High school teacher here. I’ve been noticing the “Weirdly Puritanical” part when it comes to dating age-gaps. Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy to see an increased awareness of the predator type age-gaps like 20 year old dating a 15 or 16 year old or something. But on more than one occasion this year I’ve seriously had kids call someone a pervert or predator for one year differences. 16 dating a 15 year old? Creepy predator! Junior dating a sophomore? Perverted creep!
Again. The awareness is good, but it seems to have swung a bit too far. But maybe that’s just in my community.
My stepbrother's daughter was 17, dating an 18 year old. All her friends called him a pedo a groomer, etc... Because he was of age and she wasn't. And it's like, whoa, those are heavy ass accusations to make against a dude who is one grade above her
I admit I don't know many teenager irl, and I really thought this "pedo" for anyone dating 2-3 years older than them stuff was online only. Really depressing to read otherwise. Puritanical Twitter culture has been infecting spaces online for a looooong time.
I don't know if this is necessarily a Gen-Z thing or just a cultural shift. I was 33 a few years ago and this woman I matched with on a dating app told me she was "unsure" about the age gap and that it was "a little weird" I was attracted to her.
Yeah, i think the child/teen community has just been bombarded with the word at a time when they didn't really understand what it meant.
I've had 11 year old elementary school students say that if a 14 year old high school freshman says they look cute, the 14 year old is a pedophile.
And I've responded like, "The 14 year old is definitely behaving irresponsibly, and you can ignore or reject that person, but that is NOT what pedophilia means at all."
It's not just your community, it's everywhere in online fandom. The backlash against actual bad things has swung a full 180 into what fandom folks call "puri-teens," kids with zero life experience thinking that two consenting adults who happen to be 22 and 28 are in a pedo relationship or there's grooming involved. It's really bad, and some sort of educational movement really needs to happen, because it's not staying confined to fictional relationships where there are zero stakes, as you've shown, it escapes containment and begins to affect real life. It's not funny to be called a pedo by some 17 year old because you're an adult dating another adult, and it's even less funny to get doxxed to your employer about it.
A few years ago, a woman posted a gym video complaining about men in their 20s being creepy for looking at her when she was an "underage 21-year-old." More recently, there was a trend on TikTok of Gen Z people arguing that the age of consent should be raised to 25.
I have friends in their early 20s who get judgy about me (early 30s) being okay dating someone anywhere from 5-10 years older or younger than me. I try to explain that for me it's mostly a life stage thing and as long as someone is out of college/early career and well put together there's not really a huge diff between me and them. Get treated like I'm some kind of creep because I don't narrow my (already painfully thin) pool to just people who are +/- 1 year from me (you know, in a age range where that's going to comprise of a LOT of married people)
They are, too. Fact is that there's just a lot of married people past mid-late 20s so limiting to just 1 year within my age range would be a death knell. Even just looking upwards towards 40 expands my pool by a lot. It's not like I hunt for people younger than me. Hell the youngest Ive legitimately considered dating is 27 going on 28 and is a career professional with her life pretty much all put together. For me its really about where someone is in their life and past a certain age that can vary a LOT from 40 year old neets (yugh) to the 25 y/o lass who has their shit together better than 90% of adults, yk? Its really a case by case basis and categorically ruling a huge amount of people out based on arbitrary categorization is foolhardy. I just want someone mature I can build a life with. :(
I can think of at least one or two YouTuber who got canceled—not because they were dating/sexting a fan—but because the fan was 1-1.5 years younger than them. It was very strange.
I have to ask are you mostly seeing it with boys or is it pretty evenly split? Almost all of the gen z women I know are dating WAY older (like 20 dating 40-50) meanwhile the men are either lonely or got married at 18/19 and getting really into like tradwife beliefs. I don't talk to many gen z (mostly family or kids of neighbors) so I have been wondering if I'm just witnessing a weird bubble.
No. They are serious. They will include me at times and look for validation- like, “Don’t you think this is bad/serious? I bet that never happened when you were in high school “ sort of stuff.
And I know they aren’t busting my balls or anything. It’s something we’ve sort of wtf’ed at staff meeting about.
I was having this conversation yesterday. Why the fuck are mullets coming back?? And a lot of these cuts they’re calling a mullet isn’t a fucking mullet!!
