“Northumberland Zoo is hitting it differently,” a grey-haired employee at the institution said in a resigned tone on TikTok. Then, together with his gray-haired colleagues, he created a “Gen Z palm” — made with his middle and index fingers. The video, which has racked up nearly 8 million views and more than 1 million likes on the app, is part of a trend of Gen Z employees scripting their company’s social marketing videos.
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In these videos, the scripts are full of Internet terms such as “very awesome”, “very dignified”, “Xiaoxia”, etc., and the person who recited the scripts is obviously older. It connotes the idiocy of Gen Z and the gullibility of Gen X/Boomers.
It’s the latest iteration of companies leveraging Gen Z employees and their online savvy to gain online attention and engagement. Previously, “Gen Z interns” edited their employer’s videos in a weird and unprofessional way. There is also a workplace-produced “Guess Who is Generation Z” TikTok. The latest development in this trend relies on “Gen Z vocabulary” or internet slang that is often misidentified as African American vernacular English.
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Milking the generational divide of invention is tiresome, and TikTok trends created specifically for marketing are never very interesting. They’re adding more ads masquerading as culture to our feeds.
However, some of the films in the current wave of Gen Z Interns retain a modicum of charm because of the types of businesses they appeal to. In one photo, a woman walking around the 880-year-old bed and breakfast Fyfield Manor says, “See the garden? It’s relaxing.” The video has received more than 1,140 10,000 views and 2.2 million likes. Another video, in which actors dressed in Regency costumes greet “besties” and take viewers on a tour of the Jane Austen Center, has been viewed more than 125,000 times and liked more than 22,000 times.
When these films lack the dichotomy between historical England and internet slang, they tend to fall flat – with the exception of zoos. Zoos have some of the most delightful and naturally viral social media presence on the web.
