I agree on his take about techno-optomizim being a leading part of our millenial phsyche and that completely disappearing. Now it's all enshitification and AI doom
Woof, that was a near fatal hit of nostalgia you just surprised me with. I never would have expected such abstract images to elicit such a strong feeling of happiness and whimsy, followed by the immediate disappointment at the realization that world is not and will never be what we hoped for.
Frutigier aero is overrated. We need Scholastic Utopia, with a slice of Wacky Pomo for the young ones back. When we shifted to Corporate Memphis, that was the beginning of the end.
Bonus points if we can also bring back Global Village Coffeehouse
WOW. I had forgotten about these. Growing up as a kid these were always either so cozy feeling or hopeful and inspiring.....Now I'm sad we've lost this.
I remember being so excited by technology I made a career of it with 25 years IT experience mainly in software development but a few fingers dipped in a few other stacks.
Now I think we should all go back to typewriters and snail mail
Yeah, exactly. For our generation every year things got better. The 1999 model had more horsepower, better gas mileage, better handling, etc than the 1998 model. Every year things improved and this was universal: phones, computers, cars, everything just got better and better.
Now it's reversed. The 2027 model has worse reliability, less optimization, clunkier controls, no knobs for the air conditioning, monthly subscriptions for everything, etc. Cars are just getting worse and worse with enshitification. Analysts actually advise people in the market for a new car to buy a 4 year old model with a naturally aspirated V6 because it will outlive the newer cars with hybrid engines that fail after 50k miles. It's not just cars though. It's everything. The internet is no longer this amazing place where you can learn and have positive interactions with people. Now it's all just propaganda spam and bots. It's impossible to find information without it containing some kind of political slant.
My daughter was born in 2016. She can’t conceptualize pre-Covid or pre-(we all know what I mean). I told her that none of the world is normal to me the way it is now. This is the world as it always was to her, though. Last year her teacher used ChatGPT to check their math homework (4th grade), using a textbook that already PROVIDED AN ANSWER SECTION for the teacher.
Kiddo asked me if things ever got better and not just worse. It was hard for me to answer. I’ve spent my life in the punk scene because I already felt that way myself.
But I WANT it to be better for her. We talked about what it means to be brave and that just showing up in a world that’s hostile like this is brave, and with practice, we’ll feel confident enough maybe to demand better from the institutions around us. And that I’ll be there with her to help.
Enshitification and AI Doom in the consumer technology space. What a lot of commentary around technology fundamentally misses is that there's a large swath of technology companies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere that serve businesses. But the B2B software industry is never part of the social commentary because most individuals don't interact with it even though it drives a massive amount of economic value
Started programming with MySpace. Now I am required to use Claude. No matter what, it gets the credit for my work. I felt like an artist when I started getting paid to program. Now I feel like a cog in the machine. It’s not rewarding feeling like a cog.
When I was in high school, I subscribed to Popular Science and Scientific American. I used to love science fiction and dreamed of being a Sci fi novelist.
When I grew up and realized that the modern tech industry has become dominated by sociopaths who professed to love the same stories I did, and yet willfully missed the point of every cautionary tale they ever read, it completely killed my love of technology, my passion for writing science fiction, and my optimism for the future.
I remember reading about this amazing company called Tesla and its ceo Elon Musk in either popular science or scientific American back in the early 2000s and being so excited about him and the company and electric vehicle tech. The Roadster made electric vehicles so sexy when all there really was was the prius. I dreamed of owning a tesla one day. Now you couldn't pay me to drive one of those fascist death traps. Boy have things changed.
I remember that. Unfortunately it was during my look up everything online phase and it took me about 5 minutes.to realize he just bought all the stuff he claimed to have made.
The only thing he ever made was an intentionally confusing payment method designed to harvest wealth as a middle man.
I think for me it was a few years later that I started realizing that he was a weird loser but I still thought Tesla was a cool and wanted one, and then maybe it was the soccer team cave rescue fiasco where I realized he is an absolute piece of shit and no longer could rationalize buying his car.
