Do youth ever make their own culture? 

I can’t wait for the “Thesis on silly people”

Depression 2.0

FR. I do my damn best to help make our own culture as a generation

God gives his toughest battles to the silliest goobers

We already did

Bellwether

I'd say that's half true, a lot of stuff like music ends up on the radio because of previous gens more than later gens, and growing up with something influences people to associate it with different feelings. It's only more recently with online streaming where younger people can be far choosier and not just have to deal with "Programming", both on TV and on Radio, you don't watch what's on or listen to what's playing, you look it up. That may partially be why Zoomers trend a lot closer to their gen or within their gen than the past generations.

It's not really an argument against the theory as it's well established that children are very impressionable and their experience in early life will reflect on their future life in major ways. This is a completely undisputed fact. Considering the influence of the media, their parents, and their community live in, and almost none of the culture they grow up with is theirs. They have minimal influence. If you're parents raise you in a religion there's a 80% chance you'll adopt that religion long into adulthood, if your parents talk politics you have a 80% chance to adopt their politics even through college and into late life. People don't change as much as people think, they just put on a different mask.

so you're telling me they walk into a space that's been created by someone else and act like they made the rules and destroy whatever they feel like

@@fawnrot No one is saying that.

Yes! Vine definitely fed into the modern meme culture in a big way.

Vine wasn’t really gen Z. Even the oldest ones were like 14 when it was around.

@@666sk8erguy yeah my sister was a millennial on it when i was like 5 but i still can quote a lot of them 🤷🏻‍♀️

@@LilacBadger You were 5 when Vine was popular?? Oh my god am I really that old?

would Vine really be classified as Gen Z though considering its biggest creators are now pushing 30 which makes them late Millennials/ early GenZ

and those that grew up on the 80s and 90s are making the 2020 comedies

20 years is rookie stuff. In the 80's we were watching Warner Bros cartoons from the 40's and 50's. lol

@@rustydowd879 yeah, you may have watched tom and jerry as a kid, but were people 10 years older than you also watching, referencing, and quoting tom and jerry religiously?

@@playerwil , Tom and Jerry were MGM back then. I'm talking about Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Foghorn Leghorn, etc al. If I quoted a Looney Tune, not only would my parents get it, my grandparents would too. WB cartoons were cultural bedrock back then.

I absolutely agree. I remember the day I had to break the news of Spongebob's original creator dying to my peers. It had a profound effect on a lot of us.

​@@rustydowd879 okay boomer u had like 3 tv channels. We have the entire internet and almost every zoomer still knows and understands spongebob references

Exactly this is why I swear I was born too soon.

I'm an Xer, and one of the RU-vid channels I follow are a group of teenagers who just goof around. What surprises me is that all the music in their videos are from the 70s, 80s and 90s. When I was a teenager in the 80s, it would never occur to me listen to 30 to 50 year old popular music. For example, I was 12 years old when Elvis died, and I had never heard of him until then.

@@Alex_Plante I was born in 1990 and listen to 70's, 80's, 90's, 2000's, stuff that my dad listened to and older siblings and cousins listen to. But I don't really listen to stuff from Elvis' era or before. My 10 yo also likes some of that same music. I don't think it's really a generational thing, 70's and 80's just objectively has timeless classics and you happened to be born in a time when they were new.

@@Alex_Plante Its funny because a lot of the huge Marvel movies like Thor and Guardians of the Galaxy have included tons of hits from before the 2000's that now I, as a zoomer, have come to enjoy listening to

I'm thankful because I personally don't enjoy artist like Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, and mumble rap, but I got to explore and discover classic rock and indie music through my high school years despite the prevalence of these artists on the radio. Everyone got to find what they wanted from where they wanted without needing to wait for radio time or pay for records/CDs it's pretty nice

Great comment. I think Memes have become as much of a valid generational cornerstone as other more established media. Perhaps more so, as they burn brightly and quickly into the zeitgeist before disappearing. A year down the track, people not exposed to a particular internet meme are not likely to have any idea what it means, but for people who caught it, it may become a common reference among their peer group in the same way as a hit song or a key TV episode was for their parents generations.

