At the end of 2022, I made a leap of faith and decided to purchase a driving school, and become a driving instructor. It was a bit of an abnormal choice, as at the time my only experience in the world of training was a 2 week stint as a Crew Trainer at McDonald's, and a 1 month foray into training sales agents at a call centre. Overall, I was horrifically underqualified and what's more, very unenthusiastic about becoming a preacher of rules and regulations.

Since then, I've been able to make the job not only into something that I'm extremely passionate and excited about, but also something that has completely, and continues to, change my perspective. In fact, up until the end of 2022 I would've gladly told you that Generation Z was an awful generation and that, for the most part, they were politically and socially fucked, and that society needed a giant reset. I would've said all of this as a member of Generation Z myself, as I thought that being a self hater was a personality trait worth people's time.

Now though, I find myself getting annoyed as Millennials and Gen Xers pose the question to me: "how do you deal with this new generation?". Because I'll be perfectly blunt, turns out they aren't that hard to deal with at all.

At this point, your average agender driven Gen Xer will hit you with the: "oh but, aren't they a bunch of pussies? Back in my day we used to get down and get on with the hard work and now this new generation is all soft and doesn't wanna work! I hate my wife!" And while yes, it's true, I added that last line for texture. But also yes, it's true, there are people in Generation Z that don't want to work. But that is true of every generation. the stereotype of the looser man living in his mum's basement was not created after 1997, that's been present in pop culture a lot longer than we have. I mean, anecdotally, stoner comedies came around in the 90s, which means that the people that these movies were based on had to have come of age throughout the late 70s and early 80s.

Upon saying this, a Boomer might then come back and say: "ok then well, your generation is all PC and you can't say anything these days! And believe me, no one hates their wife more than me!" And again, to that I would say stop talking about your wife that way. Then, I would point out that again, the youth being politically liberal is nothing new at all. In fact, if you go back and watch the Australian movie 'The Dish' from 2000, you'll find a portrayal of a youth who protests the presence of the Prime Minister in her town, based purely on the fact that she has a totally different world view to him. There's an extremely famous quote: "If You Are Not a Liberal at 25, You Have No Heart. If You Are Not a Conservative at 35 You Have No Brain" which has it's origins in a French history book dating all the way back to 1870. So again, nothing new.

If you want to say Gen Z hates authority, I'd come back with the truth that there is nothing wrong with that. Maybe you want to argue that Gen Z is capable of being nuisances in public, like perhaps street takeovers or public prank videos. In which case again, I'd point out that street takeovers have their roots in rap from the 80s, and that public prank videos are inspired by prank tv shows that have been around since the creation of MTV.

Every single piece of shade you want to throw at Gen Z, believe me, I'm ready to retort. So you may be wondering then, what are the roots of the stigma? Well, other than natural generational resentment, which happens with every generation, I actually have a theory on that.

If you want to know the answer to the question as to why everyone hates on Gen Z, you have to actually pose the following question to either a Boomer or Gen Xer: "What's the worst thing you did as a kid?"

Having worked in a call centre that mostly catered towards that market, allow me to list off a few anecdotal things I have been told over the years:

1. Stole their parent's car and rolled it
2. Drunk drove and crashed into a house
3. Drunk drove and flipped their car, resulting in the death of 1
4. Numerous instances of shoplifting
5. Numerous robberies
6. Numerous instances of targeted racism
7. Numerous instances of targeted homophobia (gay bashing)
8. Numerous instances of heavy drug use

So why am I telling you all of these people's sins? It's simple: back when they committed these acts, someone couldn't whip out a phone and begin recording them. Or spread word of the act on social media. Or google the act many years later as it was never recorded in any way shape or form. What I'm essentially trying to say is that Gen Z is no worse than any other generation, it's just the first one to do it's growing up out loud, for the world to see.

You can throw as many online instances as you like at me, I don't care. Chances are that you knew someone who had done something stupid, ridiculous, dangerous or illegal, or even someone whose world view was completely fucked up, false, and based on nothing except for close minded vitriol, when you were a kid. You very well may have been that person and you wouldn't have even known it. The difference is that your shit isn't plastered all over the web like ours is, because when we started plastering shit on the web, we (just like everyone else) had no concept of what the fuck we were actually doing.

I first obtained access to Facebook at the ripe old age of 10. If you think a 10 year old has any concept of "whatever you post stays online forever", you're dead wrong. To that, you may say "well, parents should be keeping track of what's posted", but given the fact that social media was a brand new form of communication, what the hell would parents know about post moderation at the time? They too, had 0 understand of what social media was.

Everything has to be viewed in context, and when you're seeing videos of smash and grabs online, perpetrated by people under the age of 25, you have to understand that you're not seeing a representation of a generation. You're seeing a useless moron do something useless and moronic. When you see videos of unspecified gender people talking about 'points of privilege', you have to understand that that's those people. When you see videos of violent street fights, wild protests, shootings, hooning, whatever, understand that this has always been going on. It's just, quite simply, the first time in human history we have been consistently exposed to it.

So, that's my theory. Maybe you could poke holes in it. Maybe you could hit me with statistics and studies and findings and whatnot that prove me wrong. But why? Like genuinely, why bother? Why try and convince yourself that the generation that's in the process of inheriting the earth is fucked. Why not redirect that same energy into educating the young people around you about some of the mistakes you made, and how to avoid them. That seems like a much more productive use of time.