Holy shit and I thought millennials and Gen X had it bad with how corporate our toys were.
I hate to be that person that's like "omg what kids like these days is poisoning them!" Especially because I come from the Mortal Kombat generation, but between Mr Beast, social media and shit like Roblox turning every hobby into a hussle I have to wonder what effect this will have on them.
Capitalism preying on kids was bad enough when I was a kid in the 90s and 00s (and from what I've seen from 80s cartoons, the generation before mine was pretty bad too), but it's a whole other level now.
Collapse is hitting hard and is only going to get worse though, so it is possible they'll go left.
Not for the majority of gen alpha (which don't live in the imperial core). The kids are alright, probably gonna be building bases on mars and living on fusion power.
I would be interested to know if there was any substantial votes for “I just hope I can grow up”. Which is more depressing than Vlogger/Youtuber.
For some reason I have a big worry that younger generations are more likely to move towards fascism due to the fact that holding cognitive dissonance in the face of your own class interests is possible if propagandised. And any kid signing up to tiktok or youtube is going to be sandblasted with right wing propaganda from day one.
If there's any teachers here they would probably know best.
Usually kids don't really get a real ideology until they enter the workforce but its also possible to see someone hate their own job and blame a minority for it.
If there's any teachers here they would probably know best.
Most school districts, in my experience, have no teeth when it comes to phone policies, if they have one at all. A lot of kids will do pretty much anything their favorite "influencers" tell them to do, including acts of bullying, vandalism, and outright giving them money whether or not there's some vague promise of a return on it.
Even when the politics aren't obvious (to them, anyway), it's all conditioning, and dare I say grooming, to get them used to a dopamine-saturated noisy zero attention span sort of constant state of unease and aggression. It's scary... I saw some modern variant of "the hitting game" erupt like a rash once where dozens of kids started doing it because their favorite trust fund sociopath on TikTok said so one day. I had to try to explain the outbreak of
to the elderly school nurse because she was until that point blissfully unaware of what parasocial bonding was.
Those not born into wealth will be ground under the wheels of the Great Machine. Like the rest of us. The Machine will not care if they were devotees of Capital or if they memorized every quote from Mao's little red book or if they never once considered the horrible thing hanging over all of them all their lives. Regardless of belief, whether they understand or not, they live to serve—and this service grants them the only purpose their lives could ever have had.
or maybe not idk lol
i feel like a lot of these kids will probably be pro capitalism and staunchly anticommunism until they reach adulthood and enter the workforce, IE, reality. lots of the media gen alpha has access to is right wing slop that gets spoonfed to them by an algorithm and it's definitely fucking them up for now, but as we know, millennials are all broke as fuck so most of these kids will be growing up poor. they likely wont have any opportunity once they reach adulthood both because of that and because capitalism has failed so hard that even millennials and gen z currently have no opportunity and look what that did to all of us.
I know a white male coworker with a skilled full-time blue collar job who is on the edge of homelessness (living in a van) who managed to say like twenty rightwing clichés to me within minutes of first meeting him. I am white but whiteness is a hell of a drug.
what's this dude's story if he's a skilled tradesman while living in a van? or do you not know him well enough to say? i do agree that whiteness is a hell of a drug, that's another aspect that should be considered for sure. especially in white supremacist amerikkka where the idea is to make the lowest white guy feel superior to the highest person of color just by virtue of being white
what's this dude's story if he's a skilled tradesman while living in a van?
Not having a union / being relatively young (30 or less) / his dad has some kind of small construction company that he intends to work for soon. He also grew up in Florida and strongly hinted that he moved to our extremely white northeastern state because it’s much less racially diverse. I just started this (my first blue collar job) a few months ago and I already have hundreds of pages of stories like this in a journal / book I intend to publish sooner or later.
Having The Talk with your kids nowadays is explaining how, no, that streamer for your latest cool game does not want you download a "companion app" to get free uWu Pointz. They're going to burn out your GPU mining CmTwnCn, the latest and greatest in cryptocurrency. And Mom has to pay the power bill on top of replacing the computer.
It depends on whether enough of them can pull out the meathooks of their parasocially bonded parasites
I'm unconcerned. Influencers can only exist because of cheap energy - as climate change gets worse and fossil fuel resources get tighter and trade becomes decoupled the entire influencer "profession" will evaporate. No one is going to be watching Mr Beast when their power is intermittent and they need to work 14 hours a day driving for Uber.
and they need to work 14 hours a day driving for Uber
What if those Uber drivers have "complimentary" slop constantly flowing into their maybe-rented-at-that-economic-point from influencers that have partnership deals with Uber, as a sort of "LinkedIn" with even more grifting?
