I'm far from gen z, but I spent a lot of time communicating through chat in the past ~20 years, and I've gotta say, to me, most of this is not "Gen Z" stuff, but "chat native" stuff. It becomes pretty obvious pretty soon when somebody doesn't really know the (for lack of a better word) language of these small nuances and a bunch of others, like message length, timings, etc.<p>It's not done to be edgy, or to fit in, or anything like that. Its different tones in text. If the other party doesn't speak this language, then the communication becomes very literal, very formal. Kind of like how someone who is oblivious to social cues comes across in spoken conversations, only without the stigma, as its quite normal to not know this stuff. But it's much harder to 'feel' the other person.
The full stop thing has been around since IRC networks, or I imagine any quick-response short message platform. No one ever explicitly explains it or notes it, you just pick up on it.<p>Same with the difference colours of laughter "lol, rofl, haha, hahaha, lmao, ha." They're all just laughing but I bet you had different ideas about how each of them feel. This happens with language at large, synonymous words pick up nuanced differences so that we can express ourselves better, they aren't codified they just spread naturally.<p>I think for full stops, it's like the difference between familiar language and polite language. If you are too polite with a close friend you give off the impression that you're not close enough for casual language, which can be insulting.
> 9. Capitalizing the first letter in a sentence will reveal where you are<p>This one really surprises me, if someone contacted me without bothering to type a proper sentence I would just think they're an idiot. Everyone I know <i>always</i> starts a sentence with a capital letter, no matter the platform. They all know how to use the shift key.<p>This isn't even gate keeping, people use slang all the time, it is basic English. News, books, articles, tutorials, emails, teams, share point... Everything I read every day has proper capitalization.
Every time some new generation starts to create its own identity, some proportion of the previous dominant generation reacts defensively by attacking it with wilful ignorance and disdain. It's a tragic way to age. Worse than a ponytail and a motorbike.<p>If you find yourself finding smug, try looking at an old Reddit rage comic/4chan greentext/usenet flamewar, depending on your age.
Some of these make a lot of sense, not just as a Gen Z thing, but overall adopting them shouldn't annoy anyone. I will continue ending my sentences with a full stop but maybe I'll start picking more expressive emojis than :)
Very tangentially related: Instagram just started to roll out their new "status" line that shows up over your photo in everybody's message lists.<p>It's like if MSN Messenger status were back again, and young people that I know are loving it :)<p>I guess some ideas are fun no matter the generation. There are also older people who got to experience MSN Messenger, and are asking when the music status updates will come too!<p>Meta/Fb just brought a decades-old staple into their app, and I find that amusing.
Very american reaction: reading too much into text messages and expecting superficial over friendliness.<p>That's not a gen z thing. That's an entitle US social media projection.
This deserves a new RFC - the original is outdated: <a href="https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1855" rel="nofollow">https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1855</a>
I think emojis are an objectively better communication tool. You can pack more emotion and nuances in emojis with much fewer characters. Yet I hate when I see them... Probably because I'm getting older and becoming less tolerant of young culture. Sad<p>Edit: I added a few emojis in the original message, but it seems automatically removed—another nice thing for hacker news.
I was expecting a list of unrelatable norms, but I think these apply for most people who regularly use digital means of communication, regardless of age.
Fortunately, most Zoomers are very good at code switching. For example, I had a conversation with my daughter about laughing emoji vs. skull and crossbones ("ded") because I was seeing tons of online discourse about it. Her response was "It's not a big deal to me or any of my friends because we know you're old." Well, ouch, but also OK. So I still text in complete sentences etc. and she doesn't and it's all fine.
Prognostication over the presence or absence of a single punctuation point seems like a problem for the reader. It assumes the author has the same background and understanding of these fine points that the reader does. This is probably an unreasonable assumption. I used to look for these shibboleths and hidden implications from minor stylistic issues. It's a bad habit. It often does reveal much. But it also tends to apophenia - seeing patterns that are not there. And it's so fuzzy that preconception tends to dominate. (You only worry about the abruptness of 'K.' if you're already worried about what they think of you.)<p>As a writer, try to follow the style your audience expects. That advice applies to informal personal communications. But don't engage heavily in this practice as a reader. It can be counterproductive to communication.
Might be a bit of a boomer opinion but the thing that kept coming up for me as I was reading that was “damn, that’s a lot of social insecurity built in by default to almost every interaction and conversation”.<p>Not all of it obviously and I don’t even think that’s strictly a Gen Z thing specifically (much of it could have been written about my mother for example) but JFC it sounds emotionally draining way to live your life.
gen z here - stop using so many emojis; they make you seem fake. maybe 1/4th of your messages should contain emojis if you legitimately feel the need to "mask" as gen z for some reason.
To be fair given the context of snapchatting, tiktoking, voicemessaging, online dating [... stories, filters ...] <i>written text</i> is simply demoted to snippets of additional information/expressiveness.<p>Sentence-s, well structured sentences (with it punctuation marks and capitalization) are in this context like evoking latin phrases let alone <i>a fortiori</i> whole paragraphs.<p>If one takes chatgpt into the equation <i>writing essays</i> will be as calculating without a calculator for the next adolescent generation and used mainly as intimidation given the current education system - or preferably a playful approach at pattern recognition emerging from formal rules conveying abstract concepts.
> Your friend texts you "I am happy for you." --> Highly likely they hate you and even wish the worst for you, but they have to text anyway cuz every friend in the group is doing so.<p>People must really think I hate them lol.
I think it's implicit, but in case anyone didn't pick up on this, these tips are HIGHLY group dependent, which is roughly equivalent to being dependent on what app you use.
Irrelevant to the article, but it is a part of it, which made me think:<p>"Disclaimer: theoretically speaking I’m a genZ. But I could never identify myself as one because I never quite know about most of the rules until recently. This is a gen Z edition, because gen Z practices these rules a lot, not because I’m one."<p>I don't think the generation you're born in is something you identify with. Nor do I think that people "practice" the generational rules, as these "rules" are the result of their behaviour not something that one would practice/actively strive to do. As such, no matter what you do, that actions and behaviour is of the generation that you're born into.<p>Example:
You don't choose your parents, nor do you choose your siblings.<p>If most of your siblings engage in daily running but you don't, saying that you don't identify as a child of you parents because children of your parents engage in daily running, is a bit of a backwards to the objective truth. (I can't think of a better way to put it into words, but I hope that fellow thinkers can see the logic that I'm trying to explain.)<p>Maybe something like this:
It is illogical to define yourself by the actions of others.<p>Or:<p>The actions of others, front define who you are.<p>tl;dr:
You are GenZ not because of what you do. But because what you do, is done by GenZ.<p>Edit:
You are not a man because you do manly things. Things are manly because a man does them.
My only impression after reading this is that gen z must be filled with anxiety constantly. My stomach hurts. Why are they like this? Why are they making so many negative assumptions about the other participant in a conversation? Why is everything malicious?
None of this is new to me. I can totally identify with most of the gotchats presented in the article. I am far from being a Gen Z. If you were actually active on irc or icq, msn, aol (which are even explecitly mentioned in the blog post!) you know all this.
Total side thought - people capitalizing letters at the start of sentences because they're on mobile and not because they're on a laptop, would be a fantastic clue in a detective novel to flag up what device someone is sending messages with.
> I never thought of this until a friend asked "Were you outside when texting me?"<p>The only thing that surprised me was that "outside" simply means "outside your home" now.
Not stated, but implicit: If you have an Android phone, throw it away. No one wants to see your green bubbles, and no one can see if you've seen their texts if you have an Android.<p>Get an iPhone, like 90% of Gen Z. Or gtfo.