Episode 51 - Gen Z (feat. Sam Hernandez and Anna Solomon)

Transcript

David: 0:06

Hi, I'm David Pena Guzman,

Ellie: 0:08

I'm Ellie Anderson. Welcome to Overthink,

David: 0:11

the podcast where two friends,

Ellie: 0:13

who are also professors,

David: 0:15

put philosophy in dialogue with the everyday.

Ellie: 0:18

Because big ideas are within everyone's reach.

David: 0:30

Ellie, more than anybody else that I know, you are obsessed with Gen Z. And I want to know why, because you're obviously not one of them.

Ellie: 0:40

I am not one of them. I am firmly a millennial, as are you. It's less about Gen Z as a generation, although, you know, no shade to Gen Z. I think there's lots to say about like why Gen Z is a super interesting generation. But I think for me it's more about feeling for the first time in my life that I am not on trend.

David: 1:06

We knew and you're like, I'm really interested in Gen Z, but it has nothing to do with them. It's all about me.

Ellie: 1:15

No, it really has to do with an existential crisis, and it's not around aging because I still feel pretty young. Luckily we're in a discipline where we're still among the youngest professors, but I think it has more to do with just the feeling of not being on the pulse. I had this moment in, God, this supposed to been right after the vaccine. So it was probably April or May 2021. And I went to this flea market in Hollywood, the Melrose Trading Post, this flea market has been around forever.

David: 1:48

You'vementioned that to me before.

Ellie: 1:50

I've probably recommended it to you. It's somewhere that I've been going to since high school. And it just has a bunch of vintage clothes and vintage furniture and stuff. And it's like a fun place to go. If you're visiting. And so I went there May 2021 or something. And for the first time ever, I felt like really out of place. One of the reasons that I liked the Fairfax trading or the Fairfax flea market is what the real LA OG locals call it, but it's technically called Melrose trading post. I felt like I-

David: 2:27

OGs in particular.

Ellie: 2:29

Right, right. Yeah. Here, here we go. The episodes already starting with like millennials asserting superiority over Gen Z. You thought this was a philosophy podcast. No, it's just yet another pop culture hot takes podcast. But so I'm used to going to that flea market and understanding the visual culture of people's outfits. It's very much a place for young people to see and be seen and to wear interesting styles. And I feel like I've usually had a sense of myself relative to that kind of pecking order. Like, oh my outfits cool. Or like, yeah, you know what, not so hot today, but that's all good. And I just felt really out of place. I was like, I vaguely suspect that these new teens taken over my old turf think that I do not have cool style.

David: 3:21

Well, yes, they would say that.

Ellie: 3:24

You don't have to confirm that David. I'm, I'm speculating here. Also. You have in other episodes admitted that you're not into fashion. So I'm going to go ahead and discount your opinion here, even though I think you have really good style.

David: 3:36

But, you know, I would actually challenge you on your earlier claim that this has nothing to do with aging anxiety, because it seems like you fear aging out of the world of fashion, which is notoriously youth oriented.

Ellie: 3:53

Maybe, but I think that that's less on the surface for me. It's really about a fundamental difference in perception and a feeling of detachment from the visual culture of youth, which is something that I had really been invested in, in my twenties when I was like, maybe what people would call nowadays, an art girl or something, you know, like going to galleries.

David: 4:15

Were you artist?

Ellie: 4:15

Top of trends. No, no. An art girl doesn't necessarily have to be an artist. Some art girls are artists, but no an art girls is like somebody who stays up on the gallery shows and the trends and all of that.

David: 4:25

Okay. I just have never heard that term, but go on.

Ellie: 4:28

I guess, I think that's an on-trend term. I don't even know. So out of touch these days.

David: 4:36

It's like, we don't really know where this conversation is going because that's how out of touch we both are, me through just passive inertia, you through whatever events in your life have led you to no longer be the in girl at this flea market.

Ellie: 4:51

This is such a weird and it's so bougie story. I kind of hate it, but one thing to add to it, because the point here is really just about like a shift in perception and a sense that I no longer have intuitive sense of what looks cool and what doesn't look cool. And I would say the same would be true of like, what is cool and what isn't cool from the perspective of slang or like what people are talking about these days. So I'm using the example of fashion, but it extends beyond that. But one last thing to mention there is that part of it also is the fact that the fashions now are starting to cycle back to the first fashions that were cool when I was first cognizant as a young teen of fashion itself. And so I'm seeing people wear things that I was wearing as a teenager. And so then it's weird because I don't want to start wearing that stuff again because it feels like I'm cosplaying my former self. But I do have, in my garage somewhere, some of these fashions that people are now resurrecting.

David: 5:57

Bring back the turtleneck, bring back the turtleneck. Are they in? I don't know. I don't.

Ellie: 6:02

David, David. Oh my God. Yeah, no dude. I'm not talking turtlenecks. Turtlenecks are classic. I'm talking like baguette logo bag.

David: 6:12

But I mean, Ellie, you use the term cosplaying which is interesting in itself, right? Because it seems as if you feel like putting on these fashions, living by these trends has an element of pretense or artificiality to it. It just like doesn't come natural to you to go there, but you want to, yes?