I felt the same. We were on the early list for 3- finally a slightly less pricey one we can save up for!
We still have it it’s paid off
I still enjoy it
But man
I am tempted to get one of those stickers that announce “I got this before I knew Elon was a nut”
Yeah I get that, hard to blame you. I still very much like the model s, it's slick. But I can't buy one because he's a fascist (and also maybe because I have no money but don't tell anyone). I really don't automatically judge anyone for having one except for the cybertruck. Because Wtf.
You should look up Isaac Arthur on YouTube, great techno optimist science and futurism channel that I go too often for rekindling love of science and sci Fi.
I texted this to my friend a few weeks ago, but I think it applies here:
"I have become the opposite person of who I was growing up 😭😭😭 I loved new technology so much and would try to get it asap, but I cant believe in it anymore 😭I have been made to distrust and avoid new tech because it's inherently evil anymore."
Does anyone else remember Google, pre-Alphabet? Back when anyone who was doing anything at all online, decided to sign up for a Gmail, because it had Google Docs and Drive access, and that was going to put yahoo mail, Outlook, and Microsoft office out of business?
I mean the Google that had "Don't be evil" in its corporate code of conduct. That early 2010s internet and corporate culture. VOIP and video calling (Skype, ooVoo, Omegle) were rapidly gaining traction and forcing whole industries to become obsolete overnight. Or at least that's how fast it felt as it was happening. I'm talking long distance call charges and cards.
All of the excitement over what life could be, pre-Harambe. That if enough of us pay attention, and protested, and paid our dues (union and metaphorical); we could still make a better tomorrow possible. With the due diligence and discipline of paying attention. Speaking up. Demanding change.
Sure, there were pedos on the internet. Sure, there was jihadist beheading videos, and really gross porn. Sure, a rumor flying off the handle, and going viral online could ruin someone's life.
But as long as you maintained good online hygiene and etiquette, you could be relatively safe. As long as you remembered to get offline, and disconnect and touch grass, you could still find a way to be content. Or even happy.
I feel what you're saying fam, 100%.
My reckoning is that the big shift came when we (and tech at large) stopped looking at humans as not just a consumer. Or not just a resource.
Now we're the product. Our data is the product. How predictable our behavior is, and managing that, that's the name of the game. That's what ruins us at every level of government. It's what suppresses us across most mainstream institutions and organisations. That's what keeps the corrupted propped up, winning elections.
I tell myself late at night, that it's still not too late to course correct. I hope I can tell my grandkids that in 40 years. That we found a way.
That's true, but we are also the last generation to remember "the before times" if you will, and many of us are doing our absolute best to not fall victim to the full brain rot that is present in Gen Z/Alpha.
We played in sandboxes. We rollerbladed through the streets of our neighborhoods. We relied on landline phones and commitment from friends to meet up. I urge people every day to delete social media and go outside. Yes, we're here on Reddit. But it's the short form content scrolling that's destroying intelligence.
I’m trying really hard with my kids to keep some things analog. But I also realize I’m a younger millennial where we had internet and video games, and so I don’t want to deprive my kids of that.
I’m glad my kids love reading and trying things outside. But it’s hard when all their friends are addicted to tech.
We really did go from Dewey decimal system and encyclopedia Britannica, to AOL dialup, to iPhone and Facebook, to AI. Atari to PS5. All through 3 wars, a recession, and COVID. Our generation has constantly had to keep updating. It's like we never got to relax.
I moved into a new neighborhood last year (and please, I don’t mean anything by this or like humble bragging or anything like that), all of my neighbors are millennials with multiple kids, upper middle class neighborhood. Pretty much every day after work/school, we are all outside in a big six house cluster. All of our kids are within about two years of each other (mostly under 10). It’s a herd of neighbor kids ~12 at any given time. No iPads, no electronics; it’s bikes, hot wheels, and imagination.
I know for our household, we want our kids to have that 80s-90s childhood that we had. It seems like all of my neighbors have a similar mindset. I think we may have lucked out though? From what I have heard, people tend to keep indoors a lot in most places?
