obsession with streamers. I literally cannot wrap my head around the appeal of watching another person that isn't an actual friend play a videogame.

Usually better opinions on current events than people my age

I'd even say that young people today have better opinions on current events than people my age had when they were their age. Most late Gen Xers were always awful about politics, just pure end of history garbage. We're the generation that grew up with AES being replaced by Pizza Hut and shock therapy, and the kids these days grow up with the planet being set on fire by capitalism, so this shouldn't surprise anybody.

Video tutorials.

Just give me some damn written instructions I don't retain anything from watching someone else do it 😣

The kids seem mostly fine. They probably don't understand quite how extraordinary the pressure is on them compared to even just 25 years ago. I'm very concerned about how their math skills are developing, but I think that has something to do with how much schools have fallen apart and/or turned into performance pressure cookers. They're kinder than previous generations, and honestly it's surprising to me that they are because of how fucked society is around them.

I don't get their humor, but I assume it's very funny if you're in the know.

I'm early Gen Z and the thing I kinda dislike is how shameless this generation is.

Anime is a good example. It used to be a niche thing for nerds that you were kinda ashamed of outside of Studio Ghibli, but now it's really mainstream. That's all well and good but then you have some people with hentai stickers on their school laptop. Instead of adopting anime as a medium, we adopted the worst forms of otakuism. Instead of mass adoption tempering the worst aspects, it appears to have emboldened them instead.

I also know some people who go around sfw anime cons and pay women to step on them in public. When I said this was kinda weird, I was the one in the friend group that got flack. Gen Z is more willing to embrace their weird habits but some stuff should be done at home or with private groups.

Honestly, younger people today seem pretty alright. One thing in particular is that is seems bullying in school seems way less tolerated than it was back in the day. I mean, I'm sure lots of bullying still goes on but back in the 90s it was not only pretty brutal and pervasive, but it was generally not seen as something that required intervention and it was "just part of growing up".

One thing I really don't get though - and maybe this is just more a local thing - but it seems like the kids are really into Sublime. I don't get it, I didn't like their music when they were first popular and while they had a hit or two, they weren't anywhere near as popular with my peers than they are today, it seems to me.

I still don't get Twitch or watching people play games. It's just hours of unedited content to me

This isn't new per se, but much more mainstream now: fandom

I love art and there's tons that I'm passionate about but like, the whole "obsessing over a character and writing fanfic and getting into fights over ships, etc." and stuff is a completely alien mindset to me. Don't get it

Saw a group of about 12 bro kids, they were all wearing sandals, pink boat shorts and white button up short-sleeves with the 'Edgar' haircut I've only really seen online prior. Bros have gotten off popped collars and fauxhawks but the update gives the exact same vibe. So I hate that but also hated how those same people dressed when I was younger and just overall just don't like that genre of guy

This is a real issue when I'm single and I need to start putting photos on dating sites, as all pics of me in my phone are me squeezing carrots in my nostrils and similarly goofy things

Unironically would make me more likely to swipe yes.

As somebody who fits best in the zoomer archetype:

Cannot get into ASMR. I've tried. Often its women 20 years younger than me, rubbing their fingernails on hairbrushes. The intentional sounds they make with their lips and fingers are things that would make me want to change seats on a bus.

I really understand this. I'm not massive on ASMR but there are a couple I think do a pretty good job. I gravitate towards the more non-sexual stuff and higher-concept, higher-effort stuff, and tend to avoid anything that's too intimate because it makes me very uncomfortable as an aro.

Instagram. I was maybe the last person to get a smart phone. It was probably 2016. I'm just fully lazy to take photos of stuff. This is a real issue when I'm single and I need to start putting photos on dating sites, as all pics of me in my phone are me squeezing carrots in my nostrils and similarly goofy things.

I also don't use Instagram or really any phone apps like that. I only have a Whatsapp for work. My opinion of TikTok has changed from "I have no idea what's going on there and want nothing to do with it" to "Hm, maybe it actually does have some potential if the US wants to get rid of it" but I still will never download it, just very uninterested.

I feel like I'm an odd zoomer as I don't really use social media beyond Hexbear and checking my twitter for ~10-20 minutes per day for geopolitical news, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a very large minority of zoomers who also not plugged into this stuff and we just find it difficult to find each other because, uh, that would usually require social media nowadays.

Most of the stuff I don't 'get' comes from really good places.

Like, I don't get all the hyper-specific labels for gender and sexuality, but I'm so glad we live in a time where people are able to actually talk about that sort of thing openly.

