incoming: the millennial digital existential crisis

Two necessary pieces to read now that we’re moving past the ha ha teens!! on tiktok!!! trend piece phase and into deeper examinations of the platform as an inflection point for our culture at large — especially as millennials uneasily (and perhaps unwillingly?) pass the zeitgeist-anointing baton onto Gen Z: 

1. WIRED’s TikTok and the Evolution of Digital Blackface

2. Rolling Stone’s Why Gen Z Turned on Lin-Manuel Miranda

As someone whose day job involves helping arguably **the** millennial media outlet figure out how to keep apace with the internet, I’ve been deeply interested in how this transition of cultural power online is going to go. You have millennials as the first ones to really grow up with the internet, so we’ve been enjoying this kind of digital Manifest Destiny-ish freedom to fashion it according to our values and needs for at least two decades. Now more and more, I’ve been picturing Gen Z — who’ve grown up completely native to social media, the influencer economy, and mobile connectivity — as an incoming riptide that’s about to pull the rug out from under us as the teen subculture begins to subsume The CultureTM. 

Judging from these two pieces, it sounds like they’re already starting to ask the right questions on everything from the appropriation of Black expression to the establishment politics of beloved cultural touchstones. And until they start officially setting the agenda for the rest of us (which honestly could be any day now), it’s going to be enormously fascinating to watch the millennial digital landscape twist in the wind to figure out how to — maybe for the first time? — not make it about us. 

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Pssst I’m going to be talking about How To Make Your Newsletter Viable And Profitable with Ron Nurwisah and Kim Bode for AAJA’s (virtual) festival on Monday. They’re extending early bird registration through Thursday if you wanna come!

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Pssst Part 2: don’t forget to get your Deez Links merch before it’s all gone (and get 15% off your order through Sunday with the code DL15)!

Here’s a shot of the tote in the wild. Idyllic, no? (Send me your pics if you get one!!)

(Thanks Irene for the pic!)