I have been saying for the past 6 - 8 years that Gen Z is the future, they are different, they are compassionate, etc. My opinion changed on that Tuesday in a bad way.
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I am also elder Gen Z and im really fucken hoping its just our version of Gen X and Boomers being confused about Dragon Ball Z fights. Otherwise I hope the runts get trial by fired and knock it off.
Turns out that growing up with a phone in their hand made a lot of them particularly susceptible to right-wing propaganda.
Ten Z didn’t vote Trump in. They simply voted for Kamala less.
Which helped Trump win.
Maybe they bought into Kamala’s messaging that Trump had no chance and that even Republicans hated him. No point turning up if its as good as won.
That’s not the message I saw. I saw him being considered an imminent threat, unlike in 2016.
I agree that this is the lesson, but it’s bolstered by decades of bad behavior by the previous generations who chose not to leave a livable world for their children.
They’ve been raised to believe their thoughts are valid and they should speak up, instead of shutting the fuck up and listening until they have enough experience.
Sorry, but that was a “kids these days” moment.
“Crazy how Millennials were the only ones to learn how to use computers and we apparently are also the only ones who learned to see through disinformation,”
Whoever this Dylan jackass is can piss right off. Gen-X built your fucking computers.
Well, TBF, the boomers helped bootstrap what Gen X was working with, and then there are the Elder Gods like Turing, Hopper, John McCarthy, Neumann, etc…
In any case, if someone thinks that learning computers means they can see through disinformation…LOLOLOL. This is exactly why I keep beating the drum for critical thinking and media literacy, steeped within a rich liberal (in every meaning of that term) educational program.
This is exactly why I keep beating the drum for critical thinking and media literacy, steeped within a rich liberal (in every meaning of that term) educational program.
I’ve actually begun work on an essay about that exact thing. One that I’ve put off for a very long time because the last time I dared to imply a causal relationship between the rise of Trade-Schools, where you learn to do one thing and one thing well, but have no real education otherwise, and the dumbing down of the electorate, I got shouted down for being “elitist”. But with recent events, I’ve decided to expand on my idea and throw some more research behind it because fuck it, I’m feeling vindicated.
I’m not saying that everyone who attends a trade-school is intellectually incurious; just that a broader understanding of the world is not a part of the curriculum and it’s left up to the students themselves if they want to be a well rounded individual on their own time.
You could throw in some Sam Bankman-Fried’s ‘philosophy’ which was just freshman-level ethics. The tech bro version of deep revealed moral truth is just they would have seen if they hadn’t all dropped out of college before taking their gen-ed classes.
I majored in Near Eastern Classical Archaeology, but the truly life-changing course for me was honestly a Philosophy elective I took in third year where I was introduced to the Metaphysics of Morals by Immanuel Kant as well as a few writings on Ethics by Locke and Hume.
Is there a link to a PDF or anything?
It’s not done yet. I’ve only just written the abstract and started collecting my sources. When it’s finished it’ll likely just go collect dust in a substack somewhere like everything else I shout into the void.
I write this stuff because if I don’t, I’ll go mad. But I hardly expect it to get widely distributed.
I’m not saying that everyone who attends a trade-school is intellectually incurious; just that a broader understanding of the world is not a part of the curriculum and it’s left up to the students themselves if they want to be a well rounded individual on their own time.
I read “Shop class as soulcraft” a while ago. I highly recommend it. I don’t have a problem with trade schools per se. Not everyone is cut out for white collar work, and there is no shame in doing other work. Smart people are required in skilled work that isn’t at a desk, IMHO. Also, I object to what university has become, and that’s essentially treating it as a trade school!
But if I were to have my ideal situation, it would be this - starting early, children are taught to question things and given a sound framework to base that on. By the time they are in high school, everyone should be able to easily spot a logical fallacy. This is not hard stuff. It’s also not airy-fairy stuff. It’s an essential life-skill, like learning to balance your checkbook and manage a household budget. This would be woven into nearly every class, where possible.
