"The Gen Z Stare"
Jul. 17th, 2025 06:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingIf you haven't seen the conversation that's been blowing up this week, "the Gen Z stare" is what people have started to call the prolonged silent stare of college-age adults when presented with the possibility of a conversation with someone they don't know.
Thank god there's a word for this. I was starting to get really paranoid that there was something deeply wrong with me personally, or perhaps that there was something wrong with Philadelphia, but apparently I'm not alone.
A lot of this week's news-outlet discourse seems to surround the complaint that Gen Z people are rude to customers and supervisors at work, but that's an almost willful misinterpretation of what's going on. Obviously I think service workers (a) don't owe you anything, and (b) should be provided with free Klonopin and/or weed gummies as a condition of employment at any public-facing job, but problems arise when you are a service worker and you need to communicate with someone who just stares at you without responding.
The videos I've seen reposted on the various Philadelphia reddits are all made by POC women complaining about how they have to treat adults in their 20s like small children. To give an example, a server at a popular brunch place on South Street was explaining how she needs to do baby-talk to 20yo diners to get them to respond to her at all. Which is insane. Like you can't just go to a restaurant and silently stare at the server who's trying to take your order! And also, treating Black women like they're not worth speaking to is... Well, it's something.
Meanwhile, earlier this week, one of my colleagues was complaining about how his daughter got fired from a summer internship at a hospital in Baltimore because her behavior is "inappropriate." Apparently what she would do is go into a one-on-one initial intake with a patient and stare at them without any sort of greeting. What she (apparently) thought is that "it's important to listen," but so many people complained about how her flat affect was "creepy" that they had to let her go.
And you can understand why, right? Like you're sick and in distress to begin with, and then you get processed through a horrible giant institution, and then they put you in a small room filled with upsetting medical diagrams, and then a 21yo with dead eyes just comes in and stares at you?
My Gen-X colleague was like, "Well they're not taking my daughter's feelings into consideration," but come on. She is supposed to be the caregiver in that situation! Some of these patients are literally dying!
Meanwhile, on various Reddit boards with reposts of recent articles, there's been a flood of neurodivergent people (who tend to be extremely sensitive to social rejection) coming forward and saying that they find the silent stare to be deeply upsetting and dehumanizing. In other words, this isn't about "not wanting to make small talk," but rather about putting your interlocutor in a position where they have bend over backwards in an attempt to communicate with you. And there are many people in this world who, for whatever reason, really aren't in a position to be able to do that.
I work with college-age adults, and it's been my experience that most of them are fine. Also, based on what I've seen on IG and TikTok, it's largely people in their 20s complaining about other people in their 20s. So of course - of course! - most young adults are doing okay and have normal social skills.
But the ones who don't are in a completely different category. I'm on TikTok entirely for dog videos, and most of what I know about non-pet influencers comes from political podcasts, but I can't help but wonder if this has anything to do with the extreme popularity of "mental health" and "self-care" influencers who use therapy-speak to reconfigure every social interaction into an abusive relationship. But who knows.
Anyway, an alternate version of this phenomenon that I struggle with personally is when people use ChatGPT (or whatever) to respond to an email without reading what I wrote or what they sent in response. As you might imagine, this creates problems that take unnecessary time and energy to fix. I hate email, and I understand the impulse to make a computer do unwanted work, but goddamn.
Thank god there's a word for this. I was starting to get really paranoid that there was something deeply wrong with me personally, or perhaps that there was something wrong with Philadelphia, but apparently I'm not alone.
A lot of this week's news-outlet discourse seems to surround the complaint that Gen Z people are rude to customers and supervisors at work, but that's an almost willful misinterpretation of what's going on. Obviously I think service workers (a) don't owe you anything, and (b) should be provided with free Klonopin and/or weed gummies as a condition of employment at any public-facing job, but problems arise when you are a service worker and you need to communicate with someone who just stares at you without responding.
The videos I've seen reposted on the various Philadelphia reddits are all made by POC women complaining about how they have to treat adults in their 20s like small children. To give an example, a server at a popular brunch place on South Street was explaining how she needs to do baby-talk to 20yo diners to get them to respond to her at all. Which is insane. Like you can't just go to a restaurant and silently stare at the server who's trying to take your order! And also, treating Black women like they're not worth speaking to is... Well, it's something.
Meanwhile, earlier this week, one of my colleagues was complaining about how his daughter got fired from a summer internship at a hospital in Baltimore because her behavior is "inappropriate." Apparently what she would do is go into a one-on-one initial intake with a patient and stare at them without any sort of greeting. What she (apparently) thought is that "it's important to listen," but so many people complained about how her flat affect was "creepy" that they had to let her go.
And you can understand why, right? Like you're sick and in distress to begin with, and then you get processed through a horrible giant institution, and then they put you in a small room filled with upsetting medical diagrams, and then a 21yo with dead eyes just comes in and stares at you?
My Gen-X colleague was like, "Well they're not taking my daughter's feelings into consideration," but come on. She is supposed to be the caregiver in that situation! Some of these patients are literally dying!
Meanwhile, on various Reddit boards with reposts of recent articles, there's been a flood of neurodivergent people (who tend to be extremely sensitive to social rejection) coming forward and saying that they find the silent stare to be deeply upsetting and dehumanizing. In other words, this isn't about "not wanting to make small talk," but rather about putting your interlocutor in a position where they have bend over backwards in an attempt to communicate with you. And there are many people in this world who, for whatever reason, really aren't in a position to be able to do that.
I work with college-age adults, and it's been my experience that most of them are fine. Also, based on what I've seen on IG and TikTok, it's largely people in their 20s complaining about other people in their 20s. So of course - of course! - most young adults are doing okay and have normal social skills.
But the ones who don't are in a completely different category. I'm on TikTok entirely for dog videos, and most of what I know about non-pet influencers comes from political podcasts, but I can't help but wonder if this has anything to do with the extreme popularity of "mental health" and "self-care" influencers who use therapy-speak to reconfigure every social interaction into an abusive relationship. But who knows.
Anyway, an alternate version of this phenomenon that I struggle with personally is when people use ChatGPT (or whatever) to respond to an email without reading what I wrote or what they sent in response. As you might imagine, this creates problems that take unnecessary time and energy to fix. I hate email, and I understand the impulse to make a computer do unwanted work, but goddamn.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-26 04:34 am (UTC)I can understand being overwhelmed and a bit freaked out by non-structured conversations - what if I do it wrong and they hate me?? - but a professional interaction (service worker or whatever) is by its nature partially scripted and even if I'm a stumbling weirdo they probably won't remember me (I have to keep telling myself this.)
I genuinely worry about social interaction sometimes (she says, as she sits in her apartment typing on the internet!)
no subject
Date: 2025-07-26 01:43 pm (UTC)I don't think the internet is rotting people's brains, though. It's been my experience that younger Millennials and Gen Z people have, on the whole, actually been better at scripted social interactions at a younger age, probably because of being able to watch amateur videos of people interacting + having so many online conversations with strangers.
I definitely remember being around 16-18 years old and not really understanding how to talk to people in certain situations. I'm still like that now sometimes. It's a process. 😅
Meanwhile I have never once seen you have an awkward interaction in all the years I've known you online, even back when I only vaguely crossed your orbit on LiveJournal. True story!
no subject
Date: 2025-08-04 08:29 pm (UTC)I think a really key component is just remembering that the other screen name (or individual in meatspace) is a whole person, not a badly scripted NPC in your personal video game. My ex forgot that, I think, and it was a huge part of the problem.