My "favorite" lecture from young people is the one in which they berate me for "stealing content" by not watching ads on YouTube.

I have a vivid memory of YouTube being a platform where normal people could share videos of their kids and pets or other fun random low quality but entertaining things

Honestly it doesn't seem to take very long at all. I watched live as the insurrectionists attempt to overturn democracy in the US during their failed auto-coup on January 6th less than 3 years ago.

Though there was some "it's not real" talk in the immediate aftermath the idea that it was a false flag, antifa, not an insurrection, not a big deal, just tourists having an afternoon scroll, etc. seems to be growing.

I wonder why the "left wing radical Democrat antifa operatives engaging in a false flag attack to make Trump look bad" marched under banners with Trump's name, admitted they were doing it for Trump, in some cases ran for office on the Republican ticket, and are actively being protected by Republican politicians.

I find the opposite more annoying. If your memory of those events is accurate there's plenty of things to point to to back it up.

But then you have older people like my father who...I don't know, something has completely rewritten their memories of significant events to the point where he claims many things happened differently than verifiable recorded history. It's impossible to argue with that because of him seeing me pointing out that's not true as an attack and accusing him of lying.

As an early GenX whose been online since the BBS days this happens all the time but honestly the historical revisionism isn't main problems, it's the loss of context around the history.

I still remember the so-called Greatest Generation and Silent Generation falling in love with Reagan, combined with Baby Boomer hedonistic indifference, resultng in liberal Democrats getting ripped to shreds at the ballot box. As an adapt-or-die reaction to Bernie-style Democrats getting electorally decimated in the 80s and 90s, the Democratic Party shifted to the center... and republicans got batshit insane with AM radio and 24-hour propaganda television.

Recent history has showed me in real time how it takes several elections to smash something down... or build something up. Yet there are too many people who seem to believe that one single election is a magic wand that can cure every goddamned evil in politics and society. And if they don't get what they want, they don't vote again, or they tune out entirely - "there were elections? I didn't notice" - constantly putting Democrats in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.

Case in point of Democrats getting bold: LBJ signing the Civil Rights Act into law, and the country got Nixon twice. Democrats lost the entire south electorally for generations, to this day and beyond.

Also, Democrats have to deal with hysterical and/or opportunistic right wing shitheads who abuse their power to sabotage every policy proposal, or even the normal functioning of the government at every level, pointless government shutdowns that paralyze the entire apparatus, including day-to-day essentials like teachers and park rangers.
Fascist bastards who enjoy flirting with visions of dictatorship... as long as they're the dictator. Who are constantly looking for ways to subvert democracy. Nixon, Cheney, the orange intestinal parasite.

This is the math Democrat politicians have to work with whenever making a far-reaching decision.

Complicating the hellish job even further, there's all those fickle, cherry-picking oh-so-pure voters who demand being catered to instantly and get their "knowledge" from twitter, a noisy drag on the equation.

Since the 90s, the right wing bastards have perfected the dark art of exploiting 24-hour mass media to keep people rabidly ignorant, to divide and conquer with a "politics for idiots" mantra that bOtH pArTiEs ArE tHe SaMe LoL aMiRiTe.

I saw it all happen in real time.

I was telling someone much younger than myself that airports didn’t always completely suck to go through. I explained how the TSA wasn’t a thing and the experience was closer to getting on a bus or a train pre 9/11.

He had a hard time wrapping his head around it because he’s never experienced it.

Made me feel very old.

On the other hand, there's my dad defending Apartheid with the defence "you weren't there". The whole rest of the world from the time seemed to agreed with me, too, Dad.

I still regard post-9/11 as an aberration. It feels like if I accept it as the new normal I've failed some duty to humanity.

It's cute that Lemmy already has classic reposts

To be fair, with time we can learn about what happened and understand it better than whatever the media at the time thought.

There was 4 Jeffery Epstines on the grassy knoll that melted the steel beams that killed Malcome L King!

It's not quite a historical event, more of a bit of trivia, but it seems to be common knowledge that it's possible to cheat at Duck Hunt by pointing the light gun at a light bulb, making it register a hit every time, often repeated as a sort of "look how far we've come, those silly game devs in the 80s missing such an obvious exploit."

Except it doesn't work. The light gun checks for a frame of darkness followed by a frame of light. If it picks up light when it's not supposed to, it counts it as a miss because it knows what you're pointing at isn't the screen at all. But people in all corners of the internet are absolutely convinced this trick was a thing for some reason.

Memories are worse than research

People are adamant that unpaid days off in the 90s meant people had to work without pay

Reminds me of the time I got a quiz question wrong; who was the first Man on the Moon.

I wasn't born, but everything I've ever read said it was Neil Armstrong, so that's what I answered.

The idiot quiz master said it was Buzz Aldrin (the second man). In disbelief, I tried to educate them of their error, only for the rest of the room, mainly boomers, to tell me I was wrong. Including one guy in his 80s who said "It was definitely Buzz. I watched it when it happened. I remember it well".

I asked him "who said the famous 'one small step for man'?"

Him: "Ahh yes, Now that was Armstrong."

Me: "Surely Buzz would say those words if he was the first one out. I mean there is literally video of the event. You even watched it live"

Him: "Yes, it's Armstrong in the video. But Buzz was definitely first out. Who do you think was holding the camera?"

Image Transcription: Twitter Post

brittany wilson, @sameoldstory

One disorientating thing about getting older that nobody tells you about is how weird it feels to get a really passionate, extremely wrong lecture from a much younger person about verifiable historical events you can personally remember pretty well

my kids are five and seven and i'm already starting to get this. i aint ready.

What do you expect when you read stuff like this?

https://www.voanews.com/a/usa_survey-finds-lack-holocaust-knowledge-among-american-young-adults/6195962.html