Gen-Z vocabulary is a rich, ever-expanding tapestry befitting of the damn Canterbury Tales. From “mid” to “cringe” to “rizz” to “sus,” the generation has created a cottage industry out of inventing new, bite-sized words to enrich our day-to-day communications.
However, once in a while, they’ll throw a curveball, innovating a term so atypical of their prior work, that society doesn’t understand it at first.
Their latest curveball, my friends, is the term hagmaxxer.
So, what’s a hagmaxxer? And for that matter, what is hagmaxxing? I’ll let the screencap in this tweet do the explaining:
Basically, we’re talking about people dating out of their typical age range, but in the less icky way. As the image reads, “Gen Z men are ditching casual sex with their women to pursue long term relationships with financially stable and experienced Millennial ladies.” It’s a fairly straightforward concept, especially if you’ve seen the film May December.
Use of the term “hag” to refer to, like, 37-year-olds aside, the term has the internet falling into two camps. The first, of course, is complete bafflement:
The second, inexplicably, is a sort of “I am Spartacus” solidarity shouted from the rooftops of cyberspace. Now that they have a term, these hagmaxxers are loud and proud:
Others are taking issue with the term itself:
Naturally, the term has sparked quite a debate, especially in its own dedicated Reddit thread, where the implications and fallout of hagmaxxing in our society are explored:
How many of you are hagmaxxing?
byu/MobileAdmirable9008 inGenZ
User u/Gracious-Rose replied, "That's a weird dehumanizing way of viewing women." u/spierx04 said, "Zoomers just discovered what MILFS are and created an entirely different name for it lmao."
But user u/Whocaresdamit perhaps summarized it best by saying, "Tip no 1 to anyone trying to date: Don't call the subject of your attraction a hag, people don't like being called that.
Tip no 2: Don't say words that end in -maxxed, it makes you look deranged."
So look to your lover this day. Are you a Gen-Z and they millennial? You just may be a hagmaxxer! Are you a millennial and they Gen-Z? If so, you're apparently getting hagmaxxed, sucka!
Anyway, best of luck to all self-proclaimed hagmaxxers in their latest pursuit of love, but please Gen-Z, maybe bring the term back into the shop for some tweaks? That would be anything…but mid.
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