Gen-Z has no counter culture - and how we can fix that

You know something is seriously messed-up when the most recognizable whisper of counter-culture in a generation is an 18 year-old pimply boy covering his premature balding with a red MAGA baseball cap -- a man-child whose biggest dream in life is to start a podcast and have a busty wife who churns out sour-dough. 

I bet they are such lovely girls that just need to join a crochet club.

Gen-Z has a problem! And, no, it is not that we are slackers who write blog posts during the work-day! Our big problem is that we do not have an identifiable counter-culture. Our grandparents had the peace and love, stinky, patchouli, hippy movement: our parents had the stinky, egg-hair, punk movement: our siblings had the stinky, super hairy hipster movement. Where is our smelly revolution! We all smell like daisy by marc jacobs!

Each of these movements stood as a counter to problems affecting young-adults in their respective time-periods. The hippies preached love and peace to protest the seemingly meaningless and deadly Vietnam war. The punks vehemently denied the greed and superficiality rampant through the 80's. And, hipsters wanted to escape suburbia, fleeing to urban areas where they enriched themselves with avocado toast and alternative music. 

Ultimately, it is obvious that capitalism trampled all of these counter-movements as time went on and corporations understood how to placate the youth with proper advertising techniques. However, gen-z has been the most influenceable generation thus far. From what is popular online, it would seem that we all aspire to be bland influencers who have sold-out their lives and privacy to be complete phonies and consume, consume, consume.

The first step to creating a counter-culture is to define the problem affecting our generation: which I would argue is social media itself. I am not on social media anymore, but I hear about the trending topics such as the idea around "third-spaces". Third spaces are a place away from home or work, where people can commune. The internet and I agree that gen-z is lacking in these "third spaces" and suffering from loneliness. We have made our third-space the black-mirror in our pockets, with a perfectly tailored algorithm that we cannot escape. 

People used to have to go out searching to validate their interests, but now we are told everything we like or dislike is "tea". What if we are dumb and some of our opinions aren't tea. With algorithms comes perfectly tailored marketing for each individual. Before our generation, it took decades to understand how to market to a large group of people with like-minded interests, thus giving room for the birth of counter-cultures. Think of a world where the hippy movement was placated with believable propaganda before they had time to organize Woodstock :( Now we allow The Man to know our every like and dislike and know exactly what can sway these in another direction. We need to be the generation to do something about this because we have been the most affected by it. I know far too many kids that died from depression, no doubt in part from social media use. I myself know that social media made my teen years much, much harder and now we are letting those disastrous effects creep into our young adult lives. We are putting up almost no fight against this because we are addicts. If we can't succeed we need to at least get the ball rolling for the generation below us that is currently growing up in a world which spoon-feeds them literal poison (iPads).

Every "punk/indie/y2k baddie" influencer that smokes cigs and wears a lot of layers in an effortless way might look the part, but they aren't countering culture at all. They are playing perfectly into Mark Zuckerberg's hands by branding their counter-culture, looking aesthetic using the most pop-culture devices (also directly profiting from this pseudo-alternativeness). Hippies were not profiting from smelling bad and having white-people dreadlocks. That is why gen-z's counter culture cannot start online because the pop-culture IS online culture. 

I hereby adopt (because I did not make this up) Delete Day for my community. A day where gen-z can come together and participate in deleting an account or app that is making life more miserable and less social. Eventually I want this to be a community picnic where clubs and local organizations set up stalls to get sign-ups from people looking for alternative ways to spend their precious time. 

The following is edited from chatGPT :D ironic ik :P

Time to Counter the Culture!

Our Mission:

Delete Day is a grassroots movement dedicated to defining a counter-culture and reclaiming Gen-Z's autonomy, authenticity, and community from the grip of social media addiction and corporate manipulation.

We believe:

• True counter-culture cannot exist online because our entire cultural identities have been formed online. 
• Social media has become our false "third space," isolating us while promising connection.
• We are the first generation marketed to individually, making collective resistance hard, but not impossible.
• Our loneliness, depression, and loss of genuine community are not accidents, they are byproducts of a system designed to keep us scrolling.

We commit to:

• Organizing monthly Delete Days (March-August), where our communities can gather to collectively delete apps and accounts that diminish our lives (scientifically proven time and time again). 
• Creating real-world third spaces where young adults can discover interests, form connections, and organize without corporate intervention. 
• Building a movement that cannot be branded, commodified, or co-opted by the platforms we're fighting against (only physical marketing i.e. posters, radio, ads in local media).
• Starting the smelly revolution our generation desperately needs—one that prioritizes authenticity over performance, community over "social" networks, and the acknowledgment of the immense beauty and entertainment that can be found in local people and places. 

Aren't you tired of being constantly perceived? This movement does not want be seen, it wants to be felt. Not only will each individual who participates feel a sharp improvement in their own quality of life, but the community will feel enrichment as people genuinely and intentionally gather to share ideas without the algorithm filtering out voices.