By the time someone leaves high school, whether they go to a trade school, or uni, or directly to a job, or to be a homemaker, they should hopefully be equipped to discern the wheat from the chaff and be able to use this skillset for life.
I think the major roadblock would essentially be Republicans. They basically want obedient workers, and they want people to fill their churches. Raising a set of citizens that are questioning the claims made by everyone, including qons, and who are able to spot the logical fallacies constantly employed by corporations and by Republicans would be a threat to the qons.
I agree completely. Trade-Schools are as good or as bad as the person attending. You’re going to have people like my best friend, who went to a tradeschool for bio-tech lab assistant, but reads constantly and is generally well versed in critical thinking. And then you have people like my brother-in-law, who’s a damn good Welder but doesn’t know, or care, about the wider world around him and just believes the words of whoever happens to agree with him.
Critical thinking is the most basic skill that needs to be reinforced in a democracy. But you need knowledge in order to participate in a proper dialogue, whether it’s political, social or economic. Knowledge that doesn’t come from learning how to weld good.
I agree. Which is why I think it should be done throughout K-12. Even homemakers that never went to trade or uni should be well-versed in this. It’s just as important as being able to manage a household budget.
It can of course be employed throughout uni, too…right now, I think it is for certain tracks, but I’m almost 100% that someone can get a masters or PhD in engineering and still somehow never really have a good grounding in critical thinking. I think it is how you get some of these people getting a degree, and are probably highly competent in narrow areas and have a high IQ, and yet, become denialists when it comes to pretty basic things like evolution and climate change. Because they are basically intellectually defenseless against people employing logical fallacies, they fall prey to complete nonsense.
Business Degrees are the most popular post-secondary degree in the world right now. Similarly, they learn about money money money and how to make ever increasing sums of it while completely eschewing anything else that distracts from that, like history, or ethics, or critical thought.
Whoa there! Cant have the working class intelligent enough to see through the bull shit.
I do think that much of the things drummed up about “generations” feeds into the distraction. If you can get boomers vilified and at the throats of millennials, if you can get Gen-X mostly ignored and sidelined, and Gen Z getting feds lots of complete dreck while telling them “you are a magical species who gets ‘tech’ like no other” and so on (while starting to rev up the propaganda to tell Gen alpha the exact same thing)…it’s quite the sideshow from what is really happening, and that is that the upper crust like Elon and donvict are utterly lawless and making off with all the loot.
I think none of this is all that new - setting age groups against one another, setting up a war between male and females, the rural against the metropolitan, the various strata of classes that range from extreme poverty to the middle class (that still desperately needs a job to keep their head above water) and of course the old standby: setting the races against one another.
This is age-old stuff, but the techniques have been sharpened and perfected like never before. And the qons work extra hard to make sure that education won’t rise to meet the challenge.
Gen-X mostly ignored and sidelined
We’ve been ready for that since we realized that our parents were never going to retire soon enough for us to have access to the “good jobs”. We went to school and majored in “whatever was available”, and then the generation that graduated after us coincided with our parents retiring and freed up the good jobs for them.
“Ignored and Sidelined” pretty much sums up my generation. If we didn’t have computers, weed, and grunge, we’d have nothing.
Yes, as I get older, I think about how cynical I’ve been all along, as a consequence of seeing both how the boomers suffered under corporate rule - many were expecting to be able to be corporate men and then retire with the gold watch and all that, only to be downsized, rightsized, outsource, offshored - because of seeing that, and being a realist about how corporations value their “human resources”, I’ve never fallen for the corporate line when working. Thing is, I cannot say that about all of my peers. Salaried IT staff still work more than 40 hours. They skip their vacations because they are “too busy”. Not realizing that those things simply will not matter when it comes to layoff time. And these are people in my age bracket - they entered the workforce - possibly - under the early 90s recession, they’ve seen the dot-com bubble burst, they’ve seen the real estate meltdown and so they know exactly how workers will be cast off like a used condom when it suits the suits. They probably saw their boomer parents grind through things in the 80s, or heard about things in the 70s.