There are some corporations that have hired gen z people to run their TikToks and actually make good memes

​@@trevormoffat4054 great comment as well. i think you make a good point of people forming connections around memes and its quick-paced, segemented culture, and to that extent, I think it is the catalyst to our communal concerns nowadays. friendships seem scarcer than ever and somehow it feels as though we're more fragmented than pre-internet generations

@@tjwestbrk you are certainly correct about the fragmentation of current generations. It’s becoming a common refrain- “More connected, but lonelier than ever before”.

That is such a cool job!

I dead ass said “who tf is that”

I assumed it was just a Canadian show.

I thought that was a s*x move?

hey! go back to breaking dirt blocks!

Franky OTC absolutely ROCKS!!!

I think my lived experience absolutely confirms your thesis. As a member of Gen X I have a literal memory of the point when I realized that there where more good books out there then I would ever be able to consume. However, I did not feel that way about video games or TV or movies or music. I could pretty much count on all my peers consuming roughly the same video games and TV shows etc. as I did. There was some point past 2000 when all of this simply ceased to be true. There was now so many shows (primarily streamed) and movies and musical groups and genres and maybe especially video games that it was impossible to consume any large chunk of the most popular stuff. The culture went from huge swathes generally consuming roughly the same thing to everyone involved in a choose your own adventure based on their tastes and often just luck of the draw about what they happen to find that they like. I recall reading somewhere that Elvis was the first 'super group' musician. Someone that everyone listened to, while U2 was the last super group. Even someone as big as Brittany Spears only ever had a minority as her fan base.

Very true, and Im not sure whether or not to be happy or sad about it. On one hand, there is a lot more out there to enjoy. On the other, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to relate to other people my age. Im only 23 and I’m already starting to feel kind of out of touch. It’s surreal.

As far as being an effect of media saturation that is true. But otherwise the trend is towards global monoculture via globalization. It also seem like subcultures are not what they once were. Previously young people were often divided into somewhat rigid subcultures: jocks, skaters, geeks, gearheads, etc. each with their own standards, tastes and values. Gen Z seems to be drifting away from this and are much more accepting of other people's differences. At least that's how it seems to me here in the States.

I'd like to add that the times when something breaks the standard, it last a much shorter time in cultural memory. For example, everyone I knew was talking about tiger king and squid games and now it's silent. Like bringing up tiger king is cringe or too far in the past

Today is even more of a monoculture. Consuming different media from your neighbor doesn't constitute an entirely new culture. What you're talking about is a change in celebrity culture. More people started favoring microcelebrities.

Still remember the theme song

season 3 sucked tho

​@@Folgemilch21season 3 was the best one I bet you were the one guy that like season 4

It exists now, doesn't it....

What even is is lmao?

Good job man, hope you do well :)

Beautifully said, I wish you all the best ❤

In my early twenties feeling very angsty and like I’m running out of time, this helps a bit

I 100% agree on this, and it's pretty plain to see that most authors throughout history just didn't get good at the craft until they were older and had more experience in the world. Many, if not most of the great authors didn't make it big until their 40s or 50s. Likewise, as JJ pointed out, this applies to writing music, movies, and RU-vid too. We tend to think of actors starting out as young and pretty people, but surprise, basically everyone *playing* a teenager in movies and TV is in their 30s because they're just not good, experienced actors until that stage in their lives. Besides, makeup can fix that anyway. Long story short, 19 year olds are almost always incompetent, inexperienced, and as far from being well-polished as you can get. Mary Shelley being one of the few outliers.

Your best work will probably come to be by your 40s or 50s. That's just how it is, and too many young people don't realize this. Unless you're a musician probably; their best work usually comes out between their mid 20s and mid 30s.

Hey, it took that guy decades to realize children make terrible public figures.

Right? All those words just to say, "Generation is defined by when you're born, culture is defined by adults at that time

Teenagers aren't children. Those old enought to work in menial jobs are old enought to work in cultural jobs. It is like applying Lenin's concept of Proletkult to age instead of class.

@@Ribulose15diphosphat what i dont get is what are we defining as youth, is it just under 18, so 21 isnt young.

@@Ribulose15diphosphat this might come as a shock, but shelf stockers and soundstage cleaners aren't exactly the pioneers of culture

I think that's true, though they often wind up liking stuff that is a product of experiences not their own.

