We spoke with Terry Nguyen of gen yeet, a newsletter about Gen Z culture, memes, and trends. Her honest and thoughtful writing covers youth culture on the Internet, technology and consumer trends, and generational commentary – all with the goal of demystifying and humanizing Gen Z.While Terry’s day job is writing at Vox on cultural trends, she started her newsletter because she wanted to share “a Zoomer’s perspective,” pushing the narrative around how people consider her generation and what it’s like to be a young person today. We talked about differences in media coverage toward Millennials and Gen Z, the relationship between Terry’s writing for Vox and her newsletter, and why it’s important to reframe how people think about specific generations. Linksgen yeet, Terry’s newsletterTerry on TwitterGen Z Will Not Save Us, Charlie Warzel’s opinion piece in The New York TimesRebecca Jennings and Taylor Lorenz, cultural reporters who write about Internet culturenormal beautiful people, Terry’s post where she writes about getting tired of TikTokWhy millions of college students and young adults won’t get a stimulus check, Terry’s Vox piece about coronavirus’ impact on college studentsHighlights(07:55) The contrast between media coverage of Gen Z and Millennials (18:17) How Terry balances analyzing the world through her personal lens and synthesizing the bigger picture(21:05) Why Terry chose to focus on one topic, and what Gen Z thinks about Substack(32:45) How Terry balances writing for her full-time job at Vox and for her newsletter(39:48) Emerging Gen Z themes On writing about a topic instead of herself:I felt like writing about myself would be really boring. I don't think anyone would be interested in what I'm doing. I don't have any fascinating hot takes. I did feel like centering around a topic, and especially a salient topic that wasn't too niche that could be expanded upon, like culture and technology and memes...I felt like that just gave me a lot of room to latch onto whatever interested me.On the long-term relevance of writing about Gen Z:I don't know when the conversation will shift. But I do think having a pulse on youth culture while I'm young is an interesting thing. I don't know how I’ll feel about it when I'm like 35, I haven't really thought deeply about the future of that yet. But I do think there is a period of time, very certain key social and political events that define every generation, and I hope to be around for the one that defines Gen Z.TranscriptNadia (00:29):Something I really like about Gen Yeet, just from reading through it, and maybe this is the perspective of a millennial coming through, but it seems like a lot of people that write in public about Gen Z are trying to make it seem really cool and mysterious and hard to understand, because it's, I think, that illegibility that builds their brand and makes them this go-to expert on this topic. Even when it's this earnest take, it seems like it's sort of ... I get the sensation of a bemused tourist looking at a rare species at the zoo.What I really like about Gen Yeet is that you don't do that. You write these really thoughtful essays about Gen Z that aren't really trying to be overly cool or hint that you know more than the reader. You're just a person who understands the stuff and is thinking and writing about it. Does that analysis resonate? Can you say a little more about your writing style?Terry (01:23):Yeah, so what was really interesting to me, in the past year, since I started to create this newsletter, was that Gen Z and youth culture on the internet at large got a lot of attention from a lot of major media publications. It's kind of shocking to see how much more people are now covering that space. For me, my goal has always been to sort of demystify and make it seem like, oh, Gen Z, as with all generations, are just humans. We're socialized during a specific period of time, but I would say that the way we see the world is also very similar to the