For Gen Z, 2025 began with a panic that turned into a unique cross-cultural experiment. In January 2025, ByteDance, the Chinese company behind TikTok, announced that it was about to shut down the social media platform in the U.S. Ahead of the shut-down (which didn't end up happening) a wave of TikTokers moved over to RedNote, another Chinese social media platform, but one that was previously only used in China. The result was a few weeks where very different cultures met on common ground, and it was low-key beautiful. Young people from China and the U.S. asked each other questions about their respective cultures, TikTok refugees showed off their newly acquired Mandarin-speaking skills, while RedNoters demonstrated their English by doing a lot of imitations of Donald Trump, and everyone learned we weren't all that different. But it was only temporary: The geopolitical drama was solved (for now), TikTok stayed open, and TikTokers, for the most part, went back to their digital home—but hopefully young people took a little empathy with them.
February: The rise of "6-7"
Like it or not, 2025 is the year of 6-7. The ubiquitous slang term really started in late 2024 with the release of Skrilla's "Doot Doot (6 7)" video on YouTube, but it took a couple months to catch on and filter down to the schoolyard, and a few more months to become the biggest slang word of the year. As I'm sure you know by now, "6-7" doesn't mean anything specific, it's just a fun thing to say, but even with no definition, 6-7 has remarkable staying power. Even after every parent and teacher on Earth learned what it meant, kids kept saying it. Whatever was funny about the joke hasn't been funny for a long time, so maybe 2026 will see the death of 6-7, but I wouldn't put money on it. It seems like one of those jokes that will go from funny to unfunny and back to funny a million times until it finally dies.
March: the "80/20 rule"
In March, Netflix released the series Adolescence, a distressing exploration of the inner worlds of alienated young men. In Adolescence, one of the teenage characters mentions the “80/20 rule” as a way of explaining the incel/red pill culture central to the murder plot and central to the worldview of too many real-life young men. Put simply, the 80/20 rule is an axiom that states 80% of women are attracted to only 20% of men. Despite being based on almost nothing, in incel spaces, the 80/20 rule is regarded as absolute truth, and the 80/20 rule (and other "mano-sphere" ideas) are spreading to more mainstream young people. Understanding the pervasiveness of belief in the 80/20 rule is essential to understanding the specific strain of misogyny that's afflicting young people. There's a helplessness implied by it—the 80/20 rule, like the rest of incels' elaborate theories about how men and women relate to each other, boils down to "it's not my fault, and there's nothing I can do to change my situation." The spread of the 80/20 rule is the almighty algorithm rewarding the worst in people, and victims often have too few real-life relationships to reveal the obvious flaw in the rule's logic.
April: A Minecraft Movie
"Who would win in a fight to the death, one gorilla or 100 men?" sounds like a dumb question at first, but the more you think about it, the deeper it gets. My first thought was 100 men are taking it, no problem, but then I considered the overwhelming power of an enraged gorilla, how it could literally tear off limbs and bite off faces, and the scale started tipping heavily the other way. No matter where you land on the answer, the question is fascinating, and the internet was briefly obsessed with this imaginary battle in May. Taking a broader view, the debates, memes, and TikTok videos the gorilla question birthed are an illustration of how the technology that connects us took what would have been an interesting hypothetical discussion among a few weird friends 20 years ago and turned it into a worldwide discussion and convenient excuse to learn about primates.
June: Steal a Brainrot
In July, teachers and parents posted videos that may point to one of the most defining cultural touchstones of Generation Alpha: they don't think fart jokes are funny. They don't laugh when someone farts in public. They don't feel the need to say "He who smelt it, dealt it." I realize a couple TikTok videos is the opposite of hard evidence, but judging from the comments and the kids being interviewed, it feels true, and important. Gen A don't seem like they're trying to be accepting of others, or mature; they seem genuinely bewildered by the idea that anyone would think farts are funny. Which is cool; they're right. But still, I can't help but feel sad for the poor fart jokes that have brought us all so much joy for so many centuries.
August: performative males
If young people are going to remember any news story from 2025, it's likely to be the one about singer D4vd. On September 8, Los Angeles police discovered a body in the trunk of an abandoned Tesla registered to 20-year-old musician David Anthony Burke, aka D4vd. The body was later identified as the remains of Celeste Rivas, who was reported missing from her home in Riverside on April 5, 2024, when she was just 13 years old.
D4vd has not been charged with any crimes in connection with the body, but neither has anyone else, so this story is likely to continue into 2026.
October: Portland frog and chicken protestors
A quarter zip is a pullover sweater with a zipper that goes a quarter way down the chest, and it's becoming the go-to look for young men, especially Black men. Wearing a quarter zip isn't exactly "dressed up," but it's more sophisticated than rocking athleisure wear. More importantly, the quarter zip is often a signifier of status and intention. Like flannel shirts in previous generations, the quarter zip is marks one as belonging to an in group, being a “quarter zip man," and the even being part of the “quarter zip movement.”
December: millennial optimism
The younger generation closed out the year by looking backwards, but only a little bit backwards. The trend of December was "millennial optimism," the romanticization of the years around 2010. Some younger people imagine it as as a more innocent, hopeful time that they missed out on, and many millennials who were setting those trends in the 2010s are feeling nostalgic for their lost youth/relevance, so both groups are posting TikTok videos about "millennial optimism." Being older than both groups, I can say with confidence that both groups are wrong for different reasons. "Missed-out-on-it" types are wrong because a period that included the recession of 2008 and the election of Donald Trump was not "optimistic," and the millennials only think of it as a fun, awesome time because it's when millennials were young (and having a fun, awesome time.)
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