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Gen Z Won’t Save Us
(slate.com)
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this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2024
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Gen Z grew up on social media. The same that spreads the propaganda, the fake information and the toxic masculinity bullshit.
They also grew up with an impossible social economic context where they barely have any hope. Trump's making promises to make the country great again. What have they got to lose?
Why is anyone surprised?
Gay marriage, contraception, porn, legal divorce? Just off the top of my head.
Their POV is that the earth is going to burn to a crisp before they're out of paying back their college debt whether the tie is blue or red.
Play an online game and hang with some teenagers every now and again and just listen in. I hear some straight depressing shit. They have zero hope for anything.
Kamala might keep the lights on. Trump might accidentally trip over a good idea. Worth a shot if you're fucked either way, right?
They were wrong, granted... but justified? Sure.
Porn isn't going anywhere. LoL
Divorce either.
Gay marriage? It's already dangerous to just come out, let alone get married.
And contraception? They'ren already losing that one too in many states thanks to local governments anyway.
"divorce either"
Just like abortion, right? You realize it hasn't been that long that you had to prove one party was at fault in order to be allowed to divorce? You hate each other? Denied!
Yup, I remember the parents of boomers bitching about "no fault divorce". Had to finally ask someone wtf they were going on about. This was maybe the 70s or 80s?
Turns out this shit gets passed down, now I hear Gen Z bitching about it as well as a few of the crazy influencer types coming out and saying the quiet parts out loud now. Nearly all my life, I didn't even really hear that many boomers complain about it, and I cannot recall hearing my gen (Gen X) say anything at all about it, if they even knew what it was, except for the occasional really crazy xtian taliban type that went unfiltered and told us normies what they thought about "the state of marriage today".
What a fucked up world that we now have to worry about this kind of thing again? These people are just fucking crazy. It's one thing that they have such fucked up ideas about (their) elites trafficking kids in the basement of a basementless pizza parlor, but they cannot even leave anyone else the fuck alone.
They have their stupid book club, and we allow them to have it, because freedom of religion. But they insist that everyone else has to join them because they think freedom FROM religion is not an American ideal that needs to be followed....I hate them so very much. And I was raised xtian...
You have to get married to get divorced, and marriage is simply not on the table for most people. It's expensive and pointless. Marriage rates have been dropping for a couple of decades. It's just not important since we completely removed the original purpose... Expanding the economic success of both families.
So you don't mind if the rights of a minority are infringed upon? You realize it's a way to control women? Marriage doesn't need to be expensive either and a man wanting to put a ball and chain on a woman will force her to get married and she'll be legally stuck with him for the rest of his life if no fault divorce is made illegal again. What about the 62 million married couples that already exist?
https://www.npr.org/2024/07/07/nx-s1-5026948/conservatives-in-red-states-turn-their-attention-to-ending-no-fault-divorce-laws
https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/amp/rcna161562
There's a massive difference between the social stigma attached to coming out, and the revocation of the legal rights associated with marriage.
It's not even that long ago that people couldn't visit their life partner in the hospital following an accident, because they weren't married.
Limited access to certain types of contraception in certain areas is a very different beast than overturning the case that ruled that contraception isn't criminally indecent.
If you don't know how far civil rights have come even in the past 20 years, or how much further back than that they openly want to push things back, I don't think you're paying attention.
Abortion had just as much legal protection as porn or gay marriage, and it "wasn't going anywhere" until it was suddenly gone.
Oh I am paying attention. I know that's at stake. I was born in the early 80's so I've seen the progress. And I've seen the conservatives chipping away at it for the past 20 years. Both in the US and Canada. (I'm Canadian)
I've been stuck with the massive democratic power of the boomer masses my whole adult life and saw them vote in these conservative and neo liberal parties that have completely destroyed whatever social safety net that they benefited from and any freedom and equality only for them to have more money to put in their retirement funds.
I was hoping the Gen Zs would join our ranks, but social media, corporate lies, toxic ideologies meant to address their insecurities, and now AI have fucked up their perspective.
Give Project 2025 a read. Wild things in there.
Thanks to who?
Literally a direct cause of the last Trump administration.
