Gen X is going after Gen Z on TikTok

You poked the bear…

Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.

If the millennial pause is the pause at the start of videos, the Gen X pause is the pause between sentences as they figure out what to say next.—Kate

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Not all Millennials are “epic bacon” theater nerds, but on TikTok, the entire generation has been tarred with the idea of “millennial core.” Now Gen Xers are catching their own bizarre reputation on the app, thanks to videos in which these older users, deploying the most obvious beauty filters available, stare wordlessly at the camera, usually above a threatening caption with no discernible target. These TikToks, which often inexplicably appear on my FYP without having received a single like, exhibit every possible marker of an accidental upload, and yet have become common enough to make up a whole genre.

No one really knows what Gen X is doing on the app in the best of times, but the message of these videos is clear enough: These middle-aged users have declared “war” on Gen Z, and they’re calling it the “Gen X rise.”