Panic World - Who killed cool?

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

What’s cool and what’s cringe, and which generation gets to decide? Today we’re talking about Gen Z, formerly known as “iGen,” and its relationship with millennials (and vice versa). Expert on all things internet, Hank Green, joins us this week to talk about the tried-and-true tradition of generations ragging on each other. Get ready for a lot of talk about gooning, looksmaxxing, mogging, and 6-7 (we still can’t totally get to the bottom of that last one). Our guest Hank Green can be found pretty much everywhere on the internet. In particular, check out his YouTube channels @vlogbrothers and @hankschannel. You can find all of his other science and educational work at Complexly (featuring SciShow and Crash Course) at https://complexly.org/. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thanks for coming on. So, yeah, my first question for you is, do you think that Jester Gooning is the new meta in the club for keeping your cortisol levels low? Is this, does it have something to do with clavicular? Yes, it does. I can't tell you what we're talking about, but I did see a single unified tweet about this. I think it was intended to be to grab my attention with being entirely impossible to parse, which did result in me reading the whole thing and then moving on. And when I say tweet, that's what I call any piece of short form text.

I think that's fair. Yeah, I saw an update from Clivocular last night that apparently he was dairy gooning. And I actually have no idea what that could possibly mean. Is that spelled D-A-I-R-Y? Like dairy. Yeah, like milk or cheese. I think I'm like 100% sure I've been there. Gary Gooning?

I am very fascinated with the evolution of the word gooning for Gen Z because it seems like they are now just using it for like to describe when you're zoning out. We used to have flow spaces and Zen and now we have gooning. Yeah, now it's it's all gooning. Yeah. So that's what we're going to be talking about today on today's episode. Oh, great. That sounds wonderful. I think that I'm going to be really comfortable in this conversation.

It's going to go really. well. My name is Ryan Broderick. With me, as always, is my producer Grant Irving, who will pop in mid-mog and producer Max for us. This is Panic World, the show about how the internet warps our minds, our culture, and eventually reality. And today, we have an expert on all things internet culture. I think I'm very excited for today's episode. Hank Green, welcome to the show. How are you? Thank you. I'm great. I've been having a crazy couple of weeks, and I am absolutely obsessed or the way that the internet warps our minds and our culture and everything. So we kind of went back and forth on what we would talk about with you.

And I was told that this was something that you're very passionate about. They sort of break down between the generations, millennial and Gen Z. And so can you tell me a little bit about your experience with Gen Z? Because I feel like they are under a giant magnifying glass right now as we all try to figure out what the heck they're talking about. I am fascinated with the idea of generations because I think it's fake. I think that it's, I mean, it's obviously fake, right? Right. Like people like me, I was born in 1980, and so nobody can tell me what generation I am.

And they made of a goddamn word for it, cuspers. Ah, sure. And then it's just like, oh, did you find another way in which you were special and you get to talk about it on the internet? That must be wonderful for you. But anyway, I'm special. But of course, like, that's made up. Like, there isn't really a way in which I'm different from somebody who's solidly in the middle of generation. And in the same way, I think it's very clear that we're talking about generations.

We're often talking about very specific, the most culturally, visible pieces of a generation rather than the generation as a whole. And the most culturally visible pieces are going to be the ones that are freaking weirdest. They are. Like the ones who say, mocking, which I think is fake. My son, I have to tell you,

my son is whatever generation nine-year-olds are. And he went to a Super Bowl party this weekend, just to date us in terms of when this was recorded. But it was also the 6-7 retirement party. Oh, 6-7, yeah. But then at halftime,

we had a retirement party for 6-7 so that they were like, we're done. And these are nine. year olds and they're like creating ritual around the retirement of of cultural institutions that have existed for what 90 days it feels like to me and that was their idea yeah it was it was one of his classmates idea someone should have told uh Kamala harris's team that six seven had been retired my nine year olds yeah i mean uh an example of of how circular i think this stuff can get is i've been like many people apparently watching madmen all winter i'd never seen the show and so

I'm sort of watching for the first time. And I am constantly kind of like having my head spun around by the depiction of different generations in Mad Men. And I'm like doing math to be like, okay, so is Don Draper? Is he a baby boomer? Is he greatest generation? What is, like, he's greatest generation, right? I think so.

But then there's a whole generational break. Like, there's a whole generational breakdown happening between him and Roger that I find very fascinating. So it's like, I do agree with you that generations are largely fake, but I do think that they contain some useful frameworks for like how things change over time and affect people's personalities. And to start us off, I wanted to kind of start with one of the earliest pieces of writing about Gen Z. Because I think it's actually very fascinating. So this is written by Hunter S. Thompson on September 18th, 2001. Wow. And like all things on this show, Gen Z existed. Well,

it was just a thought in six, seven. Yeah. Okay. So Hunter S Thompson writes, The poor bastards of what will forever be known as Generation Z are doomed to be the first generation of Americans who will grow up with a lower standard of living than their parents enjoyed. That is extremely heavy news and it will take a while for it to sink in. The 22 babies born in New York City while the World Trade Center burned will never know what they missed. It is very useful to think of Gen Z that way, like the sort of generation born immediately after the kind of old version of America ended. way. Yeah. Yeah. And it was like a slow end to, you can make it feel like 9-11 was like the moment everything changed. But it was a trigger that created a cascade. And there was a lot of sort of like slow loss of belief in American greatness a little bit. Yeah. I also just rewatched the the first

two Charlie's Angels movies, one filmed before 9-11, one after. And let me tell you, what a difference that was. Yeah. Yeah, it was definitely an inflection at the same time. I mean, there's been lots of moments. Like Vietnam was a huge, and the civil rights movement, huge moments where we were like, are we good actually? Right, right.

You asked me what my relationship with Gen Z is. Yeah. And I think that this is totally, I think. Sometimes people will refer to me, and this is not a title that I claim, nor do I think it's accurate, but that I am Gen Z's Bill Nye. Oh, I can see that. Yeah, okay. There's a thing there.