Man it's like you've never even met any of the dumb crackheads that are cucking for these evangelicals
As a Gen-X I will never blame the later generations. Especially Gen Z and younger, if I was in their shoes I'd be livid. You bring me into this mess and then tell me it's on me to fix it? F U
As a Gen-Xer, we got the benefit of the boomers taking almost all the air out of the room, and their parents thinking our generation was even worse than the boomers. The boomers mostly ignored us, called us slackers, etc....some time goes by and we are getting lumped in with the boomers and the "greatest generation" and getting blamed for all the problems, so that's been fun.
Gen X had no future, it was all boomers until...oh, it's still boomers.
I suppose this was aimed more at the sandwich generation, but still:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6ec_p1pdsA
But it is nice sometimes to finally get remembered, even if it's for blame.
Well, the older generation made some of the best movies for us, so there is that. I still say Repo Man represents a moment in time and a certain age bracket in a certain location like few other movies have...
They also grew up during the pandemic so they might actually be less educated than Boomers.
People are surprised that they grew up with tech and are more susceptible to the propaganda than previous generations. People are also surprised at how vile and uncaring young men have turned into, they want to “own the libs” no matter the cost. They like seeing the pain they cause
I have a hard time believing this.
When you actually talk to the kind of young, Gen Z men that regularly spout right-leaning propaganda, generally speaking, you don't see people who enjoy suffering.
You see young men who are suffering themselves, but are given no outlet by society to express or fix it, and are heavily propagandized to by fascists who know that by creating arbitrary divides, (the most common one you'll see with these young men being "men vs women," think Andrew Tate type rhetoric) they can redirect the anger of these young men from systems to other individuals and groups that aren't the actual cause of their problems.
When young men are the specific, designated target of right-wing propaganda, which explicitly tries to tell them that "men used to have it better," and actively tries to make them believe that they're not strong enough, not good looking enough, and not rich enough, then of course you'll get young men that feel, in some ways justifiably, shunned.
To put it how Jason Stanley put it in his book, aptly named How Fascism Works, "Misogyny is what faces women when patriarchal expectations are left unfulfilled."
Those expectations never need to have actually been reality, but just the very expectation that they should have those things can make them feel slighted.
But remember, while these young men are angry, sad, and scared, they still don't enjoy causing pain. (I'm talking broadly of course, you'll always be able to find some crazy dudes if you look enough) They just feel like they haven't been given what they deserve.
Just like the rest of Gen Z.
The only thing that makes them different is the fact they believe the source of their suffering is a different group of people.
I'm not excusing any of their behavior or beliefs, far from it. But claiming that young men enjoy inflicting pain on others because they hold beliefs that make them feel slighted by society is just plain wrong in the vast majority of cases.
Man I cannot take another four years of "won't you think of the poor lowly Trump voters?" (this time Gen Z style). The original was cringeworthy and I doubt I'll like the sequel any better.
People have bigger problems than your average Gen Z white male Trump voter, as I'm sure they're accustomed to telling others online and in real life whom complain (when they aren't going on call of duty n-word tyraids and having discord chats with other idiots).
This is absolutely, categorically not what I was saying.
To clarify using this point I already made,
I'm commenting on the fact that they experience the same issues that the rest of their generation, and in many ways, society at large experiences, not saying that their own struggles mean we should subordinate our own opinion of what society needs for their sake.
I'm not pulling a "won't you think of the poor lowly Trump voters," I'm doing a "these are people too, who still think they're doing what's 'right'"
To these young men, society teaches them that they are fault because of the patriarchy, but leaves the door wide open for the right to proclaim that the sentiment means their own issues aren't being taken into account, which, in many ways, is true with the way liberal media often presents the patriarchy, denouncing its effects, but not clarifying that the patriarchy doesn't mean these young men should be doing perfectly fine already.
The messaging these young men see is (and I'm oversimplifying here, of course) "men as a category are in the wrong because of the patriarchy," but not "but young men still face many problems, just like the rest of their generation, so we should work on fixing that too"
So of course, the right swoops in and replaces what could be a positive secondary statement, and replaces it with "they say you benefit from privilege, but if you do, why is your life so bad right now?" (ignoring the fact that their struggles are almost entirely the same as the rest of Gen Z, men or not)
Again,
Believing, falsely, that your issues are caused by a different source than the ground truth, and believing that a man who says he can fix all of that will, y'know, fix all of that, in no way means that you enjoy inflicting pain.
