Gen Z, we need to have a little chat about all this nonsense you keep “discovering”: butter like it’s a breakthrough, walking like it’s a lifestyle, boiling an egg like it’s a spiritual awakening, and now cash — waving a fiver around like you’ve unearthed a relic from Pompeii. You didn’t invent anything; you just found what the rest of us were already using while you were busy diagnosing yourselves with 14 personality types and calling breathing a red flag.
Because every few weeks, one of you appears on TikTok looking absolutely thrilled with yourself — glowing, euphoric, vibrating like you’ve just discovered fire — because you’ve found some revolutionary new way of living that’s apparently going to save humanity from the terrible modern world. And every time I look at it, I have the same thought:
You haven’t discovered a new way of living. You’ve rediscovered something your nan did in 1974 and slapped lo‑fi beats under it.
You haven’t disrupted anything, invented anything or hacked the human condition. You’ve found your dad’s childhood, put a beige filter over it and given it a fucking hashtag.
And before anybody starts frothing, this isn’t one of those “young people are useless, and we were all forged from London slate” posts; every generation thinks the one behind it dresses strangely, talks bollocks and needs tougher shoes — that’s just the natural ageing process.
But Gen Z have taken rediscovery to Olympic level, especially the ones with names that sound like bathroom products, Greek airports or flat‑pack IKEA furniture — the kind of names that make you wonder if their parents conceived them during a layover or while assembling a shelving unit.
“Hi, I’m Jaxon, this is Mykonos and our friend CeraVe” — a trio who sound less like people and more like a duty‑free gift set you’d pick up at Heathrow.
Pull up whatever sustainable mushroom‑leather stool you’re currently financing over six months and let Aunty Angie clear up a few historical misunderstandings — because clearly someone needs to explain that your beige‑washed ‘new way of living’ is just the 1980s with a compostable payment plan.
Apparently there’s a growing fashion for “digital detoxing”, which involves turning the phone off, escaping notifications and going somewhere without everybody knowing your exact location every second of the day — or, as every generation before Gen Z called it, “going outside without telling your mum.”
I’d leave the house in the morning, and my mother often had absolutely no idea where I was. Neither did I, if I’m honest. There was no Find My Angie, no blue dot crawling across London, no family WhatsApp group asking why I’d stopped moving for fourteen minutes outside a Spar — you just vanished into the general wilderness and hoped you’d reappear before Songs of Praise.
You went out, wandered about, found your mates, got up to whatever questionable nonsense was available and came home when you were hungry, bored, or the streetlights came on — the original childhood GPS system, powered entirely by hunger, boredom and the faint hope you wouldn’t end up in A&E with a stick embedded somewhere it shouldn’t be.
If you didn’t come home, somebody might eventually ring around a few houses and ask, “Has Angie been round yours?” — which was the 90s version of a missing‑person alert, powered entirely by mums who’d just finished a cup of tea and decided it was probably time to check you hadn’t been abducted by a rogue tractor.
“No.” “Righto.” That was the tracking system — NASA it fucking wasn’t; it was two knackered mums doing low‑effort reconnaissance with a landline and the confidence of people who assumed you were probably alive unless proven otherwise.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 