BussyBusta
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 17, 2025
- Highlight
- #1
The point of this thread is not to shit on zoomers really, but more to highlight how we, as a society, have let them down. When I say "we" I mean their retarded parents and boomers.
I'm going to use millenials as a counterpoint for the most part just because it's the only older generation I know this much about personally.
Zoomers, if you've taken notice, are deeply entrenched in an ever-revolving series of nostalgic trends for eras that they were not around to experience.
Most flippantly write this off as typical since generations past have had similar fads come and go (e.g. millennials with the 80s hysteria that eventually culminated in the "Stranger Things" aesthetic).
I disagree. Maybe just because I'm old but hear me out and let me know why you disagree if you do.
My main thesis is that zoomers look "back" to other cultural eras not because they think it would be better to live in that time, but because they're envious of the fact that those eras were hopeful for the future.
It's an attempt to live in a zeitgeist that has a positive forward outlook and, because zoomers are the product of a doomer society, the only way they can do this is by trying to identify with eras wherein that was the norm.
I want to touch on why zoomers are doomers in the larger sociocultural strokes first.
This is the generation that was not only raised on the internet but by the internet. Advice, guidance, goals, knowledge, ideals... a large part of a zoomer's experience of growing up is formed in and by the things they saw and participated in on the internet growing up.
I won't go into this too deeply since I'm not too interested in discussing it here but what is important about this is that zoomers were not always doomers but in large part were made that way due to their experiences with social media and online "news".
Teenage zoomers, like any teenagers really, had a big inclination to be swept up in all sorts of cultural initiatives: BLM, anti-BLM, global warming etc. The difference, compared to prior generations going through this (in the case of hippies, tree huggers, punks and the like) is that zoomers had their confidence, and perspective on the effective change that they could generate, warped by an egotistic social media feedback loop with mass media further boosting that signal.
My friend has a zoomie sister. When she was in highschool, her and her friends would constantly argue with us that they are going to "change the world" in a naive, aggressive and, most importantly, hopeful tone.
So then, if zoomers were hopeful before and constantly identifying with social causes with intent of creating a better future, how did they become doomers?
Because reality hit. Eventually, like most teenagers, they got bored and fatigued with whatever fad they were going through. For zoomers this crushed them way more than any other generation because of the simple fact that almost everyone they knew: from their friends in class, to the people online to the news channels themselves, was telling them that they were going to change the world. So when saying George Floyd's name three times in the mirror didn't end racism and paper straws didn't stop climate change, they were not only fatigued but in a state of shock.
The shock made the zoomer largely give up on the idea that somewhere in the future there can be a good world for them to live in. It wasn't worth trying to craft that future because ultimately, to them, their actions wouldn't matter.
It also happened to many of them at a much earlier age than would typically happen in the past. Instead of being in the usual age range of mid to late teens where teenagers start picking up edgy habits and causes, the range extended itself to the point where 12 year olds are getting pressured to kneel to "stop racism." This ubiquitous culture of pushing for change and identifying with "causes" was so ingrained in the zoomie's childhood.
Note that this doesn't only apply to liberals or lefties. For the zoomies hoping that Trump would bring about a major societal shift, they too were largely disappointed.
Zoomers basically got taught the hardest lesson of nothing ever happening. And now their feed is filled with doomposting news articles and they're left without the cause or drive to think they can change anything about it. The media pushed them to overconfidence and now it kicks them while they're down with negative messaging.
So why would I say that zoomers don't just want to live in another time because it looks fun, for instance?
When millenials were obsessed with 80s culture, it largely manifested in consumption of 80s media and occasional events such as "80s night." Outside of minor 80s influenced fashion trends, millenials did not transform their self to try and identify with someone living in the 80s.
If you want to know what I mean by this, take a look around you in a public space or take a look on tiktok (if you really want to hurt yourself I guess). The average zoomer girl at the mall dresses in a costume. It is a pantomime mimicry of the "subculture" they absorbed from tiktok. This often involves whole dress emulating that of periods past. Millenial girls were not walking around like Cyndi Lauper in public - the 80s was a novelty to them. A cute little curiosity with a fun aesthetic.
For zoomers it goes beyond this. If presented the chance, a millenial in their teens would be highly unlikely to want to be transported and transplanted to the 80s to live in that era themselves. Zoomers want so desperately to escape this present reality because they think it has no future. It's like they're trying to forcefully isekai their way to another time. On this note, the popularity of isekai anime and manga can be related to the zoomer's lost future. Being "reborn" into a different world is an appealing notion to someone who doesn't see the point of being in this one.
