A rant, maybe an observation...

[Magus]

I made an off-the-cuff remark about woketards being something other than regular humans, like an offshoot species I was being funny, but the more I think about it, I remember somebody in the late 90's saying we were no longer homo sapiens, but sapient sapiens, whatever the hell that's supposed to be? but anyway. I got to looking at the last two generations and started doing a mental flow chart:
Boomers to X are intelligent, well-read, self-sufficient, and have an ornery side if pressed. Lots of us are self-educated or home-schooled, mostly traditional values, and we're generally not afraid of anything!

Woke gens are codependent on government, social media, and each other to create an echo chamber that George Orwell would have been pleased to put in 1984; they have the morals of goats in heat and generally violently attack anything different, or they don't understand, but if retaliated to act like they're the victims! They believe laws only apply to others, and that's just the mental differences. Most of us have middle age spread to be sure, a lifetime of injuries to bother us, and general old age, and we're STILL in better shape than the majority of basement dwellers! Probably better looking at their age, too! So how did this genetic nightmare happen? I blame the internet for hooking up people that shouldn't be breeding, anyway! I can remember when some of the crap they hold in high esteem was a disgrace (100 sexual encounters by 15!) Living off the government, being... ah, you get the idea. Humankind is doomed, the coal scuttle is comfy, and we have no option but to go quietly into the night.

Did I say "NO" option? Well, we have some, but listing them is illegal.

 

[Binky]

....... So how did this genetic nightmare happen? I blame the internet for hooking up people that shouldn't be breeding, anyway! .....

Magus, they were BORN into internet and that's all they know. There are some good things about internet but there are a lot more of the negative things that internet can be blamed for in the way it has poorly influenced those younger people. I don't think that poor breeding is entirely at fault.

I think we can't blame internet for all the negatives that have been happening with the younger generations without us older generations accepting personal responsibility and blaming ourselves too for the consequences.

We, the older generations, are the ones that created a monster out of society with cell phones and internet. We are the ones that created the internet, we handed it to the ignorant, valueless youngsters on silver platters without putting checks and balances on the dangers, corruption and lowered values it has engendered.

That is entirely the fault of the irresponsible, unthinking grandparents and parents for bringing babies into the world of cell phones and internet and handing it too them as though it was a safe toy. We may as well have all been handing over silver platters full of shiny bright razor blades for still toothless but teething babies to chew on as pacifiers.

We opened up a Pandora's box, we let a corrupting genie out of a bottle and let our innocent and ignorant kids go play with them when we didn't even have the common parental decency and foresight to prepare them with an instruction manual let alone teaching them ourselves.

Don't blame the ignorant kids for doing what they didn't know better that they shouldn't do when it was their forebears who gave them the toys to play with without teaching the kids how to play responsibly with the toys.

.

 

[Magus]

But they don't want to know better.
If you try to show them, they attack you.

 

[Amish Heart]

Our systems are set up for the youngers for tech. And if you cross it as a grandparent, good luck with that. A couple of years ago, we had custody of our twin grandkids, had them for 8 yrs, up till they were 17, and then all hell broke loose. Lying, drugs, not coming home...you name it. I took our grandson's phone away when I caught him outside higher than a kite, using drugs here, dancing away with rap near our turkey run. His sister called the police on us. They came and she gave them an earfull...end result was we had to go to court for child abuse. Because I took his phone away and called him lazy. Evidentally, that is abuse. Look at the schools...70 percent of what they do now is on a computer. We are required to pay for rent on a school tablet, which they do everything on, and they bring it home, too. This garbage started during covid, and it still continues. I have a flip phone, no data on it. I am typing this on an old laptop. Little granddaughter has a flip phone, no data on it, and it is a house rule that it stays in the kitchen at bedtime. Mine does, too. So as a grandparent, I won't take the "blame"....our society insists that these children function with all of this. Get out of the system.

 

[Binky]

But they don't want to know better.
If you try to show them, they attack you.

Well there are also plenty of addicted grandparents and parents that SHOULD know better that are even worse than the kids for abusing phones and internet and setting themselves as poor examples. The youngsters don't want to know better when they can't recognize that they don't know better.

If you try to teach a hungry shark not to bite you when you're trying to feed it by hand it isn't going to want to learn either, it will still attack you and bite off the hand that feeds it.

WE created the monster shark and gave our kids to the monster to play with. We only have ourselves to blame for what we have turned our kids into.

It's a conundrum.

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[Amish Heart]

I didn't live like that and won't take the blame for it. All that tech is addictive and bad for young minds. Maybe people that support it should take the blame for it. Geesh, we even put a 30 min limit on Super Mario Brothers when our kids were young. Then, go out and play or do chores. The grandkids we raised did not get video games.

 

[Binky]

I didn't live like that and won't take the blame for it. All that tech is addictive and bad for young minds. Maybe people that support it should take the blame for it. Geesh, we even put a 30 min limit on Super Mario Brothers when our kids were young. Then, go out and play or do chores. The grandkids we raised did not get video games.

Nobody is talking about you as an individual, I'm talking about 2 entire generations of society, namely the boomer generation and the X generation, that screwed up their offspring generations with advancing tech that nobody was fully prepared for. Both of those older generations grew up without the kind of communications technology that started to become available in the late 1980's - early '90's.

