Gen Z has a new name for fall, according to a viral social media trend: “The Great Lock-In.” As reported by Fast Company and several other outlets, it’s a time to move past the sun and fun of the summer and into a focused period. Whether it’s in your career, finances, or something to do with your personal brand, the time to get locked in harkens back to the phrases origins in video games, when you lock in the character you’re going to play with, beating all the levels and bosses on the way to conquering each particular quest.
Yet the sudden ubiquity of this phrase also reveals the extraordinary pressure the young-adult generation feels to decipher a puzzle-like economy that barely rewards their best efforts. For Gen-Z, the drive to self optimize is relentless, a driver shaped by both economic precarity and a digital culture that allows and rewards constant productivity. And for a generation that famously loves to mock its forbears the millennials, it closely recalls the “hustle culture” that aged so poorly after the 2010s.
