When did they stop?
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Yup.
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I think it’s just as important not to romanticize kids these days, as it is important not to romanticize some mythic generation of the past. Kids are humans, too, and susceptible to horrible bullshit politics like anyone else. A cliche ‘the kids are alright’ mentality just feels like a way to wash one’s hands of responsibility for necessary system-changing political action (like the bromide about the ‘arc of history’).
I’ve taught in high schools where queer kids were out and going to prom, but also where the majority of the student body voted for Trump in the school’s mock election. The generation to come won’t automatically, magically be more enlightened than the one before it, especially if the place they are growing up in is actively miseducating them in white supremacy, transphobia, etc.
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Liberal darling John Stewart was dragging OWS non-stop, while having civil interviews with Tea Party chodes. Real “Rally For Sanity” both-sideser bullshit from that guy.
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I see it as a quick reminder that the forces of evil are not marshaled against human civilization without opposition. Every generation is a new opportunity to push forward.
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A fair point! Eternal vigilance is the price of anything good, and that includes kids.
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For anyone interested in this whole “everything is worse now” phenomenon, I can recommend the Build For Tomorrow podcast (formerly called The Pessimists’ Archive". It’s a chronicle of the history and effects of moral panics, everything from the novel to the bicycle to sex robots. It’s not just “haha look how old people are always wrong”. It explores the reasons why this effect persists and what we might do about it.
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Right? God forbid anyone say anything kind about youth today. Wouldn’t wanna be cliche. Seems willfully obtuse to ignore context but eh… that’s the modern internet. After all, you know the most important thing is how original and virtuous you are.
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I have always hated that line. Information doesn’t ‘want’ anything. The people who release it are the one who want it to be out there. And once you start putting information together or packaging it then there is always going to be some sort of bias. What do you leave in - what do you leave out. Obviously, some people (all the usual hard right crazies) just don’t even bother to try and be honest or reasoned - just unrelenting gaslighting.
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I remember having conversations with people saying that it was a waste of time because they didn’t have any highly detailed solutions or that it was too chaotic or whatever. My argument was that OWS was about trying to get people to recognize what was going on and all the problems and inequality it created. You can’t change anything if you don’t first recognize and acknowledge that change needs to happen. OWS was right about globalization and its effects. Crazy right wingers are just crazy people who…Sometimes I am just at such a loss to even describe it. The awfulness is overwhelming at times.
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It also isn’t true. OWS repeated the refrain of “Don’t bail out the banks; bail out the people.” Which was excellent policy advice that the Obama administration should have followed. Instead, they bailed out the banks who took the money and turned it into bonuses and stock buybacks, while still foreclosing on American homeowners, often ones who didn’t even have a mortgage with them.
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Vulcan Paradise is my new math rock solo project!
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I think this is the more correct approach to the question since the fracturing of society isn’t a new thing. Whether it’s folks fleeing Europe to the Americas to not be killed over their religion or folks making gay bars and gay neighborhoods so they don’t get bashed all the time such cloistering/fracturing is a necessary thing. Whereas the fact that powerful minorities such as the fringe religious groups in the US that are funded by millionaires and billionaires having the means to generate a false narrative or at very least generate FUD to muddy said narrative is more applicable and it’s truly a dangerous time to be alive as one of their targets.
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Realty tv garbage (that have awarded people for being the loudest dumbass in the room with attention & money) combined with the utter lack of forethought by the left for doing a piss poor job on improving media literacy.
It was a series of things in the years leading up to the launch of MySpace. The dems in the 90’s were trying to scare the shit out of parents about Mortal Kombat and Night Trap, a few decades later those same parents they scared are now old people who believe Obama is a muslim because of an poorly edited photoshop passed around on Facebook. Many of those kids who remembered the moral panic are now trying to cult deprogram the old folks. Hillary was the one of the main instigators and those people she kissed up to over the years with those tactics ended up biting her in the ass in 2016.
Yes social media companies need to do better but they can only do so much with trying to provide more context to people who are proud to be stupid.
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Not the ones at the back, those are caltrops.
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