Meet Okay Zoomer's greatest source — our resident young person
This has very little to do with Pete Davidson.
Once upon a time in 2014, Pete Davidson became one of the youngest cast members to join Saturday Night Live. He started appearing on Weekend Update as the “resident young person” who weighed in on current events from a youthful perspective. I didn’t like this, because Pete and I are the same age and I was not yet famous, despite the fact I ran an ~NBC show fandom blog~ for several years. He was my nemesis until he dated my best friend, Ariana.
Credit: YouTube / Saturday Night Live
I may consider myself to be an expert in internet youth culture — I have always been fascinated by how the newest people do the newest things online — but I am no longer young. I am old enough to date a Kardashian. So I hired my own.
Zack is my little brother. He is seven years younger than me. He sends me dozens of TikToks every week that I have never seen in my life even though I spend a considerable time on the app myself and the posts have millions of likes. I may have four TikTok accounts, but I will never be inside the mind of a 20-year-old dude. Zack lends me his algorithm. After reading Rebecca Jennings’ interview with @park_slope_arsonist (and Morgan Sung’s tweet about it) I found that I am far from the only internet person who does this.
As a reward for years of unpaid research work, I’m going to give Zack his own corner of my newsletter to share whatever he wants. It will grow and change over time, but before we get started, I wanted to do a little Q&A to introduce him to y’all. And make him practice for interviews. Zack is interesting because he’s not the typical type of young person you hear from in the media — he doesn’t post a lot (he literally has one Instagram post) but is ALWAYS online.
Without further ado, here’s a conversation we had via Google Docs over the last week. Condensed and edited for clarity, of course, and for capital letters because Zack does not use them (aside from auto-caps!!)
Q&A with Okay Zoomer’s resident young person
Zack and I in 2022 vs. 2011
Okay, Zack. What do you want people to know about you?
I’m 20, a sophomore in college and run track. I love stories and psychology. In my free time, I either watch analyses of movies/video games or mindless TikTok videos.
I have always called you “my teen brother.” You’re 20 now. What am I gonna call you????
Younger you*
*Awwww
What do you do in your free time, online and off?
Online, I spend far too much time on TikTok and YouTube. Offline, I like to do basically anything outside with friends, IDC what it is, I just go with the vibes
You like visiting weird and abandoned places, which I also loved when I was your age. I used to take all my friends to the “castle” at UNC where a secret society met. Do you think social media influenced you to want to do stuff like that, or is it something that has always interested you?
Abandoned places have always interested me because of the movies and video games I like, but I recently have found new places to explore through TikTok, Insta, and Reddit. The desire comes from stories and the resources come from social media.
What was your first introduction to the internet?
Watching YouTube gaming clips with Zane*, and other soon-to-be iconic YouTube clips. Also being featured on your Vine.**
*Zane, our other brother, is 1.5 years younger than me and 6 years older than Zack. Don’t ask me why my name doesn’t start with Z. I was born first!
**I cannot find the Vine he’s talking about, but I believe him.
When and why did you get your first phone + iPad + laptop?
I got an iPad in 7th grade for school because [our school] thought giving middle schoolers iPads would be a good idea. I got my first phone in the summer before 8th grade because of sports and we were visiting NYC and mom and dad didn't want to lose me. I got my first laptop summer right before freshman year of college, and it basically just replaced the old school iPad.
What’s something you used to love online that you don’t like anymore?
Literally the types of videos I used to exclusively watch I never watch now, like “funny gaming moment” videos. Also basically any meme I liked in middle school or early high school is terrible.
I used to run a fandom Tumblr, so I feel that. Do you know what fandom? Guess. I think you were like 7 at the time.
I’ve heard of it, but apparently not enough conspiracy content has come from it cause I don’t know anything about it.
Which social media sites do you use? Which ones do your friends use?
I use TikTok by far the most, it's like my comfort app. I also use Instagram and Snapchat like the rest of my generation. My Instagram feed sucks, I got it recently so the algorithm is still trying to figure me out. Also, the longer I have Snap, the less I use it. I literally forget I have the app sometimes. And I dabble in the occasional browse through Pinterest for ideas, but I usually use my friends’ accounts for that
For the most part, all my friends use the same apps, but a lot of them have deleted TikTok cause they spent too much time on it. I would say Instagram is the most used, it is generally the way most people I know keep up with everything going on.
A few people use Twitter. The only reason people use Facebook is to find a roommate, but honestly, Instagram has taken most of that duty.
How do people find roommates now??? Ours was definitely entirely Facebook-based. After college in NYC, too.
Here at least it's through people you know from your hometown or usually huge Insta groups made with like all the incoming students. I do know some people scrambling to find roommates in the real world, and they do use Facebook still.
Do people care about Snapchat streaks anymore?
Kinda, but a lot of people now only use it when they have something fun going on or get bored. Most of my friends don't like the app and only still have it for the memories part.
What non-social media apps do you use? What do your friends use?
YouTube if you don’t consider that social media. All my roommates use the same account so the suggested list is quite funny.
Spotify and Apple Music are obviously used, with Spotify winning more people over from the inferior Apple Music. We all use Netflix, Hulu, and any other streaming service.
What streaming services do you have? How do you decide what you want to watch?
I personally have none, however, I have all of them through my roommates because I am a leech.* We decide by scrolling around for a while, then one of my roommates gets annoyed and chooses a show or movie that he wants to watch.
*Zane uses a lot of my accounts and his username is always Zane (leech). It’s cute to see Zack take after him.
