The cast, all drawn in Python.
Stick figures with strong opinions. Each one is a function, so any of them can be happy, worried or asleep on command. Here are the ones with the biggest parts.
Zee
The skeptical Gen Z sidekick
Zee wears a yellow hoodie, heckles from the side with dry one-liners, and asks the question you were about to ask. In the Easy Mode video Zee stands in for you and grows up on screen, from a 7-year-old with a backpack in 2008 to a 25-year-old in 2026. In the dating video Zee is Ruby's roommate and, it turns out, the secret matchmaker.
First seen in
Is Gen Z Actually Living on Easy Mode?Fun fact. Zee gets a retirement look too: the engine has a zee_old with gray temples and glasses, used for the 2070 gag in the Easy Mode video.
Gray
The channel mascot
Gray has a round ivory head, big eyes and three strokes of hair. In the Shorts, Gray is the everyman who stands in for the viewer, curious, excited or worried as the topic needs. On the channel avatar, Gray peeks over a brain, holding a pencil.
First seen in
Why Saturday Night Feels Better Than SundayFun fact. The long-form cast is described in the engine as built on Gray's head, and Gray has five moods in the Shorts code: happy, curious, excited, meh and worried.
Grandpa Bob
The grandfather who says you have it easy
Bob opens the Easy Mode video from behind his newspaper with the line the whole video tests: "You kids have it so easy." He gets his own flashback, a young Bob with a mullet, a library card and a radio DJ who falls asleep waiting for a song. At the end he and Zee swap the newspaper and the phone.
First seen in
Is Gen Z Actually Living on Easy Mode?Fun fact. Bob has a double: bob_young, the same face with a mullet, is a separate character in the engine.
Ruby
The lead of the dating video
Ruby is a rom-com dreamer in her head and a total chicken in real life. The video opens on her porch at the end of a good date, a moment before a kiss, when a phone buzzes and the frame freezes. It then walks through seven reasons dating got harder, including the scene where she types and deletes a message eleven times. By the end she is the one who asks Leo to get food.
First seen in
Why Gen Z Stopped Dating (It's Not Just You)Fun fact. Ruby's long hair is simulated, not hand-animated: its three segments follow her head like damped springs, so the tips lag behind and swing back. She has three outfits in the engine: date, home and street.
Leo
The bike mechanic Ruby meets
Leo fixes bikes at a repair shop and lives at home with his mom, saving up for a place of his own. He is the one whose phone buzzes on the porch right as he and Ruby lean in, and the buzz turns out to be his mom texting about lasagna.
First seen in
Why Gen Z Stopped Dating (It's Not Just You)Fun fact. In the repair-shop scene Leo fixes a bike chain in three seconds, so fast his hands blur. His kitchen has a half-full jar labelled APARTMENT FUND.
Leo's mom
The reason for the buzzing phone
Leo's mom never speaks in the video. She talks by text: "Home soon? I made lasagna." and later "Lasagna's getting cold!!" A coral top and a cream apron are how you spot her in the kitchen scene.
First seen in
Why Gen Z Stopped Dating (It's Not Just You)Fun fact. In the final poll she stands next to "It's complicated" with a pot of lasagna, and winks.
Socrates
The philosopher who never said it
The Easy Mode video ends its tour of history by cracking a stone slab with a famous complaint about young people, usually credited to Socrates. He never said it. It comes from a 1907 summary, by a Cambridge student, of what ancient Greek writers complained about.
First seen in
Is Gen Z Actually Living on Easy Mode?Fun fact. The complaint is so old that everyone assumed a famous philosopher must have said it. Socrates is drawn bald with a long beard, in a white toga.
Alan Turing
The man who asked if machines can think
In 1950 Turing opened a paper with a question so simple it sounds like a joke, then swapped it for one he could test: the imitation game. He also suggested not programming an adult mind but building a child-machine and teaching it. At Bletchley Park he designed the Bombe to fight Enigma, building on earlier work by Polish codebreakers.
First seen in
The Entire History of AI, Explained in 27 MinutesFun fact. In 1952 Turing ran a chess program with no computer at all, by hand, taking over half an hour per move. It lost. He is drawn without glasses, in a tweed jacket, to match photos of him.
And everyone else.
Parents, cousins, bosses, scientists and one astronaut. They turn up for a scene or two, then leave.
