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The Not-So-Woke Generation Z (www.theatlantic.com)
submitted 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world

Summary

Gen Z’s reputation as a reliably progressive generation has been challenged by recent U.S. election results, showing a noticeable shift toward conservative voting, particularly among young men.

Many young people struggle with financial security, psychological safety, and optimism about the future. Trump tapped into their anxieties of a frightening world that’s worsening.

Issues like inflation, financial stability, and safety now rank higher than traditional progressive causes for many young people.

Additionally, conservative influences from figures like Joe Rogan and family ties to Gen X parents may have nudged Gen Z rightward, reflecting their complex and evolving priorities.

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[-] mhague@lemmy.world 3 points 2 hours ago

Well nobody could be different from us. Nobody could be wired differently. If they vote for Nazi policy then they must be confused and in need of correcting. It's impossible for bad people to exist, they're all just sheep that need shepherding.

Maybe if everything is fixed and the world is perfect and our country is perfect it will fix things? Maybe the Nazis go away?

Anything to avoid facing reality and getting our hands dirty removing Nazis from our country.

[-] kibiz0r@midwest.social 29 points 15 hours ago

I think the two most salient points here are:

  1. Podcasts

TV and radio are dead, social media is a wasteland. Podcasts are reaching young folks, especially men.

Which brings me to…

  1. Young men are in freefall

They’re doing worse than previous generations did at their age, across every metric you can imagine, and they’re also doing worse than young women.

That’s not to say we should stifle women’s success!

But if all you have to offer young men is a lecture on their unearned privilege, I think it’s not surprising that they take their business elsewhere.

Importantly: This doesn’t make them right.

But if we don’t figure this out, we’re fucked. We have to have a positive message for men who are struggling and desperate. If we don’t offer a plan, guess who will?

[-] thisorthatorwhatever@lemmy.world 9 points 3 hours ago

Don't worry the Dem's won't figure it out, LOL. The party is stuck in 1990.

"...all you have to offer young men is a lecture on their unearned privilege..." This, ten thousand times this. But, the Democratic party really has nothing to offer men ... please don't shoot the messenger. Blue collar work is hard, it chews up the body, saying you're bringing these jobs back isn't a recipe for hope.

[-] Jaderick@lemmy.world 64 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

Trump tapped into their anxieties of a frightening world that’s worsening

No reflection on how Trump exponentially makes that worse?

So they’re stupider than we thought. Nice.

Edit: at least the ones that vote

[-] TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org 45 points 21 hours ago

We are now seeing the results of Bush's No Child Left Behind.

Edit: also:

For years, Gen Z has been either derided or praised for supposedly being “woke.” Its members have been called snowflakes, mocked for performative “slacktivism” and embracing trigger warnings, and described (favorably and unfavorably) as climate warriors and gun-control activists.

Pretty sure that was us Millennials. That stuff started in the late 2000s when all the Occupy shit popped off, when Gen-Z were just kids. Meanwhile we were handing them tablets and phones to keep them quiet and giving them unrestricted access to the Internet, beginning their radicalization right under our noses. Surprise, now leftist mom/dad have a Nazi son/daughter.

[-] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 19 points 18 hours ago

For years, Gen Z has been either derided or praised for supposedly being “woke.” Its members have been called snowflakes, mocked for performative “slacktivism” and embracing trigger warnings, and described (favorably and unfavorably) as climate warriors and gun-control activists.

Change a few labels, and this sounds like the same stuff aimed at Gen X - called slackers and the "political correctness" hysteria really started to take off when we hit early adulthood, etc.

The more things change....

[-] classic@fedia.io 7 points 21 hours ago

I guess it's time for a Family Ties sitcom reboot

[-] thisorthatorwhatever@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago

Except the parents aren't hippies but run a Yoga studio and make podcast to stay afloat, are apolitical and don't vote. Alex's only successful venture has been to transform his parents' yoga retreat into an oligarchs brothel catering to Russian billionaires and Chinese whales.

[-] TexasDrunk@lemmy.world 3 points 20 hours ago

Sha la la la

[-] very_well_lost@lemmy.world 10 points 19 hours ago

To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld:

You don't run for president with the voters you want, you run for president with the voters you have.

Stupid or not, these are the voters we have, and Democrats need to learn how to reach at least some of them if they ever want to win another election.

[-] Makhno@lemmy.world 0 points 18 hours ago

Que the dems swinging far right

[-] very_well_lost@lemmy.world 0 points 18 hours ago

Sadly, yeah... D:

[-] ChocoboRocket@lemmy.world 15 points 21 hours ago

Not voting has the same consequences, so those aren't too smart either.

Gen Z are entitled like boomers, but with almost no economic prospects outside their parents.

Which makes sense, since loads of Gen Z were priced out of a future before they could even start earning, so there's no point in giving effort

At least Trump will guarantee Gen Z nearly unlimited well paying work if they're interested in bounty hunting immigrants and tracking fertility

[-] thisorthatorwhatever@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

You joke, but ... fore many white men these job prospects (cop, immigration office, jail guard) are a reality. The factories have all moved away. If you're a contractor, doing roofing or painting for example, you're competing against illegal immigrants that work under the table.

[-] Thrashy@lemmy.world 12 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

GenZ is the generation raised by helicopter parents, whose late-Boomer-to-early-GenX parents went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that they never faced any challenges. Of course they'd have some odd ideas about how the world ought to work, after spending their entire childhood and early adulthood with Mom and Dad working strenuously to shield them from personal struggles, emotional distress, and the consequences of their actions. What remains to be seen is how those attitudes shift as the rubber hits the road and their parents lose the ability to protect them from the increasingly dire state of the world. I suspect it'll be an even three-way split between blithe entitlement, despair and withdrawal, and an impulse to step up and do something about it.