When I say that zoomers can't envision a future, it might be helpful to draw a comparison. What is the zoomer's version of 80s futurism or 90s Y2K projections for the cyber future? They have none. They can only envision life progressing on towards the same but worse.
This is reflected in the media they consume and create. There is nothing new imagined of things to come but a constant need to draw on futures created in the past, e.g. cyberpunk. The worst part is that when they do this, they only end up cribbing the aesthetic usually but that's off-topic.
This effect extends to music as well. Have you been to a nightclub within the last 3 years? Unfortunately I have. Go to a "normie" (not some trendy underground techno drugden in a fucking basement or warehouse) nightclub that's a zoomer hangout spot. Pay attention to the music. 90% of what the DJ's playing is hits from the 90s and early 2000s. And the zoomers love it.
Millenials similarly had 80s hits occasionally played in clubs but, outside of 80s themed parties, these were usually at the end of the night to close the club.
To be 18 (21 for burgers) and singing along to Avicii with your friends in the club represented a jovial spirit of optimism going into young adulthood. Zoomers play the hits of their parents in the hopes that they can recapture the feeling of their parents being in the club and feeling that same spirit of optimism. They do this because they can't imagine having that same optimism themselves. They want to bottle that optimism so that they can hit it like a drug.
I'm going to coin a term here, autoneoteny, to try and make my last point.
You can observe an interesting trend in zoomer girls applying makeup vs prior generations like millenials. Both generations, for the most part, use makeup to make themselves appear more attractive or simply to style themselves but there's a nuance in certain trends that creates a major distinction.
Millennial girls used makeup to look more "mature." To look like a woman or lady and not a little girl. Zoomer girls do the complete opposite. The trend for the largest time has been for them to do things like make their eyes look bigger, make their face look more flushed in places that aren't meant to mimic sexual arousal (e.g. a red dot on the nose to indicate a spritely nature), or to place fake freckles on their face. They emphasise neotonous features to look youthful.
Whereas the millenial girl looked optimistically towards growing into a woman, the zoomer girl rejects it. She rejects it because ageing and growing up remind her of a march towards an increasingly bleak outlook. It's not that she doesn't want to get old, it's that she doesn't want to walk into this present future. It's much easier to play pretend and briefly copy someone else's.
This turned into a much more scattered, schizophrenic write up than I anticipated. Thanks to anyone who actually reads (and hopefully engages with) it.
Btw I don't think the above holds the same for younger gen Alphas. They're borne out of chaos and don't suffer the same pessimistic outlook imo. But that's a discussion for another day.
I'm going to use millenials as a counterpoint for the most part just because it's the only older generation I know this much about personally.
Zoomers, if you've taken notice, are deeply entrenched in an ever-revolving series of nostalgic trends for eras that they were not around to experience.
Most flippantly write this off as typical since generations past have had similar fads come and go (e.g. millennials with the 80s hysteria that eventually culminated in the "Stranger Things" aesthetic).
I disagree. Maybe just because I'm old but hear me out and let me know why you disagree if you do.
My main thesis is that zoomers look "back" to other cultural eras not because they think it would be better to live in that time, but because they're envious of the fact that those eras were hopeful for the future.
It's an attempt to live in a zeitgeist that has a positive forward outlook and, because zoomers are the product of a doomer society, the only way they can do this is by trying to identify with eras wherein that was the norm.
I want to touch on why zoomers are doomers in the larger sociocultural strokes first.
This is the generation that was not only raised on the internet but by the internet. Advice, guidance, goals, knowledge, ideals... a large part of a zoomer's experience of growing up is formed in and by the things they saw and participated in on the internet growing up.
I won't go into this too deeply since I'm not too interested in discussing it here but what is important about this is that zoomers were not always doomers but in large part were made that way due to their experiences with social media and online "news".
Teenage zoomers, like any teenagers really, had a big inclination to be swept up in all sorts of cultural initiatives: BLM, anti-BLM, global warming etc. The difference, compared to prior generations going through this (in the case of hippies, tree huggers, punks and the like) is that zoomers had their confidence, and perspective on the effective change that they could generate, warped by an egotistic social media feedback loop with mass media further boosting that signal.
My friend has a zoomie sister. When she was in highschool, her and her friends would constantly argue with us that they are going to "change the world" in a naive, aggressive and, most importantly, hopeful tone.
So then, if zoomers were hopeful before and constantly identifying with social causes with intent of creating a better future, how did they become doomers?
Because reality hit. Eventually, like most teenagers, they got bored and fatigued with whatever fad they were going through. For zoomers this crushed them way more than any other generation because of the simple fact that almost everyone they knew: from their friends in class, to the people online to the news channels themselves, was telling them that they were going to change the world. So when saying George Floyd's name three times in the mirror didn't end racism and paper straws didn't stop climate change, they were not only fatigued but in a state of shock.
