Gen Z Girl Tells Millennial Hairstylist That Sending Memes To Friends ‘Shows Someone’s Age’ — ‘We Don’t Do That Anymore’
She's probably still sending memes without realizing it, though.
Ground Picture / Shutterstock There are a lot of differences between each generation of people. Some are noticeable, some are minor, and some are even comical.
Most recently, it seems, Gen Z and millennials are battling it out, and boomers have gotten a bit of a reprieve.
One of the more amusing differences between Gen Z and millennials was brought up during a hair appointment.
A Gen Zer told her millennial hairstylist that sending memes to friends is outdated.
In a since-deleted video, Erin Booher, a hairstylist based in Los Angeles, shared an interesting experience she had with a younger client on TikTok.
Elnur / Canva Pro
“I’ve just been informed by my Gen Z client that — I was just doing her hair — I was like, ‘Yeah, all my friends and I do is send each other memes,’” she said. “And she was like, ‘We don’t do that anymore. You’re showing your age.’”
Booher insisted that her client wasn’t trying to be mean, just honest. “She was not being rude,” she said. “It was honestly hilarious.”
Booher said that her client informed her that sending memes just wasn’t cool anymore. “She said, ‘Mmm, that’s not the vibe anymore,’” she recounted.
Booher told her client that she would be taking the matter to TikTok to let the people of the internet decide.
“And I was like, ‘Okay, well, I’m gonna make a TikTok about this very moment, and I’m gonna ask the internet what the internet thinks,’” she explained.
Booher then posed her all-important question: “So, if you’re like a young Gen Z, like, born in the 2000s, do you send each other memes on the internet?”
“And I’m gonna, we have gotta get to the bottom of this. This is a job for the FBI,” she joked.
Other TikTokers pointed out that ‘memes’ may mean different things to different people.
While Booher’s client found her meme exchanges incredibly outdated, she may be closer to doing that than she realizes.
As one person said in a comment on the video, “The term ‘meme’ is broad. Most TikToks are memes. Unless they never send videos, tweets, etc., then they send memes.”
“I’m old Gen Z, and I feel like all memes are, like, TikToks now?” another person added. “I don’t really remember the last picture meme I engaged with.”
Merriam-Webster defined the word “meme” as “an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online, especially through social media.”
In this sense, Booher’s Gen Z client probably does exchange memes with her friends. She just doesn’t think of them as memes because they aren’t traditional edited photos but videos in the form of TikToks, Snapchats, or even Instagram reels.
Gen Z uses social media as its primary method of communication.
Fast Company stated, “There is no question that social [media] has become one of the most adopted communication channels, with over 4.7 billion social media users worldwide and the average user spending nearly 2.5 hours every day on social platforms.”
Notably, the majority of these users are Gen Z. “And, with over 45% of those users between the ages of 13 and 29, Gen Z truly does sit in a power position within the channels they use,” the outlet noted.
According to eMarketer, 51.1% of Snapchat users are Gen Z, while 44.7% of TikTok users are Gen Z. This means the majority of people using these apps, which are designed to share videos and, in some cases, pictures, belong to Gen Z.
So, while Gen Z may find themselves sending traditional photo-based memes pretty rarely nowadays, they are still technically exchanging memes based on the definition. They have just evolved and taken on new formats, like all types of technology.
As technology continues to grow and change, so will things like memes. Where once the word applied only to pictures, now it also includes videos, mainly because more social media includes videos.
So, whether she likes it or not, this Gen Zer is most likely still sending memes.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer for YourTango who covers entertainment, news and human interest topics.