Ellie: 6:33

That absence of intuitiveness. Yeah. Well, cause then, then I wonder, is it a matter of retraining my perception to now fit the new trends? Obviously there would be questions about whether I should do that, right? Like, I'm not saying, if I can, I should, but. Is it essentially about a difference in generations or age, or is it really just a matter of detachment from being in the swim of things and I just need to reenter that river?

David: 7:01

Or him, or might it also be about recognizing that what you once considered cool and trendy and fashionable is intricately bound up with questions of youth that in some way, you and I can no longer fit back into, even if we were to re-educate our perception, our senses, our aesthetic tastes. It's one of those things where somebody once told me, just because you can still wear skinny jeans in your mid to late thirties doesn't mean that you should. So like, you know, like it just, there's something about that where I could wear skinny jeans, but it just doesn't look as great as it did when I was 19.

Ellie: 7:43

Well, lucky for you, not only are you in your mid thirties, but skinny jeans are also very out, so you shouldn't even be wearing them if you're trying to be trendy. So perfect.

David: 7:52

But you get my point, no? Like, can you be super trendy by the standards of today's youth when you're no longer youthful in that?

Ellie: 8:01

We should get to the philosophy because our listeners are sitting here thinking they knew me and then just realizing I might be a smooth brained trend follower. So we will have philosophical points this episode. But I think I'm not alone, David, in being pretty fascinated from the perspective of generational philosophy.

David: 8:23

No definitely. And one thing that I do find really interesting about you and your relationship to Gen Z as a millennial is that you do seem to have an investment in the life of Gen Zs as a generation. And that's very atypical. I think typically people tend to express frustration or dislike of the generations that proceeded them. And I've never heard you do that. So I have to say, I really liked that about the way in which you talk about the generational shift from Gen Z to millennial or vice versa.

Ellie: 8:59

Well, thanks. I'll take it. Although I will say, and we'll get into this more later in the episode, I'm much more interested in Gen Z from a social and political standpoint than I am from an aesthetic stand. Although I'm really not making millennials look good right now by starting with the aesthetic, because we have the reputation as a generation for being really materialistic. Even though I recently found out in researching this episode, that boomers, people over 50 more generally account for more than half of spending. So millennials are actually not spending that much comparatively and neither is Gen Z. My mom is getting way more random shit from Amazon than I am.

David: 9:35

Well, just because we don't have money doesn't mean that we're not materialistic. In fact, that would be the reason why we are so materialistic as a generation, because we want to replicate the lifestyle of the boomers. It's just that economic conditions have not allowed us to replicate it. You know, w- the, the reason that I point this out is because I do think there is a pattern of generations often using the generation that preceded them as a scapegoat for a lot of their social, political, and economic challenges. Um, and so there is this stereotype of what is called golden age syndrome. The notion that, oh, back in the day, things were so good but now with today's youth, everything is going awry, and this is nothing new. Let me read you what a reader's letter to Town and Country Magazine from 1771 had to say about the youth of the late 18th century.

Ellie: 10:31

We're going to way back.

David: 10:32

Oh my gosh, way back. The reader says the youth are quote, a race of effeminate, self admiring, emaciated fribbles.

Ellie: 10:47

It sounds like- it sounds like something somebody on Reddit would say about Gen Z, but just with updated language.

David: 10:55

Yes. You know, the whole notion of this snowflake, um, that floats around.

Ellie: 11:00

They're just queer snowflakes.

David: 11:01

Yeah. I know, like, depending on your political beliefs, this is either an insult or just about the greatest honor. Like I am effeminate-

Ellie: 11:10

They're queer. Gluten-free sober snowflakes. That would be like what a Redditor would say about Gen Z.

David: 11:16

Yeah. Well-

Ellie: 11:17

New effeminate self, admiring, emaciated fribble.

David: 11:19

I want to stick with the effeminate, self admiring, emaciated fribble. Today, we're talking about Gen Z.

Ellie: 11:29

How do we define generations, and do generational archetypes recur in cyclical patterns over time?

David: 11:36

How has the generation of emerging adults known as Gen Z disrupting existing social and political institutions?

Ellie: 11:43

David and I bring on two members of the generation under discussion, our student assistants, Anna Solomon, and Sam Hernandez to talk about it with us.

David: 11:56

Ellie, there are very few philosophers who write explicitly about the concept of generations, probably because it sounds a little pop psychology-y as a concept, you know, it's like hard to define, uh, in some ways.

Ellie: 12:08

Like pop history.

David: 12:10

Yes, pop history. But once the philosopher whose work I find interesting is the Spanish philosopher, Jose Ortega y Gasset who developed a Spanish branch of existentialism in the early 20th century that was deeply influenced by the phenomenology of Husserl and the existentialism of Heidegger. And he wrote a book in 1923 entitled El tema de nuestro tiempo, which was translated into English as The Modern Theme, which I actually don't like as a translation, I think a better translation would be The Theme of Our Time or The Theme That is Our Time. Anyways in this book, El tema de nuestro tiempo, Ortega y Gassett reflects on a really important historical question, which is: how do groups of people make an identity for themselves under specific historical conditions? And this, he says is a question that has to be answered in terms of generations. How does a generation build the world that it can call its own?

Ellie: 13:15

So like how are we millennials disrupting the business world and how is Gen Z taking over the flea market?

