10 phrases millennials use that make Gen Z physically recoil

The betrayal happened in a Brooklyn coffee shop, naturally. I was explaining to my twenty-two-year-old intern why our social media strategy needed more "authentic engagement," why we should "lean into" video content, maybe even "pivot to TikTok." Her face did something I'd never seen before—a micro-expression somewhere between pity and physical pain, like watching someone's dad attempt the Renegade dance at a wedding.

"You just said three things that made me want to die," she informed me, with the brutal honesty only Gen Z possesses. "Like, actually die."

I'm in my early forties. I still feel young. I understand memes. I've been extremely online since LiveJournal. But in that moment, I realized I'd become what I'd always feared: generationally cringe. Not boomer-cringe, with their Facebook rants and ellipses abuse. Something subtler, more insidious. Millennial cringe.

We're the generation that invented modern internet culture, that turned irony into an art form, that made being self-aware a personality trait. But somewhere between our Harry Potter references and our anxiety jokes, we fossilized. Our language, once cutting-edge, now cuts wrong—each phrase a carbon date of when we stopped evolving.

1. "I did a thing"

We post this caption under photos of haircuts, home purchases, and major life decisions alike. It started as humility, a way to announce achievement without seeming boastful. Look how casual I am about this promotion/engagement/published article. No big deal. Just a thing I did.

But Gen Z hears something else entirely: performative modesty, false casualness, the millennial tendency to distance ourselves from our own accomplishments through irony. They announce their wins directly—"I got into law school and I'm proud as hell." No deflection. No minimizing. No things.

The phrase reveals our generational anxiety about success, our need to seem effortless even when we've tried very hard. Gen Z finds this exhausting. They're right.

2. "Adulting is hard"

Every time a millennial pays taxes, makes a doctor's appointment, or buys groceries, this phrase emerges like a reflex. We've turned basic life maintenance into an achievement worthy of recognition.

My Gen Z cousin looked at me with genuine confusion when I posted about "adulting" by meal-prepping. "You're thirty-five," she said. "You've been an adult for seventeen years. Why are you still surprised by laundry?"

The phrase infantilizes us, she explained. It suggests we're playing at adulthood rather than living it. Gen Z doesn't "adult"—they just exist, handling responsibilities without needing a participation trophy for basic functioning.

3. "I'm dead" / "I can't even"

We've been dying and unable to even for so long that the phrases have lost all meaning. They're linguistic fossils from the Tumblr era, when hyperbole was currency and everything was either the best or worst thing ever.

Gen Z's humor is different—darker, more surreal, less dependent on exaggeration. They don't die; they simply ✨cease✨. They don't can't even; they're "not doing this." Their emotional expression is simultaneously more direct and more abstract, leaving our dramatics looking dated.

4. "Doggo" / "Pupper" / "Birb"

The infantilization of animals was peak millennial internet—a linguistic comfort blanket for a generation raised on LOLcats and I Can Has Cheezburger. We created an entire vocabulary of cutesy animal speak that Gen Z finds unbearably cloying.

"It's a dog," my intern said flatly when I showed her a "smol pupper" on Instagram. "Just say dog. The dog is already cute. It doesn't need your help."

She's right. The need to make everything diminutive and digestible—it's defensive, a way to make the world less threatening through baby talk. Gen Z doesn't need that filter. They'll look directly at existence and call it what it is.

5. "Thanks, I hate it"

This phrase encapsulates millennial humor perfectly: the reflexive rejection of anything sincere, the need to preemptively dismiss before being dismissed. We hate it as performance, as protection, as personality.

But Gen Z doesn't reflexively hate. They love things unironically—their favorite musicians, their hobbies, their interests. When they hate something, they articulate why with surprising eloquence. Our blanket dismissal sounds hollow to ears trained on TikTok discourse and video essays.

6. "Wine o'clock" / "But first, coffee"

The casual alcoholism and caffeine dependency as personality traits—these phrases feel like artifacts from a simpler time when addiction was quirky and burnout was a punchline.

Gen Z watches us joke about needing wine to survive parenting or coffee to function as humans, and they see something we missed: a generation medicating its way through late capitalism, turning coping mechanisms into merchandising opportunities. They drink less, work differently, refuse to glorify the grind that requires chemical assistance.

7. "~ Vibes ~"

We killed this one through overuse, through applying it to everything from afternoon light to spreadsheet formatting. "Such good vibes," we say about restaurants, people, PowerPoint presentations.

Gen Z uses "vibe" as a verb, a check, a shift—language that's active rather than passive. Our "vibes" feel dusty, like saying "groovy" in the '90s. They've moved on to "it's giving," to "the energy," to constructions we haven't learned yet and probably shouldn't try.

8. "Serial killer documentary and chill"

Our obsession with true crime as casual entertainment, as dating activity, as personality trait—Gen Z finds it deeply unsettling. Not the interest in crime itself, but the performative casualness, the quirky-girl-ification of violence.

They consume true crime too, but differently—with ethical discussions, with victim awareness, with critical analysis of the genre's problems. Our breezy consumption feels callous to a generation raised on social justice and systemic critique.

9. "Epic fail"

We're still saying this. In 2024. As if the internet stopped evolving in 2012 and we didn't notice.

The phrase is archaeological evidence of when we stopped updating our vernacular, when we decided we'd learned enough slang for one lifetime. Gen Z doesn't fail epically—they "couldn't be me" or "that's tough" or simply share the L without commentary.

10. "Is this self-care?"

We've turned self-care into a question, a joke, an excuse for any behavior from face masks to day drinking. The phrase reveals our discomfort with actually caring for ourselves, our need to ironize even rest.

Gen Z doesn't ask. They set boundaries without apology, prioritize mental health without performance. They don't need to justify self-care through humor because they don't see it as indulgent. It's just care.

Final thoughts

The cruelest part of generational linguistic shift is its invisibility to those experiencing it. We don't feel ourselves becoming outdated; we just wake up one day and realize our references are archaeological. The very self-awareness we pride ourselves on becomes a blind spot—we're so busy being knowing about everything else that we miss our own ossification.

But here's what my Gen Z intern taught me, after cataloging my linguistic crimes: the problem isn't the phrases themselves. It's the clinging. It's the insistence that our way of speaking is still current, still clever, still cool. Gen Z doesn't recoil at millennial language because it's inherently wrong—they recoil at our refusal to acknowledge that it's aged.

"You can say whatever you want," she told me, with a kindness I didn't deserve. "Just own that it's millennial. Be vintage on purpose."

So now I lean into it. I say "doggo" with full awareness of its carbon dating. I announce my adulting with archaeological pride. I'm not trying to be young; I'm trying to be honest about being exactly what I am: a millennial, speaking my generation's truth in phrases that belong in a museum. And honestly? That's kind of a vibe. Or whatever the kids are saying now.