(Bad, post- modern, "future-less" (culture-less) timeline) Young people (1984-2014) giving up on life, future...

[Nerld1977]

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Anyways I find Zoomers seemingly large lack of protest to be both a good and bad sign. It's a good sign as I found most protests since the 80s to be large virtue signaling parties that rarely change anything, making it mostly a waste of time. On the other hand it may show that Zoomers have disconnected from the world to actually try to go out and make a change, no matter how worthless it may be.


However, this does not mean that they do not have a voice. It is just that the forms of expression are changing. Instead of streets, there is a digital environment where ideas, texts and dialogues have no less weight. For example, platforms like Overchat AI are becoming a new space for self-expression and discussion: there you can communicate with AI on any topic, form your own views, analyze events - and all this in a much more flexible and intelligent form than shouting into a megaphone.

An interesting observation. Indeed, on the one hand, the refusal to protest may indicate disillusionment with their effectiveness — especially given how often in recent decades mass actions have ended in either being ignored or in token concessions. People may simply not believe that street activism is truly a game-changer.

On the other hand, this silence may be a worrying sign — perhaps some of the younger generation simply does not feel that there is anything worth fighting for, or they have drowned in a digital environment where "like" replaces action. The key here is not to confuse apathy with a conscious choice of other forms of influence. Maybe protests now look different — in code, in media, in AI, or in education. It all depends on where and how you look for change.

 

[TheMountainsofMadness]

An interesting observation. Indeed, on the one hand, the refusal to protest may indicate disillusionment with their effectiveness — especially given how often in recent decades mass actions have ended in either being ignored or in token concessions. People may simply not believe that street activism is truly a game-changer.

On the other hand, this silence may be a worrying sign — perhaps some of the younger generation simply does not feel that there is anything worth fighting for, or they have drowned in a digital environment where "like" replaces action. The key here is not to confuse apathy with a conscious choice of other forms of influence. Maybe protests now look different — in code, in media, in AI, or in education. It all depends on where and how you look for change.

I was born in '98, so I have at least an early gen z experience to go off of, and I'll try to organize my thoughts (but sorry if I do a shit job)

At this point I think that protests have less value than ice in Antarctica. I was made to learn about the civil rights protest era (probably the last time protests worked, honestly) in a way that suggests to me that those sorts of protests and voting were being implanted as the only way to effect change. That's not really accomplished anything in my lifetime, aside from the election of Trump and while I have some thoughts there, they aren't especially relevant here. The tea party was the last protest that could have had effect, but all the powers that be realized just how much the rest of the population couldn't stand them and that the rest of the population was starting to... Organize is the wrong word, so maybe align is better... Against them. Obviously, this couldn't be allowed because it might reduce the number of zeros at the end of their checks for their bullshit "jobs". So, they did what tyrants always do and turned everyone against each other. The effects are pretty self evident. So I was in middle school when protests became absolutely pointless because either they were a wedge used against the people, or if people were actually working together some agitator or other would show up and light the powder keg. Government and corpos (not really sure what the difference is anymore if I'm honest) got to do whatever they wanted, and their more vocal opponents were taken off the board or turned against each other. So protesting does fuck all. Lovely. While I was in school, it seemed like the place was designed to go out of its way to destroy your soul. Few of my teachers were competent, fewer were people id want to interact with now, and my classmates ran the gamut from bored prisoners to school-ordered drugged out lobotomites thanks to their inconvenient inability to sit perfectly still for however many hours as teenagers, to actual criminals who sold drugs, got into fights constantly, sexually assaulted people, and any other thing you can think of. And you can't forget the Quisling narcs who would enforce the school's bullshit harder than the school ever would. (If anyone actually wonders how widespread the buffalo public schools problem is, it's everywhere. If you don't believe me, you're willfully blind). Want to do something? Go protest or sign a petition, both of which will be ignored because fuck you.
While this was occurring, we also got both the unending enshittification of everything, thanks to a bunch of soulless machines and early AI. Features that we liked disappeared, recipes changed, whimsy was systematically dragged into camps and murdered in batch lots. Remember that really specific vibe of a mall in 2008? How about an old bowling alley in 2012? Movie theater before then? It was fun, bright, and even though it was kind of gross, it was a specifically welcoming kind of mess. Now McDonald's looks like your receipt will have a suicide note when you scan the little code to leave a review, malls may as well be a station in Metro 2033, and everything tastes the same wherever you go.
Color in the world is gone, and has been disappearing as I've aged. I was in a college town for the first 6 years of my life, and it was such a good place to be, even if I couldn't join in on most of the fun. I work for a different university now, and there's so little of the energy left. The parking lot outside my office window has one car that isn't grey scale, and it's such a drab red that you'd think it was trying to avoid being red. Every building I can see is a concrete, glass, and sheet metal abomination of a structure, and on a rainy day I can't tell where the sky ends and the skyline begins.
Why would I bother to expend any effort to save this? Why should I do anything other than make my life as colorful and pleasant as I can while I wait for everything to collapse? As an engineer I recognize the system's growing instability, as an observer and enjoyer of the beauty of the natural world I recognize that we are in a dead forest waiting to be cleaned and fertilized by a grand conflagration. I just want a nice seat to kick back, enjoy a drink, and roast marshmallows on the burning remnants of this age

