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In the past week, a somewhat one-sided argument has taken over TikTok. Gen X, it seems, is “declaring war” on Gen Z, going viral with shitposts about what they see as Gen Z’s overreaction to Eminem’s new album The Death of Slim Shady. While it may be hard to work out which members of the Gen X “rise-up” on the social media platform are being sarcastic and which are being serious, the entire dustup has made for some confusing, but hilarious, content.
Online tensions between Gen X and Gen Z have been escalating for months. Finding an exact inflection point is tough, but many signs point to a video, which has since been deleted, in which a younger TikTok user says, “I think we can all agree that if we’re generalizing, Gen X is the worst generation.” The video prompted multiple reactions, many of which found their way to FYPs across the platform. One from early May, in which user @robhomecook warned that “under no circumstances do you fuck with Gen X,” has received some 5.5 million views.
“On TikTok what you get is an exaggeration of generational tensions. We’re talking about the tension between the parents’ generation and their children,” says Sonia Livingstone, a communications professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. What’s happening on the platform, Livingstone adds, is not the cause of the tension, but rather a symptom.
All of this catalyzed earlier this month when Eminem released The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce), prompting various responses from Gen Z and turning a few viral videos into what Gen X calls a full-blown online “war.”
One of the most controversial lyrics on Death comes from the track “Houdini,” in which Eminem raps, “My transgender cat’s Siamese / Identifies as Black but acts Chinese.” As the lyrics made the rounds, several Gen-Zers took to TikTok to “cancel” the rapper in his comment section. Outside of these comments, though, Gen Z seems largely unbothered by the rapper’s lyrics and more interested in trolling Gen X for their dramatic digital reaction.
Case in point: TikTok user @moustacheman23, who racked up more than 1 million views on the mock apology he gave to Gen Z. His follow-up, which was viewed more than 4 million times before it was deleted, borrowed the lyrics “You’re gonna cancel me, yeah? Gen Z me bruh?” from Eminem’s “Trouble.” One user commented, “No one [is] tryna cancel Eminem,” adding all of Gen Z “grew up” with the rapper.
“We’re used to the younger people attacking the older generation,” says Livingstone. “This is a reversal; it’s quite unusual to see an older generation attacking a younger one.”
The scale of engagement in views, likes, and comments on these videos has multiplied in recent weeks, gaining traction through TikTok’s algorithm because “it’s compelling to us,” says Anjana Susarla, a professor at Michigan State University who specializes in social media analytics. “This is the same reason why you have cancel-culture filter bubbles. It’s the same thing you're seeing with this generational war.”
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Gen Z users have reported their feeds are full of these “Gen X rise-up” videos. “To my knowledge, TikTok doesn’t have a way of knowing what demographic a video is targeted at,” says Michael Littman, a professor at Brown University and researcher in algorithm analysis. “I’d speculate it was the response of Gen Z users that alerted the algorithm that the videos should be shown to other Gen Z users.” Littman says this is almost like an online “autoimmune response.” People getting shown content that outrages them because the system knows it outraged someone else their age “is a well-established pattern in the social media era,” he adds.
Before Eminem’s release, one Gen X influencer, @40ish_and_fabulous, made a video saying, “For those Gen-Zers out there that don’t understand the Gen X rise, let me explain it. The Gen-Xers are the toughest people that currently exist in our world today.” The post has received more than 4.5 million views. Videos like this are symbolic of what happens when an older generation reflects on their own childhood. “That’s what I saw in a lot of these kinds of X attacks,” says Livingstone. They seem to say, “We didn't have that childhood, we didn't have that chance to be cared for,” she adds.
A few days ago, the audio from @40ish_and_fabulous’ video was repurposed into a meme by a user who paired it with a video of a man talking to a wall. Captioned “Gen X rn,” and hashtagged #eminem, the post seemed to reflect Gen Z’s unbothered mood about Gen X’s “war.” The video has more than 5.2 million views and 1.3 million likes, and there are more than 3,000 other videos on the platform that use the sound.
“There’s this very strange thing happening where, for some people participating in this discourse, it’s totally satire on both sides,” says Casey Fiesler, an information science professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. “But then, some people are responding to this satire seriously.” Fiesler also highlighted how users' engagement with the “X mask” filter and sound will have pushed other videos in this vein into wider circulation.
“It feels like a one-sided fight,” says Fiesler, who refers to herself as an “older millennial.” “People get easily defensive about this sort of thing. There’s been so much vitriol against boomers, and I think Gen X [have been thinking], ‘Thank goodness we’re not like the boomers,’” she says. “So as they get older, it’s strange to be on the [receiving] end of the doddering old-people jokes.”
