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Dear, Gen Z: Sure you smell like teen spirit, but you also smell like unoriginality

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Haji Mohamed Dawjee is a South African columnist, disruptor of the peace and the author of Sorry, Not Sorry: Experiences of a Brown Woman in a White South Africa. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram: @sage_of_absurd

Lately there has been an influx of insults, critiques and advice from Gen Zers to millennials. Just in case you didn’t know, millennials are old now.

First published in the Daily Maverick 168 weekly newspaper.

I wouldn’t have known about this takedown had it not been brought to my attention by my wife, whose friend has a TikTok channel. She posted a video with her hair styled in a side path. Apparently her comment section was chewed off by Gen Zers. Just to clarify, we’re talking about people who were born between 1997 and 2015, approximately, who are between the ages of six and 24. Six? SIX?!

I was born in 1984. Technically that classifies me as a millennial, but I have never identified as one. I don’t like slogan Ts that say weird crap like “But first coffee”. I don’t believe that being an influencer is a full-time job and I have never ever thought mum jeans are attractive or suitable on anyone, nor that tights are pants – unless of course you are going horse-riding in the Midlands or whatever, in which case you are a very privileged white girl. Great, good for you, and I hope you and your pony have many happy years together, with or without said pony’s hair styled in a middle or side path.

I have never opted for the record player and swapping digital for analogue.

So I am not offended by this new generation but, then again, I can’t remember a time where I have given a sh*t about what anyone has to say.

I do, however, take issue with the daft yet determined and very entitled opinions of this new-era human. (To be fair, I did the same with the millennial, even though, again, technically, I am one). I don’t care which generation you’re from. I can’t stand stupidity. Here’s the thing, Gen Z, nothing your generation does, or mine or possibly ones that come after, in terms of fashion or culture, will ever be new.

We will just wash, rinse and repeat old ideas over and over again, and forget they existed before us. We will be so consumed with the individuality of our sense of self and identity and how what we wear defines us that we will forget that all we are is carbon copies of someone’s great idea from the past. While we’re at it, Kurt Cobain has risen from his grave and requested that you please credit all the garage and grunge bands of that specific era with the shabby oversized jeans and Doc Martens look paired with the overworn and overwashed Nirvana T-shirt that you fished out of a thrift store bucket because you’re far too young to have owned one in the first place.

Sure you smell like teen spirit, but you also smell like unoriginality and someone’s leftover sweat from the actual age of grunge. Sorry to break it to you, mate. You are all the things you hate.

Technology changes, we become more savvy, human invention changes, humans evolve, the world around us evolves, first there’s global warming and the next thing you know turtles are choking on used human earbuds and straws, emojis may come and go and maybe, just maybe, we may get to a time once again where you need an actual job or at least “something to fall back on”.

But one thing will always remain the same: we will always have the need to be truly individual humans with truly individual identities and form part of an exclusive generation.

But here’s the other truth.

This. Will. Never. Happen.

We are not, in the words of Brad Pitt’s character in Fight Club, “unique and special snowflakes. We are the all-encompassing crap of the world.”

And no one cares if our petty, pathetic selves come with a side path, bell-bottom pants, a torn-up T-shirt or a crop top.

But I will tell you this. In the name of all generations, get that fall-back career. Please. I don’t care what you wear while you do it. DM168

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper which is available for free to Pick n Pay Smart Shoppers at these Pick n Pay stores.

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  • Michael Settas says:

    The brilliant evolutionary biologist, Prof Richard Dawkins, has frequently argued that ‘humanity needs a lesson in humility’. There is nothing special about us other than what our own thoughts and philosophies imagine for ourselves.

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