Population Decline or the U.S. shrinks for the first time
The Flippening or 2030 demographics
OG Unc or the AAVE origins of the term
Unc Status or old twentysomethings
Aura Alignment Chart or unc discourse
Age Vibe or "feeling old"
BRIC transhumanism or Xi and Putin’s hot mic
This year, for the first time in history, the United States population is on track to decline. As a result, the old will soon outnumber the young, an event analyst Marko Jukic calls "the flippening". What will this mean? The most obvious implications are already happening:
Politics will cater to retirees more than to families.
Life milestones and family formation will be delayed.
Culture will be more nostalgic and less dynamic.
The world will feel more stuck.
Change will happen more slowly.
For the boomers, the original Peter Pan generation, this has lead to a state of affairs where everyone seems young to them, their forty-year-old millennial offspring included. The median age of an American is 39, after all. The median age—the middle age—of Americans hovered around 30 when millennials were born in the late twentieth century.
There is something to the sentiment that the forties are the new thirties.
The boomers grew up in an era of plentiful youth. There were so many of them that the median age trended downward for a period, from 1955 to 1970. The sweeping cultural change of midcentury America was downstream of this. As the largest demographic cohort from about 1960 to 2020, boomer tastes dictated both culture and politics. Anna Wintour and Donald Trump were both born in the 1940s.
But even the boomers aren’t immortal. Trump will be replaced by J.D. Vance, born 1984. Anna Wintour is being replaced by Chloe Malle, born 1985. We will feel the flippening when those in their late seventies are abruptly replaced by up-and-comers in their early forties.
The flippening is millennials becoming unc.
The term "unc"—short for uncle—has its origins in AAVE or African American Vernacular English. A viral video from X defines as "unc" as someone between the ages of 36 to 44. The median age of an American lands squarely in the middle of unc territory.
But as with all internet schematics, the precise age of an unc is up for debate. Another post insists, "1999-2004 mfs are sad about reaching unc status because now they’re trapped in here with me…"
They used to say never trust anyone over thirty. According to unc discourse, the bar has been lowered to between twenty and twenty-five.
In an ironic twist, for younger Americans, Gen Z and below, everyone seems old. As youth becomes a rare commodity, it is guarded all the more jealously. Only 35% of Americans are under 25.
According to this X-sourced alignment chart, the opposite of an unc is a jit, or kid.
The "chopped unc" is a bigger circle, encompassing "washed millennials" as well recent college grads. The "goated jits" are below the waterline, invisible to the unc masses.
Last week, I went I went to a meme opera featuring giant Italian brainrot characters, corporate mascots, and the TikTok rapper, Jay Guapo. A launch event for the NFT project Pudgy Penguins’ new mobile game, Pudgy Party, the stage featured Pax and Polly, giant plush penguins twerking along to trap music. Tung Sahur, a giant stick from an Indonesian legend, and Ballerina Cappuccina, a dancer with a tea cup for a head, mingled with the brand mascots. Periodically, the stage would flood with hangers-on from the rappers crew, then be cleared out by event security.
The event was fourteen and up and came with all that entailed: no alcohol served on site and some especially young attendees were accompanied by their bewildered parents. Nevertheless, the scent of marijuana hung in the air, a fight broke out on stage, and I was left with the feeling that somewhere in the building an eleven-year-old was probably getting high. For the most part, the style was obvious, defined by the cheap streetwear looks that seem to spawn endlessly on Canal Street: shorts and Nike Dunks, graphic tees and clingy, midriff-bearing going-out tops. What stood out was the no-pants look pioneered by Kanye in 2022: tights with oversized hockey jerseys or cardigans, paired with Yeezy slides. It reminded me of the no-pants-just-tights look that dominated downtown in the late 2000s, only this time on young men instead of young women.
A friend insisted Jay Guapo ruled the internet—at least for this week. When I looked him up on Instagram, I was confused. He only had 600K followers, which seemed low for ruling the internet. When I searched on TikTok, I found he had over 3M. That was more in line with my expectations and seemed like yet another signal that the Meta platform’s role in defining youth culture had already jumped the shark.
Instagram was unc.