What’s the deal with people typing in all lowercase? You’ve seen that, right?

everything they type looks like this. it doesn’t matter if it’s a text. it doesn’t matter if it’s a post on x. it doesn’t matter if it’s a comment on someone’s photo. everything they type is lowercase.

‘If I see “LOL,” that’s a Boomer/Gen X. If I see “Lol,” that’s a Millennial. If I see “lol,” I know that’s one of my own.’

This style of typing is largely a Zoomer phenomenon, though some older people trying to act young do it too.

I am not a Zoomer, though I am interested in the Zoomers. I have written about them before, am writing about them now, and will write about them again. They are, whether we like it or not, the future, or at least the near future, so they should be of interest to us.

So why exactly do the Zoomers type in lowercase?

No cap

I asked a trusted Zoomer resource of mine, Caleb Wallace Holm, to provide his usual insight. He told me, “Zoomers have been doing it since we got our phones. It’s a way to demonstrate nonchalance and also a means of distinction from previous generations.”

All this makes sense. Younger generations almost always try to demonstrate nonchalance or uncaring. To be formal is to be old and stodgy, and you don’t want to be old. To be overly concerned is to be your dad, and you don’t want to be your dad.

So the young seek out ways to show they are relaxed and ways they can possibly differentiate themselves from the old. When you are young, you want to be new and different, so there is nothing particularly new about the logic of Zoomer lowercase typing.

Laugh lines

What is new is the acting out of this mini-rebellion of distinction in the digital domain, as the digital world didn’t exist for prior generations in the same way it does for the Zoomers.

And it is this new element — life in the digital space — that differentiates Zoomers most profoundly from the rest of us in a multitude of ways. As I have written before, Zoomers are the first disembodied generation, and this has profound impacts on how they exist in the world.

Holm told me he can discern how old someone is just by the way they “laugh” online. He remarked, “If I see ‘LOL,’ that’s a Boomer/Gen X. If I see ‘Lol,’ that’s a Millennial. If I see ‘lol,’ I know that’s one of my own.”

While I never would have thought of this on my own, it made complete sense once I heard it. Of course an astute member of the generation that was raised on the internet would be adept at discerning someone’s age simply by the way they “laugh” online.

The lowered life

Though the attempt to differentiate oneself from prior generations by way of typing in all lowercase makes sense and follows a fairly expected trajectory, there is something off about it. You might call the Zoomers many things, but earnest, excitable, mentally well, and aspirational are probably not among the descriptors you would choose to use.

They barely drink alcohol out, but they smoke tons of weed in. SSRI use is rampant, and a general malaise or an overly-ironic stance is fairly standard operating procedure among their cohort. The Zoomers are the most medicated generation in history and don’t appear to respond to any traditional incentive structure. Not great.

Nonchalance is one thing. Not caring about anything at all is another thing. I do wonder if the lowercase typing of the Zoomers is less about studied nonchalance than it is a lack of any vital spirit. I wonder if this lowercase typing represents something even more toxic than laziness. If the Zoomers were, in general, very well-adjusted, very social, and very mentally well and characterized by earnest effort, I may not wonder if the lowercase typing signaled something negative. But they are not those things, so I have to wonder what it represents, whether done intentionally or not.

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Photo by Brett Carlsen/Getty Images

Type casting

And yet, not all Zoomers are listless or on SSRIs, and not all Zoomers type in lowercase. Holm, my Zoomer resource, doesn’t. He types like I do — with capitalization — though he is also fluent in the language of his people (the Zoomers). And he is also full of life and spirit. And though I often joke with him that he is the most powerful Zoomer living, he is not at all alone. There are other vital Zoomers out there who type with proper capitalization.

It sounds strange, but maybe proper capitalization and vitality, or just normal emotional responses, go hand in hand. And maybe typing in lowercase and perpetual irony go hand in hand.

Maybe performative nonchalance in text form becomes giving up or some other kind of deadness IRL quicker than people realize.

Maybe the way we type to one another matters more than we think. Maybe exclamation marks, capitalization, and real non-ironic enthusiasm reflects a healthy attitude toward the world and one’s place in it.

Maybe there is more to lowercase typing than meets the eye.

The medium is the message, after all.

​Men’s style, Lifestyle, Texting, Culture, Zoomers, Lower case, The root of the matter 

Democrat Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is taking a stand for Somalians following the discovery that billions of Minnesota taxpayer dollars went to Somalian fraud, and he’s doing it by recording himself trying to eat their food.

The key word is “trying.”

On December 5, the mayor sat down at a Somali restaurant with a few Somalis while the camera rolled. However, the camera caught Frey’s odd facial expressions as he slowly chewed the rice and beans for what seemed to be forever.

“Jacob Frey … was not enjoying the Somalian food that he was eating,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales comments, explaining that his failed attempt at making Somalian food look good inspired her to try it herself.

“Is Somalian food as bad as Jacob Frey makes it look?” Gonzales asks, before trying it.

Gonzales tries the food but can’t stomach more than a few bites. And because her reaction was so negative, she received a barrage of angry comments from the left.

“Jacob Frey kind of started it. He made me curious, and he was correct in his facial expressions, and I just — it’s so crazy how you can get death threats over something like that from liberals,” Gonzales comments.

One user on the app X messaged Gonzales, writing, “Your heads [sic] gonna end up on a stick you dumb bitch. … You’re gonna’ get assassinated. Except your [sic] way less relevant than Charlie Kirk.”

