The immortalisation of the past self online as a cause for incentivising stagnation is such a great observation. I completely agree that young people especially (but not exclusively) are becoming more and more lost in the increasingly digitised world. I think a major difference for a lot of younger people is that they had no 'stable' ground to stand on before stepping onto these new platforms. Kids who have grown up with the internet as their primary reality are now reaching the age of adulthood and I think it's no wonder that they can't come to terms with that. What does adulthood mean on the internet? The internet itself probably provides a million answers to this question, and just confuses the matter even more.
This groundlessness - and the black-and-white thinking patterns that it has exacerbated - is I think a big reason why the role models that people are desperately latching onto are becoming more and more one-dimensional, cartoonish... almost as if a person has to make themselves and their beliefs into a brand in order to be taken seriously. On the internet we are not incentivised to be ourselves, but to sell ourselves.
You mention that the older we get the more we should revel in life's mysteries and joys, and I completely agree. The older we get the more we should come to understand how little we actually know, and that can be a wonderful thing. But the internet demystifies life by making all answers (whether right or wrong or somewhere in between) immediately accessible, and it strips away joy too by the same means... it teaches us that we don't have to wait, and our pleasure and reward functions are being absolutely brutalised by this all-access playground of overstimulation.
In conclusion: we really all should just touch grass.
You're absolutely right, we live a life according to an algorithm online, rather than to human nature. Life becomes dull when we try to constantly keep up. We weren't built for algorithms even though we built them, go figure.
Nice post J.S. Yes, the mentality in the west these days is quite infantile. I guess it shows how malleable people's mentalities are overall. Sure, we need food, water, shelter and sex, but other than that, it's pretty easy for our environment to manipulate human beliefs in all sorts of strange and odd directions.
You might enjoy this old post from a defunct blog, "Millennials: the Dying Children": https://archive.ph/7VPGE
I havtnread your artocle yet, but just wanted to mention that i just also called these kids the lost boys, in a comment in PITT and then afterwards saw your title. They are lost boys, on the island for boys that never have to grow up, but only to get there and find they've been lied to. I agree, my son is caught up in this mess and he doesn't want to study, work... grow up 🤷♀️💔🙏 I want something to change, I'm really sock of this and concerned. Pur boys need to be found, they need to grow up and become men.😭😭😭🙏🙏🙏🙏
There is a famous narrative, which embodies the traditional Western ritual (“the heroes journey” you may call) in which the young men of a society take on the mantle of vir hood and set out into the real world... one full of monsters and leviathans. I believe our future lies in reverting to that archaic system of values in order to restore our greatness. It goes as follows:
“Close your eyes...”
“Are we men yet?” speaks the sponge.
“Not yet... uh... spin around three times.”
The young warriors proceed to twirl, they stomp the ground as bubbles rise beneath their feet.
The sponge inducts an ancient mantra, passed down by the high-priests of Poseidon: “I think it’s working.”
Meanwhile the spell-bounder retrieves four blades from the holy grass which grows in the foothills of Hyperboria (the same material once used to bound Prometheus)
“Good, now- keep your eyes shut. With my mermaid magic...”
The anticipation boils in the hearts of the men. The psychedelic mushroom blood soup they had drunk the morning of begins to activate, as a bezerkr spirit writhes like a fox from its fleshy chains.
“And my one tail fin-“
The pink one howls into the night, uncontrollably, ravens dance in his eyes.
And at once the spell is unleashed- “I command the two of you to turn into men! Open your eyes!”
Silence falls.
“Huh I don’t feel anything-“ the sponge begins blaspheming. Before at once the young men are struck with by epiphany of what just happened.
“OH MY GOSH PATRICK! YOU HAVE A MUSTACHE!”
“So do you!”
They tremble in ecstasy and rub each other’s faces as a consummation of brotherhood.
“So now that your men, can you make it to Shell City?”
They ignore the spell-bounder’s questions, and overcome by Berzerkr lust, they begin to uncontrollably stroke themselves.
“Guys!”
They renter consciousness.
“I said now that you’re men, can you make it to Shell City?”
“Heck yeah!”
“Are men afraid of anything?”
“Heck no!”
“And why?”
“Because we are invincible!”
The two warriors flee from the spell-bounder, like wolves discovered by a farmer at night with his lantern light. They pace away, before plunging into the depths of Hades...
Hey Kasimir, do you know that sound effect from Zelda I when one of your actions reveals a secret door? That is the sound effect you earned from writing this post.
The adult happy meals never fail to confound me. My friend came over last month with the chicken nugget one that was based on some "influencer" Kerwin Frost and I was 110% convinced she was either playing an elaborate hoax on me or McDonald's had resorted to making up supposedly famous people because I have never heard of Kerwin Frost in my life. Looking him up, I'm still not entirely convinced he isn't some sort of PsyOp made by McDonald's marketing team.
My dad thought the Kerwin Frost thing was some cartoon; I thought it was some rapper I'd never heard of. We Googled the guy and we were greeted with the most atrociously unfunny "designer" we'd ever seen.
In the end, we were also left very, very confused as to where in the world McDonald's found this guy.
