As a Gen-Xer, I have several responses to Gen-Z (aka the “Homeland Generation”) lumping us all in with the “Karens”.
(1) Well, bless their little hearts.
(2) Winning a generational war only works when the other side actually cares. Gen-X has weaponised not caring. We generally DGAF what others think.
(3) Since we’re the Homeland Generation’s parents, all we have to do is threaten to take away their anxiety meds.
(4) Since even the *OLDEST* members of the Homeland Generation are indeed old enough to have passed that magical day in your teens, when you wake up one morning, thoroughly convinced that you know *EVERYTHING* (generally around 13 for girls, and 15-16 for boys), but not yet old enough to have reached the day, where it all comes crashing down, and you suddenly realise that you know nothing at all (late twenties to early thirties), until you get a few more years under those collective belts, I think that anything the Homeland Generation has to say at the moment, Gen-X will “take it under advisement”.
(5) Likewise, once the Homeland Generation has spent eight or nine years as latchkey children forced to raise themselves because their self-absorbed parents are too tied up in their own pursuits and interests to actually give two runny shits about raising their own children, they can come and talk to us. Until then... “Whatever you say, Chief.”
Excellent post. One pull of the router power chord, one missed payment to the cell phone company, and I can bring her world crashing down. I have that power.
I just don’t care enough to use it.