z are more savvy in some areas and less so in others than millennials. But ofc ppl are gonna see what they want.
absolutely tone-deaf (all those people pretending to have xyz disorder because it’s quirky)
You had me on most of these, but oof
One of the worst things you could do to someone that actually has a disorder is to disregard it because you think their pretending, I’ll give the benefit of the doubt thanks.
I’m mostly referring to the people who actually do fake it. I also tend to give the benefit of the doubt, but I’ve seen various cases online of people actively faking it for clout. People who got called out on their bullshit.
My neighbor’s 13 year old thinks I’m cool as shit because i make them loads of baked goodies. Cakes, cookies, granola, cupcakes, or whatever I’m baking for my weekly challenges.
The teens are correct, I am not cool. To quote Abe Simpson, “I used to be with It, but then they changed what It was. Now what I’m with isn’t It, and what is It is weird and scary to me. It’ll happen to you.”
Now I think I’m slightly younger than Abe was in that scene, but I’m not yet at a place where teenagers are “weird and scary” to me. Juvenoia hasn’t set in yet. I’m definitely out of touch, like I don’t know what bands the kids are listening to these days, slang is starting to leave me behind. But I think I feel okay with the kids these days growing up in their own decade, which a lot of adults seem to struggle with. I’m going to try to hang onto that.
As for their opinion of me? Yeah sure. I’m a 36 year old homeowner that spent my free time last week cutting back my azaleas and canning a year’s supply of homemade jelly. I have a shelf where I keep my carpet cleaning supplies. Any teenager who thinks I’m not cool is pretty much correct. And I’m fine with that.
I like to wonder about how many peers I’ve survived longer than. Like, if we started with 72 Million in the USA, what is my current ranking? I’m shooting for top 90%, but I’m sure there is still a long ways to go. I know I’m probably losing in other score metrics like wealth or contribution to humanity, but I figure there is always time if I don’t smoke or drive home drunk.
Boomers, people who went to Vietnam, people who were in highschool from 1990-1993. Those are my generational distinctions and I truly need no further categorization than this.
Frankly, being seen as uncool by teenagers is a good thing. Modern teenagers think people like Logan Paul are cool (not that we were any better when we were teens, but that just furthers my point)
A lot of teenagers in our age cohort thought that Heidi and Spencer Pratt were cool. Obviously, lots of us didn’t; which I assume is also the case for Zoomers and the Pauls.
But some of them will grow out of the Pauls, some of them won’t. But just as the Pratts, they’ll slowly fade into oblivion as time passes.
Oh I’m not pretending that we were any better when we were teens. I’m not ragging on today’s teens specifically, but teenagers in general, most definitely including us when we were that age lol
Some of us got lucky a lot of our stupid, cringe phase was deleted from the internet during the huge data loss that MySpace had. And people back then weren’t on smartphones screenshooting social media posts to Digg, twitter, et al. All in all, I kind of feel bad for teens now.
Smart phones, social media and their terrible algorithms combined created a perfect storm for the most narcissistic people and traits to really shine in real time.
Back then, you had a camera, had to take out that SD card, load it on the computer. Then go through the photos / videos and slowly and painfully upload them on to a site like Myspace. That or some 250px flip-phone picture was annoying as hell to bring into your PC and upload it. Unless, you had a T-Mobile Sidekick and uploaded that shit via AIM… but I was too poor for that lol
Also back then, at least in my case, and because you had to do all that, you sometimes gave it a bit of thought on whether you should publish something or not. Now it’s just instant and you don’t really think about it.
I do not like that there are factions actually trying to foment generational discord between Millennials and Zoomers. This is another tactic in the corporate-funded class war. Do not fall for it.
As millennials, we were told we weren’t old enough and that we’d understand the nuance of when we got older. We were brushed aside. Well we got older and realized things are even worse than we thought as kids. Now Zoomers complain about much of the same stuff and we cheer them on. Hell yeah, kids, fight the power!
Between people it’s simple jokes; when media runs articles saying that one generation has taken advantage of the other, it isnt. There is absolutely a divisive class war being stoked. You are free to ignore it.
gen z here. I genuinely think most millennials are cool asf. y’all took the brunt of the hate from older generations for us. I just hope we can pay it back somehow in the long run
While I appreciate the sentiment, I honestly think us Millennials just did our time in the barrel and now it’s your turn. My evidence: I use Firefox, by default it congregates a bunch of “news” articles from around the web (via Pocket, I think. Whatever the fuck Pocket is) and here’s a headline from Elle I’m looking at on my other monitor as I type: “Is Gen Z Killing Vintage Fashion?” You are The Demographic now, so there’s going to be about 15 years of exactly that bullshit to roll your eyes at.
Maybe they’ll finally deliver the death blow to golf courses, country clubs, guest rooms, diamonds and other shit we can’t afford… Or would really care to, if we’d have the means.
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