“Tiktok Teens Talk Takeover”

By: Madalan Jones

If by some chance you haven’t heard of the current online war between two of the most… interesting generations, then you, my friend, have a lot of catching up to do.

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It’s hard to say where and when all of this came to be. After all, new arguments seem to come up every other month at this point. However one of the most recent uprisings of attacks seems to have come from a Tiktok about Millennial style.

Gen Z has posted plenty of harmless videos making fun of Millenial’s cultish reliance on skinny jeans and side parts. Personally, I believe that we should be focusing more on their obsessive usage of the laughing emoji, but I digress. Despite the clear blunt and sarcastic humor, something very typical of Generation Z, Millennials have taken this as a declaration of war, and they’re arming themselves with subpar raps protecting Eminem, and their hashtags designed to prioritize themselves (#90sbabies #onlysomeremember). Gen Z’s just here for the ride.

I think The Insider Hook really captures the true essence of the new feud, “Millennial Karens-in-training attempting to clap back at teenagers” (Mahan). My favorite insult hurled back at the literal children having a good time on a social media app, has to be how we ‘ate tide pods’, or, you know, mid-thirty-year-olds just, blatantly cursing out teens. First of all, this is the generation that did the cinnamon challenge, so they really aren’t fit to talk about weird trends kids took part in. And, it can’t just be me thinking these things were taken a little too far. Sharol it’s okay, we’re not going to rip your skinny jeans from your cold dead hands, we might, however, laugh at your Instagram bio that reads ‘wine mommy to two doggos #hufflepuff #girlboss’.

However, as surprising as it may be, a lot of the outlets and information regarding the feud written by older generations is not in favor of Gen Z, according to Arwa Mahdowi, a millennial from The Guardian, we are ‘zoverlords’ and we’re trying to suppress their expression of humor. Again, tide pods are brought up. I’d like to point out that there’s an obvious bias here, as the article was written by a millennial, but because I’m over here doing the counterpart, we’re going to leave that unsaid. What we are going to talk about, though, is the laughing emoji.

The wretched laughing emoji. The bane of my existence. Okay, maybe not the bane, but that little menace has a special place down under.

Much like language evolves throughout time, (you don’t see us using thou and thee in everyday conversations, now do you?) so can expressions. So, let’s all just follow Harry Styles’s advice and, ‘stop your crying, it’s a sign of the times’.

The elephant in the room needs to be addressed before we go on. This is nearly exactly what happened between Millennials and Boomers about a year ago. And low and behold, Millennials became just what they promised to destroy.

Just as boomers were once taunting millennials about overpriced avocado toast and not being able to afford housing, Millennials decided to share the hate, and attack Gen Z for critiquing questionable lyrics from rapper Eminem, and, oddly enough, not being able to go to liquor stores. I have a few responses for this one because it’s just completely untrue. Yeah, a good chunk of Gen Z, is not of legal age to drink, and therefore cannot go into a liquor store, but… and Millenials get ready, this one will blow your gasket, the oldest Gen Z will turn 23 this year. Though I must confess, they do have a bit of a point with the whole Eminem thing. I mean, sure, his lyrics are definitely iffy, and some are just downright… yikes, but if we want to hold him to such high standards we also need to hold musicians and artists now to those high standards, something we definitely don’t do.

All in all, It’s a pretty stupid feud. Let people enjoy what they want unless it’s the gosh-forsaken laughing emoji, and do what they enjoy. Let people have their fun on social media, and be ready to take in what you dish out. It’s all in good fun, and a lot of us need to remember that, calling eleven-year-olds explicits and going all Gabbie Hanna high school freaking bullies on everyone isn’t going to do you any good. In fact, it will get you almost exactly where it got Gabbie, if not to such an extent. Remember that at times like this we’re all we have and that in the future Millennials maybe our bosses or employers and it might not be the best idea to mess everything up right now.