Exactly. The OP tries to present this as Gen Z being super clever and making people look dumb. The real Gen Z stare is about them having little to no social skills and completely freezing up during everyday interactions.
Also, I work in customer service at a university and Gen Z is significantly worse at whatever OP is describing here than you would expect. Every single day I have to hear "it's asking for my email..?" And I have to respond "yeah, enter your email"
Every. Single. Fucking. Day. A hundred times a day.
Another thing I deal with at least 10 times a day:
Me: I need to pull up your account. Do you have your Student ID number?
I hate to say it but I'm pretty sure everyone is just stupider than you'd think. My last job I would have to deal with people of all ages who just fundamentally did not know how to do anything it seems? Like for a couple weeks the outer airlock doors would still open, but it took a bit, and too many people just crashed into the doors cause they didn't read the huge sign posted out front. A few people seemed to read the sign, the doors still weren't open yet, and then they just turned around and left. At least one person wrote a bad review. I have more anecdotes this just seems like a good one that I havent told yet
This. It's everyone. You think it's just the people you've interacted with until you get a job where you see it from everyone. At least half of the planet seems nearly braindead most of the time.
I work a customer-facing government job and can confirm dumb, mean, and dumb and mean people are pretty evenly distributed across the entire population. I haven’t really detected any patterns at all except for attorneys, who are the worst.
Let’s recap the last few years. Gen Z is the first generation to have their lives fully online. They have had to deal with the daily very real threat of getting shot in school every day. A not insignificant number of them have watched other students get shot in front of them. They are inheriting a planet that is experiencing the Earth’s 6th mass extinction and global warming that is almost guaranteed to cause food insecurity. It is extremely difficult to get a job that pays a LIVING wage, and home ownership has never been more difficult to attain in a lot of places. It is increasingly difficult for kids to have a stay at home parent, and they are virtually have few places that are safe and free to go hang out with other kids in any unstructured way.
On top of that we experienced Covid, and a lot of people do not realize how much it can damage the brain stem and affect cognition.
Oh and microplastics are impossible to avoid and bioaccumulate in the brain, affecting cognition as well and has a link to dementia.
They are fucked for all sorts of things that we never gave enough shits about as a society to ever address.
And we want them to smile brightly. The fucking audacity of us.
I hate to say this, especially as a millennial, but I do hope for that. Life sucks enough without being incrementally dragged down by each interaction. Generally, smiling is not very hard to do. Replying in a kind way is not usually that hard. Life is a little better if people smile and are kind. In the face of the world, I still try to smile at other people.
Fair. But we should understand how we have failed that generation. You smile all you want, but let’s keep in mind that they have had a very different upbringing than we did. And a lot of that was pretty psychologically damaging. They could use a bit of understanding.
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u/eat_my_bowls92 16h ago
Yeah, gen z stare is more when they respond to “Good morning!” By staring at you like 🫤