The unnecessary generational war between Gen Z and their millennial predecessors continued this week with a battle brewing over the classic iPod Shuffle, which TikTok users have been jokingly wearing as a hair accessory.
In a video posted on TikTok last week, college student Celeste Tice, who goes by freckenbats on the app, shows off a silver iPod Shuffle. “So I found this old … I don’t know, iPod hair clip thing?” Tice says in the video.
She then clips the iPod shuffle, which originally launched in 2005, into her hair. “What do you guys think?” she asked, posing with iPod perched behind her ear. “Kinda vintage.” Tice tagged the video with #vintage, #antique and #2000score.
Though Tice told Newsweek that she posted it as a joke, many online still took it poorly. One user commented, “I am just gonna go turn into dust now.” Another commented that the video exemplifies “how to trigger a whole generation.” Someone else joked, “No I’m fully convinced they bully us for sport guys.”
The TikTok marks the latest in an ever-growing list millennial rage bait videos, which are specifically created to troll millennial interests.
Many things the millennial generation enjoys have been dismissed by younger users on the platform as “cheugy” — a neologism to describe the obliviously basic and outdated — by their younger counterparts.
Millennial rage bait videos first popped up on TikTok when users criticized skinny jeans and side parts. Gen Z users also made videos poking fun at the millennial-speak that dominated 2012 internet humor, cringing at adults referring to their pets as “doggos” and “puppers.” J.K. Rowling’s controversial comments have made liking Harry Potter just as embarrassing as being a Disney Adult.
Though generational boundaries are arbitrary — there is no official ruling body deciding each generation’s birth year ranges — being online is increasingly polarizing.
In each battle in the nonexistent culture war between Gen Z and millennials, the older generation gets vexed over something that a minority of people online deem uncool or use incorrectly. They post about it online, defending the jeans, hairstyles and emojis that the select few have decided are no longer trendy. Young adults and teenagers respond to the backlash, mocking millennials’ reactions to the point in which those items do become uncool.
Eating Tide Pods, for example, was a joke that people online riffed on enough to incite a moral panic, which goaded some into actually eating them.
The self-fulfilling prophecy came for blondes, too. In October, i-D reported that women were leaving their summer bleach job in favor of darker, more natural tresses. The article cited a TikTok comment that described “poorly tanned skin and unnatural platinum blonde” as “very cheugy.” Being blonde is not outdated, as one hairstylist told i-D, but it’s no longer the “ultimate American beauty standard” as trends shift to be more diverse and inclusive. A few weeks later, the New York Post reported that “Gen Z has declared blond hair as ‘cheugy’ and untrendy,” bringing on another wave of generational spite.
Rod Thill, a TikTok creator known for his funny content about the millennial work-from-home experience, posted a reaction to Tice’s video on Sunday.
“This is the last straw I can’t take it anymore,” Rod Thill, a TikTok creator known for his videos about the millennial work-from-home experience, wrote in a caption for his video reacting to the iPod Shuffle accessory on Sunday. The video has since garnered 1.2 million views.
This is the last straw I can’t take it anymore
Rod Thill, tiktok creator re: tice’s video
Reactions, like Thill’s, have helped further fuel Gen Z’s jokes.
“the fact that what makes millennials seem so much older is not even our supposed lack of cultural knowledge but their lack of understanding gen z humor,” one Twitter user wrote.
While Tice’s video is the most recent to go viral, similar videos of users wearing iPod Shuffles as hair clips have been populating the platform all year.
In a video posted on New Year’s Eve last year, TikTok creator Doris Kwon joked that she “found the cutest hair clips” in her mom’s room. In a February video, TikTok creator Katarina Mogus showed off the new “Apple hairpods,” pretending to do an influencer unboxing video for her viewers. Commenters hailed Kristen V Bateman, who posted a TikTok video wearing two iPod Shuffles in her hair in October, as a Y2K camp icon. And a week before Tice’s video went viral, TikTok creator sailorkiki modeled her “new favorite accessory” on camera.
Each time a video wearing the iPod as a hair clip went viral, the comments were littered with TikTok users complaining about Gen Z’s supposed cluelessness about millennial cultural staples. And each time they took the bait, other TikTok users doubled down on making fun of those who weren’t in on the joke.
Tice, who is a theater major, told Newsweek that “luckily most of the comments are people who can understand the joke.”
“I wonder if I can put this performance on my resume.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
