America foreclosed on Gen Z once. The risk now is that Gen Z finishes the job.
I wrote a piece last year that went semi-viral about the “Gen Z stare,” that labeling of young-adult awkwardness that goes far beyond the “millennial pause” in stereotyping a generation. But this interaction made me think it’s something else; it looks like the Gen Z sneer. This wasn’t the freeze response that researchers spent much of 2025 explaining (and excusing) but a worldview expressing itself casually, in the way that formed worldviews do: without effort, without doubt, and without interest in what you might say back.
