⚠️WARNING⚠️ Trendy Gen Z chat!!

I've been thinking deeply again 🙄

I have a confession to make.

I hate the name I chose for this substack. Not because I don’t identify with it (I definitely do) but because honestly, I find it a little cringe.

‘The Entitled Gen Z’ is a personification of the writer I was in my first journalism career. I loved her. I still love her. But the fact is, she is a character custom-made for an imagined reader I envisioned in my mind when I wrote a personal article for Australia’s largest women’s media company.

The Entitled Gen Z is self-deprecating yet self-aware.

She’s in touch with world affairs; enough that her young age isn’t irritating. On the most part, it’s refreshing, if not a little entitled at times too.

She’s a more palatable version of me - and I say that with the complete awareness that a more palatable version of myself is absolutely necessary for me to maintain a public writing profile.

But when I look at her… ‘The Entitled Gen Z’. I can’t help but cringe a bit as if I were looking at myself through the eyes of a “normal” person born after 1996.

I cringe because, against the very essence of gen Z culture, I am not radically authentic enough to be just me. I still feel the need to present to the world with an identity beyond ‘Emma Gillman’.

Did the Entitled Gen Z develop out of necessity for me to feel comfortable enough to write publicly? Maybe.

And so, I will keep her around for now. Because I’m not quite ready to let her go yet…

Today, I wanted to write about how I’ve been doing the done thing and viewing my life like a movie. ‘Romanticising’ it, if you will.

It’s a concept I’ve been fascinated with for a while now because it is so quintessentially Gen Z. The rise of Tiktok gave everyone the opportunity to be the main character. And that’s how we landed here, with trends like ‘that girl’ inviting women to treat their lives as if they were the star in a rom-com. As if they were being watched.

And despite how weird that sounds in theory, I fkn love it, you guys.

Romanticising your life is the key to getting shit done. Alarm goes off in the morning? Babe, I wouldn’t pay to watch you stay in bed for 3 hours on tiktok! It’s time to get up and do that workout.

Main characters don’t watch reality TV before they go to bed. They read. Maybe they even journal when they’re feeling down.

Sometimes I remember I can do whatever I want and I go for a night drive to a pretty suburb and just sit there. And it feels good!!!!

Life’s too short to not do the things you want to do.

I hate how I’m ending all my emails recently with some odd moral of the story thing, but hey. There are the things I’ve been thinking about.

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Recommendations!

This article was very ‘romanticise your life’ to continue the theme.

Watch Shrinking on Apple TV+. I love it. My partner loves it. Rare find.

I finished Out There Stories. It was so weird. I loved it, I stand by recommending it last time.

That’s all from me! Chat soon <3