Of course, I don't do the same thing that Bill Knight really did and lots of different things going on there. Media is very different now. But I do claim that I'm making content often for people of that generation. And I want to make content really well for them. And so I do have like a mental model. I do have like a way that I picture these people. How do you picture them? I think it's a little aspirational.

Okay. If I treat them the way that I, that like they would like to be and that I would like, like everybody would like want to be this way. But I don't know. Like, I think that people are always very curious, but I think that the way that the attentional landscape is shaped right now means that your curiosity is constantly being piqued and satisfied and peaked and satisfied and piqued and satisfied. And so that this loop is very tight. And this also goes for millennials, honestly, because they were the patient zero for this effect. Right.

I'm trying to, like at all moments hold attention. There are many ways to do this. and my trick is that I want to believe that you are curious about this. And so it's much, like, people think that my job is to explain science to people, but not really. My job is to make you care enough for me to explain science to you. I see, yeah. Like Bill and I, of course, was trying to compete with the attentional landscape of the television, which was not nothing, you know, that's also hard.

But, you know, we have to use different tricks now because the attentional landscapes are different. shaped. I think what you said about Genzi being curious is right, at least as far as I've experienced as well. Like, I sort of tend to think of them as like they are walking like this post apocalyptic wasteland and they keep like picking things up out of the dirt and they're like, what is this? I've never heard of this before. And I think of Gen Alpha is sort of like the children of the wasteland that have just like they've only ever known it. I mean, it's amazing to be talking about the post-apocalyptic wasteland. And it's, it's amazing. And, In a world where I've never not had a hot show.

Well, let's put it this way, the cultural post-apocalyptic wasteland. The Gen Z does seem to, like, I've written extensively sort of about Gen Z's quest to understand what cool is. Because I think that they desire to be cool and know what coolness is, but they can't do it in a world where every piece of culture has a number of attention attached to it. You cannot actually produce something like Nirvana, let's say, to be like super top. level there, something cool that is then also mainstream in a world where every bit of attention is monetized and measured because like that is inherently uncool. So like if Gen Z likes an artist that has like 60 plays on YouTube, they kind of know in the back of their head that like that person isn't popular. So it's like there's there's attention there that I find. I think that's why they got

so into Charlie XX for a brief moment because they're like maybe this is cool. And they're like picking things up and going like, is this cool? Is this cool? I would go a step further. And I would say that there is no longer mainstream. Sure. There is no longer a mainstream and they're never... Like I was... Somebody said to me the other day,

who's like the Brad Pitt of today? Oh, I love these. I love these conversations. There will never be a Brad Pitt again. There will never be a Brad Pitt again. You don't think Timothy Shalamee could do it? Timothy Shalameh is not Brad Pitt. You don't think he could do it?

No! I peaked. I'm sorry. Timothy... I don't even think Brad Pitt is Brad Pitt anymore. Brad Pitt is definitely not Brad Pitt. And Wes, your Gen X are higher. Yeah.

Like for me, Brad Pitt is Brad Pitt. for these kids. Like everything is fractured. There's no mainstream media. There is no place. Like Joe Rogan gets more. Is Joe Rogan the Brad Pitt for Gen Z? No.

Okay, thank God. Because he's, he's extraordinarily segmented. Like everything is segmented. And they have to try hard. I mean, try it so hard to get people to his movies. Brad Pitt used to just be like,

I'm Brad Pitt, I'm fucking cool. Right. You're going to show up. Look at my lower abs. Right. They have veins. You're going to come see if I call.

Yeah. I mean, that is, I mean, he gave a generation of men eating disorders. Yeah, I mean, because thanks, right, Pat. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. He's the reason why Grant is the way he is. So just a little background that before we get any further into this. So Gen Z, as we now call them, was not always called Gen Z actually in like late 2017. You got to teach me all this stuff too, man. I like it's so I thought this was. I'm getting going to get school. I genuinely thought this was earlier, but it was, It wasn't until 2017, 2018, that the term Gen Z started to be used more popularly before one of the major competitors for the name was IGen stylized like an iPhone.

I remember that. And it was also sort of like a commentary on how like self-focused today were. Yes, yes. And thinking back on it, I didn't really, I hate generations ragging on each other. Here's the New York Times rights at the time. I wouldn't mind being called generation scapegoat. It would be kind of the tongue and cheek dry humor that I see in this generation. And when baby boomers in Gen X or Y or whatever decide to start using us as punching bags,

instead of millennials, it's going to be much harder to whine about us if they're forced to call us the scapegoats, which, yeah. I remember a moment where they were talking about calling them the regeneration, which is just so cringe, because it was going to be like the generation of like the environmental movement. Like this was something like they're trying to get like recycling and like all. And I was like, oh, boy, it's not going to work. And so in both of these cases, I would like to talk, and I'm sorry to be in charge of your podcast. Sure. I think that we've got to talk about cringe.

Like, are we going to talk about cringe? Oh, we are. In fact, here. I've got to, that's a perfect. You did what all of my favorite guests do, which is you set up the next thing for me before I even had to do it. So you are familiar with the term zoomer, I assume? Yeah. So that term, I'm sharing my screen, that term comes from this meme, which is really kind of the defining original piece of artwork for Gen Z.

which is a Gen Z WoJack meme eating Tidepods. And it's titled that 14-year-old Zumer that eats Tidepods, Zumer being a Gen Z boomer kind of idea. That's what that is. And so, yeah, from the very beginning, I think that they are very tied to the inherent cringe of expressing yourself on the internet. There's really no non-cringe way to do it as far as I'm concerned.

But why? This is the interesting thing to me. So I've been trying to get to the bottom of this. Because it's not true until it is. So TikTok is the perfect example of this. TikTok was especially originally a very Gen Z platform. Now it's, you know, cross-generational, but it really started as a Gen Z platform. And in the early days of TikTok, the thing that appealed to me so much about it and like how I like fell into the rabbit hole of TikTok is that it.