I don't think all of them enjoy inflicting pain, but Gen Z Trump voters are just Trump voters, and some of them certainly enjoy inflicting pain (especially those walking around puppeting rape threats). I find the actions people take to be more illustrative of their character than imagined back stories.
No offense to you, but I've personally read tens of thousands of words in the wake of 2016 about economic anxiety only to have those same people suddenly about face on every economic issue once "their guy" took over and the opening of your post reminded me a lot of that.
Oh, definitely. There are always going to be some people that enjoy causing pain, and I'm not ignorant of their existence. I just believe that, broadly speaking, the majority of people in most groups, young Gen Z men included, don't actually enjoy causing harm, or even necessarily believe they're causing harm in the first place.
Right-wing grifters have a very easy time convincing people of arbitrary divides to cause conflict, and when young men are in a situation just like the rest of their female Gen Z peers, but don't see the same issues happening to those women because of their media bubble, to them, the world just looks like it's leaving them behind.
To them, they don't see themselves as causing pain, only as trying to gain back what they've "lost."
Essentially, while I do believe their beliefs are often wrong and misguided, I don't think that most of them believe they're even causing harm in the first place, let alone enjoy doing so.
I dunno man, the liberal tears shit, the "your body my choice" shit, the "hang Mike Pence chants", the insurrection, people rolling coal and flying Trump flags off cities in f-150s, etc etc. A lot of them fully know they're being assholes at very least. There are surely some kinder, gentler fascists among them but like, those ones are ok with the constant asshole behavior as well so they're enablers.
It sucks to learn that so many people are like this or at very least accepting of it. I bought democrats' collective "it's a loud minority" for a time, but at some point you just have to accept that this country is full of ignorant, fascist-loving, borderline-psychopathic assholes, or continue deluding yourself.
Women have lost their way and need to be put back in the kitchen. The gays have gotten to much freedom to be flamboyant and they're destroying decency and indoctrinating children. The blacks are getting too uppity, they need a knee on the neck. Minorities have gotten too much and need mass deportations now.
But yeah cis hetero young men get the blame for everything.
By your reasoning, women, LGBT+, minorities are all justified in becoming extremists. Yet the only demographic is leading way on this. Now I'm sure you'll feedback loop your logic to take it as young men getting all the blame.
Where in my response did I imply they get the blame for everything? Jesus man, at least be mildly charitable when you interpret my responses.
I understand this rhetoric gets used. I'm trying to explain why.
To these young men, they've been told that they have privilege, but haven't been truly explained what that means. It leads them to believe people are telling them they're already doing well, even if they aren't. Grifters take advantage of that, and use the common tactic of fascist rhetoric, which is to create a false past where everything was better, and offer these young men a simple solution to their problems: "taking back" the rights/freedoms/abilities/access that they "once had."
They might hold abhorrent viewpoints, and for the final time, I don't endorse or defend any of them, but they don't enjoy inflicting pain, or even think that they are in the first place
I may have worded my responses in a much more convoluted way than intended, and for that I apologize. My only point in this conversation, far from defending their viewpoints or trying to pull a "let's look at all sides" argument, is simply that while they might have been propagandized to enough, to the point they believe false things about reality, they don't enjoy, or want to inflict pain. They simply want society to right the "wrongs" they've experienced, but don't understand what the root cause is of their pain.
I am specifically, solely trying to make the case that while their actions may end up causing harm, they don't enjoy causing harm in itself. That is all.
I don't think that's what they meant. What they meant is that those who adhere to the virilist ideologies found online are the ones who do. Because apparently violence and aggressive behaviour is viril.
They grew up with tech without understanding it, which is a big difference from millennials.
They also grew up in a time where the education budget was slashed over and over, even some states like Florida getting rid of history and sciences during trumps last presidency. No surprise there.
Well I guess their plan worked