So you might as well take that time off. Don’t work much more than 40 hours in a week. Don’t have work shit on personal devices. Don’t check email and IM and text messages from work during off hours. It’s rare when I get to talk to a Gen Xer that seems to cop to this - or at least is willing to let down their guard and admit it to others…another cynical defense mechanism, I guess.
Because boomers were ground under all this, they stayed in the workforce for a very long time. They are even still in the workforce. Also, people are living longer, as a general rule (a recent dip in the U.S., though I’m not sure that’s going to be a trend). Gen X is a smaller pop than either Gen Y or boomers, so yeah, we got squeezed.
I think one of the more poignant moments about corporations and age groups was a moment in Microserfs where one of the characters’ dad gets laid off from IBM…anyway, it is very interesting to see how this cycle keeps repeating, and the same stories seem to be sold to/told about each upcoming generation. Seems a lot of it rhymes.
being a realist about how corporations value their “human resources
I was (and I guess still am) classic middle management. The day I went from “Cynical” to outright “radicalised” was when my previous employer told me that my staff would not be getting their yearly cost-of-living raise that year because “The Company didn’t make a profit.” Yet the company actually made 6 billion dollars in profit that year.
The issue is that some eggheads projected that they would make 7 billion, and giving raises would increase that shortfall and cause the stock price to drop by a few more cents than it otherwise would have. So in the corporate world, not making enough profit is equivalent to not making any profit and the workers get fucked.
But damn, did the head office muckity-mucks get THEIR bonus’ that year. Yessiree.
and then the generation that graduated after us coincided with our parents retiring and freed up the good jobs for them.
You think millennials had good jobs out of college? Ever heard of 2008?
2008 wasn’t the fault of bad jobs. It was the fault of overly greedy banks offering sub-prime mortgages to people would otherwise never qualify for home ownership, and then crying for a bailout when those new homeowners (unsurprisingly) defaulted.
I never said it was the fault of bad jobs. I’m saying the result was about a decade of no (good) jobs.
In any case, if someone thinks that learning computers means they can see through disinformation…LOLOLOL.
Well apparently you missed out on the reading comprehension lesson, because that is not what the original quote said. It never claimed one meant the other.
Seems like they had an association in their minds if you read the quote.
So you also need to learn the difference between correlation and causation?
(Don’t mind me, it’s been a long week and I’m grumpy)
It’s like every generation loses the ability to do something in computer technology that was just abstracted away somehow. I as a millennial have never soldered a PC mainboard (modding an Xbox doesn’t count), but I’d say that otherwise, my understanding is pretty good. And I think all of my friends understand the concepts of files.
I recently asked someone about 10 years older if he knew what partitioning and formatting means in the context, and he knew, despite initially saying he has no clue about computers, to show someone 10 years younger (who didn’t know) that such knowledge was just basically required back in the day. And it’s not like these terms are obsolete, the concepts are still the same, even though we went from MBR to GPT and from FAT32 or whatever to better filesystems. It’s no different for phones, but not required and even hidden.
I’d say generally, the technology userbase broadened while average knowledge in the group declined, however I’m not sure whether the absolute numbers of people with a certain knowledge level actually went down.
I recently asked someone about 10 years older if he knew what partitioning and formatting means in the context, and he knew, despite initially saying he has no clue about computers, to show someone 10 years younger (who didn’t know) that such knowledge was just basically required back in the day
I call them Intellectual Oligarchies. The knowledge (of any subject, not just tech) being limited to a circle of elites while the products are made simple enough to operate that the average person doesn’t really need to know how it’s done, just how to purchase it.
The good thing about Intellectual Oligarchies, however, is that they are open to be joined by anyone who wants to learn, or is curious about things. No formal education is required; just intellectual curiosity and the ability to read. They’re entirely self-propogated; not purposefully created by some evil cabal trying to withhold knowledge from the average person. Knowledge itself is open-source, in other words. Anyone can use it if they want.
In the Greek and Roman democratic condition, people who don’t exercise that “right to knowledge” lacked the context necessary to properly partake in the citizen’s primary job…democratic rule.
