The older I get, the more I think that the internet was a mistake. It had a lot of potential for good and has delivered on that in many ways, but it has also unleashed an uncontrollable onslaught of radicalization, hatred, isolation, and mental illness. It’s harms have outweighed the good by orders of magnitude.
Lots of things are fine when they are first introduced because we carry our lived experiences into it. But those who grow up with the new thing shaping their lived experience don’t bring that perspective to it.
This is going to be very true for AI.
Thanks for putting it in such concise words.
I am an embedded developer so the LLM/AI is a omni-present talking point and one of my friends was saying that he loved LLMs because they could generate big chunks of code and he can go through it after and fix the mistakes.
He has the skills to fix the issues because he has a decade of non-LLM experience.
But someone that doesn’t have that experience will have a hard time finding the correct fix when the vibe code isn’t working as it should. They will rely on LLM telling them that they were right, so here is a new fix that doesn’t fix the issue.
The internet is just a way to get a message across. Overall, Gen Z (and further ones) are fucked in pretty much every aspect. No money, no housing and generally no real future. That leads to desperation and as a result you start asking yourself questions why up until the 1970s everyone had it better than the previous generations and now we’re constantly getting fucked. Then come the “saviors” of the internet that blame it on illegal aliens, women having rights etc because according to their logic we had it good in the 70s so we must reverse everything back to the way it was in 70s. If young people get some breathing room the trend will reverse itself in my opinion. But seeing as no one is coming to save young people, it will only get worse.
Then come the “saviors” of the internet that blame it on illegal aliens, women having rights etc because according to their logic we had it good in the 70s so we must reverse everything back to the way it was in 70s.
The problem isnt just the “saviors” and their message. Those people have always existed, always had the same blaming strategy. The problem is that the internet has made it easier for those messages to reach a global audience, has made the messenger faceless and unaccountable and given the presumption of legitimacy, has made it easier to get absorbed into isolated communities saturated in this kind of messaging, and made it easier to warp the worldview of the community to something antithetical to reality. If you run into a dude saying wacky shit in a bar, and he just seems to be some drunk asshole, you’re not likely to give him much credence against all of the other messaging around you. But if you find an entire community saying the things he says, and they welcome you in, and you get a sense of comradery and purpose from it, that same messaging holds a lot of sway over you.
Isolation has always been the secret sauce to radicalization. Exposure is the antidote. Humans have always had cultural feedback loops that reinforce a specific worldview. And meeting with other cultures often causes conflicts when those worldview collide. The promise of the internet was a more global culture wherein we have a shared reinforced world view. But that didn’t really happen for everyone. What we are seeing now is that same feedback loop phenomenon in a digital space, but often with dramatically different worldviews, even within the same local physical space. That still causes conflict when those communities collide, both online and in the real world, but now that conflict happens everywhere, even in your own household sometimes.
We’re losing physical communities, friends and family for our online echo chamber communities. People are definitely driven more into those digital communities as their physical life is more of a struggle financially, socially, etc. Relieving those struggles would certainly go a long way in remediating the problem, but it won’t go away.
100% agree. The weaponization of information has made the dumbest people not only dumber, but just outright worse humans than they would have ever been.
The good potential was lost when the old wild west Internet, where any random person could build a site and start a community. Now that there’s enough money and corporate presence on the Internet, they build up all the sites and tools that places use to socialize with others and, lo and behold, they implement algorithms to make sure reactionary beliefs are spoonfed to as many people as possible.
They understood the meta on what communication and community building was going to look like, and now, the only hope to get people out of these pipelines into reactionary echo chambers is either to pray all the big social media platforms decide en masse to stop promoting these views out of the goodness of their hearts, or we all just give up the poison and go back to living like it’s the late 90s and the Internet is just a thing you maybe check a couple of times a day at home and you otherwise live in the real world.
Interesting fact totally ignored by the click-bait headline:
Among women, 18% of gen Z and 6% of baby boomers agreed.
So, among women, support for traditional gender roles tripled.
Social media ‘influencer tradewives’ and the red pill circle are a huge reason both are going up in support, it kind of comes with less critical thinking, education, social and civil rights for women being taught, the works.
Those women are about to learn the hard way why women had to fight for their freedom from this oppressive system. Have fun with that domestic violence and financial prison
I imagine it is a “grass is greener” kind of thing.
May they never have wives.
But fr, one of the things I’ve found interesting is how many men want a partner to the point of distress, but have batshit expectations of her, compared to how many women I’ve known who casually are interested in having a man but have hard limits as to what they’re willing to put up with and would much rather be single than put up with a shitty guy. And in response to this the same men who are functioning as worse than nothing options, are increasingly expecting more and more out of women.
When I look at this as a market problem I come to the opposite conclusion as these young men: that men should consider obeying their wives.
