Before Algorithms, We Had Lip Gloss
Before algorithms decided who we were, we raised ourselves on a sacred ritual:
One shared family computer.
In the living room.
With speakers that were somehow too loud and not loud enough at the same time.
And a browsing history that could start family investigations at any moment.
That was our privacy.
Not real privacy — not “I have my own iPhone at age nine” privacy — but the older kind. The kind where you were still watched, but not optimized. The kind where you could still be cringe without it becoming content.
And that’s the difference people keep noticing between Millennials and Gen Z — even when they don’t use those words.
They’ll say: “It’s weird. You’re only a couple years apart, but you’re so different.”
Yes. Because we’re a bridge generation — and bridges get hit by traffic from both directions.
I’m 1994. Some people say Millennials end at 1994. Some say 1996. Some say 1995. I don’t care. I’m basically the human equivalent of that one song you swear came out in 2006 but it was 2007.
Close enough. The point is:
We’re the last kids who got to be awkward in semi-private, and the first adults who got punished like we were supposed to have mastered life by twenty-two.
And if Gen Z wants the missing ingredient that makes Millennials look like they have “more personality,” I will tell you the secret:
We were allowed to be cringe without an audience.
Gen Z grew up under algorithmic surveillance, social performance pressure, and constant commentary — and then they log on to roast Millennials like it’s a paid internship.
I understand it. I even respect the hustle.
But also — enough.
Because you can only take so much being roasted by people who literally learned half their personality from a Millennial sibling, cousin, or older coworker… and then act like they discovered it on a mountaintop.
Like yes, babes. You invented sarcasm. You invented irony. You invented anxiety. You invented eyeliner. Congratulations. Please accept your award and your eight-hour screen time report.
Clubs Before Algorithms
There was a time when we went out, and it wasn’t “content.”
It was just… going out.
We didn’t dress for a feed. We dressed for a feeling. We didn’t have “aesthetic boards.” We had music videos and delusion.
The early 2000s taught us something Gen Z didn’t get to experience the same way:
Back then, artists were archetypes.
Shakira was hips + confidence + the first internet outage. Rihanna was a mood that evolved into a philosophy. Gaga was symbolism, artistry, permission. Nicole Scherzinger in When I Grow Up looked like a literal Bratz doll engineered in a lab for ambition.
And no, she didn’t have to strip to prove she was sexy. She was wearing leather pants and a crop top and somehow still gave “CEO of seduction.” Taste. Direction. Intent.
That era built a blueprint.
It quietly taught us how to dress, how to walk into rooms, how to flirt, how to fantasize, how to build a personality out of scraps — and how to be dramatic without being online about it.
So yes, I will say it:
You can take my skinny jeans and tight pants from my cold dead hands.
Because some of us were raised by music videos that believed in silhouettes.
Gen Z can keep the baggy jeans. I wore baggy jeans once. It was like 2015. I survived. I’m not going back.
The Lost Art of “The Whole Neighbourhood Is Into It”
Gen Z doesn’t know what it felt like when something went viral the old way.
Not because an algorithm pushed it — but because the entire neighbourhood somehow entered the same dream at once.
A new video game. A new song. A new shoe. A new brand you’d never heard of that suddenly meant everything.
Like the first time a girl in sixth grade shows up with black Baby Phat sneakers with a pink logo and you’re like:
“What is this? A cat? A brand? A lifestyle? A religion?”
Or the era of girls stealing their brother’s oversized Sean John shirts and then hiding when the brother showed up because he was about to expose the entire operation.
That was culture.
Not content.
Not a personality performance.
Just discovery. Social learning. Mystery. Delight.
Gen Z’s Problem Isn’t That They’re “Bad.” It’s That They’re Watched.
Here’s the part where I get serious for three seconds.
Gen Z isn’t less charismatic because they’re “worse.”
They’re less charismatic because they never had the luxury of being private.
They’ve never known what it feels like to play music only for themselves — not to subtweet someone in real life with lyrics. Not to impress anyone. Not to perform “taste.”
Just to be alone with a song and let it rearrange them.
Everything is monitored, repostable, clip-able, and judgeable. Even childhood.
And that creates adults who are hyper-aware of how they look, how they sound, what’s “cringe,” what’s “problematic,” what’s “embarrassing,” what’s “allowed.”
Which brings me to my next point:
Can We Stop Recording People Without Consent?
I need everyone — especially Gen Z — to relax with the cameras.
