Hollywood actress and filmmaker Jodie Foster is being praised for her blunt and stern take on Gen Z workers.
Speaking with The Guardian for a profile published on Sunday, she went all in on critiquing the often universally hated generation.
“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” she said. “They’re like, ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today. I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’”
“Or, like, in emails, I’ll tell them this is all grammatically incorrect — did you not check your spelling? And they’re like, ‘Why would I do that? Isn’t that kind of limiting?’” she added.
The praise began immediately pouring in.
Look:
She’s spot on!
— Nancy Smith (@Srfgypc) January 7, 2024
I concur, they make me question my sanity all the time. ♀️
— Zara Safsovski (@drfzs) January 7, 2024
She is correct. Now this current generation gets offended by everything even the most stupid thing ever,
— Maria E. Segura (@MariaESegura7) January 7, 2024
Jodie is spot-on about grammar and spelling. If language skills fall apart, then EVERYTHING falls apart.
— EasternTime (@EasternTime2024) January 7, 2024
I find that our youth, and even young adults, have no writing skills. Often times you can’t tell where one thought ends and one begins. No caps. No punctuation. No desire to fix anything either.
— giulia12 (@giulia12) January 7, 2024
She’s not wrong and Hollywood keeps hiring them because they think they have “influence” when most of those followers are fake bots. And they’re not gonna spend money on your movie tickets when they can just scroll through their phones for free—The attention spans are frightening
— Charlie Kurfly (@CharlieKurfly) January 7, 2024
There was likely so much praise because she had a valid point about Gen Z’s aversion to hard work.
In fact, just about a year ago, a young Gen-Z influencer went viral for arguing that her generation doesn’t care about working hard the way their predecessors did because they’re allegedly smarter.
The influencer, a young woman named Demi Kotsoris, explained this in a TikTok video.
She started by arguing that younger generations have access to more information and that this information has keyed them in on some previously unknown facts about life.
“Older generations are so confused at why we don’t wanna work anymore or why we don’t want to necessarily work hard or prioritize our careers,” she said. “We know how short life is now. And it didn’t have to come from a life-changing, life-altering experience like it did for those before us.”
“You know that older person in your life that had someone close to them pass away maybe when they were young and they live life to the fullest because of that? Now we have access to that information,” she added.
Young TikTokker sparks fierce debate for claiming Gen Z is too smart to work hard at a job https://t.co/LMHWJKIIxG pic.twitter.com/lDIcubiTQb
— BPR (@BIZPACReview) April 30, 2023
Continuing her veritable defense of laziness, she mentioned the COVID pandemic as well. She also said that it doesn’t matter if they work for a great employer who’s doing “amazing work.”
“We also had this global pandemic that happened,” she said. “So we view life very differently than we ever had before. So even for a lot of us, if we’ve got a workplace that is purpose-driven, and they’ve got great values and they’re doing amazing work, we’ll still like I wanna travel, I wanna do other stuff with my life.”
“And that’s also confusing for us, because we’re like, oh my god, we’ve got all this like privilege. Like the work we’re doing is great and all this kind of stuff. Why am I still depressed? Why do I still hate my life? Why do I still not wanna work? And it’s because we don’t place the same value that was drilled into us before on that, and so we shouldn’t. The access to information has made us smarter,” she concluded.
Is this not exactly the attitude that Foster referenced?
But don’t get it twisted, because her brief diatribe about Gen Z doesn’t mean she’s against the generation. In fact, The Guardian explicitly takes note of her “cheerleading of Gen Z.”
Going a bit further, Variety magazine notes that “the Oscar winner has made it a mission to reach out to young actors coming up in the industry.”
For example, she “recently made an effort to contact ‘The Last of Us’ Emmy nominee Bella Ramsey and asked the young performer to introduce her at an event in Hollywood.”
Also, during her Guardian interview, she offered some advice/constructive criticism to aspiring Gen Z actors/actresses.
“They need to learn how to relax, how to not think about it so much, how to come up with something that’s theirs,” she said. “I can help them find that, which is so much more fun than being, with all the pressure behind it, the protagonist of the story.”
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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