Every so often, a piece of media comes along that quietly shifts the culture. The Godfather, Pulp Fiction… Dakota Johnson’s Architectural Digest house tour. For me, it was Rachel Sennott’s infamous “What? It’s LA!” TikTok. If your brain isn’t fully softened by the internet (can’t relate), let me enlighten you: the clip saw a 20-something Sennott twirling around to Azealia Banks’s “212” while throwing out gems such as, “I’m addicted to drugs... we all are.” Allegedly, this was the 30-second fever dream that spawned Sennott’s new HBO series, I Love LA, in which we watch a bunch of 27-year-olds make questionable personal and professional choices against a backdrop of Instagram apology videos and slogan tees.
If Sex and the City was for Gen X and Girls was for Millennials, I Love LA is for Zillennials, the wayward middle children of the internet age. In the good year of 2025, we’ve been collectively brow-beaten into looking down our noses at Gen Z and their anti-social ways, while laughing at Millennials’ ankle socks and awkward pauses. But what about the in-between generation of multi-hyphenates and freelance creatives? Google calls Zillennials the generation who grew up with “the family desktop in a common area, requiring knowledge of clearing browser history.” As someone who had a Club Penguin Premium account and still has a deep appreciation for Britney’s Blackout era, I would count myself comfortably in this camp.
Given the above, the characters in I Love LA are painfully familiar. Whether it’s the Balenciaga bag and declined Monzo charge or the affinity for vague self-help affirmations and the soundbite dialogue, in I Love LA, Sennott has captured the Zillennial condition in all of its dead-eyed, Stories-watching glory.
I am, of course, biased. Everyone wants to be in on the joke, and as a 27-year-old who works in fashion and occasionally wears Tabis, I like to think of myself as the target audience for the Dilara Findikoglu references and Wildflower phone cases. I, too, have a graveyard of dead vapes by my bed and love going for over-priced, dimly lit dinners, so to see it played out on the screen—arguably for the first time—affirms the campy absurdity woven into it all.
Recently, I’ve found myself doubling down on the Zillennial literature: Zoe Dubno’s Happiness and Love, Anika Jade Levy’s Flat Earth, and Honor Levy’s My First Book, all of which felt a little too close to home. The anxiety-inducing accounts of evenings spent among self-proclaimed artists and thinkers in Dubno’s novel in particular felt eerily accurate, disgustingly relatable, and made me want to delete social media and block anyone with an Eames chair or a Red Scare Patreon subscription.
On the flipside, I Love LA hasn’t had the same effect. Maybe it’s the light-hearted tone, or maybe it’s because it’s set in LA, which isn’t a serious place, but the series has left me feeling weirdly affectionate towards these car-crash characters, bringing to mind culturally essential shows like Absolutely Fabulous. Sennott’s LA natives may be delusional and shallow, but I have a soft spot for their tacky, overblown ways, in the same way I do for Harvey Nicks-obsessive Edina and Stoli-swinging Patsy. The world is a bleak and scary place these days, and personally, I’d rather indulge in a bit of absurdity when possible, rather than reflect on how adrift, aimless, and generally screwed us Zillenials are.
Sennott—voice of a generation (or a voice, of a generation)—understands this. I Love LA is a reminder that, although landing a Marc Jacobs Heaven campaign might not cure the existential malaise, it might just soothe the spiritual decay for a little while longer.