Ars Liberalis doesn’t translate to “Liberal Arts”. It literally translates to “The skills of Freedom”. A citizenry of a democracy needs the skills (knowledge) to properly function in said democracy; and that included studies of history, philosophy, politics, civics, etc…
Ars Liberalis doesn’t translate to “Liberal Arts”. It literally translates to “The skills of Freedom”. A citizenry of a democracy needs the skills (knowledge) to properly function in said democracy; and that included studies of history, philosophy, politics, civics, etc…
It’s for reasons like this that I say we should strive for everyone to have a liberal education, in every meaning of that term.
The qons have done a lot to demonize the term, but it is a word that should be taken back…and given to the generations in our education systems right now. The point of a good education is not to crank out obedient workers.
It’s like every generation loses the ability to do something in computer technology that was just abstracted away somehow
Yes, I’ve been hearing computer engineers (or those with that mindset) complaining that programmers don’t really understand much about how computers actually work since before I even entered the workforce, but I kind of get what they are/were saying. I’d look around at my peers nearly the entire time I’ve been doing this, and I’d see some that really wanted to know a lot about, well, everything, in some cases, being interested in hardware, and then there were a lot, maybe more than half, that just focus on learning whatever the herd is telling them is the newest shiny object - and this is nearly always vendor-led and a lot of it is less about sound reasoning, and more about being fashionable. These days it might be a frontend JS framework, but exchange the set of terms/frameworks and it’s the same old story.
These days it is increasingly difficult to know much about the actual target hardware, if you work in hosted services like Azure, etc…
I mean, Boomer grandparents did the real lifting if we’re going back…
And some of the prior generation. There were some truly great minds working on this stuff that were the parents of boomers.
If we were able to age out of authoritarian conservatism, it would have happened a long time ago. Possibly as far back as “cooking food over fire is making kids these days weak”. That should never have been a strategy. Doubly so when there’s a time limit to solve global warming.
Why hasn’t there been a push to counter the propaganda on social media with social media?
Use short form, humorous posts that integrate facts and ideas that give a different more positive take on others. I would guess there are great writers and actors that have a progressive-ish mindset that could put something like this together.
But honestly what is the reason this hasn’t been done? Or if it is being done why isn’t there more of a push to get it seen?
Algorithms ensure that the only content that ends up getting to your eyes is content that you already agree with for the most part. Or content that you hate so much that you have an incurable urge to respond to it with swearing and vitriol. (or at least that’s why I think TikTok keeps giving me Maple Maga bullshit)
In other words, you can put up whatever you want but thanks to modern social media, the only people who will ever see it are the people who already agree with you.
why I think TikTok keeps giving me Maple Maga bullshit
I mean… it shows the garbage to you, and you keep coming back… maybe it’s time to ditch tictack
That would require ongoing funding outside of election years. These are paid for by Mercers and Kochs or the Kremlin on the right, and i don’t think Gates or Cuban is too eager to fund left-wing propaganda.
There is Holywood money in the world of progressive actors that could put something together but I don’t know that world and how it works so I have no idea if it’s something that is actually feasible.
You will be surprised to learn how little money the most famous actors in Hollywood actually have, that’s why they’re all trying to sell vagina candles and tequila.
The Hollywood elites are full of conservatives and libertarians. The elites are the suits who finance those movies like Steven Mnuchin.
If you don’t control the platform, it might just be wasted efforts, although I guess they could try. But it might be that those pulling the strings can be sure that virtually no one is reached.
It’s a frustratingly true response… sigh
Why hasn’t there been a push to counter the propaganda on social media with social media?
Because the dems are also right-wing and have no credibility.
The actual left-wing is constantly pushing counter-narratives but without the massive funding of capital (eg. koch bros). No billionaire is going to fund a left-wing Prager U that talks about how billionaires are trash.
The establishment wants to stay established, so they only use their established channels, not realizing how disconnected they became.
Because a lie will circle the earth a dozen times before the truth gets a foot (or whatever tf the saying is).
It is so much easier, and takes so much less time and energy to make up disinformation, than to fight it. And people on the left tend to actually care about the truth, and we also want others to understand the truth (and to gain the means for them to independently arrive at the truth), and spouting disinformation goes directly against that.