The shock made the zoomer largely give up on the idea that somewhere in the future there can be a good world for them to live in. It wasn't worth trying to craft that future because ultimately, to them, their actions wouldn't matter.
It also happened to many of them at a much earlier age than would typically happen in the past. Instead of being in the usual age range of mid to late teens where teenagers start picking up edgy habits and causes, the range extended itself to the point where 12 year olds are getting pressured to kneel to "stop racism." This ubiquitous culture of pushing for change and identifying with "causes" was so ingrained in the zoomie's childhood.
Note that this doesn't only apply to liberals or lefties. For the zoomies hoping that Trump would bring about a major societal shift, they too were largely disappointed.
Zoomers basically got taught the hardest lesson of nothing ever happening. And now their feed is filled with doomposting news articles and they're left without the cause or drive to think they can change anything about it. The media pushed them to overconfidence and now it kicks them while they're down with negative messaging.
So why would I say that zoomers don't just want to live in another time because it looks fun, for instance?
When millenials were obsessed with 80s culture, it largely manifested in consumption of 80s media and occasional events such as "80s night." Outside of minor 80s influenced fashion trends, millenials did not transform their self to try and identify with someone living in the 80s.
If you want to know what I mean by this, take a look around you in a public space or take a look on tiktok (if you really want to hurt yourself I guess). The average zoomer girl at the mall dresses in a costume. It is a pantomime mimicry of the "subculture" they absorbed from tiktok. This often involves whole dress emulating that of periods past. Millenial girls were not walking around like Cyndi Lauper in public - the 80s was a novelty to them. A cute little curiosity with a fun aesthetic.
For zoomers it goes beyond this. If presented the chance, a millenial in their teens would be highly unlikely to want to be transported and transplanted to the 80s to live in that era themselves. Zoomers want so desperately to escape this present reality because they think it has no future. It's like they're trying to forcefully isekai their way to another time. On this note, the popularity of isekai anime and manga can be related to the zoomer's lost future. Being "reborn" into a different world is an appealing notion to someone who doesn't see the point of being in this one.
When I say that zoomers can't envision a future, it might be helpful to draw a comparison. What is the zoomer's version of 80s futurism or 90s Y2K projections for the cyber future? They have none. They can only envision life progressing on towards the same but worse.
This is reflected in the media they consume and create. There is nothing new imagined of things to come but a constant need to draw on futures created in the past, e.g. cyberpunk. The worst part is that when they do this, they only end up cribbing the aesthetic usually but that's off-topic.
This effect extends to music as well. Have you been to a nightclub within the last 3 years? Unfortunately I have. Go to a "normie" (not some trendy underground techno drugden in a fucking basement or warehouse) nightclub that's a zoomer hangout spot. Pay attention to the music. 90% of what the DJ's playing is hits from the 90s and early 2000s. And the zoomers love it.
Millenials similarly had 80s hits occasionally played in clubs but, outside of 80s themed parties, these were usually at the end of the night to close the club.
To be 18 (21 for burgers) and singing along to Avicii with your friends in the club represented a jovial spirit of optimism going into young adulthood. Zoomers play the hits of their parents in the hopes that they can recapture the feeling of their parents being in the club and feeling that same spirit of optimism. They do this because they can't imagine having that same optimism themselves. They want to bottle that optimism so that they can hit it like a drug.
I'm going to coin a term here, autoneoteny, to try and make my last point.
You can observe an interesting trend in zoomer girls applying makeup vs prior generations like millenials. Both generations, for the most part, use makeup to make themselves appear more attractive or simply to style themselves but there's a nuance in certain trends that creates a major distinction.
Millennial girls used makeup to look more "mature." To look like a woman or lady and not a little girl. Zoomer girls do the complete opposite. The trend for the largest time has been for them to do things like make their eyes look bigger, make their face look more flushed in places that aren't meant to mimic sexual arousal (e.g. a red dot on the nose to indicate a spritely nature), or to place fake freckles on their face. They emphasise neotonous features to look youthful.
Whereas the millenial girl looked optimistically towards growing into a woman, the zoomer girl rejects it. She rejects it because ageing and growing up remind her of a march towards an increasingly bleak outlook. It's not that she doesn't want to get old, it's that she doesn't want to walk into this present future. It's much easier to play pretend and briefly copy someone else's.
This turned into a much more scattered, schizophrenic write up than I anticipated. Thanks to anyone who actually reads (and hopefully engages with) it.
Btw I don't think the above holds the same for younger gen Alphas. They're borne out of chaos and don't suffer the same pessimistic outlook imo. But that's a discussion for another day.
