I'm a Gen Zer who went undercover for 3 weeks as a Gen Xer on TikTok — a lot of their jokes went over my head

• I'm 23 years old, and I went undercover as a 50-year-old TikTok user to see what Gen X is watching
• It took time for the algorithm to tailor my feed before I was getting parent jokes and silly skits.

As a 23-year-old, I consider myself an elder Gen Zer who understands references from both 30-year-olds and teenagers, but Gen X and its sense of humor stumped me.

I spent almost a month scrolling a foreign TikTok "For You" page with a new account set to my birthday — except 50 years ago, in 1973. I created the alternative profile so that I could browse the content of Gen X — those born between 1965 and 1981 — and compare it to my Gen Z-focused feed that caters to those born between 1997 and 2012.

The younger generation has become dependent on the app that many of us — myself included — use as a search engine for recipes, honest reviews, and restaurant recommendations. It made me curious to see how people my mom's age use TikTok since there are only estimates on how much each generation is using the app.

It took some time to identify the content more fitting for Gen X because the "For You" feed for new TikTok accounts mostly features viral videos and motivational speeches. But I scrolled for weeks through parenting content, skits about work, and "Gen X Thought of the Day" videos until my experiment finally landed me among older users.

Here's what a few weeks on the other side taught me.

Gen X has quite a few complaints

As I scrolled TikTok undercover as a 50-year-old, it seemed like most of the humorous content centered around incompetent coworkers, bratty children, and making fun of other generations.

Gen Zers don't take themselves too seriously, but, at the same time, we know when it's time to speak up for change and advocate for ourselves. That said, I found that Gen Z's humor on TikTok relies less on complaining about others and more on making jokes about our own personal experiences.

Even work-related content from the younger generation is less about bad bosses and more about our anxiety surrounding making work friends. Typical Gen Zers work on their own terms and are not afraid to ditch a job to find a more fulfilling one.

Gen Z keeps it painfully real

Gen Z is often the butt of its own jokes. "You're so real for this" is one of the highest compliments a creator can receive from Gen Z viewers — meaning the content is authentic and unfiltered.

In popular content on the Gen Z side of TikTok, creators often make themselves the punchline in scenarios meant to be relatable to viewers. It was a pattern I didn't recognize on Gen X's TikTok, where a lot of the videos involved the creator griping about something or someone else.

Even with parenting content, I found myself identifying more with the teenagers they were complaining about than the creators themselves. I often understood the jokes I was seeing, but the punchlines sometimes fell flat.

Both generations probably grew up too fast

One user I found, therealslimsherri, is a self-proclaimed "Level 50 Gen Xer" with more than 600,000 TikTok followers. Her content includes the "Gen X Thought of the Day" series, which hits on growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, comparisons to other generations, and how "times have changed."

One "Gen X Thought of the Day" installment, which received more than 3 million views, said that Gen X adults "refuse to grow up" because they were forced to be independent at a very young age.

"We're like the Benjamin Buttons of the world, we're only going backwards with age," the 50-year-old said.

The sentiment is something Gen Z can understand possibly more than Gen Xers realize. Access to the internet and widespread information pushed many to mature faster as Gen Z learned at a quicker rate than others. More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic hit Gen Z harder than any other generation when it comes to stress.

Now, at the end of my time on Gen X TikTok, I've learned a lot more about the generation that raised me and my millennial siblings. I think both generations joined the app to make ourselves and others smile, and Gen X has achieved that on their of TikTok.