Much ink has been spilled about how Gen Z, especially members of Gen Z who spend much of their days online, seem to be riddled with social anxiety, are unable to handle any discomfort in both their personal and work lives, have zero desire to step outside their comfort zones even when it's necessary, will literally buffer instead of exercising emotional regulation, and should you disagree with them, or create content or art that rattles them, you're not merely wrong, you're downright evil and must atone.
To many Gen Xers and Millennials, this feels oddly familiar. In many ways, this is how the Boomer generation has operated for decades. As the Boomers grew up, no one gave them any real justifications, only instructions. This is just how the world works, they were told, and now echo this sentiment when challenged on their views. Should you challenge them too much, you will get the "lead paint stare." And if you disagree with them, or create something they find unsettling, you're downright evil.
So, if you've ever wondered why so many corners of the internet have taken to calling Gen Z's, especially those who tend to be the most dramatic and to demand that the rest of society caters to their emotional states and personal views Zoomers, now you know. It's kind of a fascinating phenomenon that two generations that seem to have nothing in common and are constantly at each other's throats developed the same quirks and personality traits through radically different means.
Boomers grew up in an unforgiving, conformist monoculture. They largely watched the same shows, listened to the same music, and got the same news, mostly because there were only so many choices available to them. Zoomers, on the other hand, often grew up with infinite choices of 1,000 channel cable and high speed broadband internet, all while rapidly maturing recommendation algorithms catered the entire world to their personal whims.
In the heyday of the Boomers, they were told that they were not special and the world won't change for them. Today, in the golden era of the Zoomers, they're treated like the main characters of reality. Boomers' rebellions? Just a childish phase that will pass when they grow up. Zoomers' protests at any scale? Just, objectively moral, and long overdue. Boomers have always done things this way, but Zoomers don't have to listen to anyone, much less "put on an emotional performance for you," hence the icy blank stare.
Now, obviously, these are all fairly broad generalizations since I'm talking about entire generations and not individuals, and I'm sure that you, the Boomer or the Zoomer who are currently reading this have never done anything like this, and none of this applies to you. Yet there are millions upon millions who do fit some, if not all of these points, and why they are the way they are matters greatly in culture, education, and politics.
Which brings us right back to the question of why these generations are so oddly alike despite being raised so differently. And the only answer I can think of is going to sound very obstinate to Boomers and violently offensive to Zoomers. But then again, I should note that I'm a Millennial, which basically means that it's my job to tick both groups off by my very existence, so screw it, I'mma go for it.
Both generational cultures are authoritarian in principle. Boomers explode with rage and indignant tirades when someone either doesn't follow or criticizes The Way Things Work™ because it makes them uneasy. Zoomers will rage at those who make them feel uneasy because their bubble of comfort and confirmation bias was poked, urging for boycotts and social media campaigns against the evildoer. And both generations do it because they seem to lack emotional resilience and the patience to sit with problems and take in challenging ideas that clash with their worldviews.
This was not supposed to happen, especially with the advent of the internet and social media. We were supposed to be exposed to so many opinions and ideas, so many ways of thinking and doing, that our minds would be wide open. Well, not so open that they would fall out, but to give others the benefit of the doubt. To discuss things which used to be taboo to question in good faith. Yet, a generation that grew up on social media is recoiling into full blown regressive thought policing. What gives? Well, our brains and a spiderweb of overbearing algorithms do.
There have been studies showing that being confronted with profoundly new and very different ideas and data can cause very literal physical discomfort, and it seems that both Boomers and Zoomers feel that discomfort and go on full alert, equating states of emotional uneasiness and expending mental effort with a full blown attack. I'll bet that just this dissection is deeply emotionally triggering for some of them, and I'm going to get roasted in the group chats. But that doesn't change the underlying issue, or what other generations see on a daily basis.
For Boomers, it seems impossible to accept that entry level jobs are going to LLMs, not well dressed youth with moxie and a firm handshake walking in with a resume, that a starter home is between $350,000 and $750,000 depending on the area, and instead of promotions for extra work, the new norm is layoffs and overload until burnout, as tasks just keep being reallocated among surviving employees. This is not how things have been done in their day. Only the lazy and stupid can't thrive, and if their kids are doing worse then they are, it must mean they raised dumb, lazy kids, which is impossible.
As they were growing up, they were given a roadmap in life. They stuck to it and were largely successful as a generation. Every time they felt lost or in a rut, they had The Way Things Work™ to guide them on what to do next. Yes, they had to show up and put in the work, but the social structure of the day rewarded their presenteeism and if you did all the things you were told, you were more or less taken care of. When confronted with a world where none of this works, their sage advice is irrelevant, and it's largely thanks to their votes, their minds reject the very idea, often with rage and fury because they no longer have easy answers after a lifetime full of them.
For Zoomers, clicking the thumbs down button, blocking, and joining big social media dogpiles for the dopamine hit became the norm in their formative years. By their early 20s, many seemed to have completely given up on controlling their media diets and adopted the "let the algorithm wash over me" attitude despite also being fully aware that it's not good for them. Even worse, far too many popular Gen Z influencers trying to game the algorithm adopted a distinctly moralistic black and white tone about just about every issue because that's what gets them positive attention and makes a loud, messy world full of thorny nuances so much easier to deal with.
As a result, Zoomer discourse too often seems to be about what they don't like or what they're against than what they're actually into because the author of their favorite book might be "problematic" and having the wrong hobby or interest and getting really into it in public is "performative" and "cringe." On the other hand, righteous indignation on the topic of the day? Bet. Go off non-binary monarch. And since this is so rewarded by social media and give the authors a rush of power – which is something they tend to have little off in their day to day offline life – a lot of Zoomers tend to enjoy these mass drive by cancellation bandwagons.
