The enemy is simultaneously weak and strong.

"You're not creative, you're not future-thinking, you're focused on threats in the present," he said, adding that those qualities could threaten America's culture of innovation. He noted that Mark Zuckerberg, a millennial, was 20 when he founded Facebook, but that Gen Z has only Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai to compare themselves to. Millennials, he argued, rebuilt the "entire world."

Yes and Meta is doing wonderfully right now, and surely capitalists think long term :lenin-sure: :this-is-fine:

Malala was literally shot in the skull and survived, what did Zuck even do? Create someone nonsense "metaverse" that no one cares about?

https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-are-weakened-kids-social-media-oped-says-2023-1

  • BeamBrain [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    He noted that Mark Zuckerberg, a millennial, was 20 when he founded Facebook, but that Gen Z has only Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai to compare themselves to.

    Greta: World-famous for her activism against climate change, which is an existential threat to humanity and most life on Earth

    Zuck: Asshole who started out making a website to creep on girls and eventually turned it into a massive predatory skinner box and data harvesting operation

    Yeah, I know who I'd rather be compared to.

    • Infantile_Disorder [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      Zuck: Lucky creep who was gifted the remnants of DARPA LifeLog to utilise as a data gathering service for the CIA.

        • Wertheimer [any]
          ·
          2 years ago

          You can say anything you want if there are fewer than 50 million speakers of your language, because they'll wait until after you've caused 700,000 deaths to hire more than one content moderator. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/myanmar-facebook-hate/

    • MolotovHalfEmpty [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Even by his own twisted, perverse logic Zuck created Facebook at 19, not 20, but it took years to become something approaching what it is today and to gain the momentum it needed as a (shitty) business. So he wouldn't have heard of the next Zuckerberg yet anyway. It'd be some Zoomer fucking around with an AI gif generator or something right now that'll rule and then destroy the world in years to come.

    • StellarTabi [none/use name]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Gen Z has only Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai to compare themselves to.

      Is Luna Oi not Gen Z?

  • SerLava [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    Every fucking decade some dipshit writes an article about how 13 year olds haven't yet contributed to society

  • Antoine_St_Hexubeary [none/use name]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Professor at a school which has become so expensive that the undergrad classes now consist almost entirely of rich failson legacy admissions: "It's looking a bit lantern-jawed and hemophiliac in here. Must be social media's fault"

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    Varadarajan is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and at New York University Law School's Classical Liberal Institute.

    We here at the fake jobs institute of the School of CIA talking points have decided young adults are too sissified to do important jobs like invent Facebook

  • buh [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Social media created a generation of 'weakened kids'

    🙄😒

    threatening American culture and capitalism

    :sicko-yes:

      • StellarTabi [none/use name]
        ·
        2 years ago

        He can run with that if he wants, but fb didn't do anything myspace/bebo/orkuta/googleplus or something else wasn't primed to do with the natural progression of technology. If anything, what you want to blame would be "the internet" or "smart phones".

  • fishnwhistle420 [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Mark Zuckerberg is the only good millennial because he created a social media platform that mentally weakened everyone younger than him, thereby threatening American culture and capitalism?

    That about right?

    • culpritus [any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      "We have a whole generation that's doing terribly," Haidt is quoted as saying in Varadarajan's op-ed. Haidt pointed to high rates of anxiety and depression among young people and said that a "performative" social media culture was to blame.

      but Zuck is a billionaire, so how could he have done anything bad? the market would surely have corrected his wealth away if he did bad things to :amerikkka:

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        "There are high rates of anxiety and depression among young people. Social media is to blame, not the rapidly accelerating, scientifically proven destruction of the planet which is leading to readily visible ecological devastation, the sixth great extinction, and probably the end of all life on earth!"

        Like jesus christ dude wake up and smell the burning manatees.

        • culpritus [any]
          ·
          2 years ago

          "If corporations become less effective because everyone's afraid of Twitter, afraid of what will be said about them," Haidt said, "this could severely damage American capitalism."

          oh noes peoples are talking openly about how :amerikkka: is bad and stuff, that's not good!!!1!11!!!

          • FlintstoneSpiceLatte [they/them]
            ·
            2 years ago

            CHUDS: "To find out who rules over you....HEY! Why are you criticizing both racism AND capitalism? YOU CAN'T DO THAT! 4chan said not to!"

            (But that reminds me, are the Koch brothers funding 4chan or something? How did a site full of edgelords conglomerate into being a GOP cheerleader website?)

    • Phish [he/him, any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      When you put it that way the thesis of this article sounds pretty fucking stupid, doesn't it.

  • ides_of_Merch [none/use name]
    ·
    2 years ago

    This is something I hear from a lot of managers, that it's very difficult to supervise their Gen-Z employees, that it's very difficult to give them feedback," Haidt said

    "PMC are working class, actually" :dsa:

    Notably, millennials' entrance into the workforce about a decade ago also caused hand-wringing among older workers who worried that generational differences would lead to communication challenges.

    it's extremely easy to communicate with workers raised after the recession, but you need to speak their language :gui:

  • CrimsonSage [any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Good then Gen Z is doing more for the world than any other generation ever by killing America.

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Someone else go find the Parenti quote I already did it this week.

    America’s culture of innovation.

    It took Muskrat decades and billions of dollars to achieve what NASA did with government funding in the 60s, and what Russia has been doing continuously since the 60s. Pretty much every useful thing America has ever invented came out of a government or university lab.

    Facebook was a "hot or not" site that Zuck built to creep on women at his college, that happened to blow up for reasons almost completely unrelated to Zuck himself. And the major accomplishment for which it will be remembered by history is enabling a genocide in Myanmar.

  • footfaults [none/use name]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    Just remember that back in the 2010s they were yelling at us millennials because we were all moving back in with our parents during the great recession because there were no jobs and tons of us had student debt.

    There is no war but class war, solidarity with my gen z brethren

  • Remicita [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Wait he loves Zuckerberg and also thinks that social media made children terrible or whatever?? Who does he think made all that??

  • HoChiMaxh [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    These dumb fucks confuse making money with contributing to the economy.

    Even if you ignore all the toxic negatives of Facebook, it doesn't do anything for anyone it just funnels wealth to rich people. These mfs think making Facebook is like inventing a lightbulb.

    • Lymbic_System [none/use name]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      These people belive unearned economic rent is the same as investing in real production no wonder we can't produce anything, except for fail sons thats a major export.

      Edit: and fail daughter we are equal opportunity disappointers

  • LENINSGHOSTFACEKILLA [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    lmao, what even is american culture?

    Also, I'd say the anti-capitalists are the most forward thinking, considering we're the only ones considering our planet being burnt to the fucking ground.

    • SorosFootSoldier [he/him, they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      lmao, what even is american culture?

      Big tech, big pharma, big tobacco, the MIC, big pharma, the largest wealth gap in human history, cartoon ape jpegs worth millions of dollars that are burning the amazon rain forest.

    • innocentlurker [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      "What exactly are you referring to when you say 'American culture'?"

      "THIS INTERVIEW IS OVER!"