Hello friends, if you’re a Zoomer like me (Well maybe, I was born in '96 so I’m either the last Millennial or the first Gen Z) you may have noticed that we’re often the butt of many jokes. “The worst generation of snowflakes ever” or something of that nature. I will admit, we seem a little strange compared to old folks but when you actually take a step back and look at the facts it makes perfect sense.
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Zoomers have dumb language. One of the biggest things Zs get mocked for is lingo: Skibidibop rizz with the gyatt, deadass smh at my goofy ahh uncle. Took me a while to realize it, but when’s it’s not just memespeak the reason there are so many nonsense words floating around now is because big tech and social media has become so ludicrously censor happy that you need to talk like a fucking baby to avoid getting your post flagged for one reason or another. Even saying too many normal words in the “wrong order” is enough to get shadowbanned these days.
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Kids are inside and on their phones too much. What the fuck else are you expecting them to do? Putting aside the 2 year lockdown due to a pandemic, there’s not many options for outside activities. Parks and playgrounds and other things just aren’t safe a lot of the times. Whether it’s animals, shady characters, or the jungle gym being delapidated. Teens can’t go to the malls anymore because they’re all closing and anywhere they gather is immediately swarmed with the cops. Nowadays, you go to any big city and the most happening spot is a McDonald’s or something because at least you can eat and socialize without getting dirty looks.
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Z’s are immature and rely on their parents for everything. I had a professor tell me that a not insignifigant amount of zoomers show up to job interviews with their parents and that’s bad. I’ll admit that everyone needs to grow up eventually but…when did attentive parents become a bad thing? Most older people I know had a bad relationship with their folks or they passed away early, so they were forced to mature sooner. Now this one is purely subjective because I can’t speak for every 20 something and their parents but this just seems like another generational gap that’s caused by shifting social values.
I can go on but I just had to jot all this down. The kids aren’t crazy, you’re just just not noticing how hard they’ve been hit by the downward spiral of the western world.
To your first point, most Black millennials either made up 99% slang used today (with some residuals from the previous gens, gotta give credit), i.e. “goofy ahh” is how you’d sound if you said goofy ass out loud irl, with certain accents sometimes skipping over the “s” sound (personally I say the whole joint but it’s personal preference)
So really it’s just AAVE being stolen, watered down and regurgitated so all the white suburban kids can sound cool. And they just chalk it up to “online speak”, like nah you’re appropriating a whole dialect, and that’s why you sound so goofy.
I grew up in Philly so when people online started actually typing out the “ahh” I wanted to die.
I was mad confused when I started seeing that shit online…then I realized it doesn’t make sense out of context like that…
It makes me cringe every time
Pretty much and after years of calling it “ghetto” too
Yeah racism and classism at once
Yep, and now people can make fun of it without the obvious dog whistles because it has been so far removed from Black people. I’ve seen people make fun of the way Black influencers talk online under the guise of making fun of “Gen Z speak”.
It’s the reason we keep having to make up new shit tbh but the problem is that with the internet giving people such easy access to our culture it’s impossible to do anything about…at the end of the day it would be nice for people to just respect our culture but can’t have that 💀