Gen Z Is COOKED, Listless, Angry, And QUITTING JOBS, US Economy Is IN TROUBLE
Tim Pool argues Gen Z is "cooked" and quitting jobs due to economic hardship, citing a Youngstown State University study showing 46% plan to leave over stalled careers. He condemns influencers like Clavicular for reckless behavior, such as shooting at alligators, while blaming corporate incompetence and AI for devaluing labor. Pool asserts the system is breaking down because companies cannot afford high replacement costs amidst low wages, predicting a demographic collapse as Generation Alpha enters a workforce unable to replace shrinking skilled labor pools without an economic miracle. [Automatically generated summary]
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And it's not just because we got this crazy story of Clavicular shooting an alligator and then getting arrested for assault and also opening fire in the Everglades with no backstop and also shooting at drones.
Now, I do think it's entirely possible that all of this is fake staged.
They could be using blanks.
I doubt it.
But I don't know for sure.
In the age of social media, everything is fake and gay.
And that's partly why I'm saying Gen Z is cooked.
It's not because y'all are doing anything wrong, but we've got Gen Z talking about quitting.
Gen Z women are doing OnlyFans like crazy.
They're not making money.
They're not saving for anything.
And then you get people like this.
This dude is a functional retard, right?
And maybe it's all an act.
And that would, I mean, potentially could be the case, except he actually was arrested.
This is being propped up because shock content is the only way to get attention.
So in this video, he's being investigated.
They're on, I think they're on like a hovercraft or a pontoon or something in the Everglades, shooting an alligator.
The rumor is they unloaded on it, killing it.
Some people have said, no, no, it was already dead.
Either way, you can't do that.
And if it is true, they're in trouble.
There's also a video of them shooting and they're saying, oh my God, there's people over there, which is probably not true as well.
It's all shock content.
But either way, they're opening fire into the Everglades with no backstop.
Now, after the fact, they might argue that they didn't have real ammo or anything like that, but it doesn't matter.
If a jury sees this, they're going to be like, reckless endangerment.
Shooting at a drone, whether it's yours or not, is a felony.
And it's, and this is the point.
I'll talk to you about what this guy did and whatever, but the main big picture that I'm bringing up is that young people are so desperate for attention and they can't get it without being psychopaths.
This dude is popping up all over the place because he is making content that depicts him as a sociopathic lunatic.
He hits himself in the face with a hammer.
I'll put it like this.
He had this video go viral where he wakes up in the morning and he's like, I bash my face with a hammer to fix his bones or whatever.
And he looks like a psychopath.
If Gen Z wants to get a degree of attention, this is what they're doing.
They're selling sex like crazy.
Or if you're a guy like Clavicular, you've got to do the most psychotic thing imaginable, claim to be on a massive drug cocktail, sterilizing yourself and shooting wildly into alligators and things like this.
Where is the Gen Z influencer who is basically doing normal things?
Doing normal things.
Now, certainly some of them exist, don't get me wrong, but Instagram and these other platforms are flooded with people trying to be influencers and they don't have the talent to do it.
Without the gift of Gab or anything just naturally interesting about themselves, this is what you get.
Because other than being a functional retard, and again, I'm not saying to be mean.
I'm saying functional retard as in he is a cognitively depressed individual, but he is capable of functioning in day-to-day life.
That generates shock content.
But what else does he have going for him?
He's a look smackser, right?
And that's it.
He's a, I think the police list him at 5'11.
Uh-oh, not six feet.
And that's it.
There's nothing particularly interesting other than him doing psychotic things.
So what hope is there for a Gen Z that can't afford houses, can't find jobs, and so they're giving up?
Indeed.
Let's show you the news, and we'll play the videos for you.
Again, I want to stress, I do think a lot of this is fake, and I think it's intentional shock content.
Lord Bebo says streamer Clavicular mag dumped an alligator live on stream and is now in trouble.
Kick banned him.
He was arrested.
He now faces felony charges with a possible five-year state prison sentence.
Here's the video, which you guys suspect is actually fake.
They blurred it, probably because it's fake, but who knows?
Here's the video.
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I'm going to say right away, they are shooting guns in the Everglades.
There's no backstop.
They are shooting straight into open fields.
It doesn't matter if, guys, it doesn't matter if it's someone's property, if it's, maybe they're using blanks, but I don't know why you'd make that assumption.
You can't do this.
This is the retardation and psychosis that we are getting from these younger influencers raised on this, on the social media machine where you have to keep one-upping everything to get any kind of attention and be an influencer.
