On 21 July 2024, I reposted a Reddit post about a meme based on the cartoon The Amazing World of Gumball, which was originally posted on the official Twitter profile of Cartoon Network and touches on the Generation Z label and the passing of a TikTok ban bill by the United States House of Representatives, onto the Gumball subreddit.
The meme in question. The use of the rioting scene from the episode The Vision accurately depicts the intended message of the meme which describes the perceived, possibly stereotypical, reaction of Gen. Z people towards the TikTok ban news, but this message can be controversial to some who view themselves as the earlier batches of the generation. (Image source: Cartoon Network’s Twitter; Commentary and criticism in fair use, The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University, CC BY-NC 3.0 US)
In the repost itself as well as its comment thread, I expressed my thoughts and feelings on the underlying message of this particular meme, and how it relates to the subject of generational gap and identity, as well as the development of distinct cultural experiences and memories towards the same show among different age groups.
Here are the comments I made under the repost (with minor edits for clarity).
Kinda feel offended when they assumed TAWOG viewers (especially those growing up with it since Seasons 1-2, who belong EXACTLY to the generation they’re referencing) would be THAT obsessed with TikTok…
– repost title
To be fair, I agree with this comment here. Since technology has progressed way faster than before, even Gen. Z can be divided into so-called “pre-COVID/TikTok” and “post-COVID/TikTok” eras (I’d say the former is more in 1996-2003 born whereas the latter is 2004-2012). So is it a misrepresentation? Perhaps not entirely. Still I’d find myself in the “pre-TikTok” generation so I can’t relate well with this meme.
With the surprising amount of recent Gumball-related memes (that just look so new to me; don’t get me wrong, I like them, it’s just that they’re not something that can resonate with my childhood memories) circulating online, I can see what you mean.
It just feels intriguing to me that the Gumball fandom has a somewhat clear-cut generational gap (within the same demographic cohort even LOL): people watching S1-S2 as kids (“pre-TikTok”) vs. people watching S3 onwards as kids (“post-TikTok”). This might even be the line that marks a(nother) major shift in the style of the show itself LOL.
I don’t think that’s a bad thing to have different generations of viewers enjoying the same show and have different sets of cultural experiences and trends as a result, as it’s just how life goes. I’m just having issue with this particular use of the “Gen. Z” label in this specific meme, which I am personally attached to, and then associating it with TikTok, which I feel very detached to. However, interestingly, as per my previous comment, this association is not entirely wrong (it kind of fits into the “late Gen. Z” group).
To me this may be a testament of how generations nowadays have, largely due to Internet, evolved so quickly than it ever was before that a single demographic cohort label is starting to fail in clearly defining one specific age group with a single set of common life experiences and opinions, resulting in some sort of disagreement in generational identity that happens to me personally when I see this meme.
Maybe it’s also because unlike older generations like Gen. X, Gen. Y, etc., Gen. Z is a particularly unique generation, in the sense that it kind of lies on the transitional phase where generational gaps are just starting to occur between age groups in an increasingly narrower range.