And this is true of every early social media platform that I see is you, you fall into this. And it is like weird. and it's countercultural and it's collaborative and nobody knows how to make content like new genres are being invented every day and people are trying really hard and then like and they're grabbing each other's things and making things on top of them

and then invariably four years later something will have changed and I'm going to tell you what that thing is but something will have changed and it has resulted in people being very protective people being like policing each other for cringe like trying to find some cringe thing or some transgressive thing or some like dangerous thing that someone did or a problematic

thing someone did so that they can build content and like everybody gets much more controlled and it stifles creativity and everybody's fighting for every view and the thing that has changed is that there is now status connected to success on the platform and so everybody's fighting for it which means that anything that you could do to get attention people will start doing and that means, like one of the best ways of getting attention is to say, like, actually, that person you like is bad. And so everybody has to be careful and make sure that they don't do something that's going to get them in trouble. And you also, it shuts down collaborative behavior because why would you share attention with someone else, unless you are in some way tied to their success or their success is tied to yours?

And also, like, maybe that person's going to get canceled someday. And so you don't want to be too closely tied to anybody. And everybody gets scared. Everything shuts down. This happens. I've been on three, four content platforms where this has happened. And when you watch this over and over again, I think that like a defining characteristic of, you know, Gen Z,

but really the online social experience, which I think is pretty cross-generational, especially millennials and also will be true of younger generations. There is just this vibe of no one can be cool because no one can be carefree because everyone's a little bit afraid all. the time of being caught, being cringe or being problematic. And it's never really clear where that line's going to get drawn. And you just like, you only have to witness happen to it. It happened

to a couple of people before like creativity really gets shut down. And, and like in that kind of space, it's very hard to be like legitimately culturally evolutionary and and also like legitimately carefree and like in a way that like coolness requires. Do you see that? as a fear-based thing? Because my read on that was totally different. I've seen exactly what you're describing. And I think TikTok is probably the newest best example of this effect. Okay, so I'm a millennial just to place myself in time here.

I grew up surrounded by older millennials and Gen Xers who, like, for them, the concept of selling out, like, I am a known ska fan. And there are many songs that I listened to growing up about how selling out is very bad. And I think the tension. of sort of the millennial coming of age moment was this thing of like some of us are more than happy to do a Black Lives Matter theme Pepsi commercial

and some of us are not. Some of us are more than happy to go work at digital media companies making Facebook quizzes and some are not. Gen Z, I always sort of read it as like the chain got broken somewhere along the line and Gen Z, whether it's because of financial circumstances or cultural circumstances or the Trump effect,

basically came of age more like, I'm going to make as much money as possible. And the world that I live in, money is directly connected to attention. And so I'm not even going to think about expressing myself in a genuine way. Yeah. No, I think that that is another potential like shape that this could be taking. And like that would also preclude coolness. Right.

If like it is all like, you know, the sort of Mr. Beast version. Exactly. We're like the goal is to get the views. And that's why we make YouTube videos is to get the views. But I will push back on your. sense that like a small musician isn't cool. I think there's lots of that going on. I just think none of it will ever break through to the mainstream. But if you like click around on Spotify, there are many artists who are getting millions of views, millions of streams per per month or

whatever the metric that they use there is that you've never heard of that have very passionate, dedicated young fan bases. And then there are, in addition to that, there are many more who are getting 50 to 200,000 streams. And those people are like touring, small rooms, playing weird concerts. And I, like, as a music fan, I think that, I think that anybody who says that music is boring in the year 20-

Out of their mind. Yeah, I 100% agree. It's a real issue. Like, you are not doing a good job of finding the many, many amazing, like things that are happening in music. For me, it's more of like that thing you said about how the mainstream has gone, like the ladder that you would climb.

up to dominate the uh which they you know growing up in the 90s 2000s that was so exciting for me which was like this cool weird subcultural thing explodes and takes over you know like uh the the mall emo wave of the 2000s the indie phase of the of the early 2010's like that stuff you can say like oh it led to stomp clap hey ho indie or whatever but like it it kind of rejuvenates and what's wrong with nothing a lot there's nothing wrong There's nothing wrong with Mormons and people from California making music, even if it's always bad. But there's the thing of like, you were there first before it became lame. Yeah.

And that's, you don't get that anymore. There was cloud of being like, I was in the room of 20 people. I saw the show first and now this guy's playing a room of 100 people. The incentive of like, now if you show the pick of you like take the little video and it's like not a full room, it's like, well, what are you doing? Is this like sort of like trying to explain? like water to fish. Like, like, do these things even matter to Gen Z? And so I want to spin through one section here.

We had our Gen Z researcher, Adam, put together sort of a list of, like, think pieces in early 2020, like, trying to figure out, like, what Gen Z's deal was. And he has a comment here I wanted to read, which is, you want to know how millennial these pieces are. These are three separate articles based entirely on one tweet by an aggregator account that screenshoted a TikTok comment section. And this is, something annoyed a person.

Right. This was the moment where Genzi was like, we can make fun of millennials for like liking Harry Potter and doing Facebook quizzes and stuff. And I think it's one of the best things about, you know, coming of age in like your generational cohort is you can take shots at the previous ones.

But it does sort of start to solidify into this thing that we kind of all believe now. So by 2021, the New York Times and Business Insider are talking about the stereotypes that come with being Gen Z. So the New York Times writes, the headline is the 37-year-olds are afraid of the 23-year-olds who work for them, which is true, and you always should be. And they write, a retail business based in New York, managers were distressed to encounter young employees who wanted paid time off when coping with anxiety or period cramps.

At a supplemental company, a Gen Z coworker question why she would be expected to clock in for a standard eight-hour day when she might get through her to-do list by the afternoon. at a biotech venture entry-level staff members delegated tasks to the founder, which sounds good to me. That sounds fine, actually. Yeah. But I think it does sort of speak to this feeling that maybe isn't totally true for the entire generation. There's plenty of Gen Z hustle bros out there that want to be Mr. Beast or whatever.

But there is this sort of feeling like these kids are different and we don't know why these kids are different. Honestly, what that sounds like to me is like, Oh, so a person who's new to the workplace isn't aware of the shape of the culture of the workplace? I'm shocked. And then it's like, that happened once. And then, you know, you get to, you get to write infinite number of articles about it. As a person who has run companies with lots of people in Gen Z and them, I take these things with large pieces of salt. Are you telling me that, like, the boss is complaining about their employees?