Same with mental illness. I'm always baffled when young people will just tell yme they have autism or anxiety or ADHD or whatever because when I grew up that sort of thing was so stigmatized you never told anyone. It's a good baffled though. Like, go you for saying that. Don't say it at a job interview, but go you for saying it.

Not really. They're little weirdos, but not much differently than any other generation of little weirdos.

I'll build on your 2nd and 4th ones. I truly do not understand the appeal of the TikTok aesthetic. Vertical video is already really ugly. But now we're doing incredibly bad green screen of a floating head talking at me like I'm holding up the self-checkout line at a grocery store. And then the auto subtitles that I cannot turn off that change colors or some other nonsense rather than focusing on readability that are autogenerated and contain numerous errors (subtitles are very good, but should be VTT or the like files that can be turned on and off so the platform can place them properly on the screen). Then there's just an ugly UI laid over it along with seeing reactions pop up on screen further just making a mess of styles and crowding the screen.

I feel like some old guy that loves paintings seeing these new fangled moving pictures everyone is talking about and not understanding how anyone can willing fry their attention span on them.

Whatever "Roblox" is. Whenever I see or hear about it, it strikes me as some sort of scam or something. I think it's some sort of game engine? But seemingly way more proprietary than any other?

Why the heck do people my age and younger all universally use phones for everything? It sucks.

Just browsing on a phone alone weirds me out. I work in tech, my phone is fairly modern and sizeable, I'm not even that old, but I simply can't get on with it.

• Phones are almost always slow to load, ugh
• 95% of people don't use Firefox + Adblock so it's full of shitty ads and I don't even know how to use the internet with ads anymore
• Touchscreens are never precise enough to touch small buttons (and I have dainty fingers),
• So many sites have a 'mobile-friendly' version that often lacks functionality I need. A big percent of website visits on my phone require me to use 'Desktop mode'.
• Typing into stuff requires the on-screen keyboard, which takes a minimum 40% of the screen, so I can't see and type at the same time.
• Screen tiny.

I do browse on my phone, but holy hell do I hate it. Why does anyone prefer it ever when there's a choice? Is it just because I have a dedicated ergonomic desktop setup? But even then I'd prefer using my laptop on my bed any day of the week before being confined to my phone.

And don't get me started on using any mobile OS other than Lineage. The amount of undisableable notifications makes me cry.

The kids are all right, siri play the Offspring

I know so many younger people who are trendy and hip and wayyy too online, people obsessed with short form content, I guess it stems from twitter? Snapvhat stories, vines, shit you make, is seen once, and then its gone (but theres no privacy involved and meta harvests all the data, and I've seen communities around mr tear themselves apart on fucking instsgram instead of talking to people, wait thats it! these damn kids wont make a phonecall ~my grandchildren wont call me~ sorry dear, what was I saying? lol)

grumble grumble

I've been terminally online since i was 14 but it was out of necessity from being isolated and having no irl people to bond with, it feels like people are doing it deliberately now, I feel for them.

I can't really think of anything aside from TikTok or other short form video scroll thingys. How did this video format become so popular? I try scrolling through tiktok and I can feel my brain melting from how erratic and all over the place all of these videos are.

I am an early 00s baby so I can give you some insight on a couple of those things. First, I like ASMR, but it has to be really specific. There are only a few creators I watch and I only watch specifically sci-fi or medical roleplay. I have no idea why these are the only videos that work for me, but they are. But when they work, they feel great. I get a really relaxing tingly feeling in my head, like when you're a kid and your parent is scratching your head. It's definitely weird but it works for me. I can't explain it.

I use Instagram loads, but only really to look at memes and talk with my friends. I don't post much, and most of my friends don't post much either. My feed is 95% shitposts and 5% cooking videos.

Anime is so popular and moves so fast now, and has so much support, in comparison to the 90s when a lot of it would never get an English dub or sub. There's always gonna be a few popular battle shonen - it used to be Bleach and Naruto, then Attack on Titan, now it's Jujutsu Kaisen and My Hero Academia. But there's also so many seasonal anime that asking someone "do you watch anime" actually doesn't tell you much about their tastes.

I always take my photos and videos in portrait because I guess that's the best way to look at them on a phone. I never turn my phone sideways because it's easier to scroll in portrait.

Also, a lot of people are saying that Gen z are a lot cooler than our predecessor politically. That may be true (idk I wasn't there when you were young), partially because we grew up in a post cold war, post 9/11, post 2008 crash world, but also partially because of the movements which came before us. I would say most young people are very good on LGBT issues specifically, and I think that's in large part thanks to the especially vocal movements of older queer people who came to the forefront as we were growing up. We were more exposed to gay and trans people in a positive light, thanks to a lot of millennials.