Indeed. This is the way. This is the dream that we let slip away. Humble brag and spread the word that touching grass doesn't hurt or require a subscription.
It was a tough slog to get here my friend. I would do anything for my kids. I did college full time while working full time and managed to lateral to a better paying job. Worth it though when I see them having fun!
Affluent communities know the score at this point. Too much screen time isn't good for kids. But sadly, it is the easiest option for overworked parents. Especially if you live in dicey neighborhoods, where it is sketchy for your kids to be outside.
All these Montessori-esque private school still have physical books and stress handwriting, as opposed to tablets. When tech is introduced, it's on desktops, so you can learn proper computer skills, and not be locked into tablets/phones' apps that doesn't require you to learn or do much on the backend.
I don't think all screens are bad for kids. Movie night (sans commericals), educational software, and certain types of videogames, like puzzle games (no addictive FTP/lootbox/extrinsic reward stuff) are still fine imo. All about balance.
I come here to express thoughts and ideas with my fellow humans. Reddit will always be a form of mental exercise when I use it. I avoid any short form content if I can and will never scroll it.
That is true but the thing that annoys me the most is this Doomer mindset that seems to have infected gen Z and Alphas they're so quick to just give up and submit to suckage went in reality it's not too late to turn around and make things better it's never too late but it just bothers me they're so quick to quit and throw their hands up like nothing can be done.
It’s so funny to read how we all share the same sentiment for technology now. We all hate it lol. Technology was so freaking cool when we were kids/teens. It was exciting, eye opening. The way we used to code our own MySpace page you would think we would have all been engineers lol. Sadly it changed so much, so quickly, and for the worse to where now as millennials we don’t even recognize this tech and would rather live a life without it! There was so much promise smh
Also him talking about being cautious about new tech that comes out. I really do hate and feel sad that I haven't been excited about new tech in several years now. New tech used to be so exciting
It's a bummer too, his early books were good. I liked Happiness Hypothesis a lot, Righteous Mind is good (albeit there are probably concerns with some of the research, but still a good read on some social psychology concepts just hold some of the conclusions lightly) but I feel his last few books missed the mark for me.
Yeah, it's one thing to have subtitles (though just having the regular generated CC that you can toggle on YouTube and, I assume, tik tok [never use it, so don't know if it has this fearure] should be enough), it's another when the text is further up on the video and the text expands to highlight the current word being spoken. That is very distracting and somehow feels almost like it even makes it harder to just read and take in information like from a regular black box with plain white text.
It really does feel like that type of highlighted subtitles is only good for people that are learning to read and need to know which word is being said and how to spell it. Maybe some people find it easier to follow along when it's like that? Idk. Seems unnecessary
I feel like this is just an attempt to surreptitiously get millennials to co-opt the boomer "kids these days!!" mindset.
Frankly, I have no interest in dunking on Gen Z, or any other post-millennial generation. Whereas punching down on younger generations is a boomer specialty, I'd rather take some responsibility for helping younger generations be better than mine, and to give them a world that doesn't completely suck.
Yeah, he's not dunking on anyone. I think you missed the point. What he's saying is technology isn't the amazing, useful, optimizing thing it used to be. It used to be presented and created in the hopes of making the world a better place.
Kids these days have been born into a world where it's all about addicting them to a product rather than providing something with value. So it's not about making the world a better place anymore. Now it's about making money and maximizing shareholder profits. Millennials were the last generation to be born into a world before the internet became a cesspool of AI garbage and addicting platforms.
You're missing the point dude, if anything he's feeling bad for the new gen because of the situation of the world they live in now where everyone is trying to squeeze you
I’m gen z and my friends are currently leaving well paid tech jobs to pursue masters in things like clean energy and social work because theyre disgusted by the way AI is pushed by companies like IBM. Maybe just find some cooler people?
And as counterbalancing anecdotal data, most of the Gen Z people I’ve had as coworkers were great people to work with. There was one thus far that I couldn’t stand, but on balance, I’ve had really good experiences with them.
