My caricatural interaction with a Gen Z as a millenial
The morning started with a text with a link from Douglas. Douglas is a dear friend with whom I had the pleasure of spending time during my stay in Victoria, BC. He is peacefully in his 70’s, born in York during the Roman occupation. He has two daughters near my age. Between our moments, I’ve tried my best to document the beauty of our experience together, capturing as much “content” on my iPhone. And of course, there was always an explicit tension of “let’s put that down and enjoy the moment” versus my love of keeping records of moments I wanted to keep or share with the world. I knew I was being crucified to the “you kids and the monetization”, “you kids and capturing content instead of enjoying the moment” shpiel.
The link transported me to a Facebook post (of course!) of a reel of an Irish poet reading his poem Rescued Time on television:
If we could turn off the screens just for now
The laptops, the phones, the tablets, the computers, the smartwatch and the news
If we could unplug all these noises, all these modern devices
The beeps, the pings, the pores, the hums,
If we could do without the drones and distractions of our everyday
…
I already knew where this was going. The poem ended with something about bathing in the moment.
I texted back a slightly snappy response that I promise him I try to be offline most of the time!
It’s not that I find the poem pointless. I just sometimes find it tired to pit technology against our humanity. I totally understand and agree with the sentiments, I promise I do. But I don’t like to think the two are mutually exclusive. I think we’ve become quick to pounce on the idea that technology invades human experience. Which it absolutely can at times. But as time goes by it’s revealed to me how quick technology speeds us up to witness moments around the world that make our day a little better or insightful..about the human experience. Screens have allowed us to witness interviews of successful people on the street sharing their sage advice, their story of how they made a bazillion dollars from nothing. We’re able to watch a millenial ask several elder woman on the street, “Excuse me, do men ever change?” and then a hilarious resounding “no” from them all, followed by genuinely wholesome monologues unearthed from their real experiences. We’re able to witness two strangers caught on a dash cam make a profound connection, like that time the taxi driver and the passenger found out they were both deaf and started conversing in sign language with excitement. We’re able to watch that very Irish poet read his poem about turning off screens—so that Douglas can send me a link via his screen to mine, of the thing that was aired so that it could be watched by millions on screens..ironically. We are able to witness human-to-human, human-to-animal, animal-to-animal connections and breathtaking historical moments happening around the world, that we otherwise couldn’t have without technology..and I truly think that is a gift—sue me! AI has also allowed us to put our ideas and turn them into reality very quickly so that we can share our creative vision faster than ever before. Problems? Many. But I’m not fond of throwing the baby out with the bathwater just yet.
I go on about my day.
I have to buy a monitor. I drop by the Apple store and it happens to be a Saturday afternoon. The place is bombarded with people who are feeling lucky today. I’m told by a staff member that someone will come around to help me. 10, 20, 30 minutes pass. I even leave the store to tend to something else and come back and I have probably missed my spot in the queue. I bug a staff member and am told someone will come around to help me only for time to tick slower while that promise never comes to a head. I get pissed. I calm myself down with deep breaths. What are you so mad about, Sae? You’re literally buying an expensive monitor and you’re pissed? I anchor myself into gratitude and chill myself out. I breathe back into contentment. This time I hail the same employee down with a question: “I have a question. Is it just one person who works this station?” It’s a very reasonable question especially because the employee knows I have been hanging out for a while. He gives me a “that’s a good question” and tells me he’s going to get me help immediately. He scans the bright, LED-lit room and picks out the young kid at the station next door to help me out.
The young kid gives a very clean and put-together image: freshly cut, shaved, and perhaps of Persian descent.
He greets me warmly. I want to make this easy for him and tell him I’d like to get the Studio display with the most standard options.
Not that I really care, but just because I want to make conversation and I’m also mildly curious, I casually ask him, “What’s the difference between this monitor’s camera and the Macbook Pro’s?” I fully expect a vague answer and I’d be happy with that—something like, the monitor has the Center Stage feature and the Pro doesn’t, a fact I quickly skimmed during my research prior to coming here. I offer that one to start us off.
“That’s a good question. Let’s see.”
Yeah.. let’s? He hops onto the Google search engine on the demo monitor in front of us. He types..
“camera of studio display monitor vs macbook pro”
Google spits out the results. We both lean in with curiosity. I feel like we are doing a group project at a public library together. The kid hovers his cursor on the first search result, a Reddit post. I could almost swear he was about to click that but forgot that he was at work interfacing a real customer. I would have found it hilarious if we were reading that thread together, just allowing a Redditor to do his job for him.
But he did me one better and let the Google AI summary do his job for him.
He read it out loud to me, word for word, in the tone of reading off the slides in front of the class.
And believe me.. I’m not hating all this, I promise you—I’m LOVING it, in fact. I find this moment hilarious and thank God in retrospect for serving me a nice slice of the zeitgeist cake.
I could literally make a reel of this, I think to myself. Gen Z’s love to make stupid spontaneous reels and let them fly (and they somehow always end up looking really tasteful). Millenials love to make reels that offer some sort of analytical twist. We just have to make an observation. We’re sorry, but it’s the years of training by our education system to do the T-charts and the venn diagrams for literally everything—and yes, without AI, so you could see how it’s been quite hammered into our brains. Now we can’t help but to note the differences, similarities, our thesis, and concluding statements on how we can do better. As for boomers? Understandably they’d roll their eyes at us for having our content-driven brains hijack every experience with the thought of “let’s make a reel out of this”. No, I get it.
