‘In my hagmaxxer era’: A new term just dropped to describe age-gap relationships

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. 

What is a 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.

How are people using the term hagmaxxer?

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:

Hagmaxxing sparks debate online

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.

The internet is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here to get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.