Excellent point!

I like that, the staying power of any group or work is determined by the desire for its presence. Young people thereby dictate the culture by curating what is most relevant to the time period.

In a certain documentary "The Merchants of Cool" they explain that the best demographic to market to are older teens and young adults because they are at an age where they have just the right combination of enough disposable income and little enough sense that they are willing to spend the most money on stupid shit, stupid shit being defined here as "severely marked up novelties whose profit per unit sold is particularly high". Second place is toddlers and kids because they can get their parents to buy even stupider shit by that same definition, but not at nearly the same volume. Difference is that nearly all young kid shit is inane drivel that doesn't become a cultural touchstone unless the gods of irony decide that it is a cultural totem that is celebrated ironically when older, which isn't a lottery of odd interest you should expect to win.

thats a lot of words to say that young people decide what young people like

Yeah it's all very arbitrary. Though in the context of this video, it is helpful in illustrating how old "young" celebs like, say, Justin Timberlake tend to be.

Yeah that was my thought too. The general trend is that kids consume stuff by a bit older people but the hard lines don't make sense.

That’s how I feel as an older gen z. My brother is older than me and was born in 1995, as were most of his friends, so I always felt on the cusp. Not being in high school makes me feel too old to be gen z now…

@@JJMcCullough I would say most of the singers and bands probably are young enough to fit their generations these days. Since record companies specifically want young people. But keep in mind many of them don't write their own music. How much of current music written and produced by record companies? All they want is a face, and someone who can sing halfway decent, although with autotune even that isn't necessary. I would still say older people are running things. Kind of sad.

Plus it's way too US centric. For example a lot of stuff considered part of the 'Millenial' generation were still in effect well into the early 2000s in Europe (eg 90s Cartoon Network shows airing during the mid 2000s). Plus class also has an effect, since people who aren't as well off can't get all of the newest stuff immediately. The whole generation labels just seem really arbitrary and stupid.

I still argue Zillenials (94-99ish) had some of the most unique coming of age experiences because of the phenomenon you described.

To be fair, everyone is “brainwashed”, but for different things for better or worse. That’s what social norms are for. They brainwash you into staying in check with society, which can arguably be a good thing. Anyone, brainwashed or not, will call themselves “not brainwashed”, because we see others’ biases as flawed products of brainwashing but our own biases as virtuous beliefs. It’s the inherent closed mindedness that shuts us off and makes so many generations, from the beginning of human civilization, say “back in my day”. You’re right, it is a “my group is special” projection to say, “we are smart (I’m part of your ‘group’) but the young’uns are brainwashed drones.” I think we should give the younger “gen Z’ers” time to grow into older individuals before harshly judging them before many of them can even read a book-kids are brainwash able. We were too, but we grow out of (hopefully) our younger selves. I’m sure the previous generation could see our bumbling young selves as brainwashed, internet-addicted, spoiled and priveleges fools, too. Remember, just a few hundred years ago, reading books was the “TikTok” of back then that the older generation looked down upon.

I feel like this is why many people prefer micro generations instead. A 5 year span makes more sense to me than a 16 year span.

Yeah I liked the fact my childhood was enhanced by technology not taken over by it.

I’m 15, so one of the youngest gen zs and we probably have more in common with gen alpha - I was admittedly an ipad kid. (i still am) (I don’t have a phone) I definitely feel inbetween-y too. I didn't grow up with any of the TV shows he mentioned, I’ve watched a few episodes maybe, but I just looked it up and I was a baby when the suite life ended. My little brother is 11, so officially gen alpha and he and his friends are actually so adorable. They probably do get too much screen time, but I’m so glad they’re growing up with bluey lol

Suprised to see you here

True

Yeah. I feel like although the previous generation created most of the things we associate with the following generation, the greatness from the people of that past generation were only cemented by the following generation. It's only that those particular individuals were "different" from the others of their older, out-of-touch generation and somehow "understand" the youth, thus accepted as being "one of them" instead. That begs the question, does that person's success become a fruit of the old generation or does the generation that bought the tickets and praised them take credit for their success?

what a great point

The cooks dont care what menu item you choose, so long as you eat their food.