David: 13:21

Exactly. This is the question at the forefront of Ortega y Gassett's concerns in 1923. Um, no, but Ortega y Gassett does say that we need to get clear about what differentiates one generation from another. And the answer to that is not economic or political institutions. So it's not that the economic and political world of millennials and Gen Z's is fundamentally different. It's not even a question of beliefs and ideas. Rather, it's a question of feelings. According to Ortega y Gassett, different generations are defined by the fact that they have what he calls a different vital sensibility, a different way of feeling the world on a fundamental level.

Ellie: 14:06

A different vibe.

David: 14:07

Yeah. Yeah, very much so. A very different vibe and Ortega y Gassett is sometimes known as a philosopher of life because he believes that there is something like a life impulse that moves through individuals and communities. And I think that's what we could call a vibe.

Ellie: 14:24

Okay, but it sounds like it's a little deeper than like your vibe that skinny jeans look good on you, Gen Z's vibe that skinny jeans are horrible and they should never be worn.

David: 14:34

Yes, it is deeper in two senses. It's deeper because it's collective and it's deeper because it's not just a belief that I happen to embrace at a particular point in time. It's actually something at the very core of my personality, my way of experiencing the world again in a given historical life world. And so he says that each generation has to figure out for itself how to relate to the generation that raised it and proceeded it while at the same time becoming different from it so as to create a world that reflects that vital sensibility that it carries within it. So how do you fashion a world on the basis of the way in which you feel the world? And as generations go through this challenge, they have to negotiate two very different impulses that will pull them in opposite directions, what Ortega y Gassett calls a pacifist impulse, which is basically an impulse to keep the peace and follow the institutions and the social norms of the generation before it, and a militant impulse, which is an impulse to rebel and to reorganize the world and to revolutionize it.

Ellie: 15:51

Okay, this is fascinating because I have not read Ortega y Gassett on this point, but I have a pet theory that I've been shopping around at dinner parties lately, especially multi-generational dinner parties, that there's a weird comradery between boomers and millennials on the point of conformism. We have tended as generations to want to live up to the status quo. In different ways, right? Whether it's through millennial girl boss feminism, or boomer nimbyism, and then the generation between us gen X and the one after millennials, Gen Z, have this strange comradery where I think that they are more rebellious. They want revolution in the case of Gen Z, at least, right. There's a lot of Marxist and queer members of Gen Z who really want to disrupt the existing political order and the order of gender. And then with gen X, you have the whole kind of slacker nineties vibe of resisting the logic of capitalism and making it, which millennials just really doubled down on affirming in the way that boomers did, they were like, oh yeah, the generation above us were slackers, we're going to make all the money.

David: 17:01

Money. Yes. So it seems like the revolutionary spirit skips a generation and millennials are the new boomers and gen CRS are the new gen X.

Ellie: 17:12

Yeah, that's my pet theory. I'm not about to write an academic paper defending this, but.

David: 17:17

Well, I, I hate to burst your bubble Ellie here, but the top researchers on generational theory would beg to differ with you about the way you characterize boomers in particular. William Strauss and Neil Howe, who have written a number of books on generational change, say that boomers were actually a hyper rebellious generation that was critical of existing institutions. So they were not the complacent sheeple that you have presented them as as. And the problem is that today we, and by that I mean us millennials, maybe although we could include Gen Z as well, we tend to think of boomers as regressive, as conservative and pragmatic to a fault, really. But there's another image of boomers that we can not forget. Uh, the boomers who went to Woodstock, those who launched Saturday Night Live, who partook in the civil rights movement, so on and so forth. And so they come to the conclusion that boomers are what they call an idealist generation rather than a complacent one. And they use as examples of this idealist, spirit people like Angela Davis and Janis Joplin.

Ellie: 18:29

I guess Angela Davis is a boomer.

David: 18:32

Of course. Yes.

Ellie: 18:33

Despite being the darling of Gen Z, she came to visit Pomona where I teach a couple of months ago and it was like the talk of the entire week on campus, which is well-deserved, she's an amazing thinker. And activist, but wow. That's so different from the boomers that I hang out with.

David: 18:53

Well, in, in the defense of the view that you're trying to express, Strauss and Howe do point out that the boomers actually experienced a fundamental shift in their personality as a generation in the early 1980s, during the Reagan years, when many of them gave up their original hippie idealism of their youth and traded it in for a more cynical yuppie realism, which is the realism of the, of the NIMBY movement right, which you earlier, and there's-

Ellie: 19:24

That sounds like a narrative I'm familiar with.

David: 19:26

Yes. And they have this really funny passage in their book where they say that when Reagan became president, boomers went from j'accuse to jacuzzi. They went from political consciousness to absolute search for a comfort and pleasure.

Ellie: 19:44

No, but that's funny because I have not read that generation's book, but in preparation for this episode, I did check out Strauss and Howe' book The Fourth Turning, which is another book about generations, where they say that there are four turnings, each of which spans about 20 to 25 years. And these happen in succession over time with all four turnings combined constituting what they call a cycle. So history, according to Strauss and Howe, moves in these 80 to a hundred year cycles, roughly equivalent to a century or a long lifespan. And within that there are these four different turnings where there's a dominant ideology at work in each quarter. So for instance, the first turning is a high, which they describe as an upbeat era of strengthening institutions and weakening individualism. So here a new civic order is coming into play and old values are decaying. And an example of this is the silent generation, which is roughly the generation that was born between 1928 and 1945. So like the people who were-

David: 20:51

Right, probably, before the boomers basically.

