Or, how we learned to keep worrying but love the bomb
The generation that is fighting for everything also cares about nothing. At least that’s the impression you’ll get from many of the articles you’ll find on the subject of “Generation Z,” the label applied to those, like me, born around the end of the 90s and later. There is a consensus that our generation is facing (and will continue to face) a whole plethora of seemingly insurmountable challenges, from the looming threat of climate change to the resurgence of fascist and racist ideologies all over the world. However, we are rising to these challenges, and championing those among us that are leading the charge against ignorance, hate, and false information. The names Malala Yousafzai, David Hogg, and, most recently, Greta Thunberg are familiar to much of our generation for their activist work in the fields of female education, gun reform, and climate change, respectively. These “kids” have earned celebrity status precisely because they have stood up for what they believe in and have fought for it tooth and nail.
So why is it that so many of the think-pieces written about our generation scrutinize the fact that we don’t seem to care about anything? A recent Forbes article sought to explain “Why the ‘Z’ in ‘Gen Z’ Means ‘Zombie’,” the New Yorker, in turn, has published many articles exploring the darker aspects of our cultural zeitgeist, from our love of meaningless TikToks to the popularity of the death-centric music of Billie Eilish. And while it is clear that these commentaries can in no way account entirely for the mindset of our generation, the truth that underlies them cannot be denied. We stand at a moment in history where we are fighting for our lives, but at the end of the day, many of us enjoy hanging up our hats, setting down our picket signs and cozying up to a hot cup of nihilism.
Gen Z nihilism is not that of generations’ past. However, thinking about the meaninglessness of existence tends to be accompanied by feelings of despair, but our generation actually seems to find some solace in the collapse of meaning. As the meme above shows, rather than buckle under the weight of a doom-and-gloom ideology, we, Gen Z, prefer to slap on some cool shades, give a thumbs-up, and smile through it. Of course, anyone who adopts this attitude does so with their tongue firmly in cheek. If we were all truly as apathetic as we pretend to be on the internet, events like the March for Our Lives, a student-led gun reform rally that took place in the U.S. last year, would not have yielded a turnout in the millions and spurred a movement that is still going strong today. What we have then is a kind of performed, evenings-and-weekends relationship with not-caring that is used to counterbalance the rest of the time when we are forced to care deeply about anything and everything.
It’s important to remember that Gen Z is still young and talk of them is much younger. The aforementioned <i>Forbes</i> article goes so far as to say that the archetypal Gen Z kid doesn’t even exist yet. The vast majority of Gen Z, it must be said, aren’t even old enough to vote yet, a fact which lends credence to the idea that most of us aren’t fully formed yet either. This way of thinking makes it a lot easier to dismiss our cultural tastes as being “just a phase,” and of all possible phases for an entire generation to go through, half-hearted, comic nihilism fits the teenage stereotype perfectly. This isn’t the only narrative, though, and it fails to account for the precise moment that we as Gen Z are living and coming of age in are unique.
A few of the numerous threats to our generation and the population at large have already been listed, but it’s worth considering the fact that those crises have forced us to grow up quickly. On top of the label of “Generation Z”, this generation has often been called the “Mass Shooting Generation”, a label given to those in the United States born after the 1999 Columbine High School shooting who have grown up with active shooter drills as a regular part of their school experience. Today’s world is not a place where the youngest among us can be sheltered from its harshest realities. If anything, the youngest among us are being forced to confront them head-on in a way that other generations have not had to.
Maybe this cultural aversion to a meaningful existence isn’t a phase then, and maybe it isn’t even a simple distraction. Instead, maybe it’s a defense mechanism. Insurmountable, overwhelming, and impossible are only some of the words used to describe our challenges, and while we’re taking the fight to them anyways, it’s a comfort to think that, should we fail, it never really mattered in the first place. Because if the world is truly coming to an end, which it very well might be, it would be so much easier to cope with if we could assume the cool nonchalance of the man in the meme below, and embrace our deaths with shrugged shoulders:
In the meantime, it’s probably best that we go about the business of fighting for our lives. In time, we might need to put our nihilism to better use, but for now, let the music we listen to, the memes we consume, and our twisted sense of humour confuse the older generations a bit longer.
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