I loled

I loled

I loled

I loled

I lmfaoed

As a millennial I am frequently innundated with millennials who claim to not be millennials for exactly this reason. '87 for me, '82 for my sister, and I know people born in '89 who will fight tooth and nail that they aren't millennials, they're Gen X, according to them. Just, accept your generation for what you've been lumped in with and stop hating on the rest of them, you're part of the statistics being generated for that generation, you may just not see yourself as represented by the image portrayed and reported on.

As somebody born in 2001, I completely agree.

"culture" lol you mean self obsessed narcissism?

I completely agree with your comment about how the "humor" in Gen Z's culture is influenced by the connected and universal nature of the internet. Though what is often overlooked is that this form of humor often involves referencing previous jokes or memes, which can create a sense of absurdity for those who are not familiar with the reference. Dialects, for example, can be viewed as absurd too if people from different parts of the world try to interpret them. The unique linguistic structures and references of dialects can be difficult to understand for those who are not familiar with them. Similarly, in Gen Z's culture, jokes and memes may contain references that are specific to certain online communities and cultures, making them difficult to understand for those who are not part of those communities. I do want to point out that calling it absurd might not be the best way to describe it since it has a negative connotation to it. Instead, calling it abstract or complex might be more appropriate. To neglect any biases it is important to note that this humor is often misunderstood by people of older generations, those who fall out of touch, or those who are not online quite a lot or part of various communities.

@@CrisStan love your response, great points here! An aspect is how quickly trends come and go on the internet when everyone’s constantly online, so layers can be built up extremely quickly which completely divorces jokes from any origin or meaning

@@MythicBricks what a circle jerk we have going on here hahaha

@@MythicBricks Exactly. It becomes more of a game of "remember this," rather than it's funny because it's true. Which I honestly don't mind as long as I get the references. In my mind it also relates to nostalgia, as Gen Z is also known to be the nostalgia generation, that being-- being born with technology at a young age and reminiscing at how primitive and archaic it was. Therefore meaning from memories has a strong effect on what some find funny or not.

"The Man Is Sticking It To The Man" is a real thing. I daresay that even younger people making it big send a distorted image of their world view. About the only one who is 100% honest on his situation is Cr1tikal, since he has always been humble about flaunting his opulence and explained time and time again that he's only allowed to live that lifestyle and invest in people and projects because he rolled really high on the lottery of life. You watch other big shots that are younger than 30 and you'd think they're all self made men or that their influence comes out by their mere existence.

Somebody (a scammer, I think) once said something along the lines of *"if you were younger than a teenager in the 90s, you don't really remember the 90s, you only remember the marketing"* ... and I think that's true for most generations. Everybody starts by consuming passively, then they start to copy and follow, and by the time they finnished creating their own identity it's likely there will be already younger people copying them.

This is also reassuring as a middle-aged person. Nice to know that I may still be able to create something that resonates with youth and I haven't completely missed the boat by not having succeeded at it (well not too much at least, one thing I did was somewhat popular) in my 20s.

Look up Rick Rubin if you've never heard of him. He was an extremely culturally influential figure through the music he helped produce well into middle age.

Same. I’m gonna be 30 in a few years, and I keep thinking that’s the point when I’ll be basically past my prime and no longer “with it”, but honestly, I think I have the rest of my life to make good IPs for society and make a positive impact on the world.

I may be a Zoomer, however I have been working with tech at a young age. My taste for computers is a big part of why I am wanting to major in computer science. (New High school graduate) I’ve spent hundreds of dollars (maybe over a thousand dollars) on special software for my day-to-day use, yet deep down, it’s all just code. I’m already diving into Firefox theme design, as well as a little bit of programming.

as a gen X whose Grandma talked about wind-up cars and the emergence of telephones and then tv, furnaces in homes etc....this tech difference is not new or unique to the last three generations.

I remember reading an article that speculated that as technology and our standards of life continue to improve, the "smart" people will continue to get smarter, while the "dumb" people will get dumber. The writer said this was because as life becomes easier, most people will no longer need to be as savvy and thus grow dumber, while the smart ones will need to become smarter as they become fewer and thus need to be able to sustain the existing tech for the "dumber" majority. Not sure I buy fully into it, but the decline of tech savviness of zoomers and Gen alpha leads me to believe there is some truth in that speculation

@@hardlo7146 I can believe in the Idiocracy theory. Though I'd say it's more that the technology is just a side effect of people getting unused to war and famine in the West or being kept under autocratic governments in the East.

