Teens are dressing in suits to see 'Minions' as meme culture and boredom collide

“It seems like Gen Z is getting really tired of presentation culture, as you might call it,” Zeke, a 21-year-old biologist and frequent Discord chatter, told me. “The idea that everything you do has to be a representation of your personal identity.”

“Melissa has tapped into the zeitgeist of bored teens in quarantine and given them purpose.” Mueller tells me. Craving community, the app let them “gather and have conversations with each other rather than exclusively interacting with the broadcasts on TikTok.”

Yes, this is 2024, where life increasingly feels like a huge in-joke that started on the internet. Once upon a time we had subcultures: punks and goths, hippies and emos. Now we have Gen Z’s perceptive trendspotters pinpointing a style or a mood that is sweeping the zeitgeist, coining a label for it — often with the suffix “-core” — and sharing it ... See more