A 30-Year-Old Who Goes To School With Gen Z'ers Is Giving Millennials A Much-Needed Lesson On Emojis

One of the most fascinating discoveries I've made on TikTok is that people are really out here living lives that sound like a sitcom plot. Last week, I went down a rabbit hole about a 30-year-old living in a 55+ beach community in Florida.

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This week, I can't get enough of this 30-year-old woman named Scarlett Alexandra who goes to Savannah College of Art and Design and lives in a dorm with Gen Z'ers:

Her first video to pop up in my feed was one she made about what Gen Z'ers "really mean" when they use certain emojis. This explainer now has over 2.5 million views on the platform.

To sum it up for you, the thumbs up emoji is passive aggressive. If you receive this from a Gen Z'er, you should be insulted.

The sad eyes emoji means "I'm horny" or "I'm innocent."

These fingers that are pointing at each other also mean "I'm horny."

The sweat bead face means "I'm stressed, but it's fine."

The upside-down smiley means "fuck my life."

The smiling while crying emoji essentially means "fuck my life" to the 10th degree.

The kissy face means either "sounds good to me" or "oooooooh."

The cherries mean "titties."

The emoji with the wild eyes means "silly goofy mood" (but in a tongue-in-cheek kinda way).

And the side eyes mean "I'm listening."

We reached out to Scarlett to learn more about her experience living with a bunch of Gen Z'ers. "I am an RA (resident assistant) in the dorms and surrounded by Gen Z kids between the ages of 18–21 who have an entirely different way of communicating than what I'm used to," Scarlett told BuzzFeed. "Group chats are a big thing with them, so the rapid-fire communication style has been a learning curve for me. Specifically with emojis, memes, and phrases. I'm the first one to laugh at myself for being old and obsolete, so I'm always asking questions and my Gen Z peers are more than happy to indulge me!"

Scarlett only had kind things to say about the younger generation. "Gen Z is a much kinder generation than you would expect," she said. "As someone who was bullied on AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) and Myspace in middle school, I expected the opposite from kids who have never known life without social media..."

Awww, will ya look at that? Millennials and Gen Z'ers getting along — we love to see it!