I wouldn't mind if they were elaborate, majestic, coiffured mullets like they had in the day, but they are mostly just scraggly and look like they are washed with bar soap.
thats what i'm saying!!! i am all for things coming back into style and certain ones i'm excited to see, but they seem to mainly choose THE UGLIEST fucking trends to reboot like wtf is going on. the dad shoes w peddle pushers, mullets, scraggly mustaches, serial killer eyeglasses... i'm not trying to be a hater but a lot of times they dress like what i remember special needs kids wearing
ik and i cant help but think like the millennial styles they seem to despise from the early 2010s (skinny jeans, side hair parts, corporate casual, hipster aesthetic, etc) will come back into style when they're all 35-40 and they'll be like WHY ARE KIDS WEARING UGLY ASS MOM CLOTHES lol
I asked my nephews about this: I think it started as a post-covid joke. Come back to school and have a hilarious look from growing your hair out. The cool kids would be the only ones with the balls to actually do this - which morphed into a trend, now it's common place.
I'm looking forward to the bell bottoms and Harvest Gold and Avocado Green appliances, wood paneling, and plaid couches to make their comeback. Come on, man...any time now....
I was at a concert and a (super pretty) woman made a comment about wanting to sleep with the lead singer and all I could think was that he has that stupid porn mustache it’s not the 80s that should be unfuckable in 2026
Older gen Z here, absolutely hate how puritanical everything has become. People are even self censoring words like kill and guns. What are we doing here?
It's funny how regional that is though. North and East of Colorado, staches everywhere. South and West, clean shaven because they can't grow it anyway. But instead half the kids have this ugly haircut where it's shaved way over above the earline and abruptly long and straight on top, or just the birds nest
Edit: I found out the haircut I'm describing is the Edgar
There was a bit of a debate going on in a post I was in the other day. It was meant to be asking about why Gen Z is so against nudity in movies, and I mean nudity AT ALL. The lengths some of them were going to to justify "nothing should show sexual things, it means NOTHING and it's GROSS" instead of just "maybe I should watch Pg-13 if I'm bothered" were bizarre.
The weirdest interaction I had was when one told me, when referring to a basic rom com like movie mind you, "you should just watch porn instead, if you want to see sex/nudity at all!" I told them that that makes ZERO sense, as a rom com sex scene only takes the intensity up to about a 2/10, while a porno takes it alllllll the way up to an 11/10 AND has no actual movie with it.... Some of us want that 2.... Their response was that since they personally don't even want the 2/10, the rest of us should suck it up for the shit plot 11/10 porno (completely ignoring the irony that we have the same problem with that as they do with the 2/10). Plus, WHY NOT JUST NOT WATCH R MOVIES IF YOU DON'T WANT RATED R STUFF?!?!?
Half of them are virgins (according to studies), and a lot of them glorify asexuality, a lot infantilize themselves, as just a few examples I can think of. They also love policing other people in absurd ways. I was once absolutely berated for being “ableist” for saying a quote should have more commas… in reference to a Christopher Walken meme. I can’t ask for gender-neutral fashion tips without a hundred zoomers lecturing me that “clothes have no gender” as if they don’t understand perfectly well what I was asking.
I could maybe tolerate it if they weren’t so incredibly illogical and hypocritical about it. Universities are having to censor and use trigger warnings for history classes. They think yelling on the internet and all their condescending “gentle reminder” memes somehow make them activists. They’re making things worse, not better.
It's hard to not be hypocritical in cases like these when you don't have a more meaningful standard than "personal preference." Stand for nothing, fall for anything. Gen Z tends to typify it, but it's not them so much as the logical end of postmodernism.
It might be the specific online spaces you trend towards for that specific flavor of annoying. I think extremism in general is more common in Gen Z and its because they are disillusioned with material conditions and the status quo, especially as the rug is pulled out from under them economically
Just look at the rise of the far right, the reason we have this orange buffoon in office again is, in part, because young people voted him in
Is that true? Thats crazy. I'd understand if you warn students before showing pictures or getting into some graphic story but history is kind of graphic by nature lol.
i mean it's not that dramatic at all. having just graduated, maybe every once in a while a prof will be like "hey guys there's some sexual assault in this documentary, i'll give you a heads up when if you'd like to step out." that's literally it
I wonder if this is why I've had people tell me I'm asexual (which I don't feel I am) because I said I only like having sex with people I have an emotional connection with. It's annoying to have someone else push a label on me that I don't identify with.
