Zoe Strimpel laments one more appalling cultural contribution from the worst-ever generation.

If there’s one thing Generation Z can be relied on to do, it’s make things creepy and weird where they were previously straightforward and commonplace. Having weirded out romantic intimacy, they’ve come for Guinness. It has become so popular among Gen Z that pubs this December are experiencing a Guinness shortage. …

[Now] there is “splitting the G,” in which drinkers attempt a single first swig so the remaining liquid ends up intersecting the Guinness logo. It’s a trend that combines a lackluster approach to downing a pint with something that sounds vaguely sexualized. No doubt we’ll soon be told that “splitting the G” is problematic.

Sales of this bog-standard staple have been helped along by the sorts of influences (and influencers) that would have the dyed-in-the-wool pub-goers of old Dublin turning in their graves. Take Kim Kardashian and pop star Olivia Rodrigo, the former very publicly sporting a pint of Guinness while in London last year, and the latter wearing an excruciatingly uncool-cool T-shirt reading “Guinness is good 4U.”

The Guinness obsession is part of a wider fetishization of the mundane. There are now TikTok accounts that teach women how to dress their boyfriends in old-people clothes, the so-called “grandpa core” aesthetic. Young women are also increasingly searching out goodwill store interior fittings, in the hope that a battered old lamp will help them appear quirky. For those not involved, it looks more like an attempt to intellectualize the boring task of filling your home or dressing yourself.

Part of the reason for this is the explosion in university education. Teach millions of young people to analyze their lives, and they’ll start treating everything as though it must be filled with meaning. Each decision is now part of an aesthetic, a conscious choice to be a “Guinness drinker,” which no doubt comes laden with semiotic irony, rather than choosing things because — you know — you like them?

RTWT