Dead & Buried

Hey.

Hi.

I see you.

Mm-hmm.

I'll be right with you.

Just stand behind the yellow line, please.

Um, thank you.

This, this line here.

Let's see.

Oh, honey, there's a problem.

You're not supposed to be here.

No, I, I'm, I'm just visiting.

This is heaven, honey doesn't work that way.

Uh, no.

I, I came to meet someone.

If this is about Betty White.

I can tell you right now, her schedule's booked, so, so you should, No, I'm actually here to meet you.

Oh, okay.

Yeah Great well That was Taryn Smith, known to many as an actress, model and the 2022 Miss New York, but she's known to even more people as Denise, Heaven's receptionist.

She's gone viral on TikTok by performing skits about what happens after you die.

Not exactly the content that you think people would be hungry for, but her target audience includes a generation that has acquired a truly unique view towards death and dying.

Generation Z, for those of you who don't know, generally defined as folks who were born between the mid to late 1990s and the early 2010s.

Every generation has its own relationship with death.

In the 1940s and the fifties, the generation now known as the greatest generation was defined by the grief and loss of World War II.

After them The baby boomers faced the violence and unrest of the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War, and between the recession and 9/11, let's just say there are a lot of anxious millennials out there.

And now faced with new realities, a once in a lifetime pandemic, unprecedented gun violence.

Rising rates of depression and more ways to connect than ever.

Gen Z is developing its own unconventional ways to cope with death.

They've created groups for the survivors of school shootings.

There are camps where folks are given the tools to grieve and heal, and they've even learned how to talk about death with humor in front of everybody like Denise does.

Excuse me.

Whatever it is that you're doing, could you wrap it up?

It's almost time for my break.

Yeah.

Anyway, I'm Curly Velasquez and this is Dead and Buried.

Gen Z tends to think about dying differently because their generation has been informed by death in ways unlike any other.

Three quarters of Gen Z spend most of their free time online.

57% of Gen Z get their news from social media platforms, and they use their phones twice as much as people over 45.

The proliferation of news and information has been pivotal for each generation's understanding of the world around them.

But Gen Z faces the unique challenge of being born with unparalleled access.

To information in real time, right in the palm of their hand, and it's not all cat videos and dance trends.

They've grown up exposed to graphic accounts of police brutality and experienced the whole world struggling with the deadly effects of Covid 19.

While earlier, generations grew up going through drills about tornadoes or nuclear attacks at school, one of the most impactful lessons that Gen Z learned at school was how to survive a mass shooting.

Winter BreeAnne is a Gen Z youth advocate at the intersection of social justice, politics and culture.

In 2018, she led the national school walkout that took place after the mass shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Since then, she's also created Black Is Lit, a social media platform dedicated to highlighting the uplifting stories from black communities for winter and fellow Gen Z-ers.

The daily threat of school violence has shaped views on death and life.

I think on one hand you are consistently fed images and media of death, of school shootings, of police violence, of communal violence.

After a while, it can desensitize you if you're not careful.

Tell me, like what inspired you to get involved in activism against gun violence?

Well, for me it was really the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012 and Michael Brown in 2014.

Our timeline here on this earth is very short and it's so precious.

It's something that shouldn't be taken for granted.

It's made me live more urgently by also like leading with love.

And leading with care.

You never know if you're someone's last interaction or you're someone's last meaningful conversation.

I certainly think about, um, when Maya Angelou would say like, people won't remember the things that you did, but they'll remember how they felt around you.

And I think that even moving in the world in that sort of way, can cause a ripple effect of goodness to continue to spread throughout.

But I wanted to also know too, like how has the internet allowed survivors of school violence to come together and grieve and heal?

In terms of the healing process Social media has allowed us to connect with people of similar experiences in a way that we've never been able to before.

I did grow up in a very multi-generational household.

What I learned from that at a young age was that there is.

Power and value in my voice as a young person.

And there's also power in intergenerational community.

