Generational stereotyping has become all the rage in the past few years. I am an infrequent visitor to social media but I often see posts comparing how different generations behave in certain situations. The general gist is:

- Boomers are stubborn, bigoted technophobes.

- Gen Xers are rarely featured in the videos I have seen but I imagine are a less extreme version of Boomers.

- Millenials are extremely anxious about everything. I'm not sure what else. More on that below.

- Zoomers are lazy, entitled and terrified of phone calls.

Millenials are interesting because they range from people now in their mid 20s to early 40s. These are people who grew up and lived through the digitisation of our world. Boomers/Gen X are clearly pre-tech while Zoomers are post-tech. Millenials are sort of both, so it's harder to pigeonhole millenials. Lucky me.

Obviously like any stereotype they aren't true for every individual in a certain class, maybe not even the majority. But these are the stereotypes that hold.

The main question I would like to discuss is: Why did general stereotyping become so trendy?

My opinion is that humans love to categorise and generalise. It correctly became unacceptable to stereotype based on race, gender, sexual orientation - even casually - so society has moved onto the next best thing. Thinly-veiled ageism.

It's also a way for teenagers to rage against their Gen X parents on social media, the angsty rebellion may have birthed this whole trend.

Old people have always hated young people... because, they're tired and if Gen Z is anything to go by, young people are awful.

Zoomers have had a field day the last few years, because they love labels and love deflecting accountability.

Zoomers want what Boomers have. But don't understand that Boomers have had 50 years in the workforce, hence why they hold the bulk of power, influence and money. Zoomers failing to accept this simple fact, seem offended by this. In fact, this generation seems to be in a perpetual state of being offended by something. Because it's easier that way, to blame someone else for your problems. Or finding a quasi loose definition to define whatever quirk you have to manipulate the world and the people around you into playing along with your delusions.

It's not all of them, in fact it's probably only a small percentage. But it's this minority that gets the attention of the media and hence why Gen Z have a bad name. Half the articles on Australian news sites come from whingy bitches on TikTok complaining.

With Gen Z you don't know where reality and satire begins. I'd like to think some of it is satire. But it's not. They're painful people. They really are. And despite their constant rambling about how difficult their lives are, not one single previous generation has had it as good as Gen Z has it. The problems they're facing aren't unique to Gen Z, but their response is.

Take it from a Gen Y, who straddles Gen X.. Gen Z needs to lighten the hell up and learn to laugh through the pain like the rest of us. The rest of us are allowed to be awful, because we're tired.. from working and pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps of course.

Oh, and we peaked in the 1990s with Gen X at it height of their influence. That is a fact.

I feel like I have to stick up for the kids a bit here.

Young people are stupid, it's the way of things. They're stupid now, we were stupid when we were that age, our parents were stupid when they were in their 20s. 

What I think happens is, as we get older, we forget how dumb we were and start thinking "if I were them, at that age, this is what I would do" and get upset at them for not doing that, forgetting how many years of life experience are between us and them.

I mean yeah, the kids are camping out at colleges. But do I remember people marching at anti-war events circa 2001, and it doing nothing about Iraq? Absolutely. Do I remember rallies for Bring Back Our Girls, as though a Nigerian militant faction gave two shits about what the West thought of them? So really, who are we to side eye the youth?

And why are the kids so angry? To overgeneralize (I work with some early 20 somethings who bust their butts) they don't see a path to success. The Internet is always full of doomers - Libertarian goldbugs will tell everyone who listens that we are thisclose to economic collapse, the planet is burning and those poor polar bears are stranded on tiny ice cubes, Israel/Palestine/Iran/Saudi Arabia are about to start World War 3, and the beauty and horror of the Internet is that both crackpot and genius voices that otherwise would be drowned out/ignored are given equal weight and the kids are suffering from information overload.

Assuming you're a Xennial as I am, we were absolutely told we were the greatest thing since sliced bread, where the kids these days are not. Millennials kill industries they don't need anymore! How will car companies capture the burgeoning Millennial market, which is set to be the richest? Our employers need to figure out how to cater to us and fight for our patronage as employees, not the other way around! Gen Z has none of that, only the secondhand PTSD of watching their Millennial older siblings go through two once-in-a-century economy crashes, six figures of student debt, a pandemic, and the world perpetually on fire somewhere. It's hard to blame someone for being burned out and jaded.

One of the oldest recorded documents is complaints about the youths.  Can trace that shit back like to 6000BC at least from a fucking Egyptian tomb.  And it all traces back to the same thread of thought, why are the kids not doing what I would do in their place.