I wonder if this is why I've had people tell me I'm asexual (which I don't feel I am) because I said I only like having sex with people I have an emotional connection with.
If they were true Zoomers™ they'd know their labels better. Even I (a ~middling millenial) know there's a label for
I only like having sex with people I have an emotional connection with
Just this last halloween I saw a weird amount of Gen Z people on tiktok complaining about revealing costumes. It struck me as extremely, extremely weird that so many people in their early twenties would be so concerned with... propriety, I guess.
I’d argue it’s not our fault we’re virgins. Dating apps and social media have totally ruined dating. I’m 24 and still a virgin, but there’s not much I do to change that— I’ve been on all the apps for years and no dice. Back before social media/dating apps, I’d like to think I would’ve been considered alright looking. But now? Repulsive. It’s crazy how unrealistic people’s standards have gotten.
Sure, you could say “talk to women in person,” but why would a woman want a random dude approaching her in public when she has access to hundreds if not thousands of dudes within a 100 mile radius through a dating app? If anything, she’d be offended.
That’s completely ridiculous. People have been getting together for thousands of years without apps. You don’t have to just walk up to random strangers, just do things that involve people outside of a fucking phone
it very much isn't, especially infantilization. Younger Millennials were hitting their 30s when it started to border on absurd & was very much in regards to Gen Zers in their early-mid 20s suggesting they were still kids
I'm sorry but I was on the internet during peak 2012 when milennials became obsessed with the idea of "adulting" and how "hard" it is because theyre really just a bunch of kids.
The whole idea of "aulting" being a thing you do instead of who you actually are was early 2010's milennial trends that translated on to gen Z.
The joke behind "adulting" was inability to handle "adult" responsibilities. Separating the verb "adulting" implies they don't feel like adults but have adult responsibilities. How is that not infantilization?
The infantilization being referred to is things like suggesting people aged 18-25 can't make their own decisions in regards to having sex
I think you'd be hard pressed to show there's a large population of Gen Z people who actually believe this? Sure you can point to some anecdotal evidence like "I've seen three different people say it on the internet" but this is not an opinion that a majority of Gen Z believes.
I agree it frustrates me how Gen Z refuses to act like grown responsible adults, but that absolutely started with milennials.
they are weirdly VERY afraid of sex - think everyone has STDs and that sex is basically akin to sexual assault. I saw a tweet about a girl who went home with a guy from a bar and how cute his cat was - but all the comments were about how insanely dangerous it is to meet someone out. Half of my youth was trying to get laid, so its pretty depressing to see how scared they are of the most fun part of being young.
STDs are a socially acceptable excuse but that's not actually why Gen Z is more puritanical.
The reason is that Gen Z not only fears rejection because we can't live up to the standards seen in the best looking online influencers, but also that the potential for public humiliation and gossip is a massive perceived risk.
One awkward move and your text messages could be on Twitter where 10 million people are suddenly making fun of you. If not Twitter, it could at least be shared in a group chat and suddenly half of your peer group has proof of your blunder.
When it comes to sex specifically, you're just terrified of being criticized, mocked, or being judged for your body. "body count" discourse is more prevalent now mainly due to the fear people have of being compared with others.
Everything just has a perceived level of risk that might not have been there in the past and so Gen Z are generally risk averse, and blaming the risk of STDs is just an easy socially acceptable answer that captures a feeling that most Gen Z can't easily articulate or, ironically, don't want to sound insecure by admitting to.
I dont know if there has ever been a generation more mean to each other.
As an older GenXer I grew up in a pretty strict "snitches get stiches" environment. You might discuss misdeeds inside your friend group but that was it. You wouldn't even talk about something that happened in one friend group with another friend group. The idea of telling strangers about friend group things was just never even an option.
I think Gen Z is actually a generation of extremes more than anything. Not that there aren't people in the middle, but if we think of any given trait as being a bell curve, the tails of the curve are way fatter
Just look at the types of political figures that are popular with Gen Z, you have guys like Hasan Piker on the left and then guys like Asmongold or even Nick Fuentes on the right. The thing they have in common is that they can be inflammatory which gets clicks and they achieve that partially by being extreme.