And so when it comes to organizing and activism, it's like more important now than ever that young people are a part of the conversation about what tomorrow looks like, because.

We are the now, but we're also the tomorrow.

But while this generation experienced widespread and systemic trauma, it's also showing more frankness and candor when it comes to handling depth.

Rhea Varghese studied at McMaster University where her focus was social attitudes towards health.

disease and death.

In 2021, she conducted a survey of members of Gen Z to better understand how they think and feel about death.

For my generation, most people said in my survey, they think about death a lot.

They talk to other people about death a lot, so it's very much in their faces.

What a lot of people said was simply, social media's influence.

You're kind of seeing a lot of death on social media.

People are more open to talking about it.

There's nothing that's a taboo topic anymore.

People are ready to jump into anything they want at the end of the day.

Do you find that there is less fear of death?

As I'm sure you're aware, we're going through a pandemic right now and there was a lot of death, very much in the news, so a lot more fear.

Was really very much represented in my survey.

The survey also came out after the murder of George Floyd, so there was a lot of social justice movements.

So this idea of what a good death looks like versus a bad death.

How privilege itself is very much intertwined in the concept of death.

We have disproportionate bad deaths when it comes to members of the two S.L.G.B.T.Q I.A population, people who are racialized.

We don't recognize how privilege truly does follow you even into the way that you die and experience death.

What special considerations are there for helping people under 30 process grief as opposed to older people?

Just not making assumptions on how someone should take apart their grief, how they should live with their grief.

Just let them do what they need to do, and I think that's how we should approach everything.

At the end of the day.

Members of Gen Z, like Rhea are openly curious about how their generation processes death and grief, but it's also on the forefront of adding levity to heavy topics.

If you don't spend a lot of time with Gen Zers, you should know that their sense of humor is notorious for being dark, cynical, and a little weird, in a good way.

And this sideways take on humor has served the generation well as a sort of coping mechanism in a world that feels increasingly irrational.

Gen Z responds with funny memes and irreverent internet culture references, which brings us back to Taryn.

Hi, miss the Lincoln, how are, you?

it's no problem, Abraham.

So you want two seats in the viewing summit, to watch over your great, great, great grandkids this afternoon.

No problem.

Okay, you're all set up.

I got you in.

The front row Here's your ticket, but don't worry, they're not box seats.

Okay.

Sorry.

Why do you think that the character resonates so deeply with so many people?

Why do you think it's so popular?

Because death and thinking about death and what happens after death, I think it is one of the most singular, most universal experiences.

I had never thought when I started playing with this character that it would become this outlet, um, for grief, but also the source of comfort for people.

Um, and that means so much to me.

I feel very strongly, no matter what belief system you have, there's this consistency of, you know, love, um, and forgiveness.

Um, in the after life.

What's the line for you in trying not to make it irreverent?

I've noticed that Denise seems to really give people license to.

deal with grief, with humor.

I've had so many messages and these ones always hit me the hardest.

Somebody said, I just lost my dad, and this is the first time that I've laughed in a couple weeks.

Thank you so much.

I've always dealt with the hardest things in my life in humor I mean, when I have been at my lowest generally, I'm probably gonna make a joke about it.

I think that there is, there is a level of joy and absurdity to all things in life.

I think life, honestly is kind of absurd.

And so why wouldn't the afterlife be infused with humor too?

Maybe we can learn from these Gen Z baddies.

I'm a millennial i'm trying.

Look, no social construct or human issue is left unexamined by Gen Z, not even death.

And through them we can learn a deeper appreciation for life.

And sure, we might give you flack for co-opting millennial culture.

I'm just saying you're gonna regret those low-rise genes 'cause Lord knows what you do, but live your best life bestie.

'cause at the end of the day, we all end up in the same place.

Dead and buried.

Excuse me.

By the way, if you still wanna see Betty White, she had a cancellation in the schedule and she's down the hole in the margarita room, so if you wanna see it, now's a chance.

Oh, hell yeah.

Oh, am I allowed to say hell here, Betty?