zcontxt.

Work & Money

How Gen Z talks about jobs, burnout, side hustles and spending.

Bare Minimum Monday

Deliberately starting the week gently to avoid burnout.

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Act Your Wage

Matching your effort to your pay rather than working beyond what you're compensated for.

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Quiet Quitting

Doing your job as described and nothing more — declining unpaid extra effort.

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Underconsumption Core

An aesthetic of using what you already own — worn-out clothes, half-empty products, no new purchases.

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Soft Life

A deliberate choice to prioritise ease, rest and comfort over struggle and hustle.

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Office Siren

An aesthetic of sharp late-1990s corporate dress — pencil skirts, thin-framed glasses, kitten heels.

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Old Money

An aesthetic imitating inherited wealth — tailoring, tennis whites, boat shoes, no logos.

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Quiet Luxury

Expensive clothing with no visible branding — wealth signalled through quality rather than logos.

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Grind

Repetitive gameplay done to accumulate progress, currency or items.

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Personal Brand

Managing your public identity as though you were a product with consistent positioning.

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UGC

User-Generated Content — and, as a job title, someone paid to make brand content that looks user-made.

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Link in Bio

A phrase pointing followers to the single clickable link on a profile.

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De-influencing

Telling your audience what not to buy — a reaction against constant product recommendation.

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Sponcon

Sponsored content — a post paid for by a brand, usually with a disclosure tag.

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Influencer

Someone whose online following gives them commercial power over what their audience buys.

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Clout

Online influence and visibility, treated as a resource people accumulate.

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Enshittification

The predictable decay of online platforms as they squeeze users and then business customers for profit.

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🤠 Cowboy Hat Face

Forced enthusiasm masking distress — smiling through it.

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👍 Thumbs Up

Acknowledgement — but read by many younger users as passive-aggressive or dismissive.

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Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss

An ironic motto mocking corporate feminism by pairing empowerment language with manipulative behaviour.

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Stonks

A deliberate misspelling of "stocks", used to joke about bad financial decisions.

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Boujee

Luxurious, high-end, expensive in taste — sometimes admiringly, sometimes mockingly.

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Locked In

Completely focused, in the zone, fully committed to a task.

peak