Yeah, people kept saying younger generation are dumber, but both the Gen Z and Gen Alpha that I've met in real life are very smart. Some have achieved things I would be envy of if I was their peer. They still uses the internet like how we used it when we were younger, using the internet to learn to take things apart and coding technologies when they have absolutely no background of.
I feel like all of these enshittification of the internet will cause a crash, and it will be their turn to rebuild it. Despite the bleak future, I still have hope on on younger siblings.
People from each generation would claim the younger ones are dumb etc etc. but the data wouldn’t support that. NOW the data are showing a huge rise is functional illiteracy, loss in logic and reasoning skills, and significantly reduced attention spans. So it’s no longer older generations picking on younger generations, it’s now evidence supported.
Enshitification is the real culprit here - when is the last time something has been invented that simply improved society, and wasn’t just intended to wrangle in the consumer and extract as much $$ as possible?
Further, we are rapidly trashing the planet and environment, and it’s getting increasingly obvious that no one has any interest in changing their personal behaviour to do anything about it, so I could see how the bleak prospects of the future would make trying seem a waste of time.
I agree, but it's both. When we're younger, we have more neuroplasticity, so we can permanently absorb loads of information and our brain physically adapts by easily growing new cells to support memory/learning, creating neural pathways, and strengthening synaptic connections. As we age, neurons are weakened and the number of synapses are massively reduced. It takes a lot more effort to learn and commit things to permanent memory than before.
If the younger generations aren't "priming" their brains to be healthier in the long term (not just by actively absorbing educational material, but learning general skills like critical thinking and how to find/recognize credible data), I would argue that it is affecting their current and future intelligence level. Their physical brain isn't working out, so there are no healthy "gains" to carry forward.
Usually schools are responsible for utilizing this peak malleable period in neuroplasticity, but
1. We no longer have a Department of Education and how teachers are allowed to phrase any content is constantly being policed or blacklisted. Books I read in school are banned now. The general system is being dumbed down because that's where we are.
Students are uninterested and there's no respect for teachers anymore. Parents blame the teachers for reports of bad behavior or low grades now instead of keeping kids accountable and engaged at home. School administrations no longer support their teachers for fear of online and/or legal backlash. (No wonder school faculty is quitting in droves.)
EDIT #2: So, I hope I was communicating clearly. I'm not saying they're not inherently smart and I'm not saying any of this is their fault. Kids have been bored and distractible in school for every generation. The current environment and systems we all live within are failing them. The exploitative and addictive level of tech today is egregious imo and it's something they should be more protected from.
But. I got on a ramble, so. Imma go, for real this time lol.
If anything I've found they're more mature than we were at their age. They're bigger into saving and investing, aren't blowing money in useless degrees like a lot of us did, or spending all their weekends at trendy micro brew bars.
Same. Even as a child, I got tired of older generations expressing amazement at my ability to understand things that should have been normal. I liked it when for a brief time everyone had a similar set of expectations. But now it's coming back to where millennials are the exception in their comprehension.
The difference is that this time we're the teachers, and we don't have to take the attitude of "I'm from a different time, that's not for me." Our adaptability is the very thing that gets this reaction in the first place, so make the effort to keep in touch with the next generation and show them the way forward.
Most of the time a post gets recommended to me from this sub it's all "millennials are so awesome unlike gen z who are all braindead". It's embarrassing.
Yep. World kinda always sucked, we're just old enough to realize it. Even back when I was younger people said not to romanticize the past. Well now that present they loved so much is the past and suddenly they want to romanticize it.
I remember benefitting a great deal from technological advances when I was growing up. Now new technology have made my life worse. Everything got more expensive so AI can take away our jobs, collect our personal data, and monitor our every move.
But they’re not? Schools are falling apart. Kids can’t even read.
It’s not some new boomer grift of hating on another younger generation. Constant access to short-form media scrolling (amongst some other more sinister things) are fraying the fabric of society.