It’s amazing what people are willing to do to win when you not only make it acceptable, but encourage complete disregard for ethics.
No analysis of how the older generations that turned out for Obama and Kerry went even harder for Trump than Gen Z ? Gen X went Trump by 22 percent.
Gen Z is doing their best and if you put this all on them then you’re going to lose the next election too.
Depressing as it is, it’s fairly typical for people to skew rightward as they get older. The problem is if Gen Z is already starting at a certain position, right now…where will they be at when they reach the age of today’s boomers or Gen X/Y?
Remember: the boomers brought us the 60s. Over the years, the narrative has morphed from the boomers’ parents (and reactionaries among the boomers) clucking their tongues about the 60s to: OMG, the boomers are all in for donvict, and “okay boomer” and so on. Boomer is now shorthand for Faux News and hate radio addict. Not so long ago, that target demo was the boomers’ parents.
So, if it can happen to them, it is likely to happen for Gen Z, but maybe even worse.
The boomers were actually better than Gen X. The only reason we think people get more conservative is because we had a generation with reliable news. Then as they got older they kept Fox News on whenever they weren’t watching something else, just all the time. They didn’t realize Fox was propaganda and Gen X hasn’t realized CNN was bought out years ago with the specific idea of turning it into Fox News 2.
What we need in this country is some media literacy.
Trump Youth.
The zoomers are more like boomers than any other generation. The thought that they would save anyone but themselves is ridiculous.
Liberals solve the problems that cause voters to die. Conservatives push for the status quo, even if the status quo kills the voters. The more deaths, the more people move towards the liberals. What, right now, is killing Gen Z?
Gen Z males have been raised in this “men need to be the alpha dog - don’t let anyone talk down to you - don’t respect anyone” mindset throughout high school. Then, when they get out into the real world, that mindset lead them to flunk out of college, not hold down a job, and not be able to get/keep a girlfriend. With no education/money/girlfriend’s house and housing prices through the roof, they have to move back in with there parents who:
A) Are liberal and thus blame it on there attitude, which makes them even more conservative
B) Are conservative and blame it on trans-mexican-CRT-cowfarts, which makes them bond more with their parents.
How do we fix this?
Just replying to thank you for that glorious combo of terms. As the dirty migrant I am, I simply had to steal it for my username.
Good luck!
For many, it would be making them more community-minded and responsible as younger kids. The combo of rarely being held accountable for mistakes or failure to meet expectations (basically, gentle parenting) and a social education from algorithmically curated content feels like it’s been a major factor in developing their social/political attitudes.
They about to be thrown off mom and dads insurance and learn the hard way about the “team” they voted for.
Not to mention the fact that inflation is about to go through the roof and there will be food shortages when they start deporting migrants.
No, Gen Z just isn’t conservative enough to settle for Dems. Put up a progressive, and they’ll show up.
doubt it will work as well as you think
Whatever the Dems do, even if it move their platform to the furthest left in the known universe most moral puritans on the left will just lable them mainstream, or corpo shills and find a reason to stay home. Regardless of policy position or idea, the far left has always moved the goalposts between each election cycle just out of reach of the main stream.
When they refused to vote for Gore because of climate change the party moved to the left to meet those voters, and the left said fuck off. When they moved to left to get voters that refused Hillary because of corporate speaking gigs the party moved further left on corporate accountability, and the left said fuck off. When Biden moved left during his term to protect the environment, hold predatory schools and lending servicers accountable, attempted loan forgiveness, expanded overtime guarantees, etc etc etc. the left said fuck off to his predecessor. The people who claim the left will just show up if you give them x are big fat liars. Their perceived moral purity will always be more valuable to them than progress and action.
And I say this as someone that is further to the left than the party. I am also profoundly disappointed in the parties lack of moral courage. I just believe in practical progress and action, something most self righteous moral puritans absolutely don’t believe in.
