What ‘I Love LA’ Gets Right About Being a Zillennial

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.