Ellie: 20:53

Exactly. Then there's a second turning, which is an awakening. And they say that this is a passionate era of spiritual upheaval when the civic order that has been, you know, laid down sort of gently by the first turning comes under attack. Here are the boomers. So that, I guess speaks to your point, David, boomers as rejecting what came before. And then we get to the third turning, which is an unraveling, which they describe as a downcast era of strengthening individualism and weakening institutions. That's got the gen X slacker stereotype written all over it, And then we have the fourth turning, which is a crisis period and Strauss and Howe say that this is a decisive era of secular upheaval when the values regime, this like new values regime that's been implanted over the course of the past couple of periods, propels the replacement of the old civic order with a new one. So over the course of the second and third turning, there's been this kind of new values regime that's come on the scene. You might think about the civil rights movement, for instance, as one sort of new values regime that starts in the second turning moves into the third turning. But then in the fourth turning, this new values regime finally reaches the civic order and starts to replace the old civic order with itself. So I don't know, maybe like June 2020, and not that there were that many laws that have really replaced the old civic order with the new one on the basis of that, hopefully there will be in future, but you could see that as a way that the values regime that started in the civil rights movement is really starting to reach I guess Washington in a new, new way. Again, this is according to Strauss and Howe. I don't know what about this David, but I guess a fourth turning, like we're the fourth turning, the millennials are the fourth turning.

David: 22:42

I see. So I think it's pseudoscience. They use a lot of naturalistic metaphors in the writing to give their theory of the saeculum and the four turnings and the cyclicality of things an air of scientificity. So for example, in various places, they use seasonal metaphors. So they talk about these four periods in terms of spring, summer, fall, and winter, and then it just recurs again. So the crux of their argument is that the movement from the silent generation to the boomer generation to gen X and then to millennials is just going to repeat over and over again with new generations simply taking the place of the ones from the 20th century, but the logic remains the same.

Ellie: 23:30

On that note, I read this book called The Generation Myth and author of that describes Strauss and Howe's view as similar to astrology.

David: 23:37

No kidding. It really does have this pseudoscientific veneer to it that ends up simplifying historical events by jamming them into this law of history. I think ultimately what it boils down to is that I don't think history is a science and unfortunately Strauss and Howe act as if it is. And you really see this in the fact that they claim not only descriptive, but also predictive power. So based on this model, you can divine what's going to happen in the future simply by seeing what the next phase, what the next turning necessarily is going to be.

Ellie: 24:19

Funny though, cause I'm sort of, I'm more of a schematic thinker than you are, David. And I kind of like it when there's a narrative that ties things up in a bow. And so the Hegelian side of me here, this side that wants to see history in terms of dialectical cycles, actually finds this very appealing.

David: 24:40

Yeah.

Ellie: 24:41

But I know it's, I know its not super nuanced.

David: 24:43

Except that this is not even a Hegelian dialectic, where there is genuine change. It's just the same cycle repeating itself infinitum, you know, and that's what I dislike about it. On top of that, because of the way in which they lay out the four seasons of Strauss and Howe, um, the four season framework, they make the argument that at the end of the fourth stage, which brings to a close a saeculum like a cycle, that 80 to a hundred year period when everything begins again, the way their chronology works, we, at the start of the 21st century, find ourselves at one such meta turning point, not a turning point from one generation to another, but from one saeculum to the next, from one meta cycle to the next. And what's really bizarre about that is that according to them, those moments are always moments of cultural crisis and cultural decay, where the future of the nation is at stake. And so their model lends itself to what I would consider to be the possibility of appropriation by right-wing alarmists about the collapsing of American culture.

Ellie: 25:58

Hm.

David: 25:59

And the reason I say this is because Politico put out an article not too long ago, where the author points out that The Fourth Turning is one of the favorite books of Steve Bannon, who was-

Ellie: 26:11

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

David: 26:14

Yes, yes. And my worry is that this critical take on history very easily lends itself an agenda of convincing people that that which unifies the nation, the community, the empire is coming undone at the seams.

Ellie: 26:33

Oh, my God. Well, let's stop speculating about the cycles of generations then and talk to some members of genders. Our guests today are student production assistants for Overthink Anna Solomon and Sam Hernandez. Anna Solomon is a junior at Pitzer College with passions for philosophy and politics. As the social media coordinator for Overthink in 2021, Anna created lots of great content for the podcast, even though she has mixed feelings about Instagram. Anna is originally from Boston and hopes to pursue teaching after college. Sam Hernandez is a second year at Pomona college, majoring in philosophy. For the past year, they've been working for Overthink, doing excellent episode research, writing up all the transcriptions of our episodes and more. Originally from San Antonio, Texas, Sam loves to read and travel and hopes to become a philosopher. Sam

David: 27:33

and Anna, thank you so much for joining us. Welcome.

Ellie: 27:43

Welcome to the other side.

Anna: 27:45

Excited to be here.

Sam: 27:47

Happy to be here.

Ellie: 27:48

What are you and your friends obsessed with talking about?

Anna: 27:51

It used to be Euphoria. There was a lot of conversation about Euphoria when this show was still going on. But since the finale is over, I think the talk has died down. But definitely like when the second season was still airing, every conversation seemed to have some Euphoria reference.

