This Can't Be What All Young People Like

So why do we still pretend like it is?

The Whiny Baby wine bottles look nothing like the type of bottles you’d expect a pretentious wine snob to crack open (unless they live in Silver Lake). They have colorful stickers all around the label, the words “obsessed” and “omg!?” written in all caps, and beaded necklaces twisted into the caps. The branding is something like Barefoot meets children’s pretend champagne, and when I saw it on my feed the other week, I knew immediately that it’s designed to appeal to Gen Z. And then it dawned on me — I am Gen Z. And I am 26! So, why am I being spoken to like I am toddler?

Whiny Baby Shop

When people talk about what my generation likes and gravitates to online, it feels almost like an out-of-body experience. At my day job, I nod along when I see loud colors, internet lingo, and maximalism being attributed to Gen Z culture. But when the work day is over, one of the questions that I keep going back to lately is how to look and present myself as someone who is more sophisticated, serious, and grown up. It’s almost like we collectively created this fictional Gen Z character based on the viral content that features young people online, that’s not quite accurate but easier to grasp and market to than the more realistic, complex image of what this generation is like. And even though Gen Z is moving up in their careers, starting families, and will have to retire the “my frontal lobe isn’t fully formed” jokes very soon, they (we), keep being pushed back into this colorful and loud identity box.

The way older people feel about Gen Z is probably the same as how we feel about the even younger and more mysterious Gen Alpha. We’ve already spun the whole “tweens in Sephora” moral panic out of a couple of viral images and videos of teenagers leaving a mess in makeup stores and filming Alix Earle-style GRWM videos. Its overall message is that these kids are addicted to TikTok — a hot spot for evil brands working day and night to convince them that they need retinol drops, Stanley water cups, and Lululemon crossbody bags. Yet, when someone takes the time to actually go into Sephora stores and chat with employees and teenagers, what they see is nothing out of the ordinary — just some teenage girls playing with makeup after school and buying an occasional lipgloss.

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We should know by now from the wave of millennial DTC brands that putting cute branding on mattresses, vitamins, and other packaged goods isn’t sustainable. If you are in the business of selling pickles, writing “Hot Girl Pickles” on the label and marketing them on social media doesn’t make you a pickle brand that’s uniquely positioned to speak to Gen Z. We’ve got to go deeper — give us new multicultural flavors, make them easy to thrown in a bag and eat on the go without making a mess, or turn them into an instant party starter. There’s gotta be something about this generation’s unique taste preferences and lifestyle that’s creating a gap in the market for new products and brands besides the silly little internet slang and cute colors.

To me, a good example of this are the low-alcohol drinks and alcohol alternatives, like Recess, Ghia, and Kin Euphorics. They saw an uptick in the interest towards healthier lifestyle and the sober curious movement that conflicted with people’s remaining desire to relax and be social, and created products with new ingredients, sophisticated taste profiles, and elevated branding. And even though they were the butt of the joke for a while, fast forward to now — Dry January has become a huge trend, and it’s normal to spot a couple of non-alcoholic options, like Ghia and Recess, at parties and restaurants, at least in LA and New York.

Another unfortunate truth about my generation is that it’s hard to tell what it is that we like because a lot of times, we aren’t sure of that ourselves. On top of every norm and expectation that society projected onto the generations before us, we’ve also got ten different voices telling us what type of girl to be, what the best restaurants in town are, and what the new beauty must-haves to shop for at all times.

Just like the New York tweens in another viral The Cut article, we’ve got random reasons for liking certain brands and things — we used to steal some of them from our parent’s makeup drawers and closets, fell for some trends, and picked up a couple from a random flee market table one day. Far from every purchase we make is intentional, and yet, they find their way into our bathrooms, wardrobes, and nightstands. So really, speculating about and overintellectualizing what young people like seems like a massive waste of time unless you are willing to go deeper than TikTok and befriend the type of young people who stand out of the average crowd and are soon to become the drivers of the culture around us.

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FROM MY SAVED TAB:

• The Spelling Bee kidswear campaign from SSENSE, featuring children dressed in head-to-toe designer outfits and spelling the names of big fashion brands — from Margiela to Thom Browne. My favorite comment: “Who came up with this campaign?!!! It’s unethical to use children in fashion marketing, they can become too drippy and stylish early so they develop an acute sense of style so by the time they are adults!! Unacceptable…”

• Alec Leach’s book The World Is On Fire But We’re Still Buying Shoes.

  I listened to his interview on The Cutting Room Floor about his time at Highsnobiety, the business of media, and fashion consumption, and immediately became a fan.

• Hussein Chalayan AW 2004 “Anthropology of Solitude” CD Walkman Jacket. You just have to see it.

• Spring Break Vacation Preparedness Plan from Soft Services. The checklist includes a self-tan, picking the shows to watch en route, and a full body shave.

• Marc Jacobs posting photos of himself reading books. Every famous person you know is reading now, but Marc Jacobs has been doing it forever, and I love that for him.

• From Annie Kreighbaum’s Glossier archives — art direction for the Glossier sweatshirt.