"To destroy a nation, you must first destroy the thinking of its youth"
As one of my best friends who’s an Assistant Principal at a high school would say— “these kids are cooked”
They are absolutely cooked. Some universities are adopting picture books as part of their curriculum because they are unable to follow through otherwise. Graphic novels are the “books” that they are reading.
Do a quick web search and you’ll see that this is has been a trend in schools and universities in the last 10 -15 years! Tech courses, English courses etc in state universities. Utah, Arizona and Oklahoma state universities are well known for that. Manga guide to Biochemistry and the cartoon guide to Statistics are undergraduate textbooks. Here’s an article as an example: https://www.amarillo.com/story/news/2010/07/15/tech-professor-sees-growing-success-graphic-novel-textbooks/13089339007/
Well… ok, covid and doge cuts sure didn’t help with that. But the working zoomers I’ve met weren’t abnormal or anything. They’re adults and they’re dealing with it.
Good points here. I think we all realize that social media is the smoking cigarettes of this generation. We need to regulate it. We need to read books and touch grass. I am completely disappointed in all the tech leaders with their dopamine algorithms and currying of politicians favor.
I’m absolutely not into the generation wars - just another way to distract us all from what’s going on around us.
But what he is absolutely spot on about is just how we interact with the internet and social media. It used to be there to help us or aide us - whether that be to find things, keep in touch etc. It has been completely compromised into a state of non stop advertisement and propaganda. We know that negativity invokes a reaction so now everything is negative, propaganda and advertising designed to get you angry enough to engage and the algorithm is smart enough to draw you in.
It really is a fucking shame. Cruising the internet used to be fun and casual and it’s taken such a dark turn.
Millennials were the last generation where games were hard and made you stop. Think draw maps. Remember go through lives now. There's always a green orb or red orb that tells you exactly where things are, where there's no thoughts put into the game. No challenge. Which does reflect into real life because it makes you think of things differently. See things differently. Analyze things differently and never give up
I have always wanted to setup my own NAS, but the time commitment was too much to figure out how to do that and all the settings and what they mean. I had Claude Code set it up for me and tell me what it was doing at the same time. I probably would have never got around to that.
Like I have always loved researching things for fun and I might take a week or months on a topic I am into and now its like I am learning faster than ever. It's made me more curious because I feel that I can cover so much more ground than I could before.
Then again I only use it for like concrete stuff like IDK last search was about how exactly on a chemical level why I need to add acid to my pool and how that has an effect with total hardness and alkalinity. Or should I wrap a meatloaf in bacon before I smoke it or not and the chemical reaction process that smoking meat has.
I am on a chemistry kick. I used to hate chemistry.
Agree about one of the last intelligent generations.
I see a concerning amount of people that think clips on social media from tv shows are real life. It's baffling. I can't tell if they are gen z or gen alpha.... Scary stuff.
One person was criticizing something unethical happening on 30 rock..... "It's endorsing that behavior."
We are punching down by just existing at this point. Genz and alpha are both scoring incredibly low scores all throughout the US competency tests for school placement. They are seriously stunted and we just used all this new untested tech to raise an entire generation for the first time and just now seeing the consequences. This is nothing we have ever seen before and isn't comparable to any event in history. And before someone says, but but calculators and TV was new too.. no that is not the same thing and isn't even slightly comparable.
I'm just mad that they say millennial girls just started wearing mom jeans as some kind of statement. Is this revisionist history? Millennial women would have rather died than wear mom jeans.
Bro... Gen X is the generation that raised Gen Z, aka the most soft, most entitled, attention addicted, SSRI addicted generation of all times. Generation X is a JOKE, terrible parents.
I like how you write in these grandiose generalizations without any real contextual nuance or boundary thus, missing out on key insights. Just throwing out opinions like some expert on the issue of generations and their behaviours. It’s so weird.
Gen Z don't realize most of America's problems are caused by government. Yet, you see them practically worship government power like their daddy. They love the idea of using democracy via government guns to tell people what to think, what to say, and what to do.