I'm a similar age to them and my cultural 'moment' was in the early to mid 1980s, not even the '70s although I was aware of the more 'mainstream' popular culture in the 1970s, i.e. stuff that was family-friendly and on TV.

This is interesting to read, because while I wasn’t old enough to experience this, I do remember that RU-vid was initially viewed as the kind of site where all you needed to do to make it big was grab a camera and start filming yourself. Even though I only got onto RU-vid in the early 2010s, I still remember many people had that perception until it started to fade away by the late 2010s as RU-vid became more professional, even though even by the early 2010s, there arguably was a fairly large shift away from pure amateur works towards semi-professional individuals that were good at making videos of their chosen genre.

@@Treviisolion And we still think RU-vidrs as more approchable and below cable tv, even though the average RU-vidr is probably just as relevant as many niche cable shows from the 2000s were. Heck, something like G4 was way more niche than many Twitch streamers and RU-vid reviewers.

You could say the same about RU-vid, especially if your around from the start. This platform and it’s influencers and creativity has changed dramatically

@@Treviisolion yea I would say the RU-vid of 2005-2009 was the most authentic.

@@mastersnet18 if only there were still something like this today. I'd probably be all over it!

How do you think the Great Recession in 2008 influenced youth culture? What would youth culture look like if it never happened?

I feel so old. ❤😂

Similarly to the cultural effect of 9/11, I believe the boundary between Gen X and Millennial is the memory of the Challenger shuttle disaster.

Ever read Generations by Strauss/Howe?

in my case, the cutoff is reliant on the collapse of one currently non-existent country. basically, if you sorta heard of it but didn't get the impact of the event when it happened or were born no more than 9 years after it, you're a millennial. if you not only remember it, but have a decent grasp of what this event meant, you're gen x also another thing i'd like to mention is whether you remember life before social media or not. like, i didn't have any accounts before being 14 and i do remember my parents worrying abt me spending too much time on the pc the same way zoomers' parents are worried about their kids and smartphones.

I don't know if it's the nature of teaching middle and high school kids (Australia has grades 7-12 in one secondary school), but I've always managed to surprise and shock my students when I can reference their slang (no cap), or their memes, or their idols, etc, because of course, as their teacher, I'm the nebulous "oLd PeRsOn". As an elder millennial, I've taught baby millenns through to now the oldest alphas. Post-pandemic, I am starting to really feel the difference in my students and I think I can't keep up with the youth culture. What has struck me a lot as a change in the years is how fast the turnover of new memes or slang is in Gen Alpha compared to the Zoomers. Zoomers repeat a phrase or meme ad nauseum for 2-3 years and it'd still be relevant. Now with these alphas? 6 months later you better know that you compliment a kid on their drip and not their fit, etc. I'm seeing a lot of the kids I teach now also reference touchstones that are of my generation - and then I realise of course, my fellow elder millenns are their parents. So it's a real mixed bag of those students who hear a remixed song, thinking it's new, and those who have millennial parents who've played them the original (or at least, the late 90's early 2000s version, because of course not all our music was original either ;) )

What do you make?

I'm interested too lol

Underrated and forgotten show, never even got a dvd release

​@@oaf-77 it actually did, but only in Australia, bizarrely. It's huge over there

the exact divides are bullshit. there definitely is cultural chnge through the decades that affect people growing up at the time. but it's clearly a continuous development, not clear cut new generations. someome born in 2000 has a very different childhood than you. I, born in 1990, still experienced the pre-cellphone (well before they became a standard) and we did not have a PC at home when I was small. so, my early childhood is somewhat close to a lot of people born in the 80ies but later on, when i became a teen, every kid had a cellphone and things changed so, you will have some things in common with people born in 1875 and people born in 1885, but those two will likely already have significantly different experiences to eachother

I think so much of it has to do with economic status too. I was born in 1997, but grew up without much access to the internet and 90% of my entertainment was stuff from the 90s. I relate way more to most people I’ve met who were born in the 80s than anyone I’ve met who was born after 2000. I definitely know same-aged people who grew up on the internet and with cell phones, who are totally into the current Gen-Z trends, but it’s not close to all of them.

