No Stupid Questions

I've always interpreted the stare as a consequence of growing up where cameras (phones) are everywhere and nothing ever disappears from the internet. And as a result people who grew up under that are ALWAYS cognizant of this. So they express nothing because it could make for embarrassing video or photos. Being extra or try-hard are also considered bad. Everything is tamped down, socially. They are seriously just repressed, internalized.

It's collective PTSD. 1997. Keeping up with things feels like a marathon. It's hard smile rn. It doesn't feel appropriate rn. You Stonewall until the other person indicates how they feel, but sometimes you get two blank faces going back and forth. In general, we live in interesting times and I don't want to het punched in the face because I smiled about Trump being a bitch.

no. it's just another thing to make people upset at each other. ignore what they say.

No, hacks keep writing generation war articles because they're stupid and lazy.

Even the "stare" is just a hack's memories of general teenager movie tropes. I bet right now if I said "80's bored teenage stares at character saying something stupid and weird" you know exactly what I'm talking about.

mainstrem media likes attributing negative things about younger generations and to try and keep this stupid generational war alive. i wouldn't bother. talk to the kids and you will see they are fine.

I have absolutely seen this and experienced this. Although, I don’t think it’s much different from any teenager or young person working shitty jobs in any decade I’ve lived or seen in media. The silent teen staring you down at fast food is timeless.

Every generation is like this at that age. The hallmark of my generation, GenX, was apathy. Not that I care. Whatever. Never mind.

That’s not genz thing. That’s the hot potato method of where you drop the potato on the ground and don’t play the games the sociopath wants to play.

This is a more widely used strategy now that mental therapy is more openly discussed. And the best way to win the game with a narcissist/sociopath is to not play their game. in the older days this was done in form of cutting contact. Don’t take their calls. Leave. Don’t interact.

Deadpan stare is a form of this as visual blocking.

Before the 80s so many people thought ‘I can change him!’ And after the 80s there were so many books about living loving a narcissist and how you can’t change him.

Now we just have the deadpan stare. And so many hack comedians from yesterday liken it to ‘cancel culture’ or not having a sense of humour cuz they can’t deal with being irrelevant because of their unchecked hatred landing flat

Young people in customer facing positions seem fairly unemotive in general, I'm not necessarily sure it's a new trend. The positions these young people are in are generally minimum wage (or effectively minimum wage). They aren't really being paid enough to smile lol, or don't really have much to smile about.

I tend to avoid all eye contact with folks in public so I'm probably not really the best to answer it. It's sort of something I've noticed, but I'm really not convinced it's new.

That said, I do get that there's a lot of folks who missed out on a lot of socialization opportunities during the pandemic. Whether that's enough to lead to an epidemic of young people doing a "stare" I'm not sure.

Every young generation gets clowned on. As a millennial I remember us getting it. So it's hard to really say if this is something real or just more "youth bad" rhetoric.

Simple answer: no

These people we've been screwing over for our own benefit won't smile for us!

It's basically the same concept the "Jim face" from The Office. You do something stupid, they stare deadpan at you.

I've run into it, I think. Went out to eat with the wife and as we walked into the restaurant the hostess just stared at us, then picked up two menus and started walking. We were like, "Do we follow her or...?" And so, sheepishly, we followed her and she did indeed lead us to our seats. It was a couple weeks later when I first heard of the Gen Z stare. I showed my wife and we were like, oh... That was it, we guess.

I've seen it a couple other times - recently at CVS the guy at the pharmacy counter would just sort of stare at each customer without really acknowledging them until after they said what they needed. No greeting or pleasantries of any kind, and then he would go into his standard cvs scripted questions.

Me, an aging Xennial: "The hwat?"

The various answers in this thread are just hilarious.

The stare is real; it's when they work in a service position but don't communicate. You walk up to the counter and instead of greeting you or asking how they can help you or saying anything at all they just stare at you. That's the Gen z stare. It's that simple and I've encountered it everywhere that employs younger people. It doesn't bother me, you don't have to do shit for a shit wage, but it does make interactions unnecessarily awkward.
The comment saying that Gen z just doesn't tolerate stupid is hilarious. What percentage of your generation voted for Trump again?