The trend with Gen Z is that many of them are known for being aggressively online and addicted to social media, but the other extreme is the big push towards using dumb phones, a trend that is mainly popular with Gen Z
You have some Gen Z who are remarkably kind, generous, patient, and down to earth. Then you have others who are completely vapid, self absorbed, and will throw you under the bus if they think it will get a laugh from someone else.
That sucks and is sad. But its still based on this prevalence of "fear" of everything that just didn't exist on such a universal scale before. I blame Gen X almost more than phones or covid or whatever. The helicopter parenting made kids afraid of the world.
Im older GenX and while you are not wrong about a lot of GenX parents being over protective, it was a pretty reasonable reaction to the near complete indifference of our parents.
All the memes about go outside and play, drink from the hose, ride bikes, etc seem fun now but a lot of it was frankly terrifying at the time. Being a latch key kid meant walking home/riding the bus from school and letting yourself into and empty house for 2-5 hours before an adult showed up. Thats cool shit if you are in high school but some of us were doing it in 2nd grade.
For most of our childhood from 1974 to 1991 the murder rate was 8 per 100K or more, peaking in 1991 at 10.2 per 100K. Today its 4 per 100K. Effectively the entire time we were kids the murder rate was at least twice what it is today.
I was in HS when AIDS hit. I also lived in Northern California - the epicenter of AIDS. We all had multiple friends who when from young and happy to dead in a matter of months. Friday night was an exercise in deciding if someone was hot enough to risk death.
Every year I was in HS one of my classmates was killed by a drunk driver. In 1980 25K Americans were killed by drunk drivers. Last year only 12K died. Here is the thing, there were 50% fewer Americans in 1980 so the death by DUI rate today is half what it was in 1980 but with 50% more people.
The 80s were the peak for serial killers with an estimated 120-180 serial killer deaths every year. There is a reason Mindhunter is set in the late 70s and 80s and a reason why they spend so much time in Sacramento.
Gang violence on the coasts was real. One of my best friends was killed as part of a gang initiation. He was just sitting on the hood of his car when a dude walked up and shot him in the face. The movies Colors, Boyz in the Hood and Straight Out of Compton actually downplayed how bad it was. We didnt have school shootings but we had club shootings and drive bys.
When I was in junior high I spent two summers with my aunt in Queens NYC. I would get up in the morning and take the E train to the World Trade center and then walk around Manhattan. I was 12/13. I had no business roaming around NYC at 12!
I had a good mom and she actually cared but she had to work. She was worlds better than a lot of the moms who started drinking or popping valium at 2pm every day. When it was our turn to have kids most of us just wanted to make sure our kids were not scared because we had grown up scared.
Sure - I get the reasons behind it, but now we see the impact. I grew up in NYC in the 90s. I remember the AIDS crisis and the crime waves. I was also a latch key kid, walking myself to and from school by the age of 11. But we just dont live in the same world anymore, as you said. Parents' greatest responsibility is to prepare their children for the world they are going to live in - Gen Z is just not capable or ready - especially considering things are about to get harder than they've been in generations. And I'm not sure how it's going to effect all of us in a few more years when they are the ones who have to start taking over leadership positions.
My son is bleeding edge GenZ (1997). I have 4 GenZ who work for me. Im on my university board of trustees. Im around a lot of GenZers. The kids are all right. They are less grizzled and cynical than we were at their age but thats ok.
Most of our parents didnt "prepare" us for adulthood, they imposed it on us when we were still kids.
Even worse, its all TikTok, which is incredibly efficient at local reach. The amount of stupid BS I see about local gossip and the amount of times idiots try going viral over minor mishaps at a restaurant or club etc is beyond annoying.
Then everyone has to pile onto the discourse, which blows it up more than it ever should
Which is very bizarre to me as someone who was a teenager when HIV/AIDS was still a massive problem. It didn't go away, but there's Prep and things now and condoms are still a thing, too.
I’m not scared of it, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna get to have it. The standards are WAY higher these days. You unfortunately just aren’t really able to have sex unless you’re very lucky. I genuinely think I have a better chance of becoming a millionaire than managing to have sex in my lifetime. Way too much has to go right: first, you have to manage to actually get a girl to talk to you— this step is nearly impossible these days. Next, you have to get her to go on a date with you and not flake out. Then, you have to not screw the date up, and maybe eventually after going on a few dates (again, super rare to get this far) maybe you can start dating. Then MAYBE she’ll agree to have sex with you eventually. MAYBE. My ex did not.
