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I’ve been hearing things over the last couple of months that Gen Z – born after the Millennials, so born between 1997 and 2012, roughly – are much more “conservative” than Millennials. Despite having two children that fall into the tail end of this demographic, I don’t see enough people of these ages to really feel I have any great insight into it. However, I did hear a lot of chatter about the way Gen Z voted in the 2024 Presidential election (such as here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2024/11/07/trump-win-men-gen-z-voted/76095027007/), chatter about Gen Z being more traditional, and about Gen Z even returning to church. This phenomenon, though, seems to be heavily male, and as this generation starts settling down in earnest, I suppose we’ll see how people end up.

One thing that just strikes me as interesting, though, and maybe a bit of the Zeitgeist, is the Caleb Hammer show. The episodes are on Youtube, and Mr. Hammer, himself just celebrated his 30th birthday, talks to people who are in debt to try to make some sense of their finances and set down a path for the guest to follow to try to make it out of debt. Dave Ramsey he is not. Instead of the unflappable, “grandfatherly” persona Ramsey has built, Hammer is not only excitable and often yells at his guests, he heaps insults at them and is often crass and vulgar. The episode that “dropped” on Valentine’s Day, for example (very, very not safe for work – do not play around children):

(For an episode that is much easier on the ears as far as crudeness and profanity, this one might be a better choice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGBs6WShjds . On the other hand, in this episode, the guest isn’t constantly arguing with Caleb to justify why he is in such financial straits. )

The thing is, the majority of Hammer’s guests are young, and regardless of whether they make a good income or not, they spend well past their means. In the comments of the videos, there are jokes about filling out the “bingo cards” because regardless of how unique the cases are that Hammer’s people try to find him, there are things that person after person do. Most of these people have purchased a car in the last couple of years, most at terrible interest rates. (A good number had a car before that they weren’t maintaining, and decided it was better to get a new car than to do repairs on the old one.) Most of these people have spending problems with a “I like it, I’m going to buy it” attitude. Most eat out an awful lot, including coffee on the go and/or drinks and snacks at gas stations. Most run multiple credit cards, and consider making the minimum payments as “paying off” the credit cards. There are a lot who take out payday loans. Student loans are also a big thing, and it’s crazy how many of these people were hanging their hopes on student loan forgiveness by the US government.

Then there’s Caleb himself, a young, kind of nerdy-looking guy who sits down with the guests to go through their debts and income and all. Yes, it’s part schtick, but Caleb goes nuts on many of the guests, many times screaming and berating the people sitting across from him. The thing is – most of these people seem to kind of need it. It’s like most of these people have never considered that not paying one’s debts is not a small character flaw; that this is something that will drag down their lives – and the lives of their children – for years and years to come if they don’t take care of it. He’s not nice to people about this at all.

And this is what has me wondering. His channel has been growing a lot, and while surely he gets some interest from the very clickbait thumbnails, crazy thumbnails aren’t enough to explain having over 1.8 million subscribers. He’s joked about it being a little like Jerry Springer, and with the situations and the yelling there, sure, there’s a bit of similarity, but I think there’s something else going on here that is deeper.

Hammer himself doesn’t really talk about his politics, but he definitely gives the impression of someone who is not “woke” at all; someone who is interested in facts, and who not only believes that facts don’t care about a person’s feelings, he’s going to be blunt in calling people into account for some very bad decisions. He’s not going to be convinced by excuses, and he’s not going to try to soften his approach to make people feel good; if anything, he’s more likely to double down.

The thing is, I think to a large number of Americans, especially those who are young, have been coddled to the point where hearing somebody speak the truth and do so boldly and unabashedly is a breath of fresh air. There are a lot of people in the comments who have stories of paying off debt the right way by emulating a lot of the steps that Caleb endorses. There are also a lot of people who have little stories of being tempted to, for example, stop for snacks in the middle of the day and say that imagining Caleb having a heart attack over it helps keep them from spending the extra money.

In some sense, too, the show is quite aspirational. He actually has a fairly wide range of incomes there – I’ve seen a range of ~$20,000 to ~$150,000 yearly for a single person – and in most cases, there is some sort of path forward without bankruptcy if the person is willing to absolutely buckle down and work on paying off the debt. However, the goal isn’t just getting these people to a point of breaking even, but to get them to start thinking about the next steps; having enough in an emergency fund for an actual emergency, starting to invest, etc., so that life does get to a point where it is more financially comfortable and one legitimately has more options in the future. This isn’t something that is strictly limited by income itself; it’s the sinking further and further into debt that limits a person’s opportunity more than anything. He’s certainly had people who were making good money on there be in worse shape than someone making a third of that because so many people who make more then spend more, getting themselves into more of a financial mess than someone who didn’t have an opportunity to get into as much debt.

It really is kind of the anti-snowflake show. People come on there, fully aware of how the show works, and I have to wonder if they do it because at some level, they know they need the truth to go forward, no matter how hard that truth may be. There are a few guests who are sympathetic from the very first minute, and with most, as they seem to begin to catch on to things, become so over the course of the hour or so, but every once in awhile, there’s someone who is so hard-headed, deceitful, or childish that the person watching is kind of rooting against him or her. That Caleb Hammer is the guy who is going to tell these people they can’t go off and travel or otherwise squander money while in debt to people who have never heard this before is compelling to watch, even without the theatrical elements that Hammer adds.

I’ve just been binge-watching these for a couple of weeks, and while I can’t whole-heartedly endorse them because of the language and adult humor, it hit me how much this seems to be a show that has caught the Zeitgeist in a big way; learning from the excesses of fantasy-land to face a truth that may be hard to face, but in the end has the possibility of setting one free.

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