Before we toss the year 2025 onto the temporal dungheap where it belongs, let’s take a look back at the year that has passed from the point of view of the people who have to live here even longer than we have to. Below is a month-by-month replay of the year, focusing on the memes, events, and ideas that shape and define Generations Z and Alpha.
January: “TikTok refugees” move to RedNote
For Gen Z, 2025 began with a panic that turned into a unique cross-cultural experiment. In January 2025, ByteDance, the Chinese company behind TikTok, announced that it was about to shut down the social media platform in the U.S. Ahead of the shut-down (which didn’t end up happening) a wave of TikTokers moved over to RedNote, another Chinese social media platform, but one that was previously only used in China. The result was a few weeks where very different cultures met on common ground, and it was low-key beautiful. Young people from China and the U.S. asked each other questions about their respective cultures, TikTok refugees showed off their newly acquired Mandarin-speaking skills, while RedNoters demonstrated their English by doing a lot of imitations of Donald Trump, and everyone learned we weren’t all that different. But it was only temporary: The geopolitical drama was solved (for now), TikTok stayed open, and TikTokers, for the most part, went back to their digital home—but hopefully young people took a little empathy with them.
February: The rise of “6-7”
Like it or not, 2025 is the year of 6-7. The ubiquitous slang term really started in late 2024 with the release of Skrilla’s “Doot Doot (6 7)” video on YouTube, but it took a couple months to catch on and filter down to the schoolyard, and a few more months to become the biggest slang word of the year. As I’m sure you know by now, “6-7” doesn’t mean anything specific, it’s just a fun thing to say, but even with no definition, 6-7 has remarkable staying power. Even after every parent and teacher on Earth learned what it meant, kids kept saying it. Whatever was funny about the joke hasn’t been funny for a long time, so maybe 2026 will see the death of 6-7, but I wouldn’t put money on it. It seems like one of those jokes that will go from funny to unfunny and back to funny a million times until it finally dies.
March: the “80/20 rule”
In March, Netflix released the series Adolescence, a distressing exploration of the inner worlds of alienated young men. In Adolescence, one of the teenage characters mentions the “80/20 rule” as a way of explaining the incel/red pill culture central to the murder plot and central to the worldview of too many real-life young men. Put simply, the 80/20 rule is an axiom that states 80% of women are attracted to only 20% of men. Despite being based on almost nothing, in incel spaces, the 80/20 rule is regarded as absolute truth, and the 80/20 rule (and other “mano-sphere” ideas) are spreading to more mainstream young people. Understanding the pervasiveness of belief in the 80/20 rule is essential to understanding the specific strain of misogyny that’s afflicting young people. There’s a helplessness implied by it—the 80/20 rule, like the rest of incels’ elaborate theories about how men and women relate to each other, boils down to “it’s not my fault, and there’s nothing I can do to change my situation.” The spread of the 80/20 rule is the almighty algorithm rewarding the worst in people, and victims often have too few real-life relationships to reveal the obvious flaw in the rule’s logic.
April: A Minecraft Movie
In their fractured and balkanized media landscape, Generations Z and A have few shared cultural experiences, but in 2025, A Minecraft Movie was a rare exception. The pre-release buzz (and “chicken-jockey!” memes) suggested that many young people were expecting an ironically enjoyable experience—something “so bad it’s good”—but A Minecraft Movie is actually so good it’s good, and appealed to everyone, younger kids, teenagers, and parents alike. Tapping Jared Hess—who helmed Napoleon Dynamite—to direct was inspired, as was the casting of Jack Black and Jason Momoa, but the real star of A Minecraft Movie is Minecraft, a video game that was released in 2009 and still has an estimated 200 million people (mostly young) playing it regularly. The success of A Minecraft Movie (and The Super Mario Bros Movie in 2023) indicates that Hollywood has finally figured out how to make decent movies out of video games.
May: “100 men vs. one gorilla”
“Who would win in a fight to the death, one gorilla or 100 men?” sounds like a dumb question at first, but the more you think about it, the deeper it gets. My first thought was 100 men are taking it, no problem, but then I considered the overwhelming power of an enraged gorilla, how it could literally tear off limbs and bite off faces, and the scale started tipping heavily the other way. No matter where you land on the answer, the question is fascinating, and the internet was briefly obsessed with this imaginary battle in May. Taking a broader view, the debates, memes, and TikTok videos the gorilla question birthed are an illustration of how the technology that connects us took what would have been an interesting hypothetical discussion among a few weird friends 20 years ago and turned it into a worldwide discussion and convenient excuse to learn about primates.
