The time has come for a passing of the torch, and I couldn’t be more relieved: No longer must my viciously stereotyped age cohort — the so-called “millennials,” those born between the early Eighties and mid-Nineties — bear responsibility for the relentless flow of societal change. For while the 2010s saw a ridiculous parade of clickbait headlines built on the basic formula “How Millennials Killed [Thing],” that era is quickly fading. Today, the oldest members of Gen Z are in their mid-twenties, and any shock to our collective consciousness is reliably their fault.
Studios are blaming Gen Z for the “death” of TV. Gen Z is on track to “kill” middle management. Zoomers have supposedly stopped wearing mascara, ditched the dating apps, don’t want to drive cars, and have been eradicating bars and clubs with their stubborn sobriety, perhaps leading us toward the “extinction” of the big, sloppy night out. How could they? It’s a massacre unlike any we’ve seen since, well, the generation before.
Previously, millennials stood accused of murdering everything from business dress codes and hotels to marriage and American cheese — stuff that you may have noticed is all very much still around. It’s almost as if all the hand-wringing about young adults wrecking cultural norms is more like panic from different corporate industries taking a modest hit to their bottom line thanks to an overall shift in public opinion or priorities. But don’t think too hard about that.
Besides, legacy media needs these narratives, too. Take the venerable New York Post, for instance, currently the leading publisher of horrified Gen Z generalizations. To hear this newspaper tell it, zoomers are too scared to use the bathroom at work, refuse to send emails, reject wine as an “elitist” beverage, and — wouldn’t you know it — have never heard of happy hour. The choice to blame these thinly documented trends on bad parenting, the radical left, or TikTok addiction is entirely up to the reader, of course, and that’s what keeps the stories coming: Whenever you learn that the next generation is living somehow incorrectly (differently, that is), you have another chance to pathologize them however you prefer.
It’s a cynical business, there’s no denying that. Yet perhaps the original, enduring impulse that gave us habitual millennial-shaming, which has lately given way to 24/7 zoomer-shaming, represents a kind of honest concern. We, as a species, feel protective of the relatively inexperienced junior set, and when they seem not to understand or care what it takes to maintain the status quo to which the elders have grown accustomed, we freak the fuck out. Look at what they’re doing! Surely they’ll never make it in the real world that way!
Sure they will. The real world kept on spinning when millennials started texting “here” instead of ringing doorbells, and remained on its axis as the same demographic collectively decided they weren’t really into golf. The doomsaying articles on these purported crises became altogether quaint in their predictability, nothing more than a template for that most reproducible millennial artifact: a meme. Saddled with student loan debt and extra roommates, this group found humor in the idea that they should wield such negative influence over the economy, and they reveled in their latest “kills,” each an irony of limited purchasing power.
Memes are no more immortal than casual dining chains (another victim of millennial indifference), and I must admit I’m already nostalgic for a decade that saw my peers described as inveterate navel-gazers who would rather feast on avocado toast than apply for a mortgage. Truly, it went by in the blink of an eye. Old fart that I am, I don’t quite know if Gen Z is annoyed or amused to have inherited this particular generational burden, though I hope they lean into grim reaper status — because there is no room for growth without the cull, no progress without a cleared path.
My advice, not that self-respecting zoomers asked for it: You won’t get points for bowing to the standards of consumption, labor, appearance, and ambition currently in place, so you might as well not try. The worst people in the world are mad about pronouns, so you absolutely can’t give them up. Don’t just give the hack commentators an angle for criticism based on a couple of hazy anecdotes — troll them into writing even dumber columns. It took a while for millennials to recognize the absurdity of the hit-pieces on us, whereas the Daily Mail warning that Gen Z has declared war on ordinary sandwiches, preferring “fancy woke fillings,” is unmistakable hysteria. There’s no telling what insanity you can trick these dolts into publishing.
At the very least, enjoy your moment in the sun. Millennials are headed into grumpy middle age, and more than a few will be leveling broad, baseless accusations at you. It’s simple jealousy, the eternal desire for eternal youth, that singular importance and attention. Before you know it, you’ll have opinions on what’s wrong with Gen Alpha, and the torch will pass again — in one of those rare traditions that evidently cannot die, no matter how history speeds along.