 

[wavve-creator]

I was born in '98, so I have at least an early gen z experience to go off of, and I'll try to organize my thoughts (but sorry if I do a shit job)

At this point I think that protests have less value than ice in Antarctica. I was made to learn about the civil rights protest era (probably the last time protests worked, honestly) in a way that suggests to me that those sorts of protests and voting were being implanted as the only way to effect change. That's not really accomplished anything in my lifetime, aside from the election of Trump and while I have some thoughts there, they aren't especially relevant here. The tea party was the last protest that could have had effect, but all the powers that be realized just how much the rest of the population couldn't stand them and that the rest of the population was starting to... Organize is the wrong word, so maybe align is better... Against them. Obviously, this couldn't be allowed because it might reduce the number of zeros at the end of their checks for their bullshit "jobs". So, they did what tyrants always do and turned everyone against each other. The effects are pretty self evident. So I was in middle school when protests became absolutely pointless because either they were a wedge used against the people, or if people were actually working together some agitator or other would show up and light the powder keg. Government and corpos (not really sure what the difference is anymore if I'm honest) got to do whatever they wanted, and their more vocal opponents were taken off the board or turned against each other. So protesting does fuck all. Lovely. While I was in school, it seemed like the place was designed to go out of its way to destroy your soul. Few of my teachers were competent, fewer were people id want to interact with now, and my classmates ran the gamut from bored prisoners to school-ordered drugged out lobotomites thanks to their inconvenient inability to sit perfectly still for however many hours as teenagers, to actual criminals who sold drugs, got into fights constantly, sexually assaulted people, and any other thing you can think of. And you can't forget the Quisling narcs who would enforce the school's bullshit harder than the school ever would. (If anyone actually wonders how widespread the buffalo public schools problem is, it's everywhere. If you don't believe me, you're willfully blind). Want to do something? Go protest or sign a petition, both of which will be ignored because fuck you.
While this was occurring, we also got both the unending enshittification of everything, thanks to a bunch of soulless machines and early AI. Features that we liked disappeared, recipes changed, whimsy was systematically dragged into camps and murdered in batch lots. Remember that really specific vibe of a mall in 2008? How about an old bowling alley in 2012? Movie theater before then? It was fun, bright, and even though it was kind of gross, it was a specifically welcoming kind of mess. Now McDonald's looks like your receipt will have a suicide note when you scan the little code to leave a review, malls may as well be a station in Metro 2033, and everything tastes the same wherever you go.
Color in the world is gone, and has been disappearing as I've aged. I was in a college town for the first 6 years of my life, and it was such a good place to be, even if I couldn't join in on most of the fun. I work for a different university now, and there's so little of the energy left. The parking lot outside my office window has one car that isn't grey scale, and it's such a drab red that you'd think it was trying to avoid being red. Every building I can see is a concrete, glass, and sheet metal abomination of a structure, and on a rainy day I can't tell where the sky ends and the skyline begins.
Why would I bother to expend any effort to save this? Why should I do anything other than make my life as colorful and pleasant as I can while I wait for everything to collapse? As an engineer I recognize the system's growing instability, as an observer and enjoyer of the beauty of the natural world I recognize that we are in a dead forest waiting to be cleaned and fertilized by a grand conflagration. I just want a nice seat to kick back, enjoy a drink, and roast marshmallows on the burning remnants of this age

Being a doomer doesnt help anyone mate, especially not you. There still a lot of beauty in the world worth fighting for.

 

[TheMountainsofMadness]

Being a doomer doesnt help anyone mate, especially not you. There still a lot of beauty in the world worth fighting for.