I assume they found him in a drug-induced stupor in a SoHo ditch, if his appearance is anything to go by. Give it time and I wouldn't put it past them to start generating "influencers" with AI and gaslighting the public into thinking they were always real. "Oh, you've never heard of M.C. Snacky? Well, you're just out of the know. M.C. Snacky has always been a thing."
M.C. Snacky is my favorite...*looks at Instagram feed*...hypebeast influencer! Do you live under a rock or something? Don't look at his three hands, it's a genetic quirk.
"I eat McDonald's as an expression of my identity. It's so on fleek, y'all. Try my new Happy Meal. You will love this burger - it's very gender. Pronouns!" - M.C. Snacky
At some level, I think the theory of fast life/slow life is acting upon people with people developing slower due to environmental factors not pushing them to develop.
At some other level, I believe that there is a regression brought on by a change in the age. The rules that adults were once mature towards changed and now they look even more immature than kids since they don’t know what it would like to be mature in the digital age.
At another level, I feel we are encouraged to fail Erik Eriksons’ psychosocial stages. (Really interesting to look into).
At an even other level, I think that the ability to be a kid has been subverted to such a degree that innocence has become a bought and sold identity, which I try to detail and counter in my recent SpongeBob ‘review’.
This is brilliant. You are spot on. I frequently thank God I'm at the tail end of my life at 59. This world has gone bat-shit. I try mightily to make sense of a culture that makes ZERO sense. And, then again, given how systematically our culture has been dumbed down, it was inevitable. The bit about gaslighting is perfect. It's narcissism as virtue. Well done. I feel less alone.
The more I try to understand this modern culture, the less I do. It's like watching a circus from afar. One day, it'll make sense again, even if it is several decades from now.
The education system is so broken and leads to a trillion other problems. The way kids are educated is awful nowadays, and you're right--kids hate it. They feel like school is a prison and it doesn't actually teach you anything or foster any real interest in a skill.
And strict parents certainly don't help. I hadn't thought of them in this case, but it certainly does apply. You're treated as a kid your whole life in a different extreme, one where everyone makes decisions for you.
The immortalisation of the past self online as a cause for incentivising stagnation is such a great observation. I completely agree that young people especially (but not exclusively) are becoming more and more lost in the increasingly digitised world. I think a major difference for a lot of younger people is that they had no 'stable' ground to stand on before stepping onto these new platforms. Kids who have grown up with the internet as their primary reality are now reaching the age of adulthood and I think it's no wonder that they can't come to terms with that. What does adulthood mean on the internet? The internet itself probably provides a million answers to this question, and just confuses the matter even more.
This groundlessness - and the black-and-white thinking patterns that it has exacerbated - is I think a big reason why the role models that people are desperately latching onto are becoming more and more one-dimensional, cartoonish... almost as if a person has to make themselves and their beliefs into a brand in order to be taken seriously. On the internet we are not incentivised to be ourselves, but to sell ourselves.
You mention that the older we get the more we should revel in life's mysteries and joys, and I completely agree. The older we get the more we should come to understand how little we actually know, and that can be a wonderful thing. But the internet demystifies life by making all answers (whether right or wrong or somewhere in between) immediately accessible, and it strips away joy too by the same means... it teaches us that we don't have to wait, and our pleasure and reward functions are being absolutely brutalised by this all-access playground of overstimulation.
In conclusion: we really all should just touch grass.
Thanks for the great article, keep it up!
Thank you!
You're absolutely right, we live a life according to an algorithm online, rather than to human nature. Life becomes dull when we try to constantly keep up. We weren't built for algorithms even though we built them, go figure.
Nice post J.S. Yes, the mentality in the west these days is quite infantile. I guess it shows how malleable people's mentalities are overall. Sure, we need food, water, shelter and sex, but other than that, it's pretty easy for our environment to manipulate human beliefs in all sorts of strange and odd directions.
You might enjoy this old post from a defunct blog, "Millennials: the Dying Children": https://archive.ph/7VPGE
Thank you! I'll be sure to give the article a read, it looks interesting.
Religon does a great job of manipulating .
Certainly does, which is why I stay away from it in favor of finding my own sense of spirituality.
I like this framing a lot! Do you think society can create new coming-of-age rituals that are relevant in today's digital world?
Definitely. It would have to be something widely agreed upon and an age-group to complete such rituals, but I think it's certainly possible.
I havtnread your artocle yet, but just wanted to mention that i just also called these kids the lost boys, in a comment in PITT and then afterwards saw your title. They are lost boys, on the island for boys that never have to grow up, but only to get there and find they've been lied to. I agree, my son is caught up in this mess and he doesn't want to study, work... grow up 🤷♀️💔🙏 I want something to change, I'm really sock of this and concerned. Pur boys need to be found, they need to grow up and become men.😭😭😭🙏🙏🙏🙏
There is a famous narrative, which embodies the traditional Western ritual (“the heroes journey” you may call) in which the young men of a society take on the mantle of vir hood and set out into the real world... one full of monsters and leviathans. I believe our future lies in reverting to that archaic system of values in order to restore our greatness. It goes as follows:
“Close your eyes...”