I see these all over Instagram where there are people who are commenting on news and trying to make videos, but there's a million and one of you.
So who's going to watch it?
See a video and it's like a woman and she's holding the microphone and she's like, check this video out where a guy, and I'm like, yep, been there, done that.
We've already seen it.
I don't even need to watch you do it.
I can watch the video.
Here's the thing.
You need to know what is beyond when you are pointing your gun.
There are many rules.
Do not ever point something, point your weapon at something unless you intend to destroy it.
You're shooting targets.
There is an intention to shoot that target, though you don't expect it to get destroyed.
They are shooting into open fields.
They don't know what they are shooting at.
So again, unless this is all staged because they're, you know, that's what people do and they've bought a bunch of blanks, which I kind of doubt, but maybe, because you don't actually know.
I'll take that back.
They're not blanks.
You can see this.
You can't see the gator, but you can actually see the water splashing.
Yeah, those are not blanks.
They are committing crimes in this video.
Dude is going to go to prison for this.
Like, I'm sorry, dude, these people are absolutely nuts, but I'm not going to just leave it to Clav here.
We got this viral video.
TikToker brought a group of homeless people to Chili's, and this is what happened.
Welcome to Gen Z. 46% of Gen Z employees plan to quit and how to stop them.
Stop them.
Why would you do that?
Hey, we're cooked, ladies and gentlemen.
I know a lot of people are going to say, you know, it's going to get better, but I want to say a few things and we'll read through this stuff.
My friends, there's no Gen Alpha.
Gen Alpha is half the size of Gen Z. Gen Z are listless.
And I'm not saying every single Gen Z person.
We got a bunch of Gen Z people working here and they do a great job.
But too many of them, man.
What I will say is if you find yourself in Gen Z as an individual of sound rational mind, oh boy.
Oh, life's going to suck for you.
But you may actually pull ahead because you'll be one of the only people capable of making real money, I guess.
46% of Gen Z employees plan to quit.
They say, if you feel like you're on a hamster wheel right now trying to do everything in power to retain Gen Z, getting nowhere.
You're not alone.
Maybe you're at the point where you don't even want to try anymore.
I get it.
After all, even now, while you're planning your company holiday party and getting ready to ring in the new year, 46% of your Gen Z employees are ready to quit their jobs.
The majority of managers are truly trying everything, but here's a piece of advice.
Working hard is not the same thing as working smart.
You can spend millions on new products, motivational gurus, and company-wide retreats, but it won't always lead to solutions.
Gen Z isn't leaving your company or job hopping because they're bored or lacking for entertainment.
They don't need the Quidditch tournaments or the coffee bar.
I'm sorry, Harry Potter is a millennial thing, not a Gen Z thing.
Gen Z is looking for the nearest exit because they're exhausted.
After serving a thousand full-time U.S. professionals, Youngstown State University found that nearly half of Gen Z workers are already planning their exodus.
But surprisingly, this is not inherently due to a lack of compensation.
If anything, the main reason for their exit was the lack of growth opportunities.
Around one-third of those surveyed felt stalled in their careers, including 34% of millennials, 32% of Gen Z, and 28% of Gen X.
And when they were asked why they felt this way, 71% pointed to a lack of employer support for further education or training.
In short, the research revealed a compounding crisis, one that showed a broken system problem, not a Gen Z problem.
No, no, no.
I reject this.
I reject it outright.
I think there are a combination of factors of which this is correct, but there's more to the picture.
Unfortunately, I think a large portion of Gen Z are functional retards.
Don't get me wrong.
Millennials are worse.
Gen Z. I'm not singling you out.
I'm saying millennials are way worse.
Too many millennials are woke lunatics who don't know how to do work at all, communists or otherwise.
And so there is a portion of Gen Z that don't have the capabilities.
Let me tell you a story and we'll get sexist while we're at it, right?
So I remember I worked at, oh, I better be careful about this.
Some high-profile people might be involved.
I worked for a company and I was in a meeting where we were going over pitch ideas.
And, oh, boy, there were like eight guys and two women.
And they were like, what's the plan for our upcoming major sales event?
And the guys were like, I've been planning X. Manager's like, interesting.
Let's go over more.
It's like, well, you know, I was talking with Tim and he brought the subject up to me and then we kind of bounced ideas around.
So I put together this plan for it and he was like, that could be really good.
And then the women go, we were planning why.
And everyone goes, what?
That's a terrible idea.
I'm avoiding specifics, mind you.
It was a genuinely bad idea.
And they were like, I don't know if that's going to be effective or if people want to buy a product like that.