Recognizing the cyclical nature of all things and my location within it is not being a doomer. You are certainly free to do as you will, but at this point there is simply too much cultural and societal deadwood to work around for much longer. Our world is having the exact same problem at a larger scale as the California wildfires. Decades were spent preventing those fires, which always naturally occurred since time immemorial, from taking place by quenching the flames as soon as they started. This lead to an accumulation of flammable underbrush, every inch of which added greatly to the fire's destructive power, over the course of decades. The lack of these fires prevented the reseeding of numerous plant species, fertilization of the soil, and destruction of certain invasive species. The prevention of the fires meant that when one finally got a little too big, it went out of control, and wound up destroying much of what the smaller fires of ages past simply cleaned and aided.
Similarly, any sufficiently high energy system will have a way to let off waste energy safely, though often in an expensive or unpleasant way. If however you disable the safety devices and pressure releases, eventually the system will fail catastrophically and cause significantly more damage than if the safety devices had operated.
Creative destruction is a fundamentally necessary force in nature, economics, machines, and societies. It can certainly be dangerous when it happens, and it can cause lots of damage, but when the system reaches its new low-energy state something new and beautiful has the opportunity to grow that it never would have had before. Forests, once consumed in fire, often grow into flower-filled meadows. A company's collapse often leads to newer, better alternatives. When machines fail, the knowledge that their failure provides becomes part of the next technology. When nations fall, their ruins become repositories of knowledge for those who wish to learn, and newer nations take their place, learning and changing to fit their environment.
Creation and destruction must always exist in balance, and when that balance is disrupted it reasserts itself with interest.

 

[Some_porcupine]

...

i made similar thing (/thread) (tho idk if i understand you, do you say that for us ending cycles, we must "end arcs"?) - (e.g. illustration) - or iwent crazy, here: https://forum.agoraroad.com/index.p...les-8-16-24ys-11-13-years-and-angry-sun.6395/

 

[wavve-creator]

If however you disable the safety devices and pressure releases

Very accelerationist of you. I can empitize with the mentality of wanting to fall so we can build a better system. Unfortunately the west is far more likely to just slide directly into authoritarianism. As we are already seeing with the Republicans lie their way to the top, then begin passing unconstitutional laws, remove due process all while lying about what is going on. Not to say the other side is much better.

You must remember you still have some semblance of personal agency still. Not everything is an external factor effecting you.

 

[TheMountainsofMadness]

i made similar thing (/thread) (tho idk if i understand you, do you say that for us ending cycles, we must "end arcs"?) - (e.g. illustration) - or iwent crazy, here: https://forum.agoraroad.com/index.p...les-8-16-24ys-11-13-years-and-angry-sun.6395/

More like "the longer this tension builds, the more destructive its release will be" because that's pretty common historically. Similarly, "the bigger they are, the harder they fall"

 

[TheMountainsofMadness]

Very accelerationist of you. I can empitize with the mentality of wanting to fall so we can build a better system. Unfortunately the west is far more likely to just slide directly into authoritarianism. As we are already seeing with the Republicans lie their way to the top, then begin passing unconstitutional laws, remove due process all while lying about what is going on. Not to say the other side is much better.

You must remember you still have some semblance of personal agency still. Not everything is an external factor effecting you.

So first, you're describing every political party everywhere for at least the last decade. They've reached the part of the game where the only vaguely effective strategy is "tit for tat". Reasonable minds can easily differ on the finer points of the causes of the situation, as there's simply too many variables for anyone to keep track of. Similarly, at this point everywhere is authoritarian, the only real difference being degree and direction.
Second, I recognize that I maintain agency over my decisions to whatever degree is currently possible. I am stating that the optimal move to play, for me, is to make my little corner of existence as comfortable as I can. It's entirely possible for "helping people you care about" to be part of that while recognizing that sometimes all you can do is cover the windows, help your neighbor with theirs, hunker down and ride out the storm. I'm not the main character here, fuck knows who is and I pity the poor bastard, so I'm not going to try to fix the world when I know I can't

 

[Dead Star]

John Haidt's The Coddling of the American Mind is the best thing I can recommend and by far, the most important book that gets into the issues of Gen Z which this thread is all about.

They were the first generation to grow up with access to the internet directly in their pockets via smartphones. Millennials born before 1995 still went some years before having their eyes glued to a screen. Haidt is the first person I have seen who have this figured out, linking screen time and growing up online to the mental health and antisocial problems of today's society.

These issues are very deep on many levels. They are especially a problem with dating and how screen devices have changed how we manage relationships.

 

[Some_porcupine]

i tried to bicker with ai, tho i am sadly brian girffin liberal...

https://chatgpt.com/share/681613d1-6150-8005-944a-31ff9fc3f865