"sleeping your life away"

My mother used to complain about how much I slept as a teenager. I'd be in bed in the late morning on a Saturday, and Mom would peep into my bedroom and grouse, "Aiii, sleeping your life away." These days, I don't sleep that much or that well, probably thanks to accumulated bad habits combined with age. I'm lucky if I get six hours of shut-eye; it's usually closer to five. Now, all of this changes when I'm out walking across the country: that's when I'm my best self, and I can easily get 6-7 hours' sleep while I'm on the trail. But when I'm doing my workaday thing here in civilization, my sleep habits reflect my daily grind. Sleep is part of a bad-quality routine, one bit of sloppiness in a 24-hour tumble-dryer of sloppiness.

But unless I was supremely stressed out for whatever reason, I don't recall ever rotting in bed. That's apparently a thing these days among the Gen-Z set: "bed-rotting," which essentially amounts to being a lazy fuck and spending inordinate amounts of time in bed either doing jack shit or, as the NY Post puts it, "...falling a bit more into the “clean girl” aesthetic by doing face masks, sleeping on silk pillowcases, and meditating in bed."

I basically ignore the Zoomers; they mean little to my current existence, but one day, these indolent fuckers are going to be wiping my ass when I'm too old to take care of myself. I'll be sure to load up my diapers with an extra helping of shit for them, the do-nothing bastards.

One French term for a lazy person is fainéant. The fai comes from faire, "to do," and the néant means "nothing." Gen Z, quelle bande de fainéants.

At least China's "lying flat" movement is a protest against the hopelessness of Chinese society. What does Gen Z stand for?