media frat house
“[YOU HAVE to] have a lot of energy,” Hype House’s Chase Hudson tells The
New York Times. “Weird people get furthest on the internet — you either have to be talented . . . weird [and] funny, or extremely good-looking.”
On TikTok, even the good-looking ones can dance; as ever, the aesthetic bar for funny and weird is inevitably higher for girls than boys.
“The new movements are led by people more than by a communal idea or trend,” says Victoria Moss of the fashion gaming app Drest. “Gen Z’s outlook comes from placing themselves at the centre of culture, rather than from the culture itself.”
That is borne out in pink hair, cosplay, gender-blending and ever more fantastical face filters in apps. Where once being subcultural might have seen you teased at school, the internet now offers a ready-made crowd. If every generation revolts against the previous, this one is kicking back against the notion of cool girls and jock bros, aiming instead for a deliberate off-kilter quirkiness, one that revels in its own vulnerabilities.
Just look at Billie Eilish, 18 and voice of a generation, who swathes herself in baggy clothes so that “nobody can have an opinion, because they haven’t seen what’s underneath”. Gen Z fashion tends to be fairly downbeat: they wear Converse and Superga, and have sent Doc Martens sales figures soaring by 70 per cent with renewed interest in the classic bovver. The popularity of unisex brands, such as Asos’ Gen Z offshoot Collusion, in this age range might not be so much to do with the rise of trans awareness as a wish not to be defined by deliberately sexy outfits. “We’re conditioned to believe we have to fit in somewhere, when actually we don’t,” Grace says.
Perhaps, though, this sort of insouciance is also a coping strategy for the most photographed generation yet. By the time a Gen Z-er is 13, their parents will have posted 1300 images of them online, and they will themselves have added 70,000 to that number when they reach 18. For a generation that has grown up on the internet, 59 per cent of whom will have experienced cyberbullying and 50 per cent of whose parents regularly check their messages and browsing history, other people’s opinions and being an object of surveillance are a constant rhythm of life.
So much so that they have turned it into a positive. While parents used to fear peer pressure, the peer-to-peer network offered by new, digital communities has become a social fabric for this generation. Sharing tips, links and recommendations for fashion, music and books is not only a way of life online; it is the best way for brands to reach this knowing and slightly cynical band of consumers.
“Before, it was brands saying, ‘Have this, buy this,’ and we said, ‘Okay’,” says Emma Shuldham. “Now there’s more balance in the conversation, because trends are much more about what your friends are reading, watching or wearing.”
That’s where the Hype Houses come in: constructed communities of friends, girlfriends and boyfriends, whose peer-to-peer antics provide the perfect soft sell to those who follow them. Don’t think Gen Z doesn’t know it, though; they are the savviest consumers yet. Witness Cindy Crawford’s daughter, the 18-year-old model Kaia Gerber (5.4 million followers on Instagram) taking selfies with a “Social media seriously harms your mental health” warning sticker on her iPhone case (now available online for about $6).
The notion of Greta Thunberg’s contemporaries still buying plastic tat on the internet or getting their lips injected might provoke a worldweary eye-roll among the elders, but every demographer knows that each generation has its own ironies baked in. For a generation that communicates mainly via screens, more than a quarter of teens say they also see their best friends every day.
“Gen Z uses the internet to search for connection in much the same way as Gen X takes cocaine at organic vegan dinner parties,” says Victoria Moss.
Gen Z would never do anything like that, of course, and nightlife has responded to it: at the hip Brooklyn bar Public Records, wellness cocktails come with celery soda and no alcohol, while the rave scene in LA is swapping pills for free, legal weed. Whether you’d then want to dance all night is another question — and not one that any of the Hype Housers will have time to answer.