Gen Z: Most Hated Generation Since Gen X?

Labelling the younger generation as spoiled and entitled is not a new phenomenon. But every now and then, you see a generation that truly inspires contempt. After October 7^th, Gen Z (or as I prefer to call them, the TikTok Generation) have been called "egomaniacal and unmotivated and irretrievably stupid" as well as "immoral and heartless and pretty evil." And that was just Fox News commentator Dagen McDowell. The disgust is not just right-coded, like it typically is when it comes to discourse about the younger generations. Many young TikTokers are saying they refuse to vote for Genocide Joe, enraging older, center-left Boomer liberals.

When was the last time a generation enraged the elders en masse like this? Gen X of course (or, as I prefer to call them, The MTV Generation).

Gen X effortlessly upset the Boomer generation. I have touched on this before. Like the '80s and '90s, the Baby Boomers still control the media, but now they control government and everything else. For this reason, they are very sensitive to the narratives that evolve, especially in legacy media. This makes sense, considering the rebels in the '60s took a long time to wrest power in Hollywood away from the aging studio execs that were around for both world wars.

Generations X and Z inspire rage and fear from boomers for different reasons. To delve into this, let’s take a brief, scenic detour over two different types of time periods. We’ll call them The Romantic Ages and The Jaded Ages. Chronologically, we should start with The Romantic Ages, which of course began with The Romantic Era itself in the 1800s. As a reaction to the cold rationality of The Age of Enlightenment, the Romantics in England and Germany trusted intuition, dreams, the heart, the soul, etc. In the 1850s, the Transcendentalists created a homegrown American Romantic movement.

This outpouring of passion and expanded consciousness would not return until more than a century later in the ‘60s with the hippies. The Boomers represented the ethos of this time and would eventually use the mass media to consistently produce narratives that support the values they fought for in the ‘60s. It should be said that there was quite a bit of compromise and back pedaling.

But they were resentful of the jaded children that followed. The Jaded Ages can be said to claim three decades: the 1920s (The Lost Generation, less interested in following up with the utopian interests of the 1910s artists), the 1940s (with its amoral film noir detectives as well as its cool bebop players and cynical Beatniks) and the ‘90s (the decade that gave us the rallying cry “Oh well, whatever, never mind”).

It can be difficult to chart how The MTV Generation pissed off the boomers when Gen X didn’t really get acknowledged as a generation until the ‘90s. Hip-hop can help clarify things for us. Throughout the ‘80s and 90s, rap classics from legends like Run DMC and Notorious B.I.G. got negative reviews for being homophobic and not having a positive message. These critics were aging boomers who were praying that bands like U2 would resuscitate the spirit of the ‘60s. But hip-hop was full of amoral, naturalistic tales of ghetto life that were not meant to make aging yuppie boomers feel good about themselves. The cynicism may have been a rude awakening for the Age of Aquarius, but the youth only loved it more as it evolved.

When the ‘90s rolled in, Boomers were hopeful that grunge would help restore Woodstock values. Meh, sort of. Politics and mind expansion were not on the agenda. The two guiding values of Gen X were authenticity and free speech. Who cares how much money you make or who you offend? As a song that is currently a hit on TikTok goes, “Bitch, I said what I said.”

Speaking of TikTok, we will now look at how Gen Z upsets the even older Boomers. Spoiler alert: we are right now in a new romantic age. For good or ill, the footage of the violence in the Middle East has the new generation overcome with emotion.

Throughout the 21st century, Boomers in film, TV and news media have done an admirable job playing catch-up with millennial progressivism. They may have had a more difficult time playing the pronoun game than they would have liked, but they were game. They did not want to appear like dumb, unwashed red state podunks. After October 7, celebrity after celebrity tried to create The Hot Take That Would Course Correct the Narrative. As of this writing, the previously invincible Sacha Baron Cohen said that TikTok is “creating the biggest antisemitic movement since the Nazis.” This was met with a response of derision, pointing out the irony that a comedian whose work was fueled by ethnic stereotypes would cry racism.

After October 7^th, one major difference grew between Millennials and Gen Z: censorship. For decades, the youth said that censorship was justified if it meant people were less hurt. Now, since many of the Gen Z youth are being shadowbanned -- even on TikTok – they, like their Gen X predecessors, are starting to value freedom of speech. Not since the ‘90s has free speech been this much of a hot button issue. From the ‘00s till 2022, anyone who defended free speech was painted as an aging Xer who loves Trump and hates pronoun variety. 

Not that it is a contest, but there is no question that Gen Z is enraging the Boomers way more than Gen X could ever hope to. Boomers resented The Blank Generation’s apathy. They were hopeful that one day they would magically snap out of their somnolent stupor and carry their torch. Gen Z, on the other hand, has too much passion for their liking. What hurts is that a generation that fought for so many progressive causes missed one that seems to animate the youth with a passion that only burns brighter as it gets suppressed. Now, more than ever, the Boomers are The Man. Perhaps it would have been better for them to have died before they got old.