Why does Gen Z love labels and rules so much?

They’ve been given nearly unlimited freedom, which backfired annd created a generation with no purpose, and now they subconsciously crave discipline. See the psycho girls converting to Islam.

It is funny how liberals and progressives used to be the ones screaming about no labels and let’s not stereotype people, but that’s honestly all they do. It’s just like how they scream about racism constantly, and find micro aggressions everywhere, go on and on about the Civil War and genocide and Palestine, but yet they’re usually about an inch from calling for a white genocide in the present day. Bunch of psychos and hypocrites.

R2 I would argue that these kids are definitely not progressive. They're the opposite in many ways.

Because Gen Z were raised by people like Will and Jada, simultaneously being helicopter parents and boundaryless.

My god you people need to go outside and stop living online.

R5 yet here you are

R6 my point was that I don’t form my opinions from Reddit paranoia threads. Or NYPost articles that cherry-pick tiktoks.

It is nag nag nag with them. Fucked up fuddy duddies.

OP, I'm around your age. One difference I see is that when we were 15, we wanted to be treated like 25-year-olds. And with them, they're 25 and they still want to be treated like they're 15..

I blame social media. They have been obliged to categorise themselves and find their true “identity” and obsess over online rules and etiquette since they were children. Now they are anxious basketcases.

[quote] I'm 41 and grew up when people hated being labeled.…

…anything but straight.

Gen Z are like computers pre-AI, they have to be programmed.

Michael Stipe once said, and I’ve often quoted, “Labels are for canned foods.”

They're kids who are searching for what their future identities are going to be.

We all did it and were just as annoying to adults. Fortunately for us, we weren't doing on-line. It wasn't tweeted or posted, then retweeted, reposted, archived, or screenshot for eternity. Our parents may have told their friends about our accomplishments, our struggles, and our screw ups but their parents post everything on their socials for comments and likes. For attention and validation of their own that has nothing to do with pride in their kid or concern for their welfare.

Those kids have no privacy and no sense of shame because, even if they wanted it, their parents would have already squandered it for them.

They are just trying on different personas/lewks/labels until they settle into who they truly are, just like we all did.

It seems so much crazier and more extreme because every last second of their lives have been documented by their parents and/or by them by way of social media, whereas before, no one would have known all of it was going on.

…Because they’re progressives and Democrats, who do those things?

R14 speaks some truth

The friends I see who are conservative have kids that are normal and can engage in conversations. The progressives with kids have little basket cases who seem emotionally stunted.

You guys are talking about a very small population of Gen Z who are outsiders within their own generation. The multi-label radical liberals were not the popular kids at school.

A lot of Gen Z understands the new ideology of Self-ID, it doesn’t mean they identify or subscribe to it. And some are just confused over it as boomers.

R17 That is absolute 100% bullshit.

Radical liberalism is an effect of radical conservatism. Most radical liberals are using liberalism to rebel against their conservative families, upbringing, or environment.

These angry confused purple haired people were not raised by tree huggers or hippies or progressives.

They hate conservatives and religion and homophobia because they KNOW it and it’s how they grew up.

Exactly. It’s not the hot popular kids doing this. It’s the ugly and miserable kids, the ones who were always outsiders.

And that’s exactly why crazy liberals and crazy right wingers behave the same way. They all ate at the same dinner table.

So don’t give me that “conservatives raise normal children”, such horseshit.

R20 Exactly. The hot popular kids are following the perfect TikTok influencers who look like they live like millionaires.

The problem with Gen Z in my opinion is more so the distortion of reality with privilege and money and beauty. Being an influencer can make you a millionaire, faceapp filters and beauty / body standards, plastic surgery, and that everything has to be recorded or photographed or else it doesn’t exist.

That’s more so an issue to me than ugly teenagers who think they’re dogs.

r10 and r14 have it right.

R14 The big difference between us and them is that we weren’t taken seriously on a political level.

“Queer” is just a new scene of rebellion. It’s the same as beatniks and hippies and punks and goths and emo except this scene is recognized politically and socially.

After all, all this shit began on Tumblr in the early 2010s.

