I Hate My Generation

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It's about knowing which things you can change and which you can't. It's the old 'pick and choose your fights' thing. I don't ignore every problem, I only ignore the ones that have no effect on me whatsoever.

To the OP:

I felt the same way. It took until we were all in our 30's before I could stand my peers. Even now I feel like a considerable population of them lack manners and basic comprehension skills. I don't know if my generation (X) is any more "damaged" than previous generations but I know we're the first generation to embrace our damage, put it out in the sunlight and talk about it to death. I think this allows people a perceived freedom to be hypercritical of others while remaining incredibly self-absorbed. At least some of us got through realizing we aren't the center of the universe.

Your experiences don't apply to everyone, I know lots of people who have a disgust for mainstream culture and it's not because there secretly just depressed, It's because they are intelligent people.

Hating on something might not change it, but it's a start. And even if I know I can't really change something it doesn't mean I'm not allowed to have a negative opinion on it, everyone know this and still does it.

Saying "you're just going have to learn to live with it, because it's not going to go away, it's not going to change," is pretty defeatist attitude, If some people actually did this, then we would be in a much crappier place then we already are.

But, what if you can't ignore it? what if you can't live your life to the full because of some of these things?

I hated the mainstream before it was cool.

Me too, but when something becomes cool, then it must be mainstream.

But how many mentally balanced intelligent people do you know go on internet forums to rant and rave about what they hate about popular culture to anyone who'll listen? That's attention-seeking supremacist hipster behavior. A healthy-minded intelligent person would step back and ask, if they were to post anything at all: 'what can we do, as individuals, and eventually as parents, teachers and guides to a new generation, to help steer youth away from this trend of stupid, risky and extremely rude behavior?'. All I've seen in this thread so far is: 'The mainstream is s**t! All they do is drink, fight, take drugs, commit crimes, f**k, swear, listen to sh***y music, and make sick jokes! Everyone who is part of it is a f*****g slobbering moron and deserves to die in a fire! Argh! Kill! Kill!'.

Or something to that effect, anyway.


Everyone's entitled to their own opinions, both positive and negative, but hating on something isn't the right way to go about starting to try to change something. Hating on something is like trying to get through a locked door without a key or a tool of some kind. You're going to be standing there banging your fists against it ineffectively until you get tired, hurt yourself, get into trouble, or otherwise just give up. Hate is the adult version of a child's tantrum to get what they want.


It's not so much a defeatist attitude as a sanity-saving one. If I worried and bitched and moaned about everything my peers seemed to be doing wrong with their lives, everything I can't effectively change about them or this generation, I'd be a psychological wreck. So I don't even stop to think about it.


If you can't ignore what everyone else is doing when it has no direct negative effect on you personally, then you're going to be very miserable until you either learn to let go of what you can't change, or to the day you die, which ever comes first.

I know lots of people of people like that on the internet, it's much more than just ranting and raving as you put it. And can we stop with hipster insult please, it's getting old now.




No a healthy-minded intelligent person would address the problem first (usually by complaining about it.)




You must be reading a different thread to me then, because I've seen much more than that. You're trying to simplify what the OP said to make it look bad, when it really isn't.




WHAT!? Of course it is!, if you didn't hate it then why would you want to change it? Don't know where you got the pseudo-psychological thing from but it doesn't make sense. Many social and political advances have happened due to people hating what was happening before.



And what if what you are complaining about is effecting your sanity and/or health? For example not so long (and probably still do in many places) people were teased and picked on for being gay, till someone had enough and decided to do something about it. This is just one example there are many more. And even if it doesn't effect you personally, it's still perfectly ok to have a negative opinion on it. Nobody said anything about it completely controlling their lives.



But that's the thing, lots of these things DO effect people personally.

Ok, so let's look at the substance of what the OP was complaining about (stripping away the "they are evil" rhetoric). Mostly, it was about people who post mocking and cruel internet comments about other peoples' tragedies. "BEST ROPE EVAR" to mock somebody's hanging suicide was one ugly example.

Stepping away from the anger, Zokk really is taking the more nuanced and ultimately useful approach. Instead of making counter-posts about how absolutely horrible they are (as though this was a generational thing, which it is not, other than using the internet to make these comments) he wonders how to steer young people away from this. Hyperbole about banning the internet or saying the internet will end civilization is just hyperbole and doesn't do anything. It's just emotional ranting.

So what could actually be done? That's where it gets tricky. It may feel good to say "blow everybody up" but that is a vent not a realistic attempt at problem solving. What is really happening here is dehumanization. This is a common and ugly feature of humanity and predates this particular generation by many thousands of years. It's when people who you don't feel are part of your group get branded as not being entirely people and therefore anything tragic that happens to them isn't actually tragic because it didn't happen to a person. This is probably one of the worst features of human nature but it has absolutely nothing to do with this generation.

One tactic that sometimes gets used is to try to get people to expand who they connect to- to identify more broadly. This has had mixed results. It is truly an uphill battle but one worth fighting.

The other tactic is internet-specific. We as individuals need to report these things to site managers just as people report hateful threads to mods here. Facebook will take down pages that are pointed out to them as hate pages. They've done it many times already. But they can't have mods combing through the literally millions of pages to find which ones are hate pages. Those have to be reported. Youtube has the same policy. They will remove personal attack videos but can only do that once they have been reported. All other websites similarly depend on reporting of offensive posts to remove them. So after taking a deep breath there really is something that we can do as individuals. We can report all instances of these things (I have reported some on Youtuve) so they can be removed. That has more impact than a rhetorical vent.

The teenagers of today really aren't humans. I mean, they're dehumanizing people in the first place. That's the problem.

Yes, because there totally aren't countless websites devoted entirely to pictures and videos of deaths, murders, mutilations, hate, and crimes.

Can we get a few people a memo about how things are done in The Haven, please?

How are they done? I thought this was just a place for support.

I think it's easier to spot the faults of people in your own age bracket, given that you most likely go through similar experiences and circumstances along with them. You can track your progress with there's much easier than with people much younger or older. So to me I don't think the negative characteristics you (OP) see is necessarily exclusive to one generation. But I do agree that the very fabric of decency seems to be eroding from society. It's a real shame. It seems many have been on the receiving end of this obtuse behaviour.

I'm not crazy about my generation or the following generations, either. I never did like my generation. I prefer the 60s over the late 80s and early 90s and beyond. I feel like I'm trapped in hell and I can feel the evil of today's youth. Earth seems to be getting to be more like Hell with each passing year. I don't even watch TV anymore because of the stuff that is on and the contents of the majority of the shows. I also don't care for the commercials. I don't want to be watching an ad for AXE products, maxi pads or condoms, every 10 minutes.

I hate those commercials, too.

I hate y2k
I hate facebook
I hate cell phones
I hate texting
! !!