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.

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.

Nope. It's always safe to ignore any articles about "kids these days"

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

As an elder millenial I might have some insight. You know how when we were kids people used to get all up in their feelings when you weren't smiling. That's this. "Gen Z stare", is just "Resting Bitch Face" or "You look prettier when you smile darlin'" repackaged and rebranded. They're mad that the young people in general and women in particular aren't running around with goofy forced smiles on their faces to make them feel special.

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.

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?

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.

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

Nah. The "Gen Z stare" is the blank-faced look we give people that we think are idiots. It's not that we lack self-awareness...it's you. Gen Z doesn't tolerate stupid. We just can't be bothered to call you out on it, because that's drama we don't need. So we just stare at you, instead.

As an elder millennial, I've neither witnessed nor even heard of this "phenomenon."

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

I’m Gen X and I have that stare when dealing with some people.

Nah, it's "old man yells at cloud". Blank face is a long standing tradition in the retail and service industries. Ignore 'em and keep being yourself.

Me, an aging Xennial: "The hwat?"

Boomers would call it the "fluoride stare", in relation to some of them believing fluoride in water made millenials stupid.

I dunno. I'd consider it just a dumb generational thing.

It's just a positive sign towards the deprecation of the weird social theater we've trapped ourselves in.

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

I'm an older millennial and I've been doing the gen z stare since the late nineties. I often find the stupidity that spews forth from not just my peers, but what seems all humans, to be disarming to the point of disbelief. That translates to me staring at you blankly for a second. The times i don't stop and recover for that second results in insults spewing from mine own mouth before my brain can restrain. The pause is for both our sake.

My son is a cinephile, and he talks about "iPhone Face" on young actors, where actors in period pieces look like they've seen an iPhone. Once you're aware of it, it's really true. Its really prevalent in crappy Netflix productions and the like.

I've encountered what I think of as the Gen z stare once or twice.

It skews more towards the younger end of Gen z, and honestly might even be more of an older gen alpha thing.

What I'm talking about isn't the blank look given after being asked a stupid question, although they are absolutely masters of that as well (and I love that look and use it as myself)

It feels like more of a lack of understanding that someone is asking you a question and expecting an answer, or perhaps an inability to process that question and come up with an appropriate answer.

My friend who works at a bank has what I think is kind of the quintessential story that shows this version of the stare looks like, a younger person walked up to the counter, he asked some variation of "How can help you today?" And just got a stare back, like it never crossed their mind that they'd have to answer a question and say "I need to make a deposit/withdrawal,/etc."

And I don't think it's necessarily a feature of the generation as a whole, not that gens z and alpha don't have their quirks, but I have plenty of Gen z friends and coworkers and I don't think they're much worse off in any particular way than my fellow millennials. I have somewhat less exposure to gez alpha, but overall my opinion of them is largely the same so far.

I think it's a very specific subset of the generation with a perfect storm of social isolation/anxiety issues, maybe some neurodivergence, probably some overbearing helicopter parents, and COVID kind of hitting at exactly the wrong point in their lives so that they missed out on some kind of social development milestones.

I've seen it a few times. Each time I immediately thought "damn this job must suck" and then later I realized I was the moron customer who asked a dumb question.

I remember when I was 16, some middle aged guy at work accused me of having no personality. In reality, I kept all conversations short as possible with him (like almost everyone in the store) because they were casually racist and misogynistic.

lol sounds like an asshole to work with. I would have handled it the same way.

GenX here. I think it’s the name that’s given to a small collection of social mismatches between the generations’ expectations of one another and their social behaviors.

Gen Z in my view do not place much value on social graces as I define them. They’re under no obligation to please me, I realize. But yeah they do not seem to care much for social graces as I define them. Things like “greet someone before you ask for something,” and “say thank you before you leave.” I try to do these things at all times and I find GenZ do not always return them or give any sign they even saw them. When a cashier hands me my change and it’s time for me to go, I will say “thank you,” and imho it’s good social graces for them to say “thank you” as well or “you’re welcome” or even just “have a nice day.” But with GenZ cashiers, I say thank you, and then realize they had stopped paying any attention to my presence even before I said it. The second the change has been handed to me, it seems they consider the transaction over, period. It can feel abrupt. And in that moment, someone like me can be waiting to hear that “you’re welcome” and instead see the other person staring off into space. I have also heard of worse cases where someone is asked a direct question and instead of answering they just stare. I think those are more extreme cases but it’s believable to me and I’ve heard it enough times for it to be credible. It’s obviously not a universal, constant thing.

I also think that for this generation, being a retail worker is much more of a misery than it was when I was their age. Wages suck more now. People may be less polite now. And corporations have really tried to squeeze the most out of every employee. They have to do a bunch of different things. It seems they schedule the bare minimum number of people they can get away with. Maybe in my day kids enjoyed their job more because they could literally only stand at the register talking to customers when there were some, and in between horse around with the other workers. I think a lot of that slack has been squeezed out of the system. Frankly a lot of service has also been squeezed out of the system. I remember when waiters would pack the rest of your meal to go for you. They still did this when I visited Portugal last year and it was so nice. Many things like this have disappeared. Maybe this is part of why customers are less polite now. Service isn’t what it once was. Not always the fault of the workers.

The bit about the Stare is not always true or even most of the time. But it’s something that happens often enough to notice as a pattern. Once you’ve heard the stereotype of the “GenZ stare” you can start to experience confirmation bias of it. And really you never know if the person you’re facing is GenZ or not.

So it’s not a thing one should over-think. But yes I think there is something real behind it. Like a lot of stereotypes, it’s not fair to apply to everyone, but it may have some origin in reality somehow.

The only thing I know of that comes close to what you're describing is the "thousand yard stare" of someone in the middle of an internalized existential crisis or reliving a traumatic moment as a daydream.

Or possibly just looking confounded by the other person's incredibly weird/stupid take on something.

Simple answer: no

The Gen Z stare is simply the rational response in dealing with customer facing situations where either 1. the customer is problematic, or 2. if the worker genuinely doesn't know what what to do.

Responding or engaging to problematic customers (racist, homophobic, misogynistic) can only lead to conflict, reprimand, or lawsuits.

Responding with inaccurate information or simply saying leads to conflict, reprimand, or poor reviews.

Both have worsened as people have become more polarised, and management cuts funding and hours for training.