#we’ve been singularity blurred + i haven’t been in front much recently so

[twinksepticeye]

wow i’ve really only been posting on here to be sad and anxious recently huh

[tylerbiard]

Y and Z

Do you guys remember when analysts, insiders, and marketers were trying to “crack” the Millennials (Gen Y)?  It wasn’t even that long ago when articles on figuring out how to connect with my generation were vogue.  My dad even attended a conference on how to integrate Millennials into the workforce, circa 2010.  It still happens from time to time, but now, things are shifting towards figuring out my successor, Gen Z.  Makes sense, I guess, considering they’re almost as large as the Millennials and the Boomers, and despite the oldest members being 21 (born in 1996), people haven’t really been looking at the differences between those my age and those born a decade later, largely because they’ve often been lumped in with Millennials.

I’m towards the tail end of the Millennials (born in ‘93), and so I have some friends that are at the beginning of Gen Z, but overall, my friends tend to be Millennials, both younger and older.  In some regards, I find more similarities with early Gen Z members than older Millennials, but altogether, I’d say my affinities are definitely more with the Millennials than Gen Z.  That’s not a slight against Gen Z, rather just a noted difference, which will probably become blurred as we all get older anyways.  Going back to school well past when most people do also puts into perspective a bit of the difference; many of my classmates in first year courses were fresh outta high school (born in ‘98) and it does make me wonder where things are headed as Gen Z grows and matures, and where the generation follows it takes us as a society.

With the Millennials, Boomers and Gen Xers had to learn how to professionally work with a generation that grew up with the Internet in its infancy, with a generation that was given so much from its parents, including growing up being told we’re each our own “special snowflake” and that we should reach for the stars, and so long as we got a degree -- any degree -- we’d be happy.  We were considered idealistic, liberal, and tech-savvy.

Well, now, everyone’s used to it, and perhaps because Gen Z is also very tech-savvy and educated and grew up being given participation ribbons, nobody sought out the difference until more recently.  But there are differences.  Gen Z is more conservative apparently (I don’t see it in terms of social issues), more into “branding” oneself and generally more consumerist.  Gen Z is also way more immersed in digital technology than I ever was growing up.  I remember into junior high knowing people who still didn’t have Internet or a cell phone; I can’t see that really happening now except in extreme scenarios.  Furthermore, they grew up with high speed internet, not that dial up shit I had. 

I’m still one to prefer browsing on a stationary, desktop computer, rather than on my phone.  The phone is often more handy when I’m out, but if I have a choice, I’ll always go for the computer.  Which is partly why I loathe mobile-specific social media for not being more browser-friendly.  Being a photographer is no doubt an influence here, as I like being able to view visual media on a larger screen.  But I also grew up with desktops, and was used to having to physically go home to chat with people on MSN, and when I was out, I was basically disconnected.  I had a cell phone, sure, but I wasn’t texting on it (which was expensive) or browsing the ‘Net on it (which was even more expensive).  None of that happened until I got a Blackberry in 12th grade.  Millennials grew up around the PC; Generation Z grew up around iPads and iPhones.  Apparently, on average, Generation Z does not value time offline, while I personally value being disconnected on occasion (not permanently -- I’m not that much of a luddite).  I know when I’ve spent too much time in front of screens.

Gen Z is also more visual.  Well, I’m a photographer, so I’m naturally a very visual person, so this works for me on some level.  And as a Millennial, I’m not unaware of short attention spans among my cohort.  As digital technology continues to make inroads, it only makes sense that attention spans continue to wane.  But even still, I’m here, writing long blog posts and I enjoy photoblogs which are more long-form as well.  They aren’t easily digestable, though, which is why there are less viewers.  It makes sense that social media, then, has moved towards less politicized, more mobile and visually-orientated platforms like Snapchat and Instagram, while Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr are waning, especially among Gen Z.  I’m not too happy about that, to be honest.  I find value in political discourse and believe that if we don’t fight for rights we may as well not have them.   You’re not getting discourse if you’re busy posting aesthetic selfies on Snapchat.  It seems like youth (including Millennials) have kinda accepted things as they are, and, perhaps due to overstimulation, are a bit fatigued at all the information out there, and so there is a certain sense of complacency.  The general mood of memes seems to be “yeah, the world is shit, I’ve accepted it doesn’t make sense and therefore I’m gonna shitpost rather than do anything about it.”  Maybe I’m reading into it too much but I’ve seen others corroborate this mindset.  It’s quite a different mentality from 7 years ago, when Twitter was at peak, which is all about discourse, often political.  I don’t think the interface of many websites now helps, which bombard you with ads and offers before you can see anything.