Anyone remember being kids and seeing people talk about how not calling black people n- was just political correctness gone crazy?  This current generation is nothing special, just part of the same cycle been seeing all through history of those who want change and those who oppose it.

I don't want to play a game of " whataboutisms "...

All of that is well and good, and the reality is the pandemic is likely the most impactful and significant thing to happen to Gen Z thus far, as they were far too young to remember the global financial crisis or the war on terror and let's be honest, as we sat there sheltered in our homes in front of large TVs as it had been the case for years, for a lot of us neither of those two things meant Jack, and they were merely talking points on breakfast television.

Take the 'greatest generation 'or better put, the silent generation. If you were born in 1900 and lived until the age of 44, you would have experienced two World Wars, a pandemic and the largest crash in history, leading to The Great Depression. Depending also on where you lived, a dust bowl to top it all off. A generation of young men never came home, on top of the horrific treatment of civilian populations throughout both wars, a holocaust included.

Fast forward a few decades, another war or two to round out the first 75 years of the century, a civil rights movement to shake things up and by the 1980s, the beginnings of every major conflict that would eventually lead to 9/11 and beyond.

Things weren't exactly amazing for our grandparent's nor our parent's generations.

To paraphrase Fight Club, and it was very much relevant to Gen X, it's arguably true for Z....

" We're the ugly step children of history fam, no purpose or place, we have no Great war, no Great depression, our great war is an ideological war, our great depression is our lives, we've been all raised by social media to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and influencers and celebrities, but we won't and we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very very triggered. "

The greatest generation thought the boomers were whiny liberals for insisting that black people be allowed to eat with the white people and banning smoking from everywhere.  

I'm not sure what's happening to Jimmy Carr, but the once Black Prince of Comedy is getting very insightful.

As Jimmy Carr eloquently put it, Gen Z (in most nations) do have objectively better living circumstances than any previous generation. They didn't live through massive global conflicts. But that doesn't mean they have no right to complain about anything. If I'm not mistaken the constantly increasing gap between the price of...well, everything, and the relatively stagnant wage growth is a pretty depressing thought, especially since it's not likely to get better any time soon. Buying a nice house is extremely difficult for most Gen Zers, compared to how it was even 10 years ago, never mind generations ago.

The Boomer/Gen X philosophy is "work hard and you'll get what you want", but proportionally speaking, a Gen Z has to work twice as hard to get half of what a Boomer would be able to get 50 years ago. So it's understandable that they are resentful. Yes, a vocal minority of Zoomers take it too far, and make stupid claims like they refuse to work because the system is rigged. That's not helping anyone. But I imagine most Zoomers are "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps", as they saying goes, and doing the best they can.

Gen Z are the absolute worst fucking people in the world.

Home ownership if you're buying into it in 2024 in Australia is something of a double edged sword.

You can borrow big and every night you'll pull into the driveway of a large and/or new home with all the fittings and luxuries and the size that would make the most modest Boomers in 1970 feel like The Clampetts coming to Beverly Hills. But, there's every chance you'll become one of the many complaining about " cost of living " pressures as they continue to mount. But, you'll live in a nice big house, and as long as you can weather the storm, it's yours. But your hip pocket is where it hurts.

Or you buy below your means - which is a foreign concept to many social media driven white collar Gen Zs - so you buy smaller, older or in a less hipper area. There's probably a good chance by doing this, you won't feel the pinch, but there's every likelihood you'll either never be 100% happy with the property and you'll need or want to upgrade eventually as you outgrow it.

But there inlies a point. While it may be easy to discount everything Boomers say because house prices were so low in 1980 and that's enough for Gen Z on TikTok to build their entire argument around - but, they started small.

Expectations have changed dramatically, even over the last 20 years. Keeping up with The Joneses is keeping a generation broke as that is very much part of the problem in addition to the obvious external factors.

May 20, 2024 20:46:55 GMT KJ said:

Gen Z are the absolute worst fucking people in the world.

I know you meant this more tongue and cheek, but just wait until they have kids. :lol:

May 21, 2024 0:41:15 GMT iron maiden said:

May 20, 2024 20:46:55 GMT KJ said:

Gen Z are the absolute worst fucking people in the world.

I know you meant this more tongue and cheek, but just wait until they have kids. :lol:

I imagine with Gen Z's destruction of the English language, by that stage communication will be reduced to a series of non offensive short grunt like noises and eye contact will require written consent.