David: 28:09

I just watched that last week. I binge watched it in three days. Both seasons.

Anna: 28:15

Oh, my gosh. How's your mental health?

David: 28:19

Super good, um, I actually thought I was going to hate it. I was like, I think maybe this is targeting a different demographic and I loved it. I love-

Ellie: 28:28

Gen Z?

David: 28:29

Yes, honestly, and I absolutely love the, the love story at the center of it. I thought it was beautiful.

Ellie: 28:37

You ship Jules and Rue.

David: 28:39

I know, I, I just really wanted them to have a happy ending.

Ellie: 28:44

Sam, you watch

Sam: 28:47

think the way, the way I've interacted with it, I think demonstrates how much of a stranglehold it had. Like, I have little to no interest in the show, just not my thing, but it was such like a big event on like Twitter and in person that I would still read the episode summaries just to see what happened. So I could have like a passing familiarity without having to invest the whole hour, just to like stay vaguely up to date.

David: 29:17

Maybe we can begin there because you are right that this show became just huge, and I wonder whether it became maybe emblematic of a generation. I'm curious whether you attribute the popularity of the show to maybe that.

Sam: 29:37

I think to some extent yeah, but I also think there's plenty of shows about people our age that don't get the same level of popularity. And I think it's because, like most HBO shows that are have like the base level of being well done enough to be impressive, it becomes at least semi-popular. And then this just happened to be about like high school and drugs and that seems interesting, um, and more targeted to us, I guess, than some of the other stuff, HBO produces, but I think most big budget HBO shows end up being at least pretty popular because before Euphoria it was Succession.

Ellie: 30:12

It's interesting you mentioned drugs though, Sam, because I was polling some millennial friends before this episode about what they wanted to ask Gen Z, and one of the questions was why is everyone in Gen Z sober? can you tell us a little bit about what the kind of relationship to substances is like among your- I mean, not, not like with you because I'm literally your professor, but just a general read, because I think there is a dominant narrative that millennials are more interested specifically with, in drinking than Gen Z. But I think Gen Z has a reputation for being a little more sober than older generation.

Anna: 30:51

Yeah, I think it's interesting that you say that because I think that one of the reasons why people were into Euphoria was that it projected a kind of a, like image of high school that we perhaps didn't live through, but like perhaps also thought we should have lived through. Cause I think that one of the things that I talked a lot about with Euphoria is that like no one in my high school was doing the kinds of drugs that people and Euphoria were doing in high school. Yeah. I don't really think we're less into drugs and alcohol, I just think that there's like less experimentation. There's more of a culture of approaching things with the purpose of using them to have like fun, like using them as party substances, not as like experienced substances.

Sam: 31:41

Um, I am not entirely sure how much I agree. A lot of Euphoria's appeal is like Anna said and projecting the stereotypical high school experience for Gen Z, it's our version of whatever forms of media that have been, that did kind of the similar big blowout parties for gen X or millennials. And it's exaggerated to an unrealistic extent, but I don't know that I would say there's a complete absence. Like the public school near my house had a reputation for being heroin users. There was something Heights and it was referred to as Heroin Heights because like, it was a common enough problem. And as to the sobriety, I think that we drink less, at least drink less casually. But I don't know if that trades off with other substances. Like, I feel like our generation maybe smokes more weed than prior ones. Though also might just be because I have less access to like the weed smoking side of millennials or gen X.

David: 32:44

That sounds right to me because when I think about my generation, it was pretty clearly compartmentalized into the goody two shoes who got straight A's and never drank and never partied. And then the people who just consumed a lot of drugs and partied and were kind of the black sheep of the millennials. Whereas when I think about my students and some of my friends who are Gen Z, it's less compartmentalized in that way. And I think you're right that there's a lot more, for example, a weed smoking across the board, maybe because the taboo is no longer there, maybe in the same way that it was in the early two thousands, late 1990s, when we came out of high school.

Ellie: 33:27

It's funny though, with the drugs. So I went to my high school's career day last week and I overheard someone, I overheard some conversations among high schoolers. I was like, oh, I feel like the vibe has really changed since I went to high school. And I went to an all-girls Catholic high school, and I talked to one of my friends about this afterward. And she was like, yes, I have, I heard the same thing. When we were in high school, it was a super straight-laced environment where people were not, you know, doing anything wild during the school day, we were all just like, kind of like straight-laced school girls. And then now with all of the Gen Z students, it's like a queer free for all. And there are people are doing drugs and making out in the bathroom all the time. Whereas if you got, like, if you were making out in the bathroom of my high school, you would get kicked out because it was against the rule to have public displays of affection on campus. But the secret rule around that was that it was basically like illegal to be queer there. And so I feel like that kind of speaks to the way that the heteronormative, uh, dimensions of culture are really starting to split apart at the seams with Gen Z in addition to the drugs part. But I'm actually curious more about the, the gender dimensions. I feel like Gen Z has a reputation for really wanting to explode the gender binary and the ways that people relate to one another sexually and to themselves. Could you say a little bit about sort of sexual identity and gender identity among your peer groups?

