Let's talk about the GenZs

There are a few phrases that we of late have come to increasingly hear, and even use.

- ABHIJEET KUMAR

“Oh, these GenZs”! “They don’t take anything seriously. They are too blunt. They get worked up over the smallest things.” These are some of the usual things we all have started hearing about everywhere, be it at parties, in offices, inside metro coaches, or during family dinners. Some years ago, what passed off as casual generational banter has now increasingly begun to resemble a quiet war of identities. And like most such wars of identities, it feels deeply misplaced.

The accusation that GenZ lacks depth is simplistic. The generation scrolls too much, reacts too quickly, consumes culture in fragments, and turns everything, from politics to poetry, into mere aesthetic without engaging with it in depth. But beneath this complaint lies a more uncomfortable truth, one that the “non-GenZs” are rarely pausing to confront. What if GenZ is not the cause of our cultural exhaustion but merely its most visible inhabitant?

Culture, for some time now, has functioned in a way where it has been repetitive and algorithm-driven. We know nostalgia is being endlessly reheated and sold back to us as comfort. We know outrage is monetised, depth is penalised, and complexity is uncomfortable. The warnings have been issued for decades now and yet the consumption continues.