And the women were like, okay.
And then afterwards, the women complained the men won't listen to them.
And I was like, here's the problem.
At least in this capacity, the company hired women because they were supposed to, because of DEI.
At the time, it wasn't called DEI.
It was just, we don't have enough women here.
Where's the diversity?
It's all white guys.
So they bring in the women that they think are the best they could find.
And the women were bad at their jobs and then said, how come the men won't listen to me?
And it's like, listen, listen, lady, it's not because they're men.
It's because you're dumb.
There are plenty of smart women with this company who are very successful.
And the guys listen to everything they say.
But therein lies the problem of hiring women for the sake of being women.
There were smart women at the company.
They succeeded.
They were executives.
But these women they hired because they needed more women on the team were dumb.
So anyway, my point is this.
Now that, you know, tie right over.
You have, in my experience, a Gen Z that was raised on tablets and TV shows who don't have the high-level capacity.
Elon Musk talked about wanting to hire Indians because you can't find American talent.
And everybody got really mad.
And he's completely correct.
No, no, no, don't get me wrong.
He's not correct about H-1B.
He's correct about there being a lack of talent among young people.
Why do Gen Z, many of them, feel like there's no growth opportunities?
Because they're not good at what they do.
And so they say, there's no chance for me to get ahead.
Well, I'm sorry.
Many Gen Z, hold on, hold on.
Millennials are worse.
We've already established that baseline.
There are many Gen Z, because we're focusing on just Gen Z, who are just not worthy of advancement.
And so they're going to quit.
And the companies are like, but I need someone to wash the dishes.
Here's the point.
Some people are going to be garbage men.
Some people are going to be plumbers.
There's nothing wrong with doing those jobs.
But you've got a large portion of millennials in Gen Z.
And I'm not going to call millennials young people.
I'm 40 that feel entitled despite not having the capabilities worthy of those salaries.
And so what do you do?
Someone comes to you and they says, I have ambition.
And I say, but you don't have merit.
And they're like, oh, well, I'll prove you wrong.
And I'm like, please do so.
And then they don't.
Where are they now?
I would say the people that we've kept here at Timcast are all of the best and the brightest and the most talented.
And with all due respect, not everybody who's left this company was because they weren't good or smart.
We've just budget changes and things like this.
And of course, we're a small company.
So we only really hire the best as it is.
Everyone here, they're pretty good at what they do.
But for a big company, you got Gen Z coming in.
And this is just true no matter what.
You raise a generation being told that they're smart and capable and entitled and all of these things, and then they're not.
Like they're not capable of maintaining that.
What do you think is going to happen?
Truth be told, you can't replace managers with Honduran farmers.
So opening the border is not going to fix anything.
Here's what they say.
You may be thinking to yourself, I heavily invested in my Gen Z employees.
Perhaps you even offered them online memberships on LinkedIn or whatever.
Shouldn't this be enough?
Youngstown State study, Youngstown State study, that's a word, also found that 76% of Gen Z cite costs as one of the most significant barriers to growth.
In fact, for many, it's the primary barrier.
Even when they have access to educational resources, they still can't afford the $2,000 industry certification.
They need to prove their expertise.
So in essence, the online learning tools that your company offers aren't aiding your employees.
So what can you do that works?
How can you rethink Gen Z career development to help your employees go from burnout to productivity?
Well, I'll give you two strategies you can use.
They say close the certification gap, blah, For your employees to progress, even within your company, they need tangible proof that their knowledge has credibility.
And many companies are realizing this and making changes to reflect this reality.
Companies that are funding the journey, Amazon, Chase, Boeing, et cetera, according to Gout, the cost of replacing an individual employee can range from one half to two times the employee's annual salary.
And they were like, hey, let's do this youth thing for Spanish language.
And they were like, well, we don't really want to do Spanish language.
And they're like, why don't we do a little bit of both?
It will be a principally English speaking.
What they found was they were like, hey, you know what the thing is?
Young Spanish people, they speak English.
Like young Spanish speakers actually speak English.
We can kind of do a one-off and just make one company.
And so that's why they reached out to me.
I worked at Vice.
I was the founding member of Vice News, the principal reason why they launched it, according to Shane Smith.
I went to them and negotiated and pitched this news program.
And then they said, we're going to build this.
And so they came to me and said, We want to take you and bring it here.
Here's the problem.
All of these young people, millennials in their late 20s, were dumb as a box of rocks.
They were just so dumb.
Holy crap, were they dumb?
And this is just young people in general.