Sam: 34:56

I think there's the image of a lot more queer friendliness, both in regards to gender and sexuality. And I think that's true, definitely in comparison to past generations. But I think the idea of Gen Z being like really tolerant is kind of overblown because I think it's more of a bifurcation than like a singular trend, because there's also an element that of Gen Z that I think has become hyper conservative and, you know, there's like discussions of like the alt-right pipeline, for example. And that's a very real thing that is enforcing it moreso in the other direction, than the casual centrism or conservatism of some millennials now, a lot of Gen Z conservatives, aren't just middle of the road, milquetoast conservatives. They're like hardcore fascists almost, you know, there's Turning Point USA, for example, I think there's another, uh, example of that kind of move towards an alt-right. So I think on one hand there is an expansion of possibilities in regards to gender and sexual expression. But I don't think it is true that, uh, Gen Z is the hyper progressive generation coming to save the day.

Ellie: 36:04

Hmm.

Anna: 36:06

I agree with Sam, a lot. And I think that what Sam brought up with sort of the rise of greater tolerance and also a rise of people who express very intolerant political beliefs, very outwardly. I think it's part of the same thing. Like I'm not necessarily convinced that Gen Z is more tolerant of different sexual or gender identities. I think what Gen Z definitely is more tolerant of, and perhaps also just very interested in is public performances of your identity. So I think what you, like Ellie, what you were observing in your high school maybe wasn't a greater acceptance of queer identities, but a greater acceptance of people doing certain things that were once relegated to the private sphere in public. And I, I think that's just sort of generally true about Gen Z. Like we're very interested in outwardly showing our identities, whether they're different gender or sexual identities or whether they're fascist political identities. I think they kind of occur together.

David: 37:11

One thing that I had to think about when I was doing some research about generational differences. And this goes to Anna's point that there are certain things that are seen in the public square that maybe previously happened in the bedroom or in the privacy of the home is that most of the research that is out there, whether that's historical sociological, philosophical about Gen Z is actually produced by either boomers or millennials, because those are the generations that are currently in those professions. And so I wonder Ellie, whether this image that you and I have of Gen Z-ers as these hyper radical queer affirming individuals is just a mirage that is produced by the fact that there is this public facing persona that we see, and that strikes us as different from maybe the experience that we had at that age. But it's only giving us that one side, it's giving us the public facing side of the generation and what Sam and Anna and are pointing to here is from within the perspective of Gen Z, we actually this bifurcation, that's the term that Sam used, between a far left and actually a really scary dark far right that is just as strong, arguably.

Ellie: 38:25

And I think you and I, David, are working with members of Gen Z who tends to lean left because of where we teach. And so, you know, I've just seen over the course of the past, I think I first started teaching around 10 years ago, over the course of teaching in colleges for 10 years. I've seen a total change in the gender makeup of my classes where, you know, I have a lot of non-binary students, which I didn't have any of when I was first teaching the first couple of years, at least who were out. And, um, Marx went from being a bogeyman who, when I taught Marx, I had to sort of say, this is why you shouldn't be afraid of Marx being everybody's idols. So now when I teach Marx, I have to be like, oh, maybe we should also question some of what Marx says too. So there's just been a total shift, but we're also working yeah a specific segment of the population. And so maybe we're seeing less of that other side that Sam was talking about, you know and I know, Sam, you're from Texas. So you may, might have a different perspective on this too.

Sam: 39:26

Yeah, I'm kind of torn on it because on one hand I went to a private, not quite parochial, but non-denominational Christian school, and so that was like a very repressive, conservative white administration and atmosphere. And so it kind of has the tendency to make any sort of left politic or even queer identity look really kind of out there and progressive. But at the same time, I think the standard by which Gen Z is referred to or seen as hyper progressive is the standard of boomers and gen X, which sure it's compared to past generations. And so in a way that's a metric that makes sense. But in another way, it kind of doesn't, because you take, what I would say is a fairly conservative generation and like most things are going to look fairly progressive compared to it. And so I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't think Gen Z's politics are that radical or that progressive in a lot of ways, they're just more progressive than boomer ideas. And that makes them look really, really progressive. And so as far as generational change goes, I think there is a progression, but as far as any sort of like real mapping, I don't think the idea of Gen Z as a queer hyper progressive like communists generation is true.

Ellie: 40:45

It's not Euphoria with Marx.

Sam: 40:48

No, there's certainly like more people willing to identify as communists. And at least in like college, but I still think by and large, it's like a pretty neoliberal generation that's going to continue the politics of prior generations.

Ellie: 41:02

No!

David: 41:03

Anna, what are your thoughts about this?

Anna: 41:06

Yeah, I have, I have two thoughts. I think the first thought that comes to mind is perhaps it's not the content of our beliefs that's changing, but it's the conviction with which we hold our beliefs that's changing because I think that it is true that as Sam said, there are many people in our generation who hold a variety of political beliefs, like progressive ones and very regressive ones as well. But I, I think that people are apt to profess their allegiance to certain things strongly. And I think part of that has to do with our generation's interest in authenticity and bringing a sort of authentic and really clear identity to the table with us and like an identity that's really easy to communicate to other people, either online or in person. But I think mostly online. And then the second thing is just something that Sam made me think about when they talked about being from Texas. I wonder when we talk about generations and when we try to collapse certain issues into generational issues if we're overlooking other important factors, such as place, because obviously Sam and I have a lot of similarities as students who are interested in politics and go to the Claremont Colleges.

Ellie: 42:22

You've been in all the same classes together.