Oh, are they not working as much as you do? Oh, are they getting paid as much as you are? And we're going to talk more about sort of like the timing of COVID and technology and how we sort of process these right after a word from our sponsors. Mr. B's new banking app. Can I come in with something? Absolutely. Okay. Before we do that, okay, before we get on to more of you, I'm taking control of your podcast again.

I want to go back and like talk about that disagreement that we had there because I have no idea. Maybe there is something to like, if you don't know how to be like culturally building status, because everything's so up in the air that financially building status is the safe thing to do. I think that's dead on. Yeah. I do. Yeah. It's funny what you forget from the, like, yeah, I guess this is the first time in my lifetime

where a president has been president a second time with a gap in the middle. Oh, yeah. It's not happened very much. Yeah. In general, I think it's only one other. So because of that, you sort of, like, it's like we're doing a second run of the Trump era. So I had forgotten stuff from the first one. And I will not name the show, but I was watching the show that was like, you know, it was a very bad show and it was very obsessed with like clout and status.

And I was like, this feels so Trumpian to me, even though it wasn't political in any way. And I started to sort of notice like Trumpian sort of affects all around culture. And part of me thinks that's one of them too. Like this idea of status feels so trumpian to me. I totally empathize with people like, like I think 26 is so hard. If there's any 26 year olds listening, I'm sorry. And I remember it. And I remember like never knowing quite if I was just going to be like ostracized and just like kicked out of a job or a relationship or a friend group.

And that's all very scary. And finding safety I think is so important. And I think it's like very hard on the internet because we're mean. We're much more mean on the internet than we are in life. And like we don't feel we feel being mean differently. But we don't really feel a. when people are mean to us differently. But, you know, status is, I don't think that we should assign, like, status to being Trumpian.

But there, I think that there is, like, a thing there that's, like, maybe one, like, level above status, like, at all costs kind of thing. Yeah, no, I sort of see it, like, you know, there's all these jokes that, like, the 21st century Patrick Bateman would be a girl selling, like, skin cream on TikTok. I sort of see this, like, Reagan-Go-Go-Go-80s effect happening. to America now, but it's been bifurcated by four years of Biden. Patrick Bateman, is that a sitcom character? Is that American Psycho? Oh, okay. I don't know.

Okay. I was thinking of Michael J. Fox from Family Tiles. Well, same idea. I think that's the same idea. Okay, to go that way. Not really. Different guys. Well, so Michael J. Fox from Family Ties in 21st century would be like a, like,

E-boy. He'd be clavicular. He'd be bone smashing up, you know, in the bathroom. But to sort of speak to what we said in the first. section of this episode about sort of the curiosity that Gen Z has. Uh, our researcher was sort of looking at like basically the, the change, the change in how we described Gen Z over the last like five years or so. There's this really interesting moment, you know, as we come out of COVID lockdowns

and sort of different like, you know, variant waves where the world starts to feel like it's opening back up again and Gen Z starts getting a bunch of attention for what they're nostalgic for. And so this is when you start getting all these think pieces about like Gen Z loving Y2K style. and like starting pop punk bands, you know, and addressing like Visco girls, the like 90s kind of vibe thing. Because the, you know, everything's, you know, post 9-11 basically was pretty heavily documented online even. It's very easy for like a, I found this TikToker who basically just like cosplays as like a character from like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater from like 2003 and like all of his videos are that. And it's like, right, you can do that because there's so much there's so much documentation.

and a lot of that stuff still exists. I guess. I think that we've always been mimicking styles we were nostalgic for. Well, okay, here's a question for you. No, they were wearing bell bottoms in the 90s. Well, okay, that was exactly the question I was going to ask. So, like, how would you compare the discourse around Gen Z right now to the discourse around Gen Xers in the 90s? Obviously, it's slightly different, but like, I feel like there's some overlap, right?

I don't remember the discourse around Gen X in the 90s. I mean, it was a little bit like, what was it? What was the Gen X? I feel like you guys had all those movies about you, like being sad and smoking cigarettes and stuff. Yeah. And, and like trying to find your spot and like, you know, trying. And there was a big sort of like Gen X push to not become a part of the corporate of like corporate America. Yeah, a lot of that.

And you had to be like, you know, like find your creative path. You know what I love about Gen X? What? They'll say this insane thing. We're the lost generation. No one ever talks about it. And I'm like, do you. Every piece of art for 20 years was about you guys.

And if we're being ignored now, good. Oh, we also. Anybody talks about generations in a nice way? You think there's a bunch of people who are going to show up and be like, oh, we're going to talk about Gen X now. We're going to have how cool and good and smart and cute they are. No, no, the moment, and this is going to happen in the next five or 10 years, we're all going to start treating Gen X like the boomers because they're going to be like the boomers,

because they're going to inherit all of the boomers money and all the money is going to, and like, there's Jenner X who's listening right now and they're saying to themselves, I'm not going to inherit any that money. Yeah, there's also poor boomers, but we don't talk about them. It's coming for us. And I'm going to pretend to be a millennial when it does. It's coming for us because the richest, because the oldest generation is always the richest generation.

And then we flatten them down and we forget that there's any boomers that are in poverty, which there absolutely are. And we flatten it down. But like, the reality is that there's a lot of power concentrated in the oldest generation. There will be a lot of power concentrated in Gen X. And everyone will hate them. So if you're Gen X, enjoy every moment of your anonymity. Just think of John Qsack's face when he was young and cute and just run around and be happy at the grocery store that everybody's ignoring.

If it makes you feel better, I sort of think of you as a millennial. Like I, that's great. I think of you as a millennial. All right. All right. I'm doing the work. What wizard house would you have been a part of? I always get Slytherin every time I pick one of those.

Yeah, no. The people who know me best give me answers that I don't like. I always, yeah, I always get slithering. One of my favorite kind of parts of this generational war between Gen Z and Millennials, though, is like the newest generation is very good at codifying some of the behaviors of the previous one. It kind of is a lot more fun than what it happens the other way. So like, obviously millennials, we were growing up in a moment where boomers are like, what's the deal with the avocado toast kids and all that stuff, right? But the Gen Zers are like way more sophisticated about what they're seeing. And so there is this list that comes out from the ringer.

