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CJC Alum Creates Popular 1990s Microgenerational Facebook Gathering Place

Matt Duffy, University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications online master’s student, is profiled in “Zillennial Advocate Sparks Facebook Boom Promoting His 1990s Microgeneration” published in Florida Today on May 4.

Created by Duffy, “Born Zillenial” is designed to attract those who are too young to feel millennial and are too old for Generation Z. Members include a microgeneration of people born between 1992 and 1998. Fueled by an October 2020 viral TikTok promotional video, Born Zillennial has zoomed to more than 162,200 Facebook members from 99 countries.

“An overall trend of the group is sort of feeling lost — and stuck between the two generations. You don’t know where you go. Lost in college, your major, your career path or during a pandemic,” said Duffy, who is 23. “And this community is, if anything, justifying those feelings and seeing that they’re not alone,” he said.

Born Zillennial is a celebration of pop culture memories including celebrities, television shows, music, fashion, movies, video games, food and consumer products. What launched as a fall semester project for his social media community management course, now has seven social media moderators and two friends helping with newsletters, podcasts and other platforms. He recently launched a website, bornzillennial.com, and started selling branded merchandise.

“With quarantine and COVID and everything, we lost those face-to-face communities. So I think really at its core, we were sort of forced into finding ways to connect online,” Duffy said. “It just started to become a whole, ‘I don’t know if I’m a millennial, I don’t know if I’m Gen Z.’ And I guess no one really talked about it. It was never a thing. And I think it has become a bigger conversation online,” he said.

Duffy said navigating the COVID-19 pandemic during young adulthood represents a defining moment for zillennials.

“We definitely have to be on our toes. We’re finding new ways to survive in a post-grad pandemic world. So I think that’s a big theme,” Duffy said. “We’re going to get through it, and we’re going to do it together. And it’s going to be OK on the other side. And that’s why I think we’re feeling so nostalgic for the good old days, because today maybe doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel like we thought it would. So we’re sort of clinging on to the familiar, and reminiscing on that.”

Duffy created the Born Zillennial Facebook Group as part of a semester-long project for his Social Media Community Management course.

 

Posted: May 5, 2021
Category: Alumni News, College News
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