Anna: 42:24

I know we, we really have, but I also wonder if there are distinctions that like being part of a generation doesn't cover that have to do more with our relationship to place. Like, am I more fundamentally similar with someone who's from outside of Boston than I am with someone who is part of my generation?

Sam: 42:44

I think that's a really interesting question and I'm going to disagree specifically because I think our generation is so dominated by the internet and the fact that we have been the first generation to grow up fully engrossed in the internet and social media that I think there has been like a, an effective homogenization where your place really doesn't matter as much anymore because so much of your socialization is absence of place because it's occurring online. That I, I think it does wipe away a lot of the like local differences that might've arisen between regions in slang or whatever youth culture, that it doesn't really matter whether you're in Texas or in Massachusetts or in California, you're interacting with the same content. And so you're getting the same phrases or colloquialisms or ideas, regardless of where you are.

Ellie: 43:37

And that's so fascinating cause I think you have a two-way relationship to that media where you're also able to, t- to say things that potentially have a really big reach and to hear feedback on them. So I'm thinking about the equivalent for me and David, I don't know what you might think about this, but I was obsessed with magazines when I was a teenager and I'd read these magazines. And that was one way for me to get the sense of the slang and the fashion trends and the aspirational places to go, you know, as opposed to a TikTok showing like this is what the Amalfi Coast looks like. I was seeing it in the pages of Vogue. It'd be like, I want to go there, but I didn't have any reach, you know, I didn't have a Twitter. I had AOL Instant Messenger and the only people you could message were your friends and chat rooms didn't serve the same function of this public persona being out there.

David: 44:21

Yeah. I don't know. I'm somewhere in between Anna and Sam on this point, because I do see the internet and social media is having a homogenizing effect, but something that we have learned about the politics of algorithms, especially in social media, is that it does reward people with stronger convictions, right. Or people who express their views more loudly, maybe even more polarizingly. And so I see that two things happening, there is a homogenization, but then there's also almost like the creation of a private space in a very public domain. And that's what people call now an echo chamber, right? So even if we're all using the public comments in the form of the internet or Facebook or Instagram, that public common creates these vortexes that we fall into where we think we're seeing the same thing together. But in fact, we are just getting some of those forcefully express convictions and identities that we're crafting mirrored back to us.

Sam: 45:24

I think an effect of the hyper specificity of algorithms has been to reinforce the sort of hyper individualism that America relies on because the targeted ads and specificity of your Instagram feed and customization of everything you do on the internet makes it such that everything is always specifically made for you. I think there's like this specific dividualization of identities where you like collect all the different types of identities that you have. And then that like builds you out into the full person you are. And it just really reinforces, I think an individual approach to seeing oppression because you just collect all the different ways in which you identify, and then that's the way you interact with oppression and you kind of go from there. And I think that, yeah, I don't know. It gets in the way.

Ellie: 46:14

That's really interesting because it seems to be a bit in contrast to what Anna, you were talking about with authenticity, which is a word that I was really struck by you using. So I'm curious to hear, Anna, how that might relate to some dimensions of Gen Z identity that I see as really ironic, for instance, the resurgence of bimbo feminism, like how, you know, how does somebody who's leaning into a bimbo identity being authentic or are they eschewing that norm of authenticity?

Anna: 46:40

Irony is really interesting here. I'm really struck by your question on irony. One thing that I think about is how I think Gen Z is really interested and invested in irony, but I also think that irony is perhaps dying out in our generation because of the way that all of our platforms for expressing irony are so rooted in marketing and profit. Like I think that people use irony to express their discontent with- like cottage core, I think is a good example of this. Like, there's something ironic about cottage core, but once cottage core got taken up by TikTok and Instagram, and also a lot of fashion companies, it no longer became ironic. It became something to be marketed to us.

Sam: 47:30

And similarly just on irony, I think Anna is right, like our generation is really into the idea of irony, but I think the forms which we use to engage it, since they're social media, are predicated on such short attention spans that the only irony that works is really, really, really shallow irony that is like super immediately overt. And so I think the real critical power of satire and irony is lost in our generation, because if it's not like immediately obvious that this is like a satirical take or view or something being expressed, people just take it as non-ironic and then they get, um, like backlash. And so I think there's kind of been a death of media literacy because people are not really willing to take the time to engage like the nuance of satire and ironic critiques of things and are like much quicker to just be like, oh, you just unironically believe this bad thing. For example, Licorice Pizza was a very controversial movie. And I think there is some level of ironic critique in the movie. So there's also stuff that is just like flat out bad, but so much of the discourse just got shut down immediately because it was like this movie doesn't have a very clear good versus bad. And it explores through satire and nuance, some difficult things. And people are like, oh, I can't immediately tell that the director is saying this is a moral evil. And so this movie is just wrong. And so I, I think things that take time to engage you or to understand are much more handily dismissed, because we're so used to just having things presented to us in like an Instagram post or a, or like 30 second TikTok.

Ellie: 49:16

I heard that in some conversations with millennials of people saying that they feel like Gen Z is judgmental. And so maybe that I think is part of it. And I wonder how much of that is related to social media and the virtual.