He finishes reading the summary to me, ending it off with, “and you can read all the specs here!” as he valiantly gestures to the neat little AI-generated T-chart of the differences. He turns to me and finds me already staring at him with a smirk.
“Must be nice having that AI summary do all the heavy lifting for you, eh?” I jab with a shoulder-nudge smile. It’s all in good humour but also…there it was. I’ve become that boomer. In that very moment, I heard my DNA ringlets go, “Aging telomeres activated. Initiating the “You Kids These Days” sequence. All systems go.” Once this happens, you notice that the moment unfurls in such a way that it can’t help itself. You yourself don’t see it coming. It just coughs itself up like the way a cat does a furball in his throat.
“Hah, yeah. It honestly makes my life sooo easy.” I find relief that he doesn’t take offence to me. Is that a Gen Z thing? Where they are so unbothered by what we think? If it is, then I think we’re on the right evolutionary path here.
But also…that was sooo millenial of me to point out, I reiterate to myself internally. But I mean, come oooonnn. Back in the day, we actually had to memorize things and be credible to our customers. But I get it. That’s also so Information Age. We’re passed that now. Why use up all that brain storage space when we can offload to the web? And what’s great about the AI summary is not only is it more accurate, it’s also more detailed than what the average human will share in that moment. It does make sense to turn to AI for help if we’re asking for real answers here.
I can’t help but to ask him if he’s Gen Z which also seems very millenial of me to ask.
“Uhh.. I’m ‘01 so I guess that does make me one?”
Oh it absolutely does. And I love it.
He has an older brother who’s a millenial. I ask him if his brother gives him shit for being Gen Z like I’m doing. “—because we’re notorious for that,” I add. He laughs a little too emphatically. I am glad he is accepting my apology for being an obnoxious customer right now.
On the topic of cameras, I mention the new iPhone 17 that came out. “I heard it’s got an amazing camera.” He responds by pulling out his personal one.
“Yeah, I recently got one one and it’s cool. They use this camera technology, I forget what it’s called.”
I chuckle and jab again, “You really should know what it’s called.” It is completely in jest, I promise you. I don’t care whether he knows the name of it or not. I just find this conversation with a guy in an Apple uniform hilarious.
“Hah, yeah I really should.” He’s a good kid.
He leaves me for a second to pick up my order. He returns and hands me the transaction machine to pay and fill out my details. He tells me he saw me waiting around for a while, hoping I wasn’t too bothered by that.
“You know,” I respond. “it really tested my patience. But then I thought to myself, why are you so pissed off for? You’re literally buying this monitor and there are people suffering.” Like this kid who has to hear me say that just now. He doesn’t flinch and says, “That’s a good way to look at it.”
I take a pause to continue filling out my details on the machine.
“Do you have a dog?” he asks as he watches me type.
“Uhh..yes! I have a dog—and a cat! That is such a random question! Why do you ask?!”
“I don’t know, you just seem like a dog person.”
I love it. The depth of it all. But I also get how I am coming off to him. Me making conversation as a customer is probably giving mad Golden Retriever energy to any Gen Z worker.
“So what kind of dog do you have?”
“I have a Maltese.”
“Nice, I have a Morkie. It’s like a cross between a Maltese and uhh..I forget the other one.”
“A Yorkshire Terrier!”
“Is it? I think it’s something else because it sounds more like the last half of Morkie.”
“Yeah, we call them Yorkies.”
“Oh! Yeah.”
I glance at him with the final boss: “I have a feeling you don’t do well with names.” I smile at him endearingly, but at this point I sound like an unhinged senior who happened to stumble their way into an Apple store and wreak havoc on people.
“Hah, yeah I don’t!” He gives me a genuine laugh, completely in tune with the levity of the situation I am calling for. I am so relieved he is able to swing my annoying punches with grace. I promise him this is the end as I bid him farewell. Bless him, he was a really nice kid.
All in all, we all came out unscathed, perhaps a little entertained even.
I guess that’s the circle of life, isn’t it? You start your morning with a Facebook post from your boomer elder reminding you to put the screens away, you go to the Apple store to buy a 27-inch one (5K Retina with 12MP Center Stage Camera), and then you pay a projection forward to the next generation for not working hard enough during a time when it shouldn’t make sense to.
But on a realer note, I guess the common thread here is the diminishing dependence on one’s brain. And I say this with no negative or positive connotation, merely a question mark reflected back to the cosmos. The boomer wants me to use my brain, not the cloud’s, to capture moments. The millenial wants the Gen Z to use their brain, not AI’s, to store knowledge. I don’t know if we are progressing or regressing, or both, I really don’t. But I think it’s safe to say none of us are immune to the “You Kids These Days” feature of the human experience. I love it.
Now here’s just another little funny backdrop to the whole scene. As I was waiting for someone to help me, I entertained myself by watching a little session going on at the back: “Kids Make a Theme Song: Learn how to create and remix a theme song using GarageBand on iPad”
Isn’t it crazy that kids today are learning how to produce music on an iPad? DJ-ing itself is already complex enough of a workshop, but the ability today to have kids do this on an iPad..I was so impressed by the kids actually following along. Kids these days… and I say that this time with pure astonishment.
