Yeah, but us millennials were only teenagers at best, toddlers at the youngest. Not really enough time to do anything with it. So while we got to experience a cool time in our youths, we had it all ripped away as soon as the .com bubble burst, and then 9/11 hit, along with other mixed events, like the Unabomber, Columbine, etc. We were also the first in line to get sent to Afghanistan.
Meanwhile Gen X got to live their adult lives during the 90s and make a name for themselves.
Sure, some aspects of the 00s were shit, but that felt like a bump in the road: things were still on the up-and-up overall, and the general expectation was that we could change the future for the better, resolve the world’s issues, and live better lives than our parents. That all came crashing down sometime around 2010 with the Great Recession, failure of Occupy, and realization that Obama wasn’t the knight in shining armor we’d literally hoped for. So the difference is that Millennials remember a pre-9/11 world and the less-great-but-still-hopeful early 00s, whereas Gen Z doesn’t.
Someone recently asked why the devil admitted he’d lost the fiddling match with Johnny. They said “If he’s the devil why didn’t he just claim he’d won?”.
I’d never asked myself that before. It had never occurred to me that the devil might cheat in a contest.
It made me realize that the dominant view of how people operate has changed in our culture. We now tend to assume people are slimeballs. The shittiest, back-stabbiest, most underhanded dishonest stuff now seems like normal behavior. Not even consciously necessarily. We just assume everyone is a barely-held-together antihero just looking for an excuse to take the gloves off and do nasty shit, and that we’re only good to our tight inner circle while it’s okay to treat the rest of the world like garbage.
It’s our zeitgeist. I’m finally starting to grok that word’s meaning, after having lived through four decades.
I’d say that we’re all fucked. There’s going to be at least one global population correction in the next century. Even if we are able to push it back through mitigation, new development, geoengineering, luck and pluck, the zoomers are going to see it by midlife and everyone’s life will be defined by it the way Dresden hit Kurt Vonnegut.
Yeah, but us millennials were only teenagers at best, toddlers at the youngest. Not really enough time to do anything with it. So while we got to experience a cool time in our youths, we had it all ripped away as soon as the .com bubble burst, and then 9/11 hit, along with other mixed events, like the Unabomber, Columbine, etc. We were also the first in line to get sent to Afghanistan.
Meanwhile Gen X got to live their adult lives during the 90s and make a name for themselves.
Sure, some aspects of the 00s were shit, but that felt like a bump in the road: things were still on the up-and-up overall, and the general expectation was that we could change the future for the better, resolve the world’s issues, and live better lives than our parents. That all came crashing down sometime around 2010 with the Great Recession, failure of Occupy, and realization that Obama wasn’t the knight in shining armor we’d literally hoped for. So the difference is that Millennials remember a pre-9/11 world and the less-great-but-still-hopeful early 00s, whereas Gen Z doesn’t.
Someone recently asked why the devil admitted he’d lost the fiddling match with Johnny. They said “If he’s the devil why didn’t he just claim he’d won?”.
I’d never asked myself that before. It had never occurred to me that the devil might cheat in a contest.
It made me realize that the dominant view of how people operate has changed in our culture. We now tend to assume people are slimeballs. The shittiest, back-stabbiest, most underhanded dishonest stuff now seems like normal behavior. Not even consciously necessarily. We just assume everyone is a barely-held-together antihero just looking for an excuse to take the gloves off and do nasty shit, and that we’re only good to our tight inner circle while it’s okay to treat the rest of the world like garbage.
It’s our zeitgeist. I’m finally starting to grok that word’s meaning, after having lived through four decades.
This is beside your point but a related question to the first part is, why does Satan punish bad people? Shouldn’t he appreciate that about them?
God punishes them. Satan just does his job.
Oh yeah I don’t disagree that gen z is fucked
I’d say that we’re all fucked. There’s going to be at least one global population correction in the next century. Even if we are able to push it back through mitigation, new development, geoengineering, luck and pluck, the zoomers are going to see it by midlife and everyone’s life will be defined by it the way Dresden hit Kurt Vonnegut.
How much of a name did you make for yourself by 22?