The slop isn't for Uber drivers, it's for the people sending ride requests. The drivers get to go home to their single bedroom apartment with six room-mates and try to catch some sleep between their other job at Amazon.
That's what I was getting at because I already see it happening on some Lyft rides that I've taken: some deal where the driver is compelled to feel it is a bargain to stream
trash to the passenger during the ride from a screen affixed to the rear of the front seat.Well it wasn't specifically
yet but it was a lot of bazinga brainworms I didn't ask for and didn't want.Lyft rides that I've taken
Aha! Checkmate, fake liberal! You've participated in society, and can't critique it any longer!
Boomers, Xoomers, and Millennial conservatives and libertarians think they’ll become the merchant warlords of the apocalypse, but they only ever fell for grifts. Zoomers - and as you said, particularly alphas - have not only been grifted but have it engrained in them that it’s based to do it to other people. And not bullshit grifts like “the american dream,” but quite literally learning to use computers to pull the crypto rug on your friends.
The old men will have their play time cosplaying as mad max in their suburbs while the new generation will torture everyone in the squid game content hustle to win a water ration ticket.
Each generation has its upside and downside, but the downside of what's coming up does deeply worry me and no amount of "actually the ancient greeks said their kids suck too" platitudes dissolve that for me.
I want to believe there's a chance for a sort of collective immune system response, where too much grifting and "hustling" pushed on them at an early age makes enough of them push back against the overall messaging. I do. I really do hope they stand a chance against the ideological poison being dumped on them right now.
I want to believe there's a chance for a sort of collective immune system response, where too much grifting and "hustling" pushed on them at an early age makes enough of them push back against the overall messaging.
I don't know about collective, but this did happen to me as a gen Z member. I was influenced a lot in my teens and realised it was all a lie in early twenties. Things like cryptocurrency and the concept of social media.
That gives me hope. People older than you were going full Poochie about trying to convince people your age that they needed to get excited about ugly monkey cartoons with thousand dollar price tags.
Show
and from what I've seen from 80s cartoons, the generation before mine was pretty bad too
Yes, yes it was.
The death of the Fairness Doctrine coincided with toy commercials being show-length features with toy commercials. And yes some were entertaining for me and are still stuck in a happy place in my old brain, such as Transformers.
I mean the question really is just whether capitalism is pulling the rug too early or if mass media and surveillance has already established sufficient control over people's minds to fully indoctrinate enough people. And it's really impossible to underestimate how much more directly controlling mass media has become over the last half century.
In America their is a big issue with kids not knowing how to read and write because of how covid was handled that doesn't bode well for building class consciousness
I think this is exactly the post someone would write in 2003 about millennials after the dotcom bubble, 9/11 and the wars. In that post they even somehow predicted the 2008 crisis. Look at where we are now.
In order to rebel there must be an alternative and there is no alternative because the AES aren't as big an influence as the USSR was in the 1950s. The US was actualy worried about communism back then.
The US is not worried about "Socialism with Chinese characteristics", apart from dipshits at the Fed and media being the mouthpieces of neoliberals nobody actualy cares about what China is doing.
Even if we assumed China is a perfect model to follow, there is already a generational fear since 2019. China will always be the social credit, communism is when cartoon bear owns you etc. Now after COVID every good government initiative is somehow draconian and evil because they resemble the evil SEESEEPEE.
If you want a optimistic prediction maybe when the first huge climate crisis occurs(e.g blue ocean event) there will be significant protests against some parts of the economy. Maybe eventualy the oil industry will take a hit because it will be politically unsustainable. Does that mean they're rebelling against capitalism? The media will push that. "Oh no the young generation are anti-capitalist because checks notes they don't want to die due to some shit industry destroying the planet" is a headline from an article around 15-30 years from now. Yeah because communism is when you have a green energy policy.
I want to believe the younger generations are recognizing the shortcomings of the system, acknowledging how it’s negatively impacting them, and trying to act in a way that tangibly improves the situation. However, the pragmatic part of me has seen how the rest of the population reacts by burying their head in their treats and only popping up for air and vibe checks.
I think that fact alone will play a large role in the younger generations that are now reaping what their parents and grandparent sewed. They are all going to get tired of always being on the defensive, whether it’s defending against the climate crisis, the class crisis, the political crisis, whatever… I think there is a good chance they slip further into looking out only for themselves because it’s the only way they can find enjoyment in a crumbling existence.
I’m a massive cynic tho, and really hope I’m wrong about some of this.
either going to be the most capitalist generation or they're going to rebel against capitalism hard
I think it will be a mix of both. But I'm not sure that the number of anti-capitalists will be enough to throw off our chains.