generational labels are made by and designed by the powerful and elite.It`s to keep us divided and ignore the real enemies of the average person,the top .1% and they are readily spread about by lazy media because simple labels gneralizing 20 years or so of people is a lot easier then going into so many other things that define people

Think of it more like a continuous spectrum than discrete jumps like that

same to me im from 95 I was 2 years when the zoomers started. Can I even be called millenial? I surely dont see me that way. Im a zoomer

That is a really good point, but I'd argue the overwhelming majority of creators who are currently successful on those platforms are, and the youngest, older Zoomers.

The trends are actually mostly shaped by those who control the algorithms though. That's still the older people with money.

lmao

Im glad someone else had the same thought as me! granted his pants aren't the right color.

Sure but other boomers were born in the 40s and were at the age to be rebellious. I think the whole initial premise is silly.

Eminem in gen x

@@nathanhargenrader645 who else is calling boomers people born in the forties?

@@nathanhargenrader645 I agree.

​@@nathanhargenrader645 if you were born in 1945, the earliest born who could be called a boomer, you'd be 24 in 1969 which is still too young to be leading culture.

Yep and a lot of these "icons" are also less than 10 years older than the youth that they have the ability to influence so it makes perfect sense that, in the case of bands, most of their members were also within 5 to 10 years of each other's ages. Then, those of us who later cuspers that are part of the younger third of these generations usually had siblings or friends who were older and consumed that media, resulting in us doing the same.

I think the premise is based on a false asumption since the Boomer generation was barely participating in youth culture during the 1960s. At the end of this decade the oldest would have been 14 while the youngest were 6, this means a very small portion was even old enough. The decade of teen and late teen boomers is really the 70s when you think about it.

@@Mattdewit I guess the question is who makes up the "youth". There are plenty of folks that act like I'm still "the youth" and I'm nearly 30, married with a kid. I think "the youth" is 10-16 as far as who decides what is hip. To discuss whether the premise is fair you have to agree who participates in "youth culture"

Same

You're a Cusper buddy. Let me guess, first phone was a flip or slide phone?

Blockbuster was around since 2011. You’re gen Z

I really think this is the part that differentiates the said in this video with reality; while it is true that the younger generation is, more often than not, in the side of consumer rather than creator, that does not mean that is passive by any means, and it is made cristal-clear by your comment about the Meme Culture. Culture that needs to be consumed needs it to survive; if you're not consumed you're canceled as a show, broke as an artist, etc. - That means that as consumers, the collective youth played the role of a Judge and Jury, and sometimes even of executioner. Nothing about that is passive, and the younger people furthermore influenced the culture around them by sheer collectivity of their generation, which is a lot more of a correct cultural-decisive aproach to the matter than the individualistic metris of age-groups of point-and-choose artist. While an argument may be made for marketing and publicity and it's impact on consume of differente pieces of cultural-media, the truth is that something may be a succesful business while not being a succesful cultural mark, although success may make it easier, you still need to be referenced, talked about and become part of aesthetics to actually be part of a culture, specially of young culture. While the newer generations have an easier way of showing the scale of cultural success by creating their own meme-images in the Internet, in contrast to the older generations whom satirical media was mostly shown on newspaper and made by people of older generations, it would be neglectful to try and say that the older generations didn't had, in their youth, their own Meme Culture, it was just portrayed in other ways. A bif difference between zoomers and millenials and those before them is that Zoomers and Millenials don't need to portray them in those other ways, they can just grab any electronic device, use Paint MS, and create something that expresses their opinions on the matter. On the other hand, when Boomers or Gen-Xters needed to create a meme they made it by fashion and style, they copied hairstyles, they copied what they found to be "a cool attitude" on TV Characters, they were mimicky of their surrroundings to express themselves and in turn created a paradox of consumerism where, while they couldn't by passive consumers (You literally couldn't, what you consumed made for a ranking for others to create similar content on media or different approachs, it was all risk-gain) they would be passive mirrors of what they consumed, making it seem as if the corporations made by older people where the one deciding what youth-culture was, but were merely creating a product that, if failed, would never become a staple of youth-culture. When you can only send something and hope it lands, are you really the creator of the culture when it is sucessfull? Or are you merely absorbed by others and transformed by interpretations of the youth? If the latter is true, can you really say that you influenced youth, rather than youth influencing you to create by consuming what they wanted? And when you get to that point, who's to say who's leading whom to what? Is your individualistic-self what makes your creation an act of culture, or is the choice of the youth?

there is a severe lack of electric guitars in the mainstream today, it's criminal!