Are there any sites or apps you use exclusively for school?
Any Microsoft app but they all suck. Quizlet, Canvas, Chegg
Do your professors ever make jokes about you guys being Gen Z? Honestly, do you ever encounter jokes like that at all?
Yes, unfortunately, they always reference how much easier things are and they assume everyone is completely uncultured and knows nothing from anything before like 2005.
What does it mean to be cool? What does it mean to be cringe?*
Depends who you ask and situation. “Cool” is kinda just like up to date with trends, self-aware, and able to get along with most people. “Cringe,” I would say, is like painfully out of touch, “band kid humor,” trying to be cool to impress certain people (it never works), and half of TikTok.
*Zack told me this was the hardest question.
Do you enjoy certain creators more than others? Who are they and why do you like them?
For the most part, I have no creator loyalty. I just kinda watch or listen to whatever interests me at the time. On TikTok, I watch whatever is thrown at me at the moment.
YouTube has the people I actually follow. I love watching Wendigoon. His stuff is so fun to watch and I love hearing his stories. Also there's this channel called Daryl Talks Games — he looks into the psychology behind video games and I absolutely love it. I also quite enjoy Noel Miller and Cody Ko and their podcast TMG.
On the music side of things, I absolutely love Surfaces, they are my favorite music group ever and I have literally been obsessed for two years now
Your TikTok is so interesting. I have never seen such chaos. Do you feel like it gets you?
Sometimes. I love having a fun and random [FYP], and for the most part, I've curated the perfect storm. There are days when the algorithm just doesn't get me and then my FYP is wack.
How are you discovering new content?
I have found multiple songs, videos, topics, apps, and so much else through TikTok. I also discover new content through my friends. They all like pretty different things so it’s fun to mix what everyone likes and expand my horizons.
If you had to go a week without internet, could you do it? How would you feel?
Probably, I feel like I do enough outside of the internet I could do it, however, I would get major FOMO knowing that I'm missing out on knowing what everyone is doing and what is popular.
You’re like the most online jock of all time lol. Wait, do you identify as a jock? That word even predates me tbh.
I definitely am not a jock, also yea I don’t think anyone really uses that word anymore, at least I haven’t heard it recently. But no I’ve found a lot of athletes who are actually cultured here and know old and new trends as well as like movies and tv shows. Everyone has got a nerdy side, you just gotta find it
Have you ever made a friend online? Are there people you talk to exclusively online?
Surprisingly no, but I do keep up most of my high school friendships online. I have some high school friends I only keep up with through playing games, texting about movies or shows, or just sending dumb memes.
I tend to stay away from comment sections and discussion forums, I am just a spectator there and will not intervene in the beef going on.
What’s the last thing that made you laugh online? What typically makes you laugh? Is Gen Z humor broken?
A TikTok I watched right before this. It was a stupid repost of that old video of the guy getting out of the trunk of a car dancing to “I bet you won’t”. Video is funnier than my description.
I am far too easy to entertain, and if something is even slightly random, I laugh.
Trust me, that is a gift. You will never be bored. Anyway, what’s a trend you absolutely hate seeing?
Mike Kara, get off my FYP, you’re not funny. Nor are any of the people saying, “Oh I wonder what Mike Kara says about this.” And basically any trend that involves effortless recreations of the original video.
What words are you and your friends obsessed with right now?
Pause, dawg, ayo. Get back to me on this one, I’m bad at thinking of them on the spot.
You say bruh a lot. And you used to say bet.
We still say those, they're just so ingrained in us, I don’t even think about them anymore.
What words do you use in text to convey laughter? (EX: I use lol, hahahaha, lmao, asdfghgfd)
Yea all of those are used, as well as various emojis that I’m pretty sure you use too. The random letters thing is used quite a lot now tho.
Do you think having two siblings a million years older than you had an effect on how you use the internet?
Yea, in some ways. I always thought the internet was quite funny, and I remember you always talking about trends and what was popular and I always found that interesting.
After you went to college, I started to just copy Zane. Ironically, Zane introduced me to the internet so I was always about five years ahead of my age, but now I make fun of him for being out of touch.* As he moved out, I had to figure out how the heck to live as my own person, and I feel like I stole a bit of both of y’all’s personalities, but because of the iPad and iPhone, I heavily leaned more toward your internet competent personality. Y’all being so much older gave me the ability to see, like, three different sides of the internet at once and in turn helped me be overall more aware of trends and how they work through different age groups and people.
*Zane is not an “internet person” — he spends time online but doesn’t really care what other people are doing. I admire it. Zane interview next???
Zack’s last note encouraged me to “hmu” if I had other questions, and later he texted me this:
A man who never posts but understands the content grind. Definitely my brother. Definitely Gen Z.
Keeping up with the content
I’ll let Garbage Day do the talking on the Oscars and “viral pre-exhaustion”
What does feral even mean on TikTok? (Bustle)
TikTok dating coaches claim they can give you the skills you need to marry a millionaire (BuzzFeed News)
Confessions of an information hoarder (The Atlantic)
How the folks at Internet Archive are working to democratize knowledge (Neiman Lab)
Drama in the prepper subreddit!! (Slate)
Doomscrolling got you down? Take a break at a digital rest stop. (Washington Post)
I don’t think you understand, I’m obsessed
☼ I love BookTuber Jack Edwards, who has an excellent series in which he reads the books famous people (like Kendall Jenner, who did not like the video about her!)
☼ I trust The Cut’s Fashion Friend column with my life.
OK see ya next week
we love alll the weekmans!