It’s a bit early to say, as the youngest Gen Zers are between 0 and 7, depending on who you ask, but I hope one thing that Gen Z and its parents (mostly Gen X) learn from the Millennials is regarding education.  It seems like the eldest members of Z were brought up with the same ideas as us, though.  I hope that they realize that it is important still to follow what you’re passionate about and you do need to find something of a career that you will enjoy, but I hope that there is more of a practicality about it.  My generation was told we’d be set as long as we had a degree -- any degree -- and I can tell you that that simply isn’t the case.  It isn’t that there are “worthless” degrees, but that there are degrees which require you to market yourself harder than if you got an Engineering degree and then becoming an Engineer.  I already know a few older Millennials who went down that path, and are or have gone back to school later for something more practical yet still enjoyable.  Academia works for certain fields, certainly, and the program I’m in is practical, but we’ve flooded universities too much because we’ve imbibed the idea that we need a degree to succeed, which is utter poppycock.  A lot of people in university would be better suited to a technical school or a diploma of some sort, which often yield great success without having to pay back a mountain of student loans.  I don’t know if Gen Z will learn this, as I know parents of Gen Z kids who’ve really imbibed the post-secondary ideal as much, if not more, than the Millennial’s parents.

I guess if you’re reading between the lines, I’m a bit sardonic about the future.  It’s nothing to do with Millennials or Gen Z specifically, as we’re both products of the time we grew up in.  A friend of mine joked that I was “born too late” and, considering how slow I sometimes I am with accepting technological trends and how much I like late 20th century pop culture, maybe he’s got a point.  But it’s always easy to romanticize the past.  The ‘50s were great, if you don’t factor in how close we were to nuclear annihilation or how discriminatory the hegemony was.  Furthermore, I’ve definitely become far more aware of things due to being able to access the Internet than if I grew up in an earlier time.  Despite the overstimulation, I think we can take for granted how much more aware we are able to be now; friction of distance has been reduced to rubble.  Also, my earlier comments about Gen Z favouring visual, favouring mobile, really apply to us all.  Millennials have orientated towards these formats, as well as older generations.  It definitely seems like my grandparents are more into their smartphone than they ever were Windows 98.  It’s just Gen Z is the generation that has no basis of comparison to a pre-mobile era, just like Millennials can’t compare to a pre-Internet age (except maybe some of our eldest members), and both have an influence on their respective generation.

Still, I’m not only curious how I’ll survive progress, but how society will as a whole.  America is in late empire, and there is no new Western power to take the helm like after Britain.  It’ll be interesting how that plays out for still-maturing Western countries like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, but it seems like we’re shifting to a pre-Columbian paradigm dominated by the East.  As with any change, there’s uncertainty, although America will likely remain a major player in geopolitics for the long term, even if less hegemonic in scope.  I’m even more curious about what will become of us once those degrees we hammered thousands upon thousands of dollars on are rendered obsolete by AI.  Some say the singularity is nigh, some say it already happened and we were too busy tweeting to notice.  But I don’t think it has happened in the Kurzweilian sense, and once that happens, it’ll be interesting to see where things go.  If we can “survive” it, we’ll probably be better off.  But then there’s still climate change.  Maybe once we become a (hypothetical) Kardashev Type 1 civilization, we’ll have progressed towards not killing ourselves over differences and will have finally survived progress. 

But for now, I still have to live in a world ruled by filters and brands, all-the-while we became increasingly connected yet disconnected.  Maybe I’ll fuck off to Dawson City before having to bear the full front of our digital future.  Sounds nicer for someone unwilling to embrace digital advances like so many of my peers.  Then again, how different, really, is seeing a bunch of people, disparately glued to their phones, from seeing a different bunch of people glued to their books.  Despite being social animals, we’ve long desired our own “space” and privacy, at least in the Western world.