What I mean really by “Turkish gen Z are millennials” is that the distinction between gen Z and millennials in Turkey, compared to the Anglosphere, is an insanely thin line. No gen-Z’er here is making fun of millennials like they do in other places. This clearly doesn’t actually mean anything but it’s something that I’ve noticed, especially as someone who consider themselves an honorary millennial. I grew up with Vine and those weird-ass Instagram meme accounts that were all connected to each other in some money laundering scheme. The internet for child me (age 4-10), consisted of a Turkish side and an English side. Turkish internet was vastly smaller and much more unfunny (hence why I ended up abandoning it in around 2016), and there was almost no content available for me about my interests. There were no active forums, at least none that I could get into. So, I turned to the English side of the internet, where I could freely talk about different languaged dubs of cartoons, MMD animations, Apple product testing, and Minecraft. The fact that I got into these internet communities at a very young age made me aspire to be like the people around me, those were the cool people at the time, the millennials. That’s why I feel somewhat disconnected with the gen Z induced millennial-hate in the Anglosphere, the fact that I was born in 2006 doesn’t make me less of a millennial for god’s sake. I still use the word “hipster” to describe things, and I’m literally writing this on a digital magazine. That’s a very much dead art-form.
The reason why I think the Turkish gen Z doesn’t really discriminate against the millennials is because of the time period the internet actually got this wide-acceptance. I remember staying up in 2012 scrolling through troll-face meme pages (we used to call them “caps” in Turkish) on Facebook, none of my elementary-school friends knew what those were. But now, whenever there’s a meme, or another internet-wide thing of that sort, even my 4-year-old brother knows about it. Millennials were the first to grow up with the internet in the Anglosphere, and when gen Z came along with their own kinds of habits and memes, the millennial culture quickly became redundant and looked down upon. In Turkey, the start of a proper internet culture began with gen Z and younger millennials. I personally can’t think of any stereotypical Turkish internet-millennial thing, unlike the hundreds of items I can list for that same task applied to the Anglosphere. We don’t have a version of the phrase “I did a thing” in Turkish. An example I can think of is the use of Facebook groups to be a little silly in. While those began with younger millennials, posts from Facebook groups like BGY and KGB (we had AMG and DAG back in my day, google tells me those aren’t that relevant anymore) get posted on Instagram where gen Z actually find them funny. Even on Reddit, which is a gen Z dominated platform in Turkey, one of the biggest Turkish subs is about one of those Facebook groups. Back in my day r/Turkey had 6k members. That’s so quirky right ? I love me some avocado toast ! crying laughing emoji