That was about the only time punk was mainstream. And those of us who were elder punks hated it. Yeah, the sound was a throwback to bands like Chelsea, Eddie and the Hotrods, 999, etc. But the closest any pop punk band from that era ever came to mainstream success were the Ramones. Really want to annoy elder punks? Remind them the Sex Pistols were a manufactured boy band.

Nothing encapsulated my youth more than RuneScape videos with Simple Plan playing on the background

​@@Marshtard is being mainstream a good thing, though?

​@@mollieisabellereynolds my tastes are very mainstream, i'm not qualified to answer that ...but anything to remove "shape of you" from the airwaves, yeah

The Gen-Xer's in my cohort were about as much interested in 60s culture as they were 80s. I'm sure a lot of it was aimed at Boomers wanting to relive the good old days, but there are a lot of people my age organically interested in, say, The Doors or Led Zeppelin.

ObZen is still the greatest album ever and it came out in 2008

I was surprised that my 18yo nephew didnt look down on non-current music like it seems that nearly all other generations did. "That's old-people's music; you are not UTD". Instead he was listing to stuff from the 1920s and stuff from previously unknown celebrities from Mongolia, for example, at the same time as listing to the regular radio play. The internet gave him the ability to explore nearly every kind of media from nearly any age and country. Is he a quirky person or is he average of his generation?

​@@skybluskyblueifyas someone who will turn 19 in a few days can confirm its quite normal Ive had convo's with my friends about who their favorite classical composer was the same day as listening to metal with them

Oh yes true. Reagan was born in 1911, making him part of what is termed the "Greatest Generation". Also proves not all in the Greatest Generation were so great. :D

Exactly - my parents are boomers but they didn't have the independence or resources to do anything until the early 80s (after graduating university)

Very true

Yes, but don’t forget- to Zoomers, everyone over 25 is a ‘Boomer’. They aren’t talking about a specific generation.

On top of the labour laws, a lot of teen centric movies and tv shows have sex scenes which would be very not okay to have a minor do. Which I always find weird whenever there’s a scene like that but I’m supposed to believe that these people are 16/17.

Then you have people like Carly Rae Jepsen who is older than Adele. How many of you knew that she was 28 years old when she did call me maybe? It's funny because she was frenchie in Grease Live and was actually 7 years older than when Didi Cohn played Frenchie in the movie version of Grease and we all know how that movie is infamous for all the actors looking too old.

being born in 1983 i am a late gen x-er, not a milenial, milenial is more 1985+ honestly If you left high school / 11th grade before 9/11 is a good idea of when gen-x ends

It's not that it doesn't have defining features, it's just that these things become clearer in hindsight. When the Alpha Gen is the current youth culture, it will be much easier to tell what the defining features of Gen Z really are. ...but that's only if you buy into the way "generations" are generalised in the first place. It's all pretty arbitrary tbh.

@@mollytovxx4181 A somewhat decent way to do it is by key events everyone remembers. For boomers that is JFK getting shot. For Gen X I’d argue that’s 9/11. For millennials it could be 2008 financial crash. My examples may not be perfect but I was talking with my boomer grandparents and it reminded me of my mother talking about 9/11.

@@badart3204 Although this is all pretty dependent on where you grow up as well. The experiences and cultural touchstones of someone born in the 1950's USA won't necessarily be the same as someone born in the exact same year but in Japan instead. Even globally shared events will have a different sort of impact on different groups of people. When people talk about "The Silent Generation", "Millennials", "Zoomers", or the rest, they usually have a fairly western, middle class, and English speaking context in mind. 🤷‍♀️

Part of what you’re describing is that you were at the right age where the traditional cultural gatekeepers were getting destroyed by the internet. The music, tv, and movie industries were not ready for that change.

