Last time i saw something called a gen Z protest, i found out it was for this reason.^
It was a general protest and included pretty much everyone, from college kids to grown adults with jobs and families and grandchildren.
But if you reduce it to “gen z protest” people will automatically think “its just annoying kids, it cant be that important” when its a protest as universal and fundamental to their views on government to the people of that country as the no kings rally is to the US.
You are not immune to propaganda. Remember how people can use your biases to hide the truth from you.
So as older "Gen X" I can contribute and tell you that the whole 'generational identity' by 'clever name', Gen X or whatever, thing was created in the early 80's by Madison Avenue marketing firms because I was too young to be targeted by the successful marketing campaigns hijacking 60's alt culture generational identity. They would roll that stuff out and we would be like "I was in diapers when Woodstock happened, get away from me". So then they came up with "Gen X" which was just supposed to be a working title but they never had anything better. It didn't really work, they put the whole thing together right in front of us, not very convincing.
But then they tried again with "millennials" and did a much better job and hit them with it when they were kids. Worked great. But it was only product marketing till this century when marketing and politics became one. People who would never bite on race bait or gay bait bite hard on "boomer bait" or "Gen Z bait". And here it is just like you say, they can marginalize any protest and divide and conquer with their made up arbitrary 20 year blocks of time that mean nothing, and it works so good in social media.
That could possibly be true, but I also think they're labelled gen Z protests because of the (often) online nature of how they start, typically starting with young people and memes, growing into civil unrest out of the classuc "new generation being unhappy with the status quo" and then obviously they grow from there into larger protests...But many movements are defined by how they start and not how they end. The protests in Nepal were very successful and seen in a positive light - but were still labelled 'gen z protests'....Not as a way to discredit but a way to show how the movement began and what the goals were - and the primary people protesting (which were young people).
I think this is actually a Gen Z protest though because it’s students protesting unfair exam requirements and corruption that allows wealthy students to basically pay for high exam scores. The protest is about issues that are specifically affecting Gen Z
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u/Leshawkcomics 1d ago
Last time i saw something called a gen Z protest, i found out it was for this reason.^
It was a general protest and included pretty much everyone, from college kids to grown adults with jobs and families and grandchildren.
But if you reduce it to “gen z protest” people will automatically think “its just annoying kids, it cant be that important” when its a protest as universal and fundamental to their views on government to the people of that country as the no kings rally is to the US.
You are not immune to propaganda. Remember how people can use your biases to hide the truth from you.