And it basically collects all of Gen Z's like jokes about millennials. And here are a few that I think are pretty good. So I even know with the millennial pause, do you do the millennial pause? I do it. I can't not do it. Honestly, the millennial pause annoys me so much. I hate it so much. More than the Gen Z shake?

I get like, I get like auto like more than the Gen Z shake. Yeah. Well, they shake your phone. Way more. Okay. Look, these kids know what they're doing. they're good at it yeah it's also it looks like in medius rest

it's very exciting yeah exactly no one notices this as much but gen z shoot and this is changing now but for a long time they would they would shoot their tic talks from like below chin level yeah which a millennia would never do

you always go from up so you don't see your chin and you look a little bit better but you know one because they're like young and fit and they don't have to worry about it but two because they're like defining an aesthetic that was different and so I'm on they're like doing TikTok shooting from below, it's seen my hairy chin because I'm, you know, I'm trying to make sure that the aesthetic is not standing in the way of people enjoying. Like, it can't, one of the part of that job is to, is to have your content have no barriers,

you know, to not have people like thinking that like something looks a little bit off, even if they're not sure what it is. And in that very same way, you have to have the noise occurring from the first push of the button. So I have to grow this beard because if I were to shoot low and, not have a beard, I would look like J.D. Vance. So I have to be very careful. Nobody wants, that. No one wants to look like J.D. Vance. Uh, especially not J.D. Vance. Uh, some other sort of observations from Gen Z about millennials, uh, the concept of adulting. Familiar. Yeah.

Yeah. Taking photos of meals. I'm actually very excited for this to go away. I understand, like, like, I understand it's good, you know, it's sometimes you do want to, like, You're like, damn. Although in my experience, every time I've wanted a photo of a great meal, it was so great that I ate it already and I forgot to take it. I feel like that's... There you go. I do, though, wonder what Gen Alpha will say about Gen Z. It's going to come back to bite them.

Tyler, I think Tyler Oakley said this. I don't know if he was the first person who said it, but he said, and of course he's a millennial. He said, don't kill the part of you that's cringe, kill the part of you that cringes. Sure. It is a world that is begging you to not be yourself. More and more, I feel like sometimes I'll watch a piece of media or I'll read a comment and I'm like, man, any opinion that can be had will be had. Right.

And any opinion that can end in views will be had times 10. And I think that that is in part because like, it's because we have, it's because we have surrendered all of our decision making to content recommendation algorithms. I hope deeply that Gen Alpha will look at that and be like, wow, I cannot believe Genzi, let them, their brains be hacked by like six billionaires. I think that's the optimistic version of that. I think that's my, I said hope. I did not say.

I agree with you, though. Yeah. So I was at a party over the summer and I was talking to this person who was living in LA like at peak like Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, like club era. And she was talking about, you know, she's now in her probably late 30s or the 40s. And she's talking about how like things have changed. And she said that basically Hollywood was killed in 2007 when the iPhone was invented. It just took about two decades for people to notice.

The average person does not realize how much their behavior in public has shifted over the last 15 years to make sure that they don't end up in someone else's video. And here's a personal example. My mom's a flight attendant and she used to fly for United. Some people were having meltdowns on planes. And I remember telling her like, hey, like I'm a journalist. Like I'm on a newsroom. I don't want you to come through my Twitter feed. If something kicks off on one of your planes, go hide in the bathroom.

Because the phones are going to come out and they're going to film you. And I do think, like, even if you're not consciously aware of that, like all of us now are acting a bit differently in public, which is sad. I find that sad. Yeah. And I just opened up Instagram yesterday and that meta has given itself an ad placement that no one else has access to, which takes up the entire front screen of Instagram. for glasses that you wear on your face. Of course, yes. That have cameras inside of them.

This is going to be normal in 10 years. Oh, 100%. I just watched a guy load open claw, the open source AI model, into his metaglasses, and now he can control it with the metaglasses. Like, that stuff's already here. It's not even coming. It's already here. So I feel bad for anyone who doesn't remember a world without a smartphone.

Because I think that that is the real deciding factor here of why they feel different, you know, to us. Are you saying it was better but when we weren't mugging all the time? I mean, this is just going to really keep us in line to make sure we're always just, okay, Gen Z, if you're listening, if smartphones didn't exist, you couldn't be frame-mogged by an ASU frat leader. I got, I am going to need you to explain to me what magging is. Mogging isn't, so, okay, like half of Gen Z slang is African-American vernacular. And then the other half is violent in-cell language that they got from 4chan.

It's effectively clockwork orange speak and mogging a gerind version of an acronym, Amog, which stands for alpha male of the group. So if you're mugging, you're like looking like an alpha male. I'm doing it right now. My girlfriend calls it male-smising. Oh. And then they're also now using the word munting, which is so disgusting that I'm not going to define what that is on this episode. Sure. I've got a guess.

I mean, that is an interesting thing, too, where it's like, we were talking about, actually, you know what? Before we talk further about magging, we're going to go to a word from our sponsors. Are how to be good men taught by the garbage boys. That's right. The garbage boys, male, male classes. We're doing classes for men. That's the sponsor. Here's something I find very interesting.

I love your take on it, Hank. Earlier, we were talking about how subcultures used to bubble up into the mainstream, and then you, you know, you'd go. That's how you get from Nirvana to nickelback, right? Everything kind of gets watered down as it moves up the ladder, it becomes radio or TV, and then, you know, it dissipates. One of the strangest examples of something like that happening post-cultural fracture is 4chan was sort of singled out as a subcultural space. And then via the president became just like how Gen Z talks sometimes. All of their terms come from like 2014. 4chan threads, which I struggle to wrap my head around, like, what that means.

I mean, I don't know what it means. And I was also not aware of the effect until just now. So thank you for explaining a way in which the world is terrible. That's what we're here for. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for coming on the show. We're all good.