And I'm sitting here looking around, being like, nobody here has a functional brain.
Are they just hiring retards?
I was the only one at the company that got views on content.
The president actually tells me this.
I go in and I'm like, I get like 50,000 views on my YouTube videos.
And he was like, yeah, you're the only one getting traffic.
And I'm like, why won't you listen to me?
Well, because the people who are running it were also functional retards.
So now for Vice, I can understand this.
The people who ran it were Gen Xers, and their worldview was built on accomplishing the Gen X mountaintop.
So for Shane and his cohort, they said, We want to be on TV.
We want TV.
We want movies.
And for me, as a millennial, I was like, the internet is everything.
So they hired me and other people who did a great job, but their view was always: one day we'll get TV.
They used the internet as a stepping stone.
And oh boy, ultimately, in the end, it just the internet wasn't the stepping stone, you know, it was the future.
So for that reason, man, did they burn down?
But also, they went woke.
Here's what I see: right?
Man, 30% of teenagers surveyed said they had ever had relations, down from 54% to Dickens Prior.
We have a snow plow parenthood problem.
When I was a kid, go outside, ride the bike, come home when the streetlights turn on.
So I'm like seven years old riding my bike around my neighborhood.
That was it.
Came home and my parents were like, oh, you're back.
Went out some.
Now you go outside and there was a kid who I think was like 10 and he was walking one mile to go to a dollar general and they called the police.
10 years old.
They called the police and they had the mom arrested over it.
So what do you think that turns into?
Millennials are split.
Gen Z getting worse.
And I think Gen Alpha is going to be cooked, but maybe the system breaks, life gets hard, and then you get this bifurcation.
Here's what I see: companies are failing.
There's not enough workers.
Many young people in Gen Z feel entitled to better jobs.
And I will tell you this: it's not all because they are entitled.
Some Gen Z are entitled and completely incapable.
I think there's a large portion of this.
And you can also take a look, as we mentioned, like the opening of the segment with the clavicular stuff.
I think that's patently obvious that they're desperate and we're willing to do anything to make money because the normal means don't seem to make it.
But the issue is: how do you buy a house?
How do you have a family?
How do you accomplish life things?
The other thing I think is affecting Gen Z, which it did affect millennials, is value misalignment.
Meaning, we were raised to value bad things.
So you're getting a Gen Z that's being told to value attention and being looked at instead of building something substantive and making money.
Some Gen Z have gotten there and already got rich.
Some have gotten rich for weird reasons.
Some are trying to get rich and build fame through the stupidest and craziest of reasons.
But where does it come down?
To where it really matters is in the workplace.
So I see two big things happening.
For these young people, you have genuine, talented, and intelligent Gen Z, but they can't find good jobs because there are very few.
Competition is insane.
And so when you have, let me tell you from an employer's perspective, here's a challenge.
We want to, oh man, we want to find a film producer right now.
Someone who understands how to use AI and can film with the camera and do video editing.
Damn near impossible to find.
It's a sea of noise.
There's one big thing, and that is you don't need to hire anybody.
Or I'm sorry, I'm sorry, you don't need to be hired by anybody.
A young person who has all these skills says, me, I'll do it myself.
And so they make their own channels and they'll try and figure out how to make revenue.
And, you know, good for them.
That's fine.
So when we go to talented people and say, we need people who will work, they say, I don't need this anymore.
So the ability to actually grow a larger company is getting harder because a young person would rather make slightly less money knowing that they're their own boss.
I respect it.
So then you end up with people who have substantially less talent and because they can't do it on their own.
But you don't want to hire those people because they can't do the job.
The problem for many young people is that they might have middling talent.
And I don't mean middling consulting.
I'm saying like they're an average talent and they're like, listen, but I need to make six figures so I can have my own place.
How am I supposed to buy insurance and get a car if I'm not making enough money?
And I'm like, that's true, but what you produce doesn't make that much money.
That's why I think AI is a nuclear bomb.
It's going to wipe everything out.
It's making it so, it's making it increasingly difficult to generate revenue in a variety of fields.
So now a young person says, what does this job pay?
And I say, listen, we're losing money on that job.
The money has to come from somewhere.
And so when you come here, you do this work.
We apply it to our machine to try and generate revenue so that we can pay you.
Well, here's the issue.
You have to invest, right?
And then it turns out the maximum amount that you can generate off an individual's labor is less than what they would need to survive.
That is a crisis for the United States.
And I'm not just talking about content because media is getting blown out.
But many jobs are not going to pay as much as the individual needs.
So I saw this video where it said, good luck hiring Gen Z females.