You made me realize I haven't really interacted with anyone between 16-30 in a long time.

My nephew is into fortnite and roblox. In my day we played more competitively oriented games like quake or counter strike (I'm young enough that those were a thing) and I don't get the appeal of the newer games.

Nah way man, I'm gonna keep rocking forever, forever, forever...

20-somethings seem to be a lot less into drugs and alcohol which is great, definitely a positive change, but I don’t get it.

1. ASMR as well.
2. Some of the Music, mainly stuff like Semetary. Also the incredibly short songs sometimes throw me a bit.
3. Some of the memes just go over my head so much.

Otherwise I think the kids these days are great. Have learnt so much from them, about drawing boundaries, neurotypes, gender. I am very happy to be the parent of one of these younger humans, they make the best comrades.

I tend to like the young folk and identify with them way more than people my age, not in a creepy way I hope. Probably because I don't have kids and am terminally online. I'm optimistic about everything. I don't think there's anything about younger people I fundamentally don't understand.

I don't get sending huge amounts of money to streamers, but I also don't have huge piles of money to throw around.

I actually like how younger people are going more minimalist in their fashion taste. Lots of reappropriation of stereotypical work clothes, like Dickies pants, overalls, stuff like that. That's a neat trend I've noticed.

I was maybe the last person to get a smart phone. It was probably 2016.

Nope, that's me. Never had one.

Generally I have less problem with the yutes than I do with my own age cohort. Most of my contemporaries have let life and circumstances beat them into submission and now they care about property values and are aghast at the very idea of public transportation. Kill the suburb inside your head, late-30s people!

I honestly can't think of anything off the top of my head. There's plenty that I personally wouldn't indulge in, but just understanding why younger people like a particular trend isn't that hard. If anything, it's older people not understanding a particular trend that makes me baffled. Stuff like not understanding skibidi toilet (it's just gmod + body horror), not understanding Tiktok (if you can understand the appeal of dancing badgers with music being played in the background, you can understand the appeal of Tiktok), not understand streamers (if you can understand why people would football on TV or why people follow celebrity gossip, you can understand streamers). To go over your examples:

1. ASMR: It's just a particular genre of Youtube video. Genres can be quite specific. I personally like the genre of video where you watch a timelapse video of a plant growing from a seed. I think ASMR got popular because you don't have to actually watch the video since it's all audio. So, you can just treat the video like a podcast while doing chores or studying.

2. Instagram: It's just a social media site that grew large enough, and once a social media site is large enough, people will go to it no matter how much of a dumpster fire it is (see Facebook, Reddit, and LinkedIn). I mostly see Instagram as taking the photo part of Facebook and turning that into its own thing. There are people with 10000+ photos on Facebook, so why not create a social media site specifically catering to those people? We already have imageboards like 4chan, so the idea of a social media site centered on images is nothing new.

3. My students' taste in anime: I mean, Azumanga Daioh aired in Japan 5 years before they were born. Like, it predates Lucky Star and K-On. If you showed me those GI Joe cartoons from the 80s when I was a teenager, I would've given you a similar response. It's also an awkward time period where it's too old for me to enjoy as a kid but too new for my parents to enjoy when they're kids. If you showed me The Adams Family or some other boomer show when I was a teen, you would've at least gotten a "oh yeah, my parents showed me these before, and I thought they were pretty cool." There's a decent chance you would get a flash of familiarity if you showed them Transformers or GI Joe since their parents (or at least their dads) probably watched them.

4. Photo and videos done in portrait mode: It's just a stamp of authenticity and immediacy that translates to an aesthetic. Awhile back, there was a trend on Tiktok poking fun at how millennials start videos with this 5 second awkward pause while zoomers start videos by fumbling their phones. Even though they're very different on the surface, they're ultimately both trying to convey the idea that the video isn't edited but something that spontaneously happened. The millennial video has that 5 second pause to communicate that it was done unscripted with a single take, so I have to gather my thoughts for 5 seconds. The zoomer video has the fumble to communicate how I spontaneously wanted to create this video out of the blue. To loop back to portrait mode, if you take out your phone from your pocket, you're already holding it in portrait mode, so shooting the video in portrait mode is to communicate, "oh my God, I just have to shoot the video. I don't have time to flip the phone to portrait mode. I have to shoot it now." Eventually, it just becomes its own aesthetic just like how Unregistered HyperCam 2 became an aesthetic for certain early Youtube videos.