You know, there is a thing where we want our slang to come from places that are not the mainstream. And also the gay community, like we pull. And also like those are places where cultural evolution can happen more because it's not, it's been marginalized. It's been put off to the side. Right. And also like maybe once you've been marginalized, there's some joy in creating your own culture so that you can have a thing that's yours that it can't be sort of taken away from you. But then of course, it gets, it goes mainstream.

And so in that way, it kind of, it kind of is. But like, why pull from 4chan? I think if you're trying to look at what's truly transgressive in a society, then you're not going to be pulling from, you know, a bunch of college students learning about how systemic abuse works, about how marginalization works. You're going to be pulling from areas where people are like, you know, fuck everything.

This is the thing that we always forget about transgressive spaces is that they are actually transgressive. So like a lot of like cultural transgression of the past, it has been sort of sanitized and we don't see it that way anymore. Like we don't see hippies as actually transgressive. We see them as like future boomers. You know, we don't see like the cool jazz cats. Even like, you know, Lenny Bruce, we're not like imagining him as transgressive

because like he's kind of tame, you know. It always ends up being kind of tame because culture is always evolving. Those things weren't just legitimately transgressive. They were also like legitimately dangerous. to the societies that they are inside of. They were actually like they were, you know, tearing down structures in order to build new ones. And so the people who were in favor of those structures were very threatened by those things. And like, because I actually feel like now I'm the frickin society, I'm like, yeah, no, that's very, that's very bad.

You're the man. That way of imagining, you know, everything is a status game, that way of imagining all women as, you know, the enemy that must be manipulated into the one thing that they are good for. Like, it's racist and it's sexist and it's homophobic. And it's all, like, right on the edge of pretending that it's just for fun, but then suddenly it's not anymore. Like, I do think that that's very bad. And if, like, I knew people who were into it,

I would be very concerned for them and I wouldn't want to be their friends anymore. It kind of makes sense. I don't know, though, and I'm curious why you say it's via the president, because, like, I don't know. I don't know about this. What I was going to bring up next is sort of this very recent wave of what they're calling like nostalgia for 2016 millennial optimism. And I think even though they're combining a bunch of stuff that did not happen in 2016,

into 2016, that is an important date. Because I think in a lot of ways, because of sort of the haze of looking backwards, 2016 is probably the last time the American monoculture felt like it was monocultural. If you look from like Gamergate to Trump entering office and the American Carnage moment, sure. You basically have this moment where all of this stuff is being hoovered up out of 4chan and spread across massive platforms at their, at the moment where those platforms in television were sort of still competing for your attention.

So the TV was amplifying everything on the internet without really thinking about it. Like I used to go on to the Today Show and be like, this dog on YouTube has 11 million views, you know? Like that was happening. Yeah. I remember when the internet was cute and good. Exactly. Rebecca Black's Friday and Gangham style.

You know, like that stuff, right? So when that all ends, though, is when Trump enters office and things start moving too quickly for the TV to keep up.

And it never really slowed down. Like, you know, the television can't handle something like the Epstein files drop. You know, like it doesn't move that fast. So I do think that there's... They also,

for a, for clarity, have to like say things that are true, which it's much easier to be it to put like, well, I mean, they get, they experience reputational harm when they don't. They do. Unlike, you know, your average podcaster. No offense to all of us podcasters. I get my news from Walter Bloomberg, the man who cause plays is the Bloomberg terminal on X.com, the everything up, actually.

And if Ryan says something to me, it is fact. That's right. That's how we operate. It's much easier to post like a screenshot from the Epstein files. and say like, I cannot believe that this is true. And then you read it and you're like, what am I trying to figure out is true? Right.

But like now you've spent time reading that. And so Twitter is like, this must be a good one. I don't know if you've like been on Twitter in the last six months, but it has started to like really reward when people spend time on a tweet, which means that it really rewards confusing-ass tweets. Yes, vague posting is the hot new meta for X.com. And everything.

Vague posting. Thank you for giving me a word for it. Vague posting. Yeah, no. I spend every day on X still because like, I used to cover 4chan and Reddit, and that was kind of harder to do. But now all the bad people are on one site,

so I can just look at culture happening on 4chan? Um, sometimes. I mean, they're really freaking out right now because Christopher Poole, the founder of 4chan was in the Epstein files, and they're not really sure what to do with that. But like,

there's still people over there. Does Fortune give a shit about moot? What the fuck year is it? They're afraid that all of their, politics for the last 15 years were created by a pedophile cabal and they're having a tough time with that. Well, good. Yeah. Sorry, guys.

Like, that's what happens. We thought it was just coming from Nazis. We didn't know it was a Nazi pedophile. Fuck. But to sort of circle back to what we were talking about, like, there is this one last moment of kind of the old world, probably, you know, as we'll look back on it at, you know, and Trump enters

office, all this stuff leaks out of the internet. And now kids are talking in ways that would make a Charlottesville guy blush, you know, like it's just very different. And mixing in with that, I think, is some genuinely real resentment. And this is a really fascinating piece from New York Times that was published this year about the millennial optimism sort of feeling with Gen Z. So they write, this week, Instagram became a time machine.

Scrolling through my feed, I was struck by the feeling I had somehow traveled back a decade. Instead of the usual fare, mostly content from influencers and advertisers, I was greeted by hundreds of old photos from friends and celebrities revisiting life in the year 2016, hyper-filtered grainy images of assayee bowls and sunsets, skinny jeans, black choker necklaces and Snapchat filters that put flower crowns and dog noses on our faces. Without even realizing, I found myself humming Drake's hotline blink. Get help. Get help.

It's only been 10 years, but to me, 2016 feels like a lifetime ago. And then it goes on and says, are people really missing 2016 a year that, like every other year contained no shortage of hardship and despair for many people around the world, or are we just missing an internet that no longer exists? And I think we're missing a feeling of sort of like we're missing a cultural feeling that doesn't exist. That can probably never come back. 10 years is like one, a long time. It's about an eighth of your whole life. That's true. Don't say that again. Don't ever say that again. Maybe for you guys. Yeah, I'm having some Gen Z blood injected into me. And I'm,

Thanks to the Chinese peptides I keep buying on Amazon, I'm never going to die. Or I'm already dead. I can't actually tell. Oh, my God. I keep hearing the word peptide. I feel like I'm missing another phenomenon, but don't explain that one to me. Wait, yeah. What's your peptide and neutropics stack?