“I can’t even explain why people are so pressed that Sara Gonzales said, ‘Somalian food sucks,’” Gonzales says.

“Checked it off my bucket list,” she continues. “Jacob Frey was correct.”

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

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​Camera phone, Free, Sharing, Upload, Video, Video phone, Youtube.com, Sara gonzales unfiltered, Sara gonzales, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcast, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Somalian food, Somalia, Minneapolis mayor, Jacob frey tries somalian food, Jacob frey, Jacob frey somalian 

A Pakistani national is suspected in what one police official called a “terrorist incident” against a Jewish gathering at an Australian beach on the first night of Hanukkah in which at least 15 were killed Sunday, including a 12-year-old.

Another 40 people were hospitalized with injuries, including two officers and three children, after the attack at Bondi Beach, CBS News reported.

‘What we saw yesterday was an act of pure evil, an act of anti-Semitism, an act of terrorism on our shores in an iconic Australian location, Bondi Beach, that is associated with joy, associated with families gathering, associated with celebrations, and it is forever tarnished by what has occurred last evening.’

On Monday morning local time, police said two gunmen — a 50-year-old father and his 24-year-old son — opened fire while the local Jewish community was celebrating the first night of Hanukkah, the network news outlet said.

The 50-year-old gunman died, and his son was hospitalized in “serious condition,” New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon said, according to CBS News.

More from the network news outlet:

The 24-year-old was identified as Naveed Akram, a Pakistani national based in Sydney, according to a U.S. intelligence briefing and a driver’s license provided by Australian police. Police previously said the deceased gunman was the son, but Lanyon later clarified that the father was shot and killed by police.

New South Wales Health Minister Ryan Park said the death toll had risen from 12 to 16 overnight, including a 12-year-old child. Three other children are being treated in the hospital, he said.

“This is absolutely horrendous for the community broadly, but particularly the Jewish community. … What we saw last night was the worst of humanity, but at the same time, the very best of humanity,” Park told CBS News, which added that it is unclear if the number of fatalities or injuries included the gunmen.

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The international organization Chabad, which represents a branch of ultra-Orthodox Judaism, said one of its rabbis — Rabbi Eli Schlanger — was among the dead, the network news outlet said, citing the Associated Press.

More from CBS News:

Called Hanukkah by the Sea, the event was held to mark the beginning of the Jewish holiday observed from sundown on Sunday until Monday, Dec. 22. More than 1,000 were at the beach when gunfire broke out, said Lanyon. He called the attack a “terrorist incident” and said the perpetrators used “long arms,” referring to long guns such as shotguns or rifles, to carry it out.

New South Wales Premier Chris Minns and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also characterized the attack as targeted, with Minns saying it “was designed to target Sydney’s Jewish community.” The prime minister said it was “a targeted attack on Jewish Australians.”

“What we saw yesterday was an act of pure evil, an act of anti-Semitism, an act of terrorism on our shores in an iconic Australian location, Bondi Beach, that is associated with joy, associated with families gathering, associated with celebrations, and it is forever tarnished by what has occurred last evening,” Albanese said during a news conference Monday morning local time, the network news outlet noted.

Lanyon added to CBS News that police believed several improvised explosive devices were inside a vehicle at Campbell Parade — a main street that runs parallel to Bondi Beach — which officials discovered shortly after the shooting occurred; a rescue bomb disposal crew was at the scene.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a social media post said “the United States strongly condemns the terrorist attack in Australia targeting a Jewish celebration. Antisemitism has no place in this world. Our prayers are with the victims of this horrific attack, the Jewish community, and the people of Australia,” the network news outlet reported.

More from CBS News:

One video appeared to show someone wrestling with one of the suspected gunmen and taking his weapon from him, according to Minns, who paid tribute to that individual in some of his comments Sunday.

The video was recorded by a bystander along Campbell Parade, a main street that runs parallel to Bondi Beach. In it, a man jumped up from a crouched position behind a parked car and tackled the suspect, who had just fired his weapon toward something out of view.

Following a short struggle, the man disarmed the suspect, pushed him to the ground, and turned the weapon on him, at which point the suspect stood up and walked in the opposite direction. The man then lowered the weapon and raised his free hand in the air. Off to the side, one person appeared to be lying unresponsive on the sidewalk beside a different vehicle.

RELATED: Kids have already found a way around Australia’s new social media ban: Making faces

Minns called the man — whom relatives named Ahmed al Ahmed, a fruit shop owner, to Australian media — a “genuine hero,” the network news outlet said.

More from CBS News:

Mass shootings in Australia are rare. But researchers have recorded dramatic upticks in antisemitic incidents in the country since the Oct. 7, 2023, assault by Hamas terrorists on Israel triggered the war in Gaza, along with spikes in hate incidents against Muslim groups.

In response, the Australian government appointed special envoys last year to address antisemitism and Islamophobia in its communities. However, attacks have continued to happen since then. In July, an arsonist set fire to the door of a synagogue in Melbourne, another major Australian city, seven months after a different synagogue in the same city was burned by criminals in a blaze that injured one worshipper.

This is a developing story; updates may be added.

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​Crime, Australia, Jewish gathering, Terror attack, Pakistani national, Bondi beach, Massacre, Mass shooting, First night of hanukkah, Politics