But yeah violent misogyny must be met with feminism with teeth. We will not go back.
But yeah violent misogyny must be met with feminism with teeth. We will not go back.
I don’t know: these people seem to be getting a permission structure from the government. Honestly, I’ve been watching some of this stuff and mostly being quiet about a lot of it, even online.
But if you ask me honestly? I’m terrified about the direction things seem to be going. I’ve seen lots of unhelpful intergenerational warfare, mostly about boomers and Gen Y taking shots at one another, while my generation (Gen X) is playing the part of the forgotten child, just as we always have. Boomers seem to get blamed for everything in life, but it’s not like these other generations don’t have any agency!
But I’m very concerned about Gen Z and alpha, and just where they are going. It’s possible some of these people may break out of their mind forged manacles and moderate themselves or become more progressive, but that’s not how these things tend to work. People tend to drift to the right as they get older, not the other direction. And if they are starting at the trad wife position at such a young age?..yikes.
We are going back though project 2025 is calling for a removal of no fault divorce, women’s reproductive healthcare is being weaponized, death penalty for abortion bills are being introduced, the EEOC has been gutted, civil rights legislation is being reversed….not looking great for women
One of my Gen Z colleagues described a conversation they had with their wife wherein she said “you’re my best friend”, and he responded with “I’m not your friend I’m your husband”. I bet that made her feel good.
Did you call him a douche?
You should have
Idk, dipshit feels more appropriate. “Hey dipshit, sometimes you have to pay attention to the meaning over the words when your wife is expressing how she feels about you”
It’s not like he said it to her in my presence. The guy wants to ruin his marriage that’s his business, I got my own issues.
Well, gosh. This falls right in line with what I’ve been saying and wondering aloud about things like the Fourth Turning.
The Archie Bunker thing was something boomers stood up to make fun of their parents’ generation. That is the kind of thing that all this ginned-up inter-generational warfare that seems largely directed at the boomers (and the Silent Generation and Generation Jones somewhat) seems to miss.
And now we have all these younger “influencers” (barf) doing this kind of thing openly and unironically in the brosphere. The trad wife influencers. And those people and their fans are not the boomers…
Apart from the fact that this is reported by The Guardian. It is important to highlight that it is not just a “gen Z” problem. This is yet another battle against the generations - and the fact is, gen alpha also has this problem.
It is baffling how yet again, people are needlessly correlating problems to a particular minority. Problems as a result of precise indoctrination, crafted by our glorious leaders and corporations. The fascism within our lives impacts everyone no matter the age.
So honestly who’s fault is it to enable such widespread fascism in the first place? Our whole ecosystem is basically fascists in disguise, technology crafted to indoctrinate people from their infancy and punish those which stray away.
This is a problem which disregards the root problem and shifts it all on meaningless “generations”. Growing up with fascist made technology essentially puts you on the fascist training programme. Of course, even if you didn’t - majority of the time they will leave you no other choice than to obey.
And how likely are they to be single? This idea is appealing to husbands but I don’t see Gen Z wives hopping on board with this idea.
18% are, as per the article.
Ok that’s really concerning because it means far right messaging is increasingly hitting girls, who had previously not been as hit by it.
Agreed.
I think I just figured out why I can’t decide if I’m pansexual or finsexual. It’s because so many masculine looking guys my age are assholes, so my brain just assumes that all masculine looking guys my age must be assholes, so I’ve been nearly entirely turned off to all masculine looking guys. I know that good men exist, but it seems like they are few and far between so I tend to just avoid men altogether unless they are gender nonconforming. So basically I’ve limited myself to femboys and wlw, but I would date a masculine looking guy if he happened to be one of the few who aren’t assholes, it’s just that they’re hard to find.
I also live in a small rural area though, so there’s probably a higher percentage of misogynistic assholes here compared to the cities but idk.
Remember that media gives voice to the minority to get clicks, not to inform you.
The difference may be that I live in a city, but almost all people I’ve come across in my life are genuinely good people. It’s hard to imagine that people like Andrew Tate or Nick Fuentes live in the real world. I like to think of it as a separate online world since people like that are few to come by.
To be fair, I don’t go out much, but that’s partly because I’m in the middle of nowhere and there’s like nothing out here. On dating apps the men I see pretty much always have their political views set to conservative or moderate.
I did go to a bar in the cities once and I did meet a guy I liked there but nothing ever came of it. I do get the impression that men in the cities are likely much better than where I live, but I haven’t spent much time in the cities though.
I am also thinking about when I was in highschool, specifically a yeehaw highschool, and my impression was that most guys would rather eat crayons than pay attention in class. Those guys also had loser flags on their trucks despite us being in a northern union state, and there were a lot of them. Though I did have some guy friends who were chill, I felt like they were in the minority.