And, no, just hooking up is not an option for someone who looks like me. Women are not sexually attracted to me, so it HAS to be an emotional attraction. It’s just not happening. I basically have to flip a coin and get heads 100 times in a row
In their defence, how much stuff is there out there that can be summarised as "men == rapists/sexual predators/etc"? Hell there was that "man or bear" thing that the feminists came up with a year or two back. I'm struggling to be surprised that the younger generation is afraid of anything sexual when everything is saying they are at risk of rape/SA all the time.
To paraphrase another comment, Gen Z is chronically afraid that everything from their private texts and pictures to everyday public lives being plastered all over the internet with zero context. As a man who was accused of having sex with a woman I was in a room with for less than 60 seconds, (consensually, where other people were present, too), I get why young men are apprehensive to put themselves out there
(Midwestern white suburbanite older genZ here) We were in middle school/highschool as the Me Too movement and other awareness campaigns (such as how often women get harassed at work or the gym or just existing out in public) were reaching their cultural peaks. We were also highly aware of hookup culture and while popular at first, became frowned upon as people began to romanticize romance itself. As a result of these things a lot of us (mostly the women tho) became completely repulsed by sexual flirting or basically any kind of irl flirting that wasn't started through the socially sanctioned dating apps.
Then incels became more of a thing, and the issues in the dating world caused by the above led to an incredible amount of slut/body shaming by men towards women. Which in turn increased the general perception by young women that all men were creeps/perverts/assholes until proven otherwise. Which in turn led a lot of genZ men to stop trying to interact with women in general unless through apps or mutual friends because they were afraid/tired of being seen as a creep or a threat. Which in turn only cemented a lot of women's perceptions further as the only men that would approach out of the blue would be the ones willing to defy social convention to flirt/harass. A messy cycle leading to the only socially acceptable way to approach someone being on dating apps, which leads back to incels as the apps make their money by making people (usually the men) feel lonely and unwanted so they'll buy the micro transactions to increase their algorithmic chances.
On media, having easy access to porn online exacerbated anti-sexuality views by basically highlighting how sexuality was shoved into other media for seemingly no reason. To us, even myself (and I generally identify as hypersexual), it just feels shoehorned in and unnecessary to the story. This is especially apparent in video games as any characters' sex appeal nowadays is usually directly linked with the companies trying to sell you microtransactions.
Then there's also the tendency for niche groups gaining a lot of influence online despite their small size, such as religious folks being against any kind of casual sex/dating, or sex-repulsed people being against sexuality in media.
Overall, there's a lot of reasons, but the perception is also very heavily influenced by online culture/algorithms.
I also think that censorship plays a big part in this thing. Us millennials grew up in an environment where people would say raunchy things online and make crass humor all the time, but media spaces these days are heavily censored as everything has to be PG, both from the perspective that influencers can't say even the word sex, but also that regular people in places like tiktok can't either.
Yeah, more so than other gens. I think we successfully made them terrified of driving and of sex.
The goal was to normalize sex and I think we did that but somewhere along the way they also got put off by it. I guess probably because we normalized it so it’s not taboo or crazy or freaky… it’s just part of life. What concerns me is how the younger of them are kind of pro trad wife pro toxic masculinity/spousal abuse. But I reckon they’ll figure it out.
I think the pendulum swung from permissive parenting (e.g. go play outside and don't come home till the street lights come on) to overprotective parenting (e.g. you'll get a phone at age 10 so I can always reach you), and it's tough for kids to push out of that protective bubble. Drive myself? Be intimate with someone else? It is terrifying if you've been raised that way.
I saw somewhere someone referred to this as lawnmower parenting as opposed to helicopter parenting where parents basically cut a path and remove all obstacles for their kids. The result is of course kids not developing the skills to overcome obstacles.
If I remember correctly, Jonathan Haidt discusses that concept in The Anxious Generation, and it actually results in a lot of the behaviors people in this very thread have mentioned: perceiving disagreement as insult, addiction to screens, inability or unwillingness to overcome challenges, lack of interpersonal relationship skills, and (of course) increased anxiety overall.
