approximately one quarter of the country’s population,29 the group was the first generation to grow up without traumatic memories of life under military dictatorship. Owing to a decade of liberalization and access to the internet and social media, Gen Z is also Myanmar’s first generation of digital natives who participate and shape their identities in communication and dialogue with global digital media content. In their first weeks, protests had a festival-like atmosphere, an exuberance reminiscent of the Thingyan or Myanmar New Year’s festival. Much, if not most, of the early protest signage was written in English, reflecting how Gen Z directed its communication to global audiences— unfiltered by international media or domestic or political institutions. Gen Z asserted itself as the “voice of society” imploring international audiences to support the protesters and to intervene against their military oppressors.30 Some protest signage called for a temporary halt of the everyday. A couple dressed in wedding attire carried the sign, “Our wedding can wait, but not this movement”. Or, “A Nice Day for a Revolution”. Through street performances, sit-ins, parades and private—but photographed, videoed and circulated online—performances, the early movement was inflected less by rage than by indignation at the interruption to placid everyday life. “I cancelled the date with my girlfriend because I’m here for this shit … Fuck Military coup”, one person wrote on a placard. “The only -ship I want is Scholarship, NOT Dictatorship”, wrote another. At yet another protest, a few young women dressed in pyjamas slept by the side of the road behind handwritten cardboard signs which asked passers-by to, “Wake us up when we get democracy” (Figure 3). Cosplay parades featuring Weebs, Femboys, Marvel and Disney characters, and Dinosaurs intermixed with parades of drag queens, People born between the mid-1990s to 2012 are considered Gen Z; Republic of the Union of Myanmar, Department of Population, Ministry of Labour, Immigration and Population with technical assistance from the UNFPA, “Census Atlas Myanmar: The 2014 Myanmar Population and Housing Census”, n.d., p. 16. 29 English examples of placards from street protests were retrieved from Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram and other social media platforms. 30 12 21-J07648 01 Trends_2021-7.indd 12 28/4/21 9:34 AM