Generation Oblivion
on being a 'Zillennial' in 2024/2025
I’ve always felt to varying degrees—depending on the slant of the light and the mood of the room—out of place. I am in the world, but I am not of it. It’s difficult to describe this feeling with words, but here I am, trying and typing. That being said, there are, and there have been, places on this planet where I feel, at least, more comfortable about expressing myself. There are circles that I have entered that accept me and my muddled tendencies—but, even then, I don’t quite fit in. I mainly remember these circles less as large groups but more as individual friendships. I’ve been a part of a few dynamic duos and titular trios, but I’ve never belonged to clubs or large groups of friends; I think I’ve always felt lost in big organizations and corporations—and honestly I’m somewhat creeped out by the homogeny that they tend, by nature, to encourage, breed, and nurture.
Perhaps all of this is in part due to my upbringing as a Jehovah’s Witness, but I also think that it has something to do with my age and the generation into which I belong. This in-between feeling of being neither here nor there—neither a Gen Z and on TikTok nor a Millennial and once on MySpace—is very strange. It’s like I have one foot in each generation. Again, it’s difficult to put into words the feeling and the lived experience—but I was reminded—slowly at first and then thrust into a visceral a-ha moment—by a fellow Zillennial about Zillennials and the strangeness of our supposed “micro” generation.
It all started with the mention of Danny DeVito in Matilda (1996). I’m not sure if this movie falls exactly beneath the small shaded tree of being a ‘Zillennial’ classic, but regardless, my fellow Zillennial jogged a dormant memory in my brain. I haven’t thought about Matilda (1996) in literally ages, and it all made me very nostalgic and somewhat pensive about what makes a Zillennial. I wondered if my lifelong experience of living in a limbo zone could at least be somewhat explained by my generation.
A quick Google search (does anyone remember Ask Jeeves?) pulls up a bunch of different ranges for Zillennials. Apparently (and generally, according to AI Overview) they are thought to be born between 1992 and 2002, although I feel like the ‘core’ is 1993-1998, but at this point, we’re just splitting hairs. Zillennials “share characteristics of both Millennials and Gen Z. They grew up with the internet, but before social media, mobile phones, and high-speed WiFi were widely available.” In other words, 9/11 is a hazy and fuzzy memory in my mind, but I can clearly recollect PC computers and landlines. As such, there are some cultural touchstones that I share with Millennials and Gen Z—but I do not share everything with both. As a Zillennial born in 1996, I am, quite literally, a Venn diagram of a generation. I can talk up to Millennials about poking people over Facebook, and I can mourn with Gen Z about Vine (RIP)—but I can’t for the life of me understand the appeal of TikTok (not to be confused with the banger Ke$ha song) or the purpose of Napster.
It therefore feels as though I exist in water instead of on land, as I am constantly swimming in-between the nostalgic, analogue past and the virtual, tech-ruled present. I do not have fins, but my hands and feet are webbed; I can walk on land and delve underwater; I am a hybrid of the times and by the times—and I don’t know the how or why.
I also feel that, as a Zillennial (which is, by the way, the ugliest-looking name for a generation that I’ve ever seen), I carry a deep sense of decay and longing within me. There’s a sadness that has sprouted within me—circa 2008 or so—when the iPhone was released from its laboratory gates. It’s morbid, but I believe that something died during the onset of big Internet—and whatever died is never coming back. I remember the touch and feel of cassettes and VHS tapes, which connects me to the 20th century and a different kind of past. As such, I know and feel that I am part of the last swell of humankind that will be able to remember a time when there weren’t iPads or apps or a thing such as virtual life. Perhaps there are some older Zoomers that remember the days before social media, but I think then that they would fall under Zillennials anyway.
The Zillennial Generation therefore marks the beginning of a kind of oblivion within humanity. We remember the before of the Internet, but just barely. It’s all a haze, a dark chamber. We witnessed from behind childlike eyes the death of mainstream analogue and the birth of the super virtual—the search engine, the algorithm, the feed. With us, we started to forget—not by choice, of course, but due to forces outside of our control. We vaguely remember a time when our brains weren’t addicted to scrolling—and to this day, I believe that we’re striving to get back to the before times, even though we know, deep down, that the virtual void has taken over and resistance is futile.
I’ll never know what it’s like to grow up with access to touch screens and the social media matrix—but every future generation hereafter will be able to speak to this and much more. Ultimately, I’m not sure how to feel about all of this. Initially, I feel a mix of fear and sadness at the loss of a more human way of connecting and communicating. I think the Internet is great on the surface, but like all human inventions, it has created more problems than it purports to solve. In fact, I’ve never been more anxious than I am now; my nervous system is positively fucked, and I am addicted to Instagram, no matter how many times I try to delete it off of my phone. It’s like a little cockroach that I can’t kill, even though I secretly love it.
But I remember a time deep in the heart of me before all of this virtual shit. I remember a time when I could get away from the screen and leave for the woods—and when I was in the woods, I was really there among the trees and the doves and the cardinals. Most of all, I remember a time when I could log off, shut it down, let it go to sleep—and that was that. I couldn’t carry it—and it couldn’t follow me. It let me be.