Are you going to send me a package? Yeah, yeah. Clavicular apparently likes to smoke meth and take a bunch of neutropics. That's how he stays in shape. Meanwhile, you're on the only male-hosted podcast that can't get a supplement brand to advertise for us. We would have so much fun with them. Yeah, Grant really wants a creatine advertiser.

You guys, I've said no to a lot of... Pass them over here. Yeah, Grant wants supplements, yeah. But yeah, so like, I mean... Yeah, I think that it's a long time. I also think that it was a very intense 10 years. I mean, the first Trump election was a real psychological scar, I think, a real sort of misunderstanding of the structure of society.

and there was, you know, there was Black Lives Matter, there was COVID, there was George Floyd, there was, like, all of these things were, are pretty big deals. But also, I think that if you take any point in time and you, and you think back to, like, if you pick the hotline bling of 10 years ago, like, if it's 1980 and you pick, what was the hotline bling of 1980? I was probably, like, you know, early Bejys. And, and you'd be like, oh, God, I like, my, like, my. knees didn't hurt. I wasn't worried about this thing I'm worried about now. Like nostalgia is always a grief and it's always a clouded one and just like any grief. You know, you're you're picturing all the things that are beautiful, not all of the things that are hard. I had this I had this revelation about baby boomers and sort of the passage of time last year where I was thinking about like for a lot of baby boomers like McDonald's at one point like was new technology.

Like fast food was like a technological innovation. And so. Hard to remember this. Yeah. And so like when you look at like RFK, he's basically like, hey, that new technology you are alive for like, we're bringing it back and it's good for you now. Like there will obviously be a candidate in 50 years that is like Facebook is going back to a chronological news feed and we're going to run the country on it.

Like that is the same mindset of sort of like the thing that you remember. We're bringing it. Hi, I'm a millennial president and I'm bringing my space back everybody. Like, it's going to be something like that. Yeah, it'll be something like that. I'm real bearish on social media being anywhere like shaped the way that it is right now, 20 years from now. I assume it'll be like mandatorily installed in our brains and we won't be able to get off of it. No idea what it's going to look like, but I don't think it's going to look like this.

I think that we're going to like create some social taboos around the terrible way that it is currently structured. From what I can see, millennials, they love posting. They just, they can't stop posting. They've all given themselves severe personality disorders from using Twitter and Instagram too much. Gen Z are kind of the lurker generation. Like they don't really make a ton of content. They're consuming so much of it. But like they're really, I think as you said, they're a little nervous.

They're a little scared to do it. Gen Alpha from what we can see sort of already on Roblox and Minecraft and Fortnite in places are much more sort of into a very different way of interfacing with something like social media. And so I am curious, like, in the next five years, that transition from, you know, the 20-somethings that are watching nothing but short-form video content to the very young 20-somethings that are coming into the workforce that really know the internet as a playable three-dimensional space. And I'm interested to see, like, how that creates some tension because that is a, that's a pretty big jump. Like, that's a, me and a Gen Z person have a pretty similar internet diet. You know, I'm watching Charlie Kirk AI video is pretty much non-stop now. That's my thing. Whereas Gen Alpha, like, I'm not really sure what they're up to.

I don't know. I think it's very hard to know with Gen Alpha because, of course, like, playing Minecraft is very different from being in a social media space, even if it is a social Minecraft space, which, of course, there are. Or if it's like watching Minecraft videos where there's a lot of, like, storytelling and social stuff going on. I think that that could be, you know, to that generation the same as like goosebumps books. And you're not like expecting that.

that like they then move into the workplace and they're sort of seeing work through the lens of goosebumps. I am. I definitely am. So I don't have any stats on this. I don't know if I feel like Gen Alpha is actually spending less time on the internet. It's like more cringe to be on the internet. I hope that's true. What we're talking about is is like these generations on the internet. Like what do they look like on the internet? And this is anytime you're having generational conversations, you end up making these. fudges where it's like, oh, what are we, what, who are we really talking about here? It's like how like every YouTuber and TikToker is annoyed that YouTube and TikTok is defined by like the top two people on the platform. And so I say I'm a YouTuber and people picture Logan Paul, you know? And that's, that's so we have to be careful about that. And then then I also think,

of course, like the main thing that, uh, that I'd like to say to both Gen C and, and millennials as a person who, who is your elder, um, is, is be friends. Because, boy, are you going to hate Gen X together? Everything that you could do to imagine that this is not actually a generational conflict, it is actually a conflict about who controls the society through money and through power. That will actually be a better thing for you, because we really do need some redistribution going on. And that's going to be a bigger problem in the next 10 years than it even is now.

And so when Gen X inherits all that money and we all realize that we kind of suck, and I start pretending I'm a millennial, we'll have to be figuring out both, I think, confrontational and quiet, subtle, careful strategies for getting everybody on board that maybe the shape of society doesn't need to be the only people with power and money are over 70. You're so, right? I remember years ago there was like this piece that was like, who are the most influential millennials in the world.

It must have been like 2018, 10, 2019. And you know, you have this idea of what a millennial is based usually on the internet. You know, Harry Potter tattoos, uh, uh,

I don't know, like Harry Potter tattoos, a lot of Harry Potter tattoos. Uh, and you sort of, you know, the cringe, you know,

bubbly, you know, millennial pink, all that stuff, right? And the list was like, Muhammad bin Salam, crown prince of Saudi Arabia,

Mark Zuckerberg, uh, Stephen Miller, Jared Kushner, Like some of the most evil men that have ever walked the planet. And it's like, right, that's actually how you should probably be thinking about your generational cool work. There's a thing about generations that is easy to pay attention to and thus we make content around it, just as we are doing right now. Right.

But in fact, it can be harder to think about it in terms of actual power dynamics because that's not fun. It's not as fun. What Hogwarts House would Muhammad Ben Salam be organized into is what I want. I want to know. It's a real griff, a real Gryffindor, I'd say. Just a real brave, just, you know. Hufflepuff. Totally hufflepuff.