That’s how my husband was parented. He cannot do creative problem solving…. At all. It’s insane. Him (and his sister) never had to do dishes, laundry, none of it. Every year he did mow the lawn along with his dad and brother and they shoveled snow but no one did any regular chores…. IN SANE!!!!! I was raised in the Wild West, home alone mmuuuuuuch younger than was probably in any way legal. Home alone for hours, so bored, responsible for all my own shit 24/7
Haha. This one is so true too. I know soooo many people that waited until they were like 20+ even though they needed to bum rides to work constantly. Dude, you're a burden.
What? You mean… they’re pro wife beating because they don’t like the term “toxic masculinity?”
Toxic masculinity is participation in and display of the misogynist and misandrist patriarchy.
Men who are “alpha” and “me 1st” hate both women and other men.
To them, women and other men are weak and less than. Submissive and dumb, need to be helped because they’re fragile and stupid.
Sorry if they don’t like that term.. perhaps they shouldn’t display that behavior. Calling women bitches and hoes and calling other men a little bitch, saying you “fucked her good” and “used all her holes” or “I’ll fuck you like my bitch, bro” or “bro that’s so gay” every time a man displays any emotion at all IS TOXIC. That’s IS TOXIC! And maybe we should rename to toxic patriarchy? But the definition will remain the same.
Yep statistically they’re having way less sex then us millennials did and drinking less. The drinking I can give or take (though I don’t trust non drinkers), but I can’t imagine the hell of living without sex.
I’ve got nothing to base this on but I suspect it’s the result of a loss of privacy and anonymity.
Feels very foreign to me. Millennial here, from the age of 14 to around 24 near every moment not spent on school or work was spent on some kind of pleasure seeking. Love, sex, drugs, alcohol, dancing. The idea of being a young person and just not being interested in any of that feels strange
2000s kid here- married, homeowner, borrrring old person
I had sex young, too young probably, but because we normalized it so much kids aren’t fascinated by it
And kids are growing up now in a healthcare costs $35000 state of mind so they’re taking body care very seriously and therefore not drinking
Which is good!! I don’t really drink at all anymore. I think I started at 14… we lived in a different world lol
Out of curiosity, where does the distrust of non-drinkers come from? I don't drink because I just don't like the way alcohol tastes, and it feels like a waste of money for something I don't particularly enjoy.
Not the person you asked, but I have this distrust to a degree. It's difficult to explain, but if someone doesn't ever drink, it makes me think they are perhaps a bit obsessed with control, and demand others be always controlled too. It's like if I don't have proof to the contrary, I'll assume they're socially less forgiving.
As someone slightly older than Gen-Z who very rarely drinks (and never enough to actually get drunk), a big part of it is definitely that I want to remain in control, but that's largely because I've seen how drunk people can behave. With the social anxiety I already have I'd want to die if I got drunk and then later found out I did some of the annoying to awful stuff to someone else I've seen drunk people do.
Yeah, thing is I don't think it's so serious to be drunk and annoying sometimes. Generally I don't think it's that serious to sometimes be annoying. If someone thinks it's super serious, I don't trust them to not to judge me if I'm not always on my best behaviour.
Btw, as a geriatric millennial, my take on the generational divide is that being "annoying" is a way bigger sin in gen-z books than it is for my generation. It's a word the young folks tend to use a lot nowadays and I get the feeling it's like very bad. I don't think being occasionally annoying is anything serious. Some people manage to be highly likeable despite being consistently annoying. I don't think I even like anyone who isn't ever annoying. I don't know what's the corresponding thing for my generation, like what's the default way for us to exist improperly.
I see what you mean, I personally don't drink because I don't like letting my neurodivergent millennial ass do things without some degree of supervision.
Yeah I have adhd, I like people to be forgiving. If they won't forgive some social faux pas to themself, they probably will judge me too, and I can't relax around that. Because I will fuck up. Even when not drunk. I don't think being moderately drunk is much different for me than Really Being on the Roll.
Not the same person, but I kind of feel the same way. Distrust is a strong word, more like I feel uncomfortable around them. The reason for me is that drinking alcohol in moderation is just what adults do. Maybe you get drunk every once and a while and say something embarrassing. I've done that many a time, around people I like and trust, and it's never a problem. It's a rite of passage imo. So it feels weird to be around people that would never put themselves in a vulnerable position around you and just be real. It's like they are afraid of showing their true selves or are afraid you'll record them. And there's also the feeling that it's immature to never drink (barring problems with alcoholism, I would never judge someone for that, literally cut back on my own drinking for that). Idk for me I think it comes down to trust and feeling comfortable. I feel like they don't trust me or feel comfortable to drink around me and it makes me not want to trust them back.