June: Steal a Brainrot
“Steal a Brainrot” came out in late May 2025, and by June, all the kids were playing it; 20 million of them, anyway. “Steal a Brainrot” is a multiplayer mini-game within maxi-games Roblox and Fortnite. In a game of Brainrot, up to eight players share a server, and each has their own base. The object of the game is to buy brainrots for your base and/or steal brainrots from other players’ bases, while defending your own brainrots from thieves. The brainrots themselves are objects meant to reference “Italian brainrot,” i.e.: low-quality internet memes. They vary in value and have vaguely Italian names, but they aren’t based on actual brainrot memes. The lesson: Good game design only needs the lightest hook to create a compelling experience.
July: the death of fart jokes?
In July, teachers and parents posted videos that may point to one of the most defining cultural touchstones of Generation Alpha: they don’t think fart jokes are funny. They don’t laugh when someone farts in public. They don’t feel the need to say “He who smelt it, dealt it.” I realize a couple TikTok videos is the opposite of hard evidence, but judging from the comments and the kids being interviewed, it feels true, and important. Gen A don’t seem like they’re trying to be accepting of others, or mature; they seem genuinely bewildered by the idea that anyone would think farts are funny. Which is cool; they’re right. But still, I can’t help but feel sad for the poor fart jokes that have brought us all so much joy for so many centuries.
August: performative males
The “performative male” is another “gift” from the toxic-masculinity corner of youth culture. The term is an insult young men throw at other young men whose tastes, hobbies, and lifestyle are seen as a performance aimed at obtaining societal approval, especially the approval of young women. Performative male traits include matcha lattes, Labubu toys, listening to Clairo, tote bags, and reading in public. “Performative male” is mildly sexist on the surface—it’s mocking dudes who like things associated with women (gasp)—but if you go deeper, it’s similar to older slang words like “white knight” and “virtue signaling.” A performative male is fundamentally dishonest, because no real man would read in public, so it must be fake, and why would men be fake if not to make women like them?
September: the tragic story of D4vd
If young people are going to remember any news story from 2025, it’s likely to be the one about singer D4vd. On September 8, Los Angeles police discovered a body in the trunk of an abandoned Tesla registered to 20-year-old musician David Anthony Burke, aka D4vd. The body was later identified as the remains of Celeste Rivas, who was reported missing from her home in Riverside on April 5, 2024, when she was just 13 years old.
The singer’s rise to fame is a quintessentially Generation Z story. His career began with online fame gained through posting Fortnite videos online, but YouTube removed his content for using copyrighted music. At the suggestion of his mom, D4vd began recording original songs using free iPhone tools, which he posted to SoundCloud. The end result was a recording contract, an album, a couple of moody, dreamy songs with over 1.5 billion plays on Spotify, and a body in the trunk of a car.
D4vd has not been charged with any crimes in connection with the body, but neither has anyone else, so this story is likely to continue into 2026.
October: Portland frog and chicken protestors
This year, young people in Portland changed the perception of what “protesting” means. At demonstrations against Federal immigration enforcement, young people started showing up dressed in colorful, inflatable Halloween costumes. Frog guy was first. Then chicken guy. Then a panoply of unicorns and other fanciful creatures. The idea seems to be to highlight the farce of a heavy police presence on American streets by appearing as harmless as possible. Protestors have been using ridiculousness to make their point since protests began, but the instant, worldwide dissemination of videos from Portland’s “front line” is fairly new, and they really deliver the message. Images of heavily armed and armored law enforcement officers staring down Portland weirdos in unicorn and panda costumes makes a more compelling point than would clashes with radicals in ski masks—you don’t have to think very hard to know which side you’re on.
November: quarter zips
A quarter zip is a pullover sweater with a zipper that goes a quarter way down the chest, and it’s becoming the go-to look for young men, especially Black men. Wearing a quarter zip isn’t exactly “dressed up,” but it’s more sophisticated than rocking athleisure wear. More importantly, the quarter zip is often a signifier of status and intention. Like flannel shirts in previous generations, the quarter zip is marks one as belonging to an in group, being a “quarter zip man,” and the even being part of the “quarter zip movement.”
December: millennial optimism
The younger generation closed out the year by looking backwards, but only a little bit backwards. The trend of December was “millennial optimism,” the romanticization of the years around 2010. Some younger people imagine it as as a more innocent, hopeful time that they missed out on, and many millennials who were setting those trends in the 2010s are feeling nostalgic for their lost youth/relevance, so both groups are posting TikTok videos about “millennial optimism.” Being older than both groups, I can say with confidence that both groups are wrong for different reasons. “Missed-out-on-it” types are wrong because a period that included the recession of 2008 and the election of Donald Trump was not “optimistic,” and the millennials only think of it as a fun, awesome time because it’s when millennials were young (and having a fun, awesome time.)