I’m so tired of secret recordings. Of coworkers filming supervisors for a “viral moment.” Of people filming strangers in malls like it’s a safari.
I’ve been in workplace situations where I could feel the bait.
The weird tone policing.
The language policing.
The “let me try to trigger a reaction so I can document it.”
And I’m old enough now to know what a setup feels like.
Not everything is your content. Not everyone consented to be a character in your story.
Some of us are just trying to do our job and go home and listen to music like it’s 2007.
The Cardi B Thesis (and Why Everyone Needs to Chill)
People love to call artists “bad influences.”
Every generation has one.
Cardi B was one of the few who said the quiet part out loud.
She talked about bodies, surgery, pain, poverty, survival — and she did it with humour and honesty, at a time when the world was pretending certain women were “just born like that.”
And yes — Nicki Minaj deserves respect for what she built.
But it’s also true that refusing to pass the torch turns “icon” into “cautionary tale.” Same story, different rapper, different gender. Pride makes people weird.
Meanwhile Cardi was out here being unserious and truthful — which is literally the Millennial speciality.
And if Gen Z wants to understand why Millennials defend Cardi more often?
Because she represents something we’re tired of being shamed out of:
Joy. Mess. Personality. Public imperfection. And the right to laugh while surviving.
The Kanye Memory: “Stronger” as a Time Capsule
My first Kanye love wasn’t the music video.
It was So You Think You Can Dance?
A season finale. Two guys. A dance-off. The song Stronger playing like it was injected into my bloodstream.
I had a crush on the “cuter” dancer — the boyish one — so naturally I thought he was the better dancer because my eyes had fully stopped doing their job.
My little brother (four years younger, already acting like a tiny judge on a reality panel) was like:
“No. The other guy deserved it.”
I was offended. Personally. Spiritually. Historically.
So I rewatched the dance-off repeatedly like I was doing forensic analysis, pretending it was about the choreography when really it was about wanting to see my crush on screen again.
Years later, I rewatched it as a grown woman and realized my brother was right.
The other guy was better.
Which is a nice way of saying:
My childhood taste was valid, but my childhood logic was a criminal.
And yet — the song still hits.
It’s still my favourite Kanye song.
It’s still the track that made me a fan.
That’s the magic of music: it keeps the feeling even when the delusion expires.
The Renaissance Man (Jack of All Trades, Master of Being Right)
In school, we learned about the “Renaissance man” — the one who can do many things well.
A teacher once said Kanye was a modern Renaissance man because he took shots across industries and actually landed them.
That stuck with me.
Because I’ve always been a jack-of-all-trades type — and for years people acted like that was an insult.
“Jack of all trades, master of none.”
But that saying is incomplete — and it hides the real truth:
Sometimes the jack-of-all-trades becomes better than the master-of-one at the master’s own thing because creativity transfers.
I’ve seen it in real life. I’ve drawn a duck and won an art competition against someone whose entire personality was drawing Lamborghinis and Ferraris.
It wasn’t even my best duck.
It was just… range.
And I think Millennials — especially the ones raised by immigrant hustle and half-present parents — became well-rounded because we had to.
We raised ourselves. We taught each other. We became our own older siblings.
Gen Z often had Millennials as built-in templates — older siblings, cousins, older coworkers — which is why it’s extra hilarious when they roast us like they didn’t download half their mannerisms from us first.
The Gentle Challenge
Okay. Roast over. Here’s the sincere part.
If you’re Gen Z and you want to feel more like a person again — not a performance — try this:
Six months.
No TikTok. No Instagram. No Snapchat. No Facebook. No WhatsApp.
Delete the apps. Deactivate if you can. Make it inconvenient to return.
You can keep YouTube — but only as a library.
No comment-section citizenship. No turning it into a second personality.
And if you feel FOMO?
That’s not proof you need social media.
That’s proof social media trained your nervous system to panic when you’re alone with yourself.
Because the truth is:
Everything you think you’re missing… you already have.
You’re not missing the world.
You’re missing privacy.
You’re missing the freedom to be cringe, to explore, to develop taste without being graded in real time.
And if you learn how to be alone again — with music, with joy, with your own thoughts — you might discover something shocking:
It wasn’t the algorithm.
It was you all along.
Music gave us joy before everything became serious.
Readers interested in cultural humour may also explore → Tarantino Trying to Focus
For reflections on taste and feminine identity → Cleopatra’s Vanity
For independence and self-formation → Table for One