Just like Boomers grew up in an overbearing monoculture in which not fitting into the binaries came with serious social consequences, Zoomers also face constant scrutiny, and standing out too much, or aligning with the wrong take brings furious backlash. Boomers became pariahs and got blackballed from jobs and social clubs. Zoomers are branded toxic and cancelled. Both cast people aside to avoid the mental discomfort of the world not cooperating with one's idealized version of it, and to avoid doing the hard work of expanding one's horizons. Different terminology, same motivation, but more or less the same mechanism to force compliance.
And this is especially disconcerting as Zoomer voices get louder and louder in culture and politics. The alarm isn't whether they're right or not, or if they disagree with those around them. Debate is healthy and societies often change once mainstream views. No, the problem is that just like Boomers, the Zoomers all too often can't deal with different views in healthy ways. Their ban and block strategies of curating their social media have spread into their face to face interactions.
Politics is very literally a popularity contest. You can't simply barge in, declare yourself to be the one objectively correct, morally superior voting bloc and say that everyone has to get in line or they're just evil, leaving even allies who agree with you on 95% of everything you said with a foul taste in their mouths. You also can't dismiss them with furious grandstanding, conspiracy theories, and performative moralism. You can block or outshout people on social media and dismiss their concerns as "toxic gaslighting," or your favorite therapy-speak. You can't do it face to face because other people still have agency outside of apps and likes.
The same dynamic applies to books, movies, and music. Gen Z has entered that highly lucrative 18 to 35 pop culture demo and so a lot of entertainment tries to cater to them because media companies, like Mr. Krabs, like money. But it's no longer enough that a TV show, or a book, or an album is good. The artists have to have the right politics. If they haven't offered an opinion on their favorite topic, they're automatically assumed to be hiding the incorrect one. And the work better offer not just social commentary, but the right kind of social commentary.
All that said, I can understand not wanting your money to go into the pockets of people that you find loathsome, especially if they pivot to using that wealth to cause harm and harassment. JK Rowling in 1998 was an author who inspired an entire generation kids to read 600 page books for fun and teach them about resilience and friendship. JK Rowling of 2026 is an obnoxious bigot who is so obsessed with others' genitals, even Elon Musk once begged her to post about literally anything else for a change.
But cases like JK Rowling are an extreme, in no small part because she kept on doubling down at every turn. Meanwhile, TikTok and Instagram keep sharing lists of "problematic authors" many of whom you've probably never heard of for one questionable post, or even without elaboration. Some new authors even had their debut novels pulled thanks to ending up on one of these lists. There is no degree of offense, just the accusation of an offense is enough.
So, it's not just the Boomer culture wars we need to worry about. Zoomers have their very own culture wars to wage. On the Boomer end, there are way too many of "those people" in our media these days, by which they mean those who don't conform to their normal with their clothing, or speech, or yes, skin color and sexual orientation. In the Zoomer camp, there may not be enough contrast on the screen, and the some of the views espoused by the actors or artists, not just as characters in their fictional universe, but as actual people, may be wrong and therefore worthy of scorn and boycotts.
The common thread here is this. Both an overbearing monoculture and highly curated, overly personalized algorithms take full advantage of our propensity of, to put it bluntly, being cognitively lazy and serve us easy, comfortable answers and quick dopamine hits of self-righteousness and comfort. They ensconce us in emotional bubble wrap and tell us that when something doesn't add up at the end of the day, we're always in the right, our views are just and moral, and if others don't comply, they must be stupid, or lazy, or evil, and so imposing our will on them is obviously the correct thing to do.
What are "cringe" and "performative" than synonyms of "tacky" and "phony," applied in the same exact scenarios and with the same exact disdain? And how else to explain why both Boomers and Zoomers have such intense opinions of how Millennials need to do everything from budgeting, to using emojis and gifs on social media and texting, and as far as Gen X goes, they both go "Gen Who?"
Meanwhile, what both Gen X and Millennials learned is that the world is not about you, personally. It does not exist to make you feel safe, or important, or right. It just is, and you have to adopt to it and its changes. Gen Xers had to more or less raise themselves. Millennials were given start Boomer lectures on The Way Things Work™ and promptly watched it collapse with 9/11, the Great Recession, COVID, and the rise of LLMs while being treated as a nuisance.
In short, Millennials and Gen X rarely had main character syndrome while Boomers and Zoomers suffer from its advanced stages. Let's remember that back in the 1970s, when Boomers were taking over the workforce and voting booths, their predecessors called them The Me Generation, lamenting their self-indulgence. And while the world largely neglects Zoomers and their fate, the phones in their hands are programmed to coddle them, and the chatbots to which they increasingly like to talk are trained to love bomb them into utter delusion.
Again, it bears repeating that the internet was supposed to save us from this. We were supposed to be less ideologically rigid, more open, more comfortable with shades of gray, less self-involved, more communally-minded since we were going to spend large parts of our day connected to great digital hive minds. Or, at least that was the dream of the genteel academics behind the project. Instead, Big Tech decided to try and do all the heavy lifting, thinking, and choice for us, wrapping us in an algorithmic haze that drowned out voices we didn't immediately and very eagerly choose to hear, follow, and subscribe to. And this is the end result.
The original web was supposed to appeal to our superegos. The web we have now is only interested in placating our id on the off chance to sell a subscription or merch and take a cut of the transaction. It would be tempting to file this sad decline of this once utopian technology under the Dead Internet rubric, and move on, but we can't ignore its effects on society at large. Especially when we finally know what happens when you raise an entire generation in a bubble of AI suggestions, and the answer is that you get an awful lot of moralistic and emotionally dysregulated petty tyrants.
