- A Gen Z comedian satirized millennials for their attempts at a wedding video trend on TikTok.
- He went on to suggest they liked "Hannah Montana" and would chastise Gen Z about home ownership.
A Gen Z TikTok comedian went in on millennials and racked up millions of views on TikTok, but many felt he'd totally missed the mark on the generational stereotypes.
Mark Gaetano goes by @snarkymarky and has 4.5 million followers on TikTok where he posts comedy content including more parodies of the generational differences, from Gen Z's take on tattoos, to millennials on social media. Although he has said in at least one comment that he is in his 30s, this appears to be a joke as his bio lists him as being 21, and a profile of him in Paper Magazine published in 2020 listed his age at the time as being 18.
On October 7, Gaetano posted a video with an on-screen caption where he mocked millennials who attempted a popular wedding TikTok format, in which bridal parties jump in the air in casual clothes and the clip is edited to show them landing in their dresses. Gaetano recreated the effect in a deliberately clunky way to mimic those who struggled to get it right.
@snarkymarky They’re always ten seconds off #millennialsoftiktok #comedy ♬ som original - Lay
The video blew up with 6.3 million views and over 7,000 comments, including one popular response from a self-described millennial who admitted it was both hilarious and accurate. However, many other comments, presumably from millennials, said they felt "attacked" by the video.
A day later, Gaetano stitched his own video playing a character that appeared to be a parody of those responding, introducing himself as an "offended millennial."
@snarkymarky #stitch with @mark acting so angry over a joke PLEASE calm down #comedy #millennialsoftiktok ♬ original sound - mark
"Worry about the fact that you can't read or write cursive, the fact that you don't know who Hannah Montana is, and the fact that you'll never be able to buy a home," he said while in character.
The video received 3.1 million views and thousands of comments, many of which argued he'd totally confused the perspectives of different generations.
"There is NO way hannah Montana is a millennial thing," one viewer wrote in a popular comment that received over 11,700 likes.
Multiple users responded to this comment in agreement as they wrote they had grown up in the early 2000s, and had watched "Hannah Montana." The Disney show, which aired between 2006 and 2011, was especially popular among Gen Zers who recently embraced a TikTok trend called "Miley Stewart summer," in which they escaped to the countryside to unwind, in reference to the plot of the 2009 film "Hannah Montana: The Movie."
Gaetano told Insider he has noticed that some millennials or older Gen Z are fans of the show, and let it "define their childhood."
Some millennials also took issue with the suggestion that they would call out younger people for not being able to afford their own home, highlighting their own struggles with the housing market, and pointing to older generations such as Gen X who were having an easier ride with buying property.
"Lol us millennials can't buy homes either don't worry," one viewer wrote in a top-liked comment.
Just 20% of millennials who responded to a survey published by real-estate-technology firm Opendoor in 2022 could afford a down payment on a house, while nearly half of millennial respondents who didn't already own a home weren't sure if they'd ever buy one, Insider previously reported.
"Do y'all even know any millennials because no one I know acts like this," a further viewer wrote in a popular comment.
Gaetano told Insider his videos are intended to be satirical, and he didn't take this one seriously, he just wanted to poke fun at "the sort of authority over Gen Z some Millennials boast in their TikTok videos."
"Anyone who is overly mad should maybe learn to laugh at themselves," he said. "When Gen Alpha inevitably makes the same types of videos about Gen Z, I'll be sure to view them and laugh along at them. It's okay to laugh at yourself!"
Impressions of millennials are nothing new on TikTok, as users share their view on how the age bracket views the world, as well as breaking down millennial fashion choices and self-deprecating humor. These videos are popular on the app, and inter-generational divides are often a source of humor and debate.
For more stories like this, check out coverage from Insider's Digital Culture team here.