David: 49:28

Well, let me jump in here because there is a professor, an English professor at Emory University. His name is Mark Bauerlein and he wrote a book about Gen Z, where he says that precisely because Gen Z's psychology is determined by the technological media that is dominant in this day and age, especially social media. Some of the features of the media in question become features of the psyches of members of Gen Z. So that short attention span that, uh, Sam was alluding to, the need for likes, the gratification from something like becoming a trend or going viral independently of what the content is. And so I here want to pose a question about technology, which is whether you think technology might be the best framework for thinking about Gen Z, because that is how Gen Z is typically defined, right, as the generation that was born already with the internet in place and who came of age at 12, 13, 14, already with social media. And there is this debate amongst boomers experts on Gen Z. That sounds like a, like a weird thing to say, but, you know, boomers scholars who are interested in Gen Z, there is this huge debate about whether Gen Z is, as Bauerlein says, quote unquote, the dumbest generation in history because of the short attention span, because of the desire for sharing information rather than processing and interpreting, because of the collapse of close reading skills, or as the historian, Neil Howe, that we mentioned earlier says, actually the media literacy that Gen Z do have about social media is what makes them the smartest generation in history, because they are incredibly adaptable. They understand how to hack systems, not just technological, but also social systems. Which gives Gen Zers just a really valuable skill of knowing how to maneuver difficult spaces. And so I'm just curious about how you both think about your relationship to technology and whether the features of that technology do or don't tell us something about the way in which you relate to the world more generally.

Anna: 51:49

I don't think that our relationship with technology makes us dumber persay. I don't know. I just get really frustrated when I hear older folks like express their dismay with my generation. Cause I know so many amazingly smart and fantastic people who are online maybe too much. But I think that, I think that there is a tendency to simplify among a lot of people who I know. And I think that that's the factor of having access to so much information at all times. I think that one thing that happens is that we spend less time with more information and because we spend less time with things, we're more focused on sort of glossing for a summary and then trying to come up with ideas based off of perhaps not enough information or not enough depth of information out of too many sources. We can think about things in ways that are too black and white, which is exactly what Sam was talking about with Licorice Pizza. And I think it relates really well to cancel culture, which I agree with Sam is a little bit overblown.

Ellie: 53:04

Yeah. And I think this leads, uh, nicely to a final question, which I got from multiple people that I polled and I think it's a formulation that is so classically millennial. When I asked multiple millennials, what did they want me to ask Gen Z? Their question was, what do you think of millennials? One person said specifically 34 year olds. And what do you think we can-

David: 53:31

Specifically.

Ellie: 53:33

Specifically 34 year olds. And what do you think we can do better?

David: 53:37

And by the way, 34 is the exact age average if you take Ellie, Ellie's age and my age and divide it by two. So we're implicated here very personally.

Ellie: 53:49

The person who was saying this was 34. Anyway, that probably goes without saying, let me just let you answer.

Sam: 53:55

Okay. This is just speaking for myself. I would say that I have a higher view of millennials than gen X and certainly boomers. It might be like my Marxist sympathies talking, but I think that there is a way in which a common view of millennials is that they got the at least early stages of the discontent with the modern economy and rising housing prices and climate crisis, but kind of adopted themselves into a more liberal approach, and embraced neo-liberalism to some degree. And I think a lot of Gen Z, or at least the people I talked to in Gen Z, because it's obviously pretty multiplicitous, maybe look down or would prefer millennials to be a bit more radical than they are, and are a bit tired of like the millennial vote blue no matter who kind of hand-wringing that seems to be the approach to politics. Like one common trope is like millennials want to turn everything into Harry Potter. And so they like make politics into Harry Potter houses. Um, like I- I've ironically seen people on Twitter be like, Ukraine is Gryffindor and Russia is Slytherin and it just it's like this oddly like kind of distant, removed from reality, kind of like aesthetic liberal approach to politics that I think a lot of, at least left Gen Z feels like millennials maybe have. And so I think the biggest critique from them as to what millennials can do better is be more radical, I guess. And like less accepting of the liberal institutions of the status quo.

Anna: 55:37

I don't have any good answer to this question. I think I have to meet people before I make judgements about them. But I'll say is that I know plenty of people in different generations who I think are wonderful people and I think have very interesting ideas that I am always open to.

Sam: 55:55

Yeah, can I like affirm that retroactively?

Ellie: 55:59

Well, I think this is great too. Cause I, Sam, you mentioned the word multiplicitous in your answer and I feel like Anna, your answer sort of embodies that maybe it's a quintessential millennial move to want to define the generations and to make you two come on to the show to give us Gen Z's perspective on millennials.

Anna: 56:18

You could rename the show, Millennial Anxiety instead of Gen Z.

David: 56:24

Well on that note, Sam and Anna, keep on being your Gen Z multiplicitous, undefinable, authentic selves. Um, we really enjoy the fact that you took the time to come and chat with us. And now we know what you think about me and Ellie. It's it's it's out in the public record.

Sam: 56:45

Dear.

Ellie: 56:45

Thank you both. You're so amazing.

Anna: 56:48

Thank you for having me.

David: 56:55

We hope you enjoyed today's episode.

Ellie: 56:57

Please rate and review us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can find us at overthinkpodcast.com, where you can email us with questions, feedback, or even request for life advice.

David: 57:10

You can also find us Instagram Twitter @overthink_pod. We want to thank our audio editor, Aaron Morgan, as well as our production assistant Sam Hernandez.

Ellie: 57:20

Samuel Smith for the original music and Trevor Ames for our logo. And to our listeners, thanks so much for Overthinking with us.