Instead of even trying to chase jobs that seem out of reach, Gen Z is embracing living like a rat—not showering or leaving the house for days at a time.
The millennial era of “work hard, play harder” and “girl bossing” has given way to a new trend. In China, at least, Gen Zers are proudly calling themselves “rat people”—they’re spending entire days procrastinating in bed, scrolling on their phones, snoozing and ordering take out.
I think it has something to do with “giving up” on the economy: if you have very low chances of landing a job anyways, why even try?
The article does not directly tell us how many people participate in this movement consciously. It does hint, however:
Today, over 4 million American Gen Zers remain jobless. In China, the government has said that as of February, 1 in 6 young people are unemployed.
I do agree that activism is required here and it maybe China is really stuck at progressing here as activism is basically illegal. The one case of animals activism that I know (posted in another comment) is zoo employees rising up against awful zoo conditions and animal torture and anti shark fin soup lead by Yao Ming and some other pop stars.
Animal activism just doesn’t really exist in China and it really might be the only way to progress this medium.
I’m honestly quite disappointed in Buddhism here. Chinese follow Mahayana branch of Buddhism (same as Japan, Vietnam etc.) Which aims to “help all beings to achieve buddhism” and yet animal rights are non existant and they perform all these rituals of releasing a fish or smt but never do any real action. Just shows how deeply rooted this issue is.