And it's probably fake, but she's doing an interview.
And the guy says, the job pays, the salaries are between 70, 90,000 a year.
And because you're experienced on the lower end, we'd open you up to around the mid-70s, maybe 75,000 per year, I think would be appropriate.
And she says, I think I'm worth $180,000.
He's like, excuse me?
I'm sorry, but we don't pay that much.
And she goes, well, I'm worth it.
And he's like, okay, thanks for your time.
Here's the reality.
70, 80k per year is not enough money for a Gen Z person, for anybody, to get married, buy a house and have kids.
And it needs to be.
So if the company can't pay it and the young person can't work for it, what are you doing?
Indeed.
This is the breaking of the system.
So that ultimately brings me back to the whole clavicular thing.
I'm not saying he is the most influential guy ever.
I actually don't think he is.
I think Aiden Ross has substantially more followers and notoriety.
But this is a man with no talent, no charisma.
What can you do to succeed?
And I think he epitomizes everything.
Again, I'm stressing this.
He gets more and more famous from videos like this.
People learn his name.
They say, who is this guy?
My point is, if you are not talented or capable, you don't know how to run a business and you're a young man.
Well, you're not going to be able to be an online hooker on OnlyFans like many young women are doing.
And most of them not even making money.
You have to be the male version, which is a shock lunatic shooting up an alligator, fighting people, causing scenes, and clip farming.
And eventually you will spiral out burnout and get fried or go to jail like this guy.
What is a Gen Z person supposed to do if moderate talent is not going to make you enough money to succeed?
Gen Z is largely checking out, as Forbes already explained.
And this is an old article, by the way.
Let me get the date on it.
It's not from December of 2025.
It's from several months ago.
We know it's happening.
And they're saying you need to give them a light at the end of the tunnel.
It's like, okay, well, they're not going to be able to have a family.
Like, what do you expect is going to happen?
And then the truth is for the business, if you're not making money, what can you do?
So it's an economic thing.
This goes to Trump and the Iran war to a certain degree.
Trump's strategy for fixing the economy is taking control of the global energy infrastructure so that we get more for less.
And then all of a sudden the economy is roaring because we're flooding our own market with free oil.
Indeed.
But what I think we are going to end up seeing is just a listless Gen Z followed by a desperate and microscopic Gen Alpha.
Generation Alpha, now 15, actually 14, 15 years old, yeah.
In the next few years, they should be entering the skilled labor market.
Actually, it's supposed to be happening right now.
But they're not because they don't exist.
In 2008, I was 22 years old.
That's when the historical average, I should have had my first child, who would now be crazy, right?
Turning 18 years old, already having entered the low-skilled labor market and then inheriting the entry-level positions of this country.
Going to school, maybe, but probably not, but getting a job and working at a cafe or, you know, low-skilled labor.
If I had a son, he'd be doing labor jobs, a daughter, she'd be doing service jobs.
But I didn't have kids and I didn't know it at the time.
But the issue was that when the market collapsed, I just said, eh, what does it matter to me?
I've been poor the whole time.
I've been broke the whole time.
Now everyone else is broke.
What does that matter?
What matters is that had I known I was supposed to be entering the mid-skill level in my 20s.
I mean, look, professional athletes, they're like 19, 20 years old.
Yes, this is when young people are supposed to be entering this low to mid-level where they're making a salary and they say, I'm going to buy my first home.
I'm going to find a place to live.
I'm going to establish myself, have a family, have kids.
And it did not happen.
So now there's no young people.
There's no Gen Alpha.
We are not going to be able to replace the entry-level workers because Honduran farmers can't be mid-level managers.
The response they give is, no, no, don't worry.
AI will replace the white-collar jobs we've lost.
But then I'm going to stress, AI is not going to be buying Taco Bell on the weekends.
It's not going to be going for lunch at your restaurants.
Gen Alpha being half the size of Gen Z means no customers, meaning businesses will start collapsing and no civilization has ever been able to recover from this.
Trump's strategy, we're going to get the oil and make America great again.
Simply put.
I don't know for sure, my friends, but what a silly way to explain that we face a generational talent crisis, managerial crisis, and population collapse.
No better example than a crackpot dude who whacks himself in the face in the morning with a hammer, so he claims, takes a variety of drugs, sterilized himself, and then is on camera shooting wildly into open air and into the air illegally, and now has been arrested for assault and may get arrested for a variety of other crimes because he's desperate for attention and they prop it up.
Holy crap.
We are so cooked.
I'm going to wrap it there, my friends.
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