theory on Gen Zs complimenting their millennial co-workers’ style
AKA: How to Manipulate Your Millennial Manager
I liked Justin Bieber’s YouTubey Coachella set! From YouTube he came, to YouTube he shall return, for one. And there’s something quite provocative, snide even, about frog-marching 100,000 attendees expecting to be living their best life at a music festival through his digital free associations. Very “yeah you’re here, but I bet you all kind of wish you were home on the couch scrolling on your phones huh?”
But I did feel mixed emotions watching him gaze at footage of his young self. For most celebs who pull this “look how far i’ve come” shtick, it works because they’re looking back at a starting point of a great, magnificent rise. For Bieber, that rise has been famously convoluted. It was easy to project a bittersweetness and longing from him for a more innocent time, or a more innocent self. “Baby,” indeed. At this point, Bieber isn’t so much a musician as an embodiment of the millennial id. In that, he always succeeds…
The other night, a fellow millennial friend and I were discussing the experience of having Gen Z colleagues at the office. What we realized is that, whether consciously deployed or not, there’s a real power move pulled any time a young co-worker compliments you, the elder, on your clothes. “Cute skirt,” the 20-something might say. “I love that scarf,” “Cool jacket, man.” (Many of them have not seen Mean Girls, so it doesn’t seem as though they are intimately familiar with the Regina George undertone of this kind of comment.)
Our theory was that for the young person, complimenting your co-worker’s outfit is an easy, generic, and therefore reliable social bid to make in the professional setting. We suspected it is also probably one of the only ways a young person can even imagine relating to an older person. (At least, that’s how I remember it; there was this wild child cool girl who was the HR manager at my first job who wore the most insane outfits — booty shorts and couture, often in the same get-up. I probably wanted to get to know her, but I was so bewildered by her seniority that all I could ever muster up was a quick scan of her outfit that day, where I’d pick one thing to compliment). And if you really drill down into it, it’s highly likely that the compliment itself is a bit less than authentic — more likely than JJ from social or Madlee the assistant actually fucking with your professor-core pashmina is the possibility that they’ve simply noticed it and are verbalizing the act out of social duty.
But what is hilarious, we agreed, was how this compliment lands with us as the “olds” nevertheless. By which I mean: It feels soooooooooooooooooo good when your younger co-worker says they like your outfit. To the degree that it really disarms you? You could be in your most Boss Manager Mode (but in a cool way right) giving orders, slaying dragons, editing da deck, etc. but the minute someone sub-30 tells you they endorse a sartorial choice you made at 8am less so out of any particular fashion-related inspiration, and more so as an ongoing project of surrender to your go-to staples due to a calcifying refusal to learn if you are a spring or autumn or whatever the fuck Kibbe type, the clouds part. Honey-hued sunshine beams down. For a microsecond you are drunk on the validation of the youth.
Then it passes, and you realize with some embarrassment that being the recipient of this kind of polite compliment definitely absolutely means you are viewed as one of the elders, and also these punks probably didn’t even really mean it in the first place. They’re just trying to be nice. Unless??
Anyway: Do what you will with this bit of Deez pseudo-psychology if you happen to want to manipulate disarm your manager or older co-workers at the office this week. It’s tough being the youngest in the office, but as it turns out, you do hold some power. Enjoy it. Wield it responsibly. Make me feel alive again by noticing my jeans tomorrow?
An item I first read about in the perfectly British and gossipy Popbitch newsletter: Buried in a Guardian story on Pet Shop Boys is an amazing quote/dichotomy from Neil Tennant about the common thread amongst the magazines that are actually doing well: “The New Yorker. The Spectator. The Atlantic. The stapled magazine opens invitingly, whereas the instinct of a perfect bound magazine is to close.” Something to think about!
Cake Zine is turning into Steak Zine for a new special issue (TBD whether it is stapled or bound…), which is already a highly pleasing riff on the magazine’s conceit. And from the looks of this essay on the legendary “Cattle Queen” of steakhouse iconography by Rachel Ossip (published in part on Substack and in full on N+1, interesting), the team is taking the subject amazingly seriously. Is Cake running circles around the slate of newish food media start-ups? (They certainly know how to throw a party and assign serious work!)
Whether it’s Gen Z or due to Zohran, there’s certainly a Z-fication of institutional comms in New York. Exhibit A: that tweet about hole-filling.
Exhibit B: The Brooklyn Botanic Garden on what a bad job everyone does every spring re: identifying cherry blossoms correctly.
I suppose I don’t mind this at the local level as long as these places are not trying to totes doggo on fleekify actually important information; please just list your hours in a normal way, etc. The federal government should be banned from this though. Nothing more embarrassing than being a literal world power looking for online clout. Oh wait…
Finally: Did you guys watch this last season of Bridgerton? I kind of thought I was done with the show after suffering Season 3; obviously, nothing will replace the heroic psychosis of watching Season 1 during the first quarantine Christmas (what happened to Regé-Jean’s career though? I thought he was supposed to get Elordi-ed!). But the critics were saying that this season’s Cinderella story (also okay it has an Asian lead so obviously that compelled me too) was actually good, and you know what? I had a nice time with it.
Most interesting to me was how this season (spoilers ahead) was finally actually a little interested in the class of it all; there also is a sudden death of a minor character that seems uncharacteristic for the happily-ever-after Bridgertonian vibe otherwise. There’s much to find fault about the aesthetically and sociopolitially polished universe of Bridgerton — where imperialism, racism, homophobia, and like, bad sex are simply not a thing, to say nothing of that color palette, ugh. But if we are grading on the curve of general Netflix slop, it was kind of interesting to see how the show handled death as the ultimate caveat of everlasting love. Or as Francesca puts it: “What is the point of finding love when your husband will probably die?” I mean, it’s not Shakespeare, but it’s not a bad question!
No babe I think you’re reading toooo into it!!! Like we just genuinely like the scarf or the jacket idk