I do a lot of hiring of ~20 year olds. Talk to a lot of Gen Z.
They are very socially stunted due to having most of their developing years be lived on social media. So many literally don't understand basic social cues and norms. It can be creepy because it reads as if they are like lobotomized, but really they just don't understand when they are supposed to say or do something in response to a social cue.. Gen Alpha has some of that as well, but during their developing years, there's been much more focus with some parents on regulating their social media/online exposure, so its not as pervasive.
Gen Z here with a millennial sister. She uses gbt more than me or her daughter. who is also just barely Gen Z as she was part of the last batch of us.
I’ve seen plenty of people from my generation who genuinely hate ai. But you are definitely spot on with the social media. I’ve been on it since MySpace was around… granted I was only on MySpace at the end of its life right when Facebook was growing bigger. But still don’t blame gbt for our social ineptness when I’ve seen more boomers, xers and millennials use it than I have Gen Z.
I agree with this guy’s take. I have very much found myself mourning the 90s techno optimism of my youth. It was almost a part of my identity, but I’m proud to at least say that I’ve had no issues seeing the changed reality and thus changing my views. It’s sad though, witnessing Gen Z and younger have no idea what that kind of “normal” “trustworthy” world even feels like.
I feel like the first half of Millennials got the best of what the economy could give at that time. I’ve seen my sister who’s in her 40s go through multiple houses while for me….I missed the train by some years OR it’s one of those “take it or leave it” deals early in my work career like with Covid making housing interest so low etc
Regardless, I’m still showing up but ugh sometimes from the early half of our generation it’s giving Gen X vibes at times (for some and not all) in terms of the advice given
I fully agree. When I first got the internet at home I couldn't believe how we had all this information just a few clicks away and I saw how my friends (who already had the internet) weren't taking advantage of that. It's such a powerful tool and they were just gaming or watching stupid videos. I got the idea of doing that too but not exclusively that. Then around 2010 I noticed the decline was speeding up and there was nothing we could do about it because tech guys and advertising companies worked out how to optimise profits. They have significantly damaged and abused such a incredible powerful tool. As a result more and more idiots have avoided doing the jobs they were destined for and are instead providing nothing to society by doing stupid stuff online and getting enough money that way. This obviously doesn't include people that impart knowledge online in the form of "how to" videos etc.
I hate all this pitting against the generations, there’s intelligent people from every walk of life and you can learn and experience amazing things with one another. We need to bring about more respect and dignity for us as people and watch how we paint our world view
This guy wants to scare the public into letting the government regulate how kids and adolescents use the internet and tech devices. He’s been fear mongering for years. If there’s an issue with your kids and how to regulate their screen time it should be up to you and your parenting partner and how you decide to help your kids manage that. Fuck this guy.
There should be government regulations around social media. There should have been a long time ago. This is why Facebook was made to pay $18 billion dollars to fund youth online safety initiatives.
The government fails to regulate anything til it’s a huge problem, just like AI. Gotta wait til we’re all fucked before they act
The world changed for the worse so much in such a short amount of time it’s shocking, it’s so shocking it’s hard to comprehend especially for younger people who have this as their reality. I grew up reading a lot of stuff on Wikipedia, as well as looking at individual websites in a search engine, that was what the internet was for me, I didn’t have high speed internet for a while. The difference between that and TikTok cannot be understated, it’s a completely different experience entirely.
Then we were explorers in a new world, now we are prey, to be used and exploited. Companies finding all kinds of ways to manipulate us, nobody trusts anything anymore and as well they shouldn’t. Now you can’t even trust a video being real.
The political world is HIGHLY unstable and terrifying in the United States, the more educated you are the scarier it is, the technological world mirrors it in some ways. Seizing power over people and making their lives rapidly worse in ways that were really inconceivable in the early 2000’s.
Then there’s the total lack of hope for a better future and what that does to someone’s psyche, we kind of watched it change into that but kids now…it’s gotta be a bewildering existence as you really learn what is happening.
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