Comment by jondwillis
2 months ago
At this point I’m just watching a slightly younger cohort of men repeat all of my worst digital addiction mistakes like getting inserted into the online video game -> toxic online behavior pipeline (or worse, fascism), ideologies (Musk), crypto and options gambling (thanks Reddit a la 2013 for all of the crypto communities and WSB) too much computer (ouch, my neck, arms and back.)
I’m not doing particularly well, especially mentally, despite having tons of opportunity and successes. Worried about the younger cohorts, but I guess that is a tale as old as time.
I feel like the patterns are more or less the same but the cycles are getting shorter and more pronounced.
I met the son of a family friend today, he's 13, already has an opinion about the Israel/Palestine war and spent $500 in roblox so far, they're not wealthy at all. Back in my days I was stuck in the free to play parts of mmorpgs (or had to beg for months for a $5 monthly membership), playing tf2 (free) and had 0 political ideas or even knew people who cared about politics
It really is not beyond the reach of a motivated and curious 13 year old to have an informed opinion on (geo)politics.
You don't gave to be particularly motivated to get predigested opinions from influencers. There's too damn many boys and young men echoing how the "Matrix" keeping them down
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When I was 13 I had a paper route and mowed lawns, and with those earnings I spent about $75 per month on video games and comic books, easily exceeding $500 over a year.
This to me on a surface level this seems totally fine, however I can't help to feel conflicted when that money is being spent on some of the more "predatory" games like gachas, however I'm not sure if it's really too different from kids spending their money on pokemon cards either. Do you feel different about those or would you say it's the same thing?
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It's normal for 13 year olds to have strong opinions on such topics - they have plenty of time to refine them or even change their mind.
I would be more worried about those who by this age didn't develop any interest in geopolitics - it affects them all the same but they typically don't understand why and pick whatever source tells a more compelling story.
When I was 13 (in the US in the 1970s) none of my classmates or friends ever expressed any interest in geopolitics or international relations.
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$500 in Roblox? that's a lot of money for a 13 year old and that money could likely be spent elsewhere... As far as the opinion about Israel/Palestine it's likely that opinion is inherited from family or cohort and it's not fully their own.
I recall in grade school in the 80's lots of kids had opinions on Jews, Poles, black folks, gay folks, etc. Clearly, all acquired from relatives.
Young people emulating the adults in their life is how it always has been.
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If you don't have decades of built up propaganda it's pretty easy to see that Israel is the bad guy. The condescending "it's complicated" line is part of the propaganda telling you that you're not allowed to come to the obvious conclusion for yourself. My 10 year has figured out that Russia is the bad guy in Ukraine and that Israel is the bad guy in Gaza.
Must be nice if politics is just good and bad guys for you.
It should give you some pause that a 10 yo has the same level of understanding of global politics.
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Well he didn't have decades of propaganda but still roots for Israel... I didn't mention this subject there because I have better things to do with my time than ruin Christmas by talking politics with teenagers so I can't tell you where he got that from
> If you don't have decades of built up propaganda
But how are you so sure that doesn't apply to you?
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online games aren’t the problem imo, it’s disposable identities and ~zero repercussions for bad actors.
The remedy is far worse than the problem
Yeah I don't know how you preserve much-needed anonymity, while also binding humans to their personas and holding them accountable for their actions.
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Are they also drinking tons of soda? I can’t believe how much I used to drink. I don’t touch any drink with sugar (other than lactose/latte) nowadays. It’s so disgusting, don’t know how I ever did it in the first place.
God my teeth wish i had just stopped drinking soda a decade ago. It wasnt even that hard to kick
How much of that was soda, and how much was it access to preventative care?
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Broad brushstrokes incoming and pure speculation but I wrote it out anyway…
Today’s youth are more proactive with their identities these days than we were. We were and remain reactive with our identities. That preference influences what triggers the dopamine hits needed for life.
The drugs of a reactive identity culture are sugar, alcohol, narcotics, work, anything that’s a trope in movies made by boomers. These drugs have consequences that shape the user’s identity. For example: weight gain or burnout.
But the drugs of a proactive identity culture are those that drive the person’s perception of their identity. The live ahead of the consequences. Things like digital social networks, status symbols like shoes, colleges, or jobs, and anything that drives success in those status symbols. Example: Adderall helps the user study, which helps the user get better grades, which opens the door to a better college, which allows the user to flaunt that college association as part of their identity. That doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences to those drugs but those consequences aren’t tropes of modern life just yet because we’re still normalizing their outcomes.
All of this to say: sodas aren’t their thing because soda is “unhealthy” and that drags on their identity.
> Today’s youth are more proactive with their identities these days than we were.
I wanted to echo this and say that I believe younger people create a "symphony" with their identity; picking and choosing from various sub-cultures to create a unique combination. Flexible, morphing.
A very interesting observation. I wonder though if the difference is genuinely a different kind of self-understanding between the generations, or more a question of the prevalence of these two approaches to identity. I think in my generation there were also plenty of people that at least tried to be 'proactive' about their identity building (and greatly valued status symbols etc), but I believe it was not as common, because this meme of 'seeing yourself as your own brand and wanting/needing to market yourself' was not as prominent. Maybe there even were, relatively speaking, more people back then that actively tried to avoid the 'status games', because they were still easier to escape then -- but that's just speculation, and certainly influenced by my own aversion to these games and hence my own youth.
What a brilliant observation.
Has anything else been written online about proactive vs. reactive identities, and particularly - how this has changed historically. Could it have been the case that prior to television, generations (for example "The Greatest Generation") grew up with a proactive identity culture, due to having a more proactively social culture?
"Our youth now love luxury, they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders, and they love to chatter instead of exercise. Children are now tyrants not servants of their household. They no longer rise when elders enter the room."
— Socrates
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Gen Z uses a lot more steroids which tracks with your analysis.
But also I think you're falling for sample bias. The ones who don't have a billion followers are overweight and generally less healthy than previous generations.
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Wsb was 2013??
It existed at least: https://web.archive.org/web/20121218025312/http://www.reddit...
I remember the “community” having its own well-defined memes and culture by at least 2016