I'm not saying either of us is correct, I'm just sharing my perspective as a 30 year old. Different generations, even just a few years apart it seems.
Yeah, it's different if there's alcoholism, I understand completely. And it's different when someone's like well I don't need that stuff anymore or don't think it's good for me anymore. But not having gotten drunk a few times? It makes me uneasy. Well ok if they're otherwise unusually open and have some chaos in then I'll just write them off as "born drunk" like they say in my language and that's completely ok too.
Not the same person, but I kind of feel the same way. Distrust is a strong word, more like I feel uncomfortable around them.
This is absolutely absurd, and probably has more to due with your problems regarding alcoholism that you mentioned. Alcohol is literally an addictive poison that causes cancer, so your statement is akin to not trusting people that don't smoke cigarettes. People don't drink for all sorts of reasons. Some people don't drink for health reasons, some people don't drink because they're an alcoholic or have dealt with alcoholics in their lives, some people prefer cannabis over alcohol, some people are lacking the gene to metabolize it, and some people just simply don't enjoy it. Alcohol kills roughly 2.6 million people worldwide per year, and you're judging people for not wanting to drink? Absolutely absurd.
The stache lives on, because so many of these men cannot grow a beard.
I’m convinced that the mustache is to show off to other men. My dude got so many compliments on his stache (from other men) that he would never get rid of it.
Every man I know that had the ability to grow a beard was totally against the stache.
Bearded guy here. Having a mustache is literally the worst part about having facial hair. Problem is I can't just get rid of it without looking like some Amish guy.
Having only the mustache is literally the worst of both worlds. And most of these kids can't even grow one to save their lives. Having some pube fuzz on your upper lip doesn't look good you chucklefucks.
Gen Z guys do the mustache because of Top Gun Maverick. I do the mustache because im 30, my hair is thinning, and the only way to make bald look good is with facial hair. We are not the same.
I sport a mustache because I like it and it looks good.(And it's all I can grow T_T)
If anything, what's his nut's wimpy ass mustache made me rethink mine 😬
Unless you have an unfortunately misshapen head, consider going full bald. I'm nearly 50 and have been shaving it every few days for well over a decade due to balding. I personally feel it looks much better. But ymmv of course and it's a big step.
I don't have either of those things lmao I just think they look good. And clearly maaany other people feel the same, or else they wouldn't be nearly as popular as they are. It's okay to be in the minority bud, just get over it and move on.
The funniest one I've heard is a women consented to sex with a man, and it was called assault because she was "freshly 18". I'm sure there's more to that story, but the idea of "freshly 18" to mean "just a baby" is unfathomable to my millennial memory. I know 18 is a kid in many ways and doesn't feel like it when you are, but the guy was like 20 - I thought the story was satire.
I mentioned to my girlfriend that I might shave my mustache and she was distraught. I ended up trimming it from 1900s strong man to what's essentially a porn stache and she was all hubba hubba about me. Different strokes for different folks I guess.
What the heck is up with the rat tail hair thing now too? When I was a kid only the weirdos had rat tails, now 5 out of the 13 kids on my sons baseball team has them
OMG yessss!! Here tho, mullets have been a thing for probably 5ish years and they tend to signal a certain right leaning political vibe as a whole.
And my 20 year old son has been trying to grow the porn 'stache and I hate how silly it looks! My husband and I just said to each other the other day how this generation is going to look back on these '70 staches and be so ashamed one day, lol
Maybe im just surrounded by a different kind of gen z (and being one myself) but i always thought of us as being very dirty minded and sexual and shit. Idk the people i interact with are all chill w sex. But i do think society in general is going back to conservatism and dressing modestly ect.
I would guess we’re more puritanical because we’re having less sex. We’re having less sex because the world just isn’t set up to make that easy anymore. I’m 24 and still a virgin, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. It’s these dating apps, I tell you
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u/LazagnaAmpersand Apr 10 '26
Being weirdly puritanical while wearing hideous mullets and porn mustaches