A Millennial comedian satirized Generation Z in her stand-up routine posted to TikTok last Monday, bringing up the age-old war between old and young.
Iliza Schlesinger went on a four-minute rant about Gen Z and how they “aren’t nice to millennials” after thanking them for coming to her show and calling it a “safe space.”
“Because your generation is a contextless generation, made of sound bites and hot takes, you need to know something about the history of my generation,” Schlesinger said.
She added, “It’s taken us our entire existence.”
Schlesinger, who is currently on tour, received a positive response from the audience and TikTok users during her rant.
Comedian Iliza Schlesinger voiced Generation Z to an audience of enthusiastic fans
Her message to Gen Z was that they are ‘not nice’ to millennials, despite the many difficult things the generation has experienced over the years
Schlesinger is currently on tour across the country and regularly posts stand-up acts on her TikTok, which has 1.6 million followers
‘We were told we were lazy and that we could have anything – and then we dropped out of school if we could afford it, and there were no jobs, and then there were no houses, and then they said we couldn’t have avocados have,” Schlesinger shouted.
“A lot of us started doing weird things, like wearing owl jewelry and wide-brimmed hats, and moved to Brooklyn, and made small batches of lavender ice cream,” she added.
She emphasized that millennials ate the ice cream because it was “the food of our people,” while mentioning that people in that generation were also young once upon a time.
However, according to the comedian, the pandemic changed everything, and Generation Z “started saying s*** to us like ‘new millennials, why are you so bold’, a word you invented.”
According to Schlesinger, after millennials could have it all, there were “no jobs” and “no houses.” Millennials started doing ‘weird things’ like wearing ‘owl jewelry and wide-brimmed hats’
Schlesinger told her audience that she could see that people in Generation Z were “angry” about society, which she said resembled a “tire fire from an urban flea market.”
“We are angry too,” she said.
“But we have heartburn and our backs hurt, but we’re here with you.”
Continuing her rant, the comedian said Gen Z was also angry at millennials because they are “the only others in the TikTok comments section.”
“We didn’t start the fire, we’re not responsible for that, we’re not your damn parents – unless we’re from Texas and we don’t have physical choices,” she shouted.
Schlesinger discussed what connects millennials and Gen Zers, and that instead of looking like their parents, millennials are more like the siblings of Gen Zers.
“We are your older siblings who showed you how to smoke weed out of an apple,” she said.
“We are your bosses who will give you the day off because your fifis are retrograde, as we understand.”
According to the comedian, people over forty who wear their hair down with a part in the middle ‘make you look like a witch’
After her tireless and comedic rant, Schlesinger reminded Gen Zers what millennials did to make society what it is on social media.
“We faked social media – never forget we ran on Instagram so you could run on TikTok, we gave that to you,” she said.
Schlesinger wishes she could go back to a time when Instagram was different, where a “post was just a post” and not “monetized content.”
“I want to go back to a simpler time when I could just hold up an iced coffee and say ‘#TBT,'” she added.
She concluded her rant by addressing the viral generation divide between those who wear their hair parted in the middle versus those who wear it parted on the side: “If you’re over 40 and you wear your hair down and a parting in the middle, you look like a witch.’