“Are we men yet?” speaks the sponge.
“Not yet... uh... spin around three times.”
The young warriors proceed to twirl, they stomp the ground as bubbles rise beneath their feet.
The sponge inducts an ancient mantra, passed down by the high-priests of Poseidon: “I think it’s working.”
Meanwhile the spell-bounder retrieves four blades from the holy grass which grows in the foothills of Hyperboria (the same material once used to bound Prometheus)
“Good, now- keep your eyes shut. With my mermaid magic...”
The anticipation boils in the hearts of the men. The psychedelic mushroom blood soup they had drunk the morning of begins to activate, as a bezerkr spirit writhes like a fox from its fleshy chains.
“And my one tail fin-“
The pink one howls into the night, uncontrollably, ravens dance in his eyes.
And at once the spell is unleashed- “I command the two of you to turn into men! Open your eyes!”
Silence falls.
“Huh I don’t feel anything-“ the sponge begins blaspheming. Before at once the young men are struck with by epiphany of what just happened.
“OH MY GOSH PATRICK! YOU HAVE A MUSTACHE!”
“So do you!”
They tremble in ecstasy and rub each other’s faces as a consummation of brotherhood.
“So now that your men, can you make it to Shell City?”
They ignore the spell-bounder’s questions, and overcome by Berzerkr lust, they begin to uncontrollably stroke themselves.
“Guys!”
They renter consciousness.
“I said now that you’re men, can you make it to Shell City?”
“Heck yeah!”
“Are men afraid of anything?”
“Heck no!”
“And why?”
“Because we are invincible!”
The two warriors flee from the spell-bounder, like wolves discovered by a farmer at night with his lantern light. They pace away, before plunging into the depths of Hades...
-An excerpt from “The SpongeBob Movie”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9RFp1WYIZpo&pp=ygUYc3BvbmdlYm9iIG1vdmllIG11c3RhY2hl
I HATE AND LOVE THIS COMMENT
Yup... sorry... would’ve been better as a note... shits happens at 1:00 in the morning.
Hey Kasimir, do you know that sound effect from Zelda I when one of your actions reveals a secret door? That is the sound effect you earned from writing this post.
https://thingstoread.substack.com/p/gen-x-is-the-last-generation-of-adults
I smiled when I saw this.
Also, the idea of sparring with metal pipes is amazing and hilarious.
The adult happy meals never fail to confound me. My friend came over last month with the chicken nugget one that was based on some "influencer" Kerwin Frost and I was 110% convinced she was either playing an elaborate hoax on me or McDonald's had resorted to making up supposedly famous people because I have never heard of Kerwin Frost in my life. Looking him up, I'm still not entirely convinced he isn't some sort of PsyOp made by McDonald's marketing team.
My dad thought the Kerwin Frost thing was some cartoon; I thought it was some rapper I'd never heard of. We Googled the guy and we were greeted with the most atrociously unfunny "designer" we'd ever seen.
In the end, we were also left very, very confused as to where in the world McDonald's found this guy.
I assume they found him in a drug-induced stupor in a SoHo ditch, if his appearance is anything to go by. Give it time and I wouldn't put it past them to start generating "influencers" with AI and gaslighting the public into thinking they were always real. "Oh, you've never heard of M.C. Snacky? Well, you're just out of the know. M.C. Snacky has always been a thing."
M.C. Snacky is my favorite...*looks at Instagram feed*...hypebeast influencer! Do you live under a rock or something? Don't look at his three hands, it's a genetic quirk.
"I eat McDonald's as an expression of my identity. It's so on fleek, y'all. Try my new Happy Meal. You will love this burger - it's very gender. Pronouns!" - M.C. Snacky
At some level, I think the theory of fast life/slow life is acting upon people with people developing slower due to environmental factors not pushing them to develop.
At some other level, I believe that there is a regression brought on by a change in the age. The rules that adults were once mature towards changed and now they look even more immature than kids since they don’t know what it would like to be mature in the digital age.
At another level, I feel we are encouraged to fail Erik Eriksons’ psychosocial stages. (Really interesting to look into).
At an even other level, I think that the ability to be a kid has been subverted to such a degree that innocence has become a bought and sold identity, which I try to detail and counter in my recent SpongeBob ‘review’.
This is brilliant. You are spot on. I frequently thank God I'm at the tail end of my life at 59. This world has gone bat-shit. I try mightily to make sense of a culture that makes ZERO sense. And, then again, given how systematically our culture has been dumbed down, it was inevitable. The bit about gaslighting is perfect. It's narcissism as virtue. Well done. I feel less alone.
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it.
The more I try to understand this modern culture, the less I do. It's like watching a circus from afar. One day, it'll make sense again, even if it is several decades from now.
The education system is so broken and leads to a trillion other problems. The way kids are educated is awful nowadays, and you're right--kids hate it. They feel like school is a prison and it doesn't actually teach you anything or foster any real interest in a skill.
And strict parents certainly don't help. I hadn't thought of them in this case, but it certainly does apply. You're treated as a kid your whole life in a different extreme, one where everyone makes decisions for you.