It’s definitely a city vs rural thing then. And this is not unique to the US. Being in the city forces you to be aware that there are many different people with many different backgrounds in the world, and you are forced to interact with them daily. It makes it a lot easier to accept homosexuality, for example, if you actually interact with gay people and realize that we all aren’t so different from each other.
Funny enough I can still relate as an asexual myself.
I had to cut many friendships with people because they started doing MAGA-style “jokes” after growing comfortable atound me.
Now I keep an extra distance just in case someone turns out to be a bigot, unless if there is a hint for the opposite like them being androgenous or anti-capitalist etc.
It found that gen Z males (born 1997-2012) were twice as likely as baby boomer men (born 1946-1964) to have traditional views on decision-making within a marriage, with just 13% of men in the older cohort agreeing that a wife should always obey her husband. Among women, 18% of gen Z and 6% of baby boomers agreed.
Hmmm okay… So the author states that gen z women are three times more likely to adopt these conservative viewpoints, which means they are being converted at a higher rate than men.
“I think there are a lot of grievances, a lot of fear of men losing social positions,” Chung said. “And there’s a vacuum that’s being filled with rhetoric and voices which are trying to pitch young men against gender equality, against young women, against migrants.”
Such an opportunity for an interesting article examining why, but of course they completely gloss that over and frame it as men being egotistical and gullible.
I am hoping it’s that gen-Z they surveyed was going through the middle/highschool edgy teenager phase.
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Hey look an essentialist pissant who doesn’t know what social factors are. How’s that spot next to the likes of Rowling? Ah who am I kidding youre probably incapable of introspection meaning my insults and flyts are wasted on ya.
Do you got a solution? Or are we just going to flood them with more ‘man bad’ buzzwords tonkeep pushing them away? These people are going to get us killed and there is no solution.
As a man I can tell you the solution sure as shit isn’t to abort any male fetuses that’s for fucken sure. If I was younger I’d probably call you an SJW but frankly speaking I think you’re just an idiot.
As for actual solutions. Relatively simple, improve material conditions and put a bullet into freaks like Rogan, Carlson, and Peterson. The fact of the matter is that this has happened in the past, it happened during at least the French revolution and during the rise of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s. The solution to both at least in the pre-war period is to improve economic and material conditions, fascism got gutted here in the states due to the new deal and Napoleon granted enough stability and improvements to snub a lot of problems.
Is it a satisfying answer? Fuck no. But sadly most people don’t have an all encompassing hatred for cultists and incompetents that broke me out of the gamergate sphere. Turns out my hatred for Trump is genetic or at least so engraved into my person hood so as to have no definitive difference.
Okay, fine. I calmed down, but the fact is these people exist because they are the men that both sides seem to talk about the most. We cannot beat them by focusing so much on them. And your solution is something I doubt will ever happen.
Bread and circuses wasn’t just a way for the Romans to keep their population docile, it was how they prevented the empire from collapsing in on itself centuries before the fall of the Western half of Rome. Point is that improved material conditions would help to weaken this movement, probably won’t kill it since plenty of it is based in cults like Mormonism and modern Evangelical Christianity but it could stimmy the flow.
But yeah in many ways the cat is out of the bag and we are firmly in damage control now. I also do agree that focusing on those already within such groups is pretty much worthless, best place to start is to talk to kin, kith, and clan about it and try to prevent it from happening in the first place. Mind you this won’t stop it from happening but you may be able to redirect their rage towards the politicians and rich bastards who have created our modern material conditions through their greed.
Yeah, but it feels like we have to work against our own side for that to happen. Because at best a liberal man can do is be ‘one of the good ones’ and that shit is pretty is isoating when all gender discussion is focused on the worst of men.
Boys are effectively told they can only be monsters by both sides. Not a day goes by there is another study about how awful men are. Or some influencer tells them it’s okay to be a monster.
And that is it. No other message.
And I keep hearing about the need of a ‘liberal Joe Rogan’. But I can think of a few people who might fit that mold, but no one actually wants to talk about them. But we sure give Tate a lot of attention.
Yeah I don’t even know how we would go forward on that front. I’m pretty traditionalist amongst my kin but the problem is that still puts me as a progressive in larger society since it aligns me with union men, anti-authoritarians, and anit-assimilationists which is to say I’m a stereotype for pre-ww2 American Scots who somehow exists in the modern period.
Personally I do think there may be a way forward with that though I’m a tad bit tired typing this out since it’s 3 in the morning but still. Basically use traditional aesthetics to push progressive causes, sorta a shieldmadens, beer, and unions type of thing IDK. My brain is currently poisoned by my current EUV Frisia run so all I can think of is spamming privateers everywhere.