I think your idea that it is not a generational war, it's a class war, is a good one to sort of end on. And I guess what I wanted to ask you to sort of close things out is you have Gen Z, you know, viewers, audience. I don't know what you call people, like users, fans, you know. It honestly depends on where. So I often say audience. And sometimes when it's a closer relationship, I do say community. Community. But it really depends from platform to platform.

So your Gen Z audience, like, have they ever sort of talk to you? Like, do you get signals from them on like what they're interested in, what they're curious about when it comes to educational content? Because I feel like that is actually something that doesn't really ever get talked about in these conversations is like what they actually want from the world around. Like, do you have any sort of insights there of like what? they're kind of trying to get out of the people making content for them. My social media manager is actually, I think she's Gen Z. She might be a, she's going to be mad at me if she's deeply Gen Z, but I think that she's older Gen Z.

And when, where is the cutoff? Millennial is 81 to 96. Yeah, that's how I'm not, technically not a millennial. And Gen Z is 97 to 2012. Yeah. And so, like, one of the great values that Peyton provides for me is just telling me when I'm being, when I'm doing something that I shouldn't be doing. And part of that is like, that's going to be, like, you shouldn't show your feet, you know, that's not a thing. Dude, don't show your feet.

Don't show your feet. I have a Wiki feet page because I didn't, I didn't, no one told me that. I have a wiki feet page. Wait, let me see what yours is compared to mine. Hold on. I actually have pretty high rating, I have to say. Me too. So, you know, we should do this for all.

I found this out literally a month ago that I have. Wikipedia page. Okay, hold on. I'm doing this live. And how did it feel? I was like, where is that picture from? Ooh, that's a pretty good score. Hold on.

Let me see if you beat me. You're 4.81. Now, I should say my readers have found mine and they're constantly messing with it. Oh, yeah, you beat me. You beat me. You're being like 0.3. I mean, I'm 4.58 in your point. That's the same.

There's no statistical significance there. Dude, it's close only matters in hand grenades and horseshoes. not WikiFeed page. Our bosses are always telling us we need a plug like, you know, leave comments, leave reviews,

but actually all we want is for Ryan's WikiPee page to go up. If you could please, wait, hold it. Hank, Hank,

one of these is a screenshot from your TikTok. You were posting feet on TikTok. Look, I don't, is it? Where? It's got the watermark.

Yeah, Hank Green one, the watermark. Yeah, no, that was early. I didn't know what I was doing. I could tell from those pants. I can tell from those pants.

I haven't had those pants since 2020. That, that means you post it. feet on the internet, like post-2017, all my feet footers are from like before that. Like, you were posting feet. I don't know. This is why I needed Peyton to come along and be like, Hank, don't put feet on the internet. Don't put armpit on the internet either. That's the new one. armpits the new feet. You heard it here first. Oh, man. Man. If you like this page, you may want to check out Dan Howell's Feet. That's a huge win for me. Yeah, that's awesome.

Here's what I will say in addition. So like, I'm good at social media, but I do. I don't like I learn a lot about what they like the kinds of the just I'm sorry to use the word vibe but the kinds of vibes we're going for and a big one is like I'm not one of you I'm like your big goofy uncle who just wants you to care about starfish you know sometimes young people they want to ask questions but once once you're like 13 your questions are good actually and and to take those questions not that Gen Z is 13 but but, you know, throughout my career. And to take those questions seriously,

one of the best questions I ever got sent my way was, was, it was like presented as like, she was like kind of ashamed that she was having this silly thought. Was math created or invented? That's a great question. Or discovered or invented, discovered or created. And like, yeah, well, I don't know. No, like mathematicians don't know.

Did we discover math or did we create math? And it's kind of both, obviously. Like there's certainly things that we have created in math. But it's also like, is it a property of the universe? Is it just like sort of a thing that was always there? Very cool question. And to be able to like to validate, I think is part of what I'm doing as I'm saying like, yes. You should be like questioning the world and and you should be fascinated by it and like kind of obsessed with it.

And like you should be chasing some emotions that are not outrage and fear and superiority. and, you know, like, all of this. Because, like, if you look at it from the right distance, it does seem like a lot of both the sort of good parts and the pathologies. So I'm not saying that this is like one or the other, but it is really about, like, a lot of attention is being paid, and it is easy to mess up. And, like, really the thing that delivers status is gathering attention.

even if that does not come along with money, which on TikTok, it mostly doesn't. I think that that, like, allows us to focus on some important things, but I think that it also, like, it enables all of the culturally unwelled behaviors that we've talked a lot about today. Yeah. And I'm glad that we were able to package that into content that will give us attention. I mean, hopefully, like, is attention ever good anymore? Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. All I know is if I don't get attention, I will. die. Okay. Yeah. No, I hear that.

Yeah. I want to thank you for coming on. This was a great conversation and it's a lot of fun. This is a silly question to ask you, but I ask all our guests this. If people want to follow you online, where can they do that? Where? So I know you're active on X.com, the everything app, but other than that. I'm not.

I actually am on Boozky. That, you know, most of my attention is paid to my YouTube right now, which is YouTube. com slash vlogbrothers or YouTube. dot com slash hank's channel um and then uh the the big thing that we're always working on is is we've got we've recently converted our educational media company into a non-profit organization so complexly at complexly dot org which is new or dot org congrats yeah is is makes all of the things that actually people know me for it which is like sci show and crash course and a bunch of other shows so you can find me there you like bizarre beast channel that's where i do like a lot of my educational stuff youtube

dot com slash SciShow is the big the big one where I do my science content. Panic World is a production of Courier. It is written and produced by Grant Irving and hosted by me, Ryan Broderick. Josh Fielstead is our production coordinator and our amazing researcher is Adam Bumis. From Courier is Shane Verkest, who edits our video episodes along with our producer, Devin Barone, and National Managing Director and Executive Producer Kevin Dreyfus. R.C. DeMezzo is their VP of Brand and Social. Charlotte Robinson is their deputy director of brand and social. Marianne Couga is their director

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