No. The party has never moved left beyond their rhetoric. Their actual policies keep moving right. For example, even as their climate rhetoric went left, they still broke records on fossil fuel extraction, waived environmental protections to build Trump’s wall faster, and tried to ban imports of green tech.
The real sticking point is war. The party refuses to move left enough to be anti-war, because they are beholden to defense contractors. And Americans are so sick of war, they’ll vote for anyone they believe might de-escalate.
100% of the USA relies on fossil fuels. Dems have always done both in the last 2 decades, focus on energy independence (which means meeting the present need) and on preparing for the future (clean energy alternatives). And they weren’t trying to ban green tech, they were trying to stop spyware from entering the country from china. Yes Biden blew it on the wall.
The real sticking point is war.
It’s the real sticking point now. As soon as the party shifts their policy stance there will be others, that’s my point.
People on the left have no clue how policy is made, how party platforms change, how minds are changed. If you want a seat at the table you actually have to take it. That means showing up and joining, going to meetings, voting on policy platforms, holding your nose and voting for your team and then pressuring you side to do what you want. It means saying “hey, if you take a moral stand on this, I’ll back you up in the next election.”
But that’s not the way of self righteousness and moral purity, the lefts smug moral purists would rather torch the world than work with people. They say “thank for taking a stand on this, but it will never be good enough, kindly go fuck yourself”. The party doesn’t move left, because the left is far far too self righteous to ever actually work with anyone that doesn’t pass their purity test. People like that don’t actually believe in democracy, in consensus building, it’s their way or the highway.
I agree the party needs to move left, but people that actually want to govern on the left need to meet them there.
I understand that’s what you want to happen. That you think the left should hold their nose, and compromise on the horrors of the empire to get a seat at the table.
But as this election has shown, that’s not going to happen. So it’s not the left that needs to hold their nose to get a seat at the table. It’s now the party that needs to swallow their pride, and acquiesce to the left, or they’ll continue to lose their seat at the table.
You’re missing my point. I am much further left than the party on most issues. I too wish for the party to move left. It won’t move left by left wing people disappearing, that behavior only serves to move the party right. The party needs 50% of the vote plus one, if you don’t show up to vote, they will get it from the moderate right next cycle. Every time you fail to be part of the solution you make the problem much worse.
Alternatively, people can get engaged with the party now, while we have time to take over. The party is made up of it’s members. If those members shift heavily left, so will the platform. You don’t win the game by refusing to play, you win the game by becoming the team.
But that’s the opposite of what is happening. Instead each time the party fails to gain enough power to enact left wing policy and instead is forced to concede to the middle they get punished and they have no choice but to move towards the votes.
We are repeatedly doing exactly what the right wing wants. Stay fractured and disorganized, and we all lose, forever.
Its the working class vs the 1%, not generation vs generation.
It was pretty funny seeing people putting so much faith into these kids
The funniest one was when they thought Taylor Swift fans of all people would save democracy.
“We need a good billionaire to fight the bad ones”
Ugh… this shit is why I never leave the basement willingly
Sorry to break it to ya Slate (libs), Trump barely got more 18-24 votes this time than he did last time, whereas a lot of young people just didn’t show up for Harris. Everybody knew young people were upset by the genocide, they said they couldn’t vote for Harris because of her policies and surprisingly no matter how much Dem party dorks tried to shame them they didn’t show up, just like they said they wouldn’t. And now everyone is like “gen z is maga” get a grip
The sad part is I don’t think most gen z voters who withheld their vote for Kamala fully appreciated what a 2nd Trump term meant, but here we are.
You’re right of course. This is part of the reason there needs to be a viable workers party, to educate and uplift the consciousness of workers to counter the lies of the GOP and the criminal negligence of the Democrats.
The lads depicted are Gen Alpha 18 year olds. Gen z is mid to late twenties now. Some of them are about to hit 30…
The birth year range for different generations is fuzzy, but I can’t find a single source saying that 2006 or 2007 would be considered gen Alpha. The youngest population that voted in this election is gen. Z, and not all members of Gen. Z are eligible to vote yet.
Fuck Gen Z. Gen Y fo life!
