I listened to the episode Confessions of GEN Z of the Illumina Show podcast and I found some interesting pieces, which I tried to report here.

I’ll try to summarize at the beginning, I’ll write in more detail below.

• there is a clear shared language for them, less so for others
• awareness of boomers’ mistakes or stereotypes
• It’s more about the feeling/atmosphere and less about explicit things

Instagram

In the podcast they talk about a use of Instagram less oriented towards documenting events or appearance and more towards building an emotional climate.
They talk about “dumps”: a carousel published even after some time, often at the end of the month, which mixes photos of people, banal details, animals, screenshots, images found online.
The order of the images is not random, rather it is thought out (I was about to write studied, but it seemed excessive), it serves to convey “how I felt”, rather than to show something that happened, that was seen or to show off, as we do.

The stories follow a similar logic. Partial shots, zoom, without faces, the subtraction is intentional: less explicit information, more space for interpretation, even the absence of tags and positions goes in this direction: those who recognize the place recognize it, the others do not and it is not considered a problem.

Chat and language

Written language follows the same ideas: in chat, lowercase letters prevail, short sentences, and no punctuation. When capital letters or full stops are used, they do so to change tone and signal distance, formality, or tension. Or at least that’s the precept.

To transmit, chaotic sequences of letters, errors, random capitalizations are invented (one uses the term IBAN); the more chaotic it is, the more you want to convey that it makes you laugh, here too more the intention and the atmosphere than the content.

Emojis and stickers depend on who sends them: the crying face or the skull indicate amusement if they come from another gen z, or concern if they come from an adult. There’s a whole culture or sub-culture of stickers that I don’t quite understand, it just seems like they become gods "meme" within the group and from there a shared meaning derives that only makes sense when explained (like nicknames in my day).

Calls

The part that makes the least sense to me.

The phone is almost always on silent (and ok), voice calls are avoided, rather video calls, accepted even without continuous presence in front of the camera, they stay in contact more than saying something to each other.

Cringe

In the podcast the “cringe” is something that can be judged embarrassing, then become so out of time as to be funny again, so it depends on the context and the reading. Nothing stays serious for long, and nothing stays permanently rejected, rather it tends to go around.

What did I understand

That they don’t really feel better, that they want to distance themselves and create a shared language in the small group, that makes sense to them, that they have to try a little to understand.

That the atmosphere, the vibe and the feeling are worth more than the direct content.