Why Jayden can’t use capital letters

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.