[-] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 4 points 18 hours ago

GenZ is the generation raised by helicopter parents, whose late-Boomer-to-early-GenX parents went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that they never faced any challenges.

Weren't the same kinds of things aimed at kids raised by Dr. Spock? In other words, the boomers?

[-] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 21 hours ago

No Child Left Behind

[-] AfricanExpansionist@lemmy.ml -4 points 21 hours ago

Lots of people just stayed home 🤷

[-] grue@lemmy.world 13 points 20 hours ago

And they're even stupider.

[-] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 16 points 21 hours ago

... or marketing, plain old marketing, advertising and public relations.

You can blast the airwaves with the same message over and over again eventually people just believe it ... either because they are lazy, don't care, it doesn't immediately matter to them or they just don't want to be bothered learning the details. It's the same process of convincing people to either like Coke or Pepsi.

Goebbels and the Nazi party easily mastered it in the 30s .... tell a lie, repeat it often enough and eventually it will be come true ... if you tell a lie, tell a big lie, the biggest lie you can make and everyone will believe it.

It all boils down to money and marketing ... whoever dumps the money into one party, politician, political movement will get the votes eventually and convince everyone of whatever reality they want them to believe.

[-] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 16 points 21 hours ago

Only a small portion of GenZ was incentivized to show up this election. Interpreting the fact that only right wing GenZ showed up shouldn't be treated as a condemnation of a generation. White women didn't show up for Harris either. Would we make the same condemnation?

It all comes down to the fact that Democrats offered little and less in the four years where they could have accomplished something, and when called out for that, those critical were told to shut the fuck up.

What the Democrats offered was right wing politics: their base won't vote for it. Which isn't to say that groups like GenZ or women won't show up if you actually offer them something they want to vote for.

This loss can be dropped squarely on the shoulders of the deeply toxic "Blue No Matter Who/ Blue MAGA/ You can't be critical of Democrats because you only have two choices" philosophy. It was seriously at work here on Lemmy, and moderation and prominent posters here (and across the internet) did real damage filtering down forums like c/Politics, r/Poltiics, etc to select for a narrow and now very proven wrong approach to electoralism.

[-] NoForwardslashS@sopuli.xyz 7 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

Complex and evolving priorites

Incels, what will they prioritize next?

[-] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 6 points 21 hours ago

Incoming Subsidy for Tesla Sex Robots

[-] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 4 points 18 hours ago

Honestly, if the weird "men's movement" and incels actually got their way on having great robot sex wives, and they thought that meant all the uppity real females have now been "replaced" or outsourced or whatever, would they stop being so angry? I do have to wonder....something tells me they'd still be butthurt about stuff.

[-] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

A significant portion of Lemmy believes that if men don’t get sex they turn Republican so maybe they’ll be normal if we get them a sex robot.

[-] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 1 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

If sex robots were actually a thing...

There is a certain segment of incels that would probably be very happy with this, if it was at least somewhat socially normalized, they would probably be fine.

Thats the segment of incels that are more driven by just having no access to sex, already more or less fine with being social recluses.

Granted, that could be accomplished right now by just giving them fleshlights or something, combined with less social stigma around masterbating.

I really do think thats a non zero % of incels.

But there's also a likely much larger % of incels that are more driven by a sense of revenge for all the times they've been rejected, driven by a need to have a living thinking thing to boss around or torment, an active hatred.

Those incels would not be sated by sex robots.

....

Whats more financially / pragmatically / realistically likely in my estimation is that if an actual sexbot can ever be designed, you'd just end up with more, legalized robot prostitutes in brothels.

[-] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 2 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

There is a certain segment of incels that would probably be very happy with this, if it was at least somewhat socially normalized

I think it may take a while before normalized, but then, I remember how quickly it went from extremely rude and annoying for someone to take a call on a cell phone, to constantly happening, all the time, everywhere....some norms can change pretty quickly.

But there’s also a likely much larger % of incels that are more driven by a sense of revenge for all the times they’ve been rejected, driven by a need to have a living thinking thing to boss around or torment, an active hatred.

This is exactly what I was thinking. I think a lot of them are just replaying their middle school/high school experiences and want to take that out on women. Maybe some kind of Westworld scenario might suffice for another percentage of them...

if an actual sexbot can ever be designed

I have not looked, but I would bet more than a few companies exist that have this as their business model.

[-] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 2 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

I have not looked, but I would bet more than a few companies exist that have this as their business model.

AFAIK all that exist are possble life sized dolls with basically internal fleshlight cavities, some talk a bit as well.

Sex is actually a very complex and delicate manuever from the POV of a robot designer.

If the female sexbot suddenly jerks or collapses, it may have just snapped your dick in half. Penile fracture and groin muscle tears are real and extremely painful and debilitating.

A humanoid robot would also probably weigh double or triple what a same sized human would weigh.

If you had the tech required to make a reliably safe sexbot, that would be the same level of tech to just actually make humanoid robots that can say, work in a McDonalds more efficiently than a human.

Its a pipe dream (pun intended) for now.

[-] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago

Honestly, I think if they had something that was safe (enough? - and we are talking about putting autonomous cars on the road in greater numbers, so in the scheme of things, a malfunctioning robot might be extremely painful, but maybe not deadly) in the bedroom, they would get snapped up. Add in the ability to carry on a conversation - and I hear some people are already falling in love with chatbots - and cooking/cleaning, I think that'd be enough for a lot of these guys, assuming the stigma gets blunted over time.

Hey, if it brings down the temperature for this bunch, I'm all for it. I doubt many of them are too complicated - something that lets them bust a nut and makes a sandwich for them and remembers nearly every detail about them might go pretty far...

this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2024
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