It’s like if politicians in the 80s and 90s acknowledged satanism as politically correct for gothic teenagers.

The younger generations and people who want to capitalize off them have hijacked the transgender group to express their angst and rebellion and want “civil rights” for it.

They're not interesting, witty, charming or even very smart. So they have to rely on case studies: I'm a non-binary, fluid, neurodivergent celiac Aspergers with fibromyalgia.

Watching them ransack psychiatric diagnoses in search of an identity is bizarre. Declaring themselves “neurodiverse” because they can’t pay attention without Ritalin and then announcing that autism is a superpower, meanwhile the child who is actually autistic is mute, episodically violent and requires round the clock care.

I’m convinced being on the spectrum fucks with your sexuality. Either in the sense you’re somewhat asexual, or your preferences are a tad bisexual.

R26 the worst part is they learn about these things from glancing at memes or from 2 minute YouTube videos, they have no fucking clue what they’re talking about.

None of us did at that age, R28. We thought we knew it all but we didn't. The difference between them and us is that we didn't have a chorus of tens/thousands/potentially even more of other equally inexperienced people breathlessly waiting to agree with our immature worldview and bolster our uninformed opinions with likes, re-tweets, and reblogs.

They won't realize how little they knew until they're older.

Tumblr.

I know, sounds crazy, but if you were on tumblr in the 2010s, at the height of its popularity, basically a whole generation grew up buying into some crazy ass shit. Especially when it came to identity and labels.

I'm glad I grew up millennial. At least we knew how to have fun!

R31 and the older generations were sooo obsessed with us when they really should have spent more time worrying about Gen Z.

the social media bio effect

Kids today love making petty rules and demanding people follow them, according to people on a site where posters throw a fit every time someone posts an obituary without the phrase "....is dead to me" and whine whenever Vivian Vance isn't listed as a poll option.

Why? Because they're a bunch of coddled, humorless assholes!

OP, you're really gonna lean in the everlasting trope of complaining about...

... Why are younger generations different from my generation?!?!?

SMDH

Honestly I think it's part of the autism wave where, because of their heavy online presence and single mindedness they disproportionately influence internet culture which has real world effects. The classification, systematization and codifying of identity is part of that, along with the neuroticism

Good god, OP.

“We were taught to live this way, why doesn’t the next generation do as we do?”

A tale as old as time

Very wise and reasoned post from R14.

It's late stage capitalism: everything can be labelled, commodified, exchanged and traded as capital, including the identity one might construct for oneself. You can be as special and unique and different as you want to be, because capitalism has told you that it is all purchasable.

It isn't progressive in the slightest.

Sorry to break it to you OP - but for those of us 5-10+ years older than you, the 'no labels' was just as stupid and snowflakey as today's pansexual and other terms.

"No labels" - basically is meaningless - it's to say you don't like words and definitions, which is what language is.

But nobody wants to say "i'm confused" or "I don't know what I am because I'm young" because that sounds like you may not know everything.

Before the internet, the musings of teenagers and twenty-somethings were kept private. Now we have to listen to this bullshit as if it's serious and worthy of discussion.

It is not.

I have this admittedly pop-psyche theory that, because young people are all a part of this vast international online community, labels have become a way to identify who your “people” are. Where you fit in. In real life, we give off all these details that telegraph this. Plus in real life our communities are smaller. High school or college. You can tell pretty quickly where you might fit in.

Then of course there is the subconscious and conscious influences from all these young people. I heard on a radio program that Tourette’s among young women is on the rise. Not because they actually have it, but because they genuinely think they do and start exhibiting symptoms. There are a couple of popular female Tiktokers who post videos about having Tourette’s and psychologists think that might be the cause of the phenomenon.

R41 I'm pretty certain I remember people 10 years older than me doing the No Labels thing, so no, that did not begin with us.

R43 - Correct. But Millennials always took something that already existed and proclaimed it to be new.

To be fair, most generations do that - but Millennials were the first to have their teen and 20 years broadcast on the internet.

But my point stand - the no labels thing is stupid and equally stupid as the other terms nowadays.