True, in most cases, the people influencing a generation are from the generation before it, and are maybe a few years older than that generation. Paul McCartney (shown in the thumbnail) was born at the same time as the examples you gave, in the early 1940s before the 1946 cutoff, which would make then Silent Gen rather than Boomers. In the 1960s, Boomers ranged from kids to teenagers, so of course most weren't influencing culture. They really started influencing culture in the 1970s and 80s - think Donna Summer, Prince, Madonna, Michael Jackson, etc., all Boomers. Influencing Boomers isn't the same as being them. But while there is some overlap between generations, the generations in general are defined by specific events and phenomena, and growing up in a certain time period is fundamentally different from being an established adult at that time, even if not far apart in age. I am a Millennial, and I was a young adult when September 11th happened. While some Zoomers were born prior to 9/11, they're too young to have vivid memories of a pre-9/11 world and how much different it was.

Yeah man that sh is depressing. Thats one of the most characteristic problems of our generation. Social media effect.

Just know that where there is one Olivia Rodrigo there are more than a million people that age who are not Olivia Rodrigo. Some people just strike gold and everyone else has to just do their own thing regardless. That is life and you’re not a failure.

Hang in their... Your time will come.

To a certain degree I think this is true, but on the other hand, I think big media defines what youth will like, simply by making the media. Like, because youths can’t choose what is made, only what is consumed, they will end up consuming media and culture that was decided entirely by a previous generation, simply because that is all there is. While there s a degree of choice involved for the young consumer, much greater latitude is exerted by the older producers.

Interesting, I was born in 1992 and hadn't heard of Zack and Cody. But it might just be that, for whatever reason, I never watched Disney Channel. I knew of iCarly only because of parody edits on RU-vid. It was all about Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network for me.

@@gdtyra iCarly actually was on Nickelodeon lol. I suppose everyone has a different experience. I actually specifically remember when iCarly was new, because it was sort of a successor to Drake and Josh, which is a show I would associate more with my own childhood. It's in fact been so long that iCarly has been rebooted with the characters as adults.

@@RunstarHomer oh you're right... I also thought Drake and Josh was Disney because in my mind Nickelodeon didn't do live action shows (although I know they did some in the early 90s/late 80s too). Huh... Maybe I just stopped watching those channels earlier than I thought

I was born in 2002 and by almost all definitions a Gen Z, but I always felt that due to a very late adoption of the internet and a general ignorance of popular media that I am a late millennial/zillennial.

Can you really say it was "by millennials" though? It's true that the kids were voiced by kids, but how much input did they have in the direction of the show? It was created by a guy born in the 50s, and it looks as if most of the writers (that I found in a quick google search) were also born in the 50s and 60s. The animators weren't children (or at least I really hope they weren't...that'd be pretty dark).

@@mollytovxx4181 I thought about clarifying that it was just the actors. I just didn't

@@Bartholomule01 I thought it was worth clarifying since it was a Nickelodeon show, and there were quite a few Nickelodeon shows around that time where kids did have more creative input than acting. I wasn't sure if maybe Hey Arnold also had some contributions from kids on the script (seemed plausible), so I looked into it. Doesn't look like they did. I thought other people might have had a similar thought process to me, so figured I'd leave a comment to save some confusion. Wasn't trying to like... call you out or something pointless like that, so I'm sorry if it looked that way.

22! !? I can't believe you're 1124000727777607680000 years old!

How about Aerosmith in the 90s?

Yeah the revolution was very very televised.

Music when my Zoomer self was zoom zooming around the junior high school was the first (or second I guess, but first mainstream) wave of trap music, and all of what I grew up calling 'conscious' and 'industrial' hip-hop. It has put an imprint into my soul that causes me to feel a compulsion to dress like Tyler the Creator.

AOC is unusual in being a politician with youthful appeal who appeals to people her own age

@@JJMcCullough She seems to be one of the people bridging the gap between her own generation and the younger one regarding politics. Becoming an insider isn't having the same moderating effect it had in generations past.

@@KAPTAINmORGANnWo4eva She represents what you could call the left wing "permanent radicals" whose political alignment doesn't mellow out so much with age, hence they find more connection across generations. It's probably not a position that would ever get her anywhere near the presidency, but it plays well in some very liberal urban areas.