When it became available those two older generations dived into it without safeguards and without anticipation of needing safeguards because of the exciting newness of it. And they did not pass on their old values and new safeguards to the future generations that came after generation X.

I'm an old boomer, old enough to be Magus' mother, my youngest child is 57 years old. I've never used a cell phone in my life and I didn't even know what internet was until just 20 years ago, 5 years after the turn of the 21st century. My kids did not grow up with cell phones, computers and internet. The closest I've come to participating on social media is on forums like this one. But I do use internet and see on internet what has become of generation Millennial (1981 - 1996), generation Z (1997 - 2012) and generation Alpha (2013 - 2025). And what I see is not good because ALL generations from Boomers to Alpha have now become fully, irrevocably dependent on internet.

When internet and cell phones go down THAT will be the end of the world as we know it. The two older generations might survive it but the younger generations won't because they can't survive without cell phones and internet.

It's a bone of contention for me and I do accept some blame for it because it's my generation that created it and I do use internet and I enjoy it. But if it gets taken away from me it won't kill me the way it will kill so many others in younger generations .

.

 

[Amish Heart]

I really don't like tech.
This AI stuff is just making things worse.

 

[Tirediron]

it is possible to raise a responsible child , or at least it was nor that long ago, In my opinion it take good parent, that put parenting first, not their career or social life, most people just won't put in the effort. If a child has an intact family, both have to work as a team , and support each others decisions, even if they don't agree with each other, discuss that in private. probably many of the late boomers and X ers wouldn't have done well in the get buried in tech world either,

 

[PaulKersey]

I really don't like tech.
This AI stuff is just making things worse.

I agree! I still use my old flip phone as I see no need for games, toaster oven, coffee maker, etc, etc, on my phone.

 

[Magus]

Gen "X" wasn't a breeze. I saw my mother once in the morning if it was raining and she had to drive me to school. I saw my dad for about thirty minutes in the evening after he and mom were tired and already mad at the world. I saw my sister even less if I could help it, so by the weekend, we were a bunch of almost strangers trying to coexist. There were no kids my age in the area; in fact there were no kids. My life was gophering beers to Dad and his war vet buddies on poker night and playing in a junkyard trying to figure out how stuff was built, my best friends were rats, and my hallucinations. (IF they were hallucinations!) When I was old enough, I hit the woods when I wasn't in technical school. By then, I hated society and pretty much everyone in it, but I needed a job if I was going to have enough gear to escape, and hell. I almost made it. I know about being a latchkey kid; I knew about being alone,
The fact I'm not locked up someplace proves I did something right. The millennials and Gen A have no idea about life; they're pampered pups in a world of wolves, and my gut tells me they will be eaten soon.

 

[Supervisor42]

I agree! I still use my old flip phone as I see no need for games, toaster oven, coffee maker, etc, etc, on my phone.

Ditto.
I lived on the cutting edge of technology for decades...
I really, really, wanted to have a laptop I could put in my pocket, until...
I saw the stupidphones turn perfectly-good smart-people into 'the walking dead'

.
I never will surrender my brain to a smartphone.

 

[elkhound]

i seen and see hope when i am out in forest often....kids hiking,adults etc.

this week one afternoon i seen an amazing amount of young folks out....doing all sorts of activity...flying kites ,on bicycles etc....the one young man picking up trash along lake shore in rip rap rock shoreline was heart warming and gave me hope...made me want to go find his parents and give that kid something...magazine subscription to outdoor magazine,backpack,fishing gear ,hell a bicycle anything like that he might be in need of.

 

[Snowman]

I Can't say how many times I see little kids in shopping carts with that damnable thing in their hands, while Mama is a few feet away looking at items on the shelves or chatting with others and Not Talking with their Kids, educating them with what they should be looking for inside the dang stores...?!?

 

[Magus]

At least they don't scream as they pass the candy or toy aisles anymore.

 

[old tex]

As we have gotten older we spend more time observing & judging the people/world around us. We react to the extreme things that we see & think about the way it was to compare. But what we seem to overlook is that what we see in the media are the extreme example that are used to get us to watch. Hard working people that are 20 something are not covered in the media because it would be boring & boring doesn't sell. I would also point out that a lot of the crazy stuff that we hear about now days was going on when we were younger but the info wasn't put on the front page (so to speak). People have always been worthless & stupid. We just didn't see examples of it all around us like we do now.

 

[Dave V]

We can generalize all we want about each generation, and maybe there are some trends due to which tech or drugs etc. are prevalent during one time period or region, but there are plenty of "bad ones" from each generation that think laws don't apply to them and that they get to decide for everyone else. Then there are the innocents of each generation that the bad one's prey on. Then there are some from every generation that look to "do the right thing, believe in fairness and honor. And then there's everyone else, the lost, the addle-brained, the not my backyarders, and the not interested if it doesn't help or pleasure me crowd. They're all out there for EVERY generation and often in every family. It's called humanity, it's a mess and fabulous all at the same time. To thrive, we need to carve out our spot in the mess and look for those who we have common ground. Most of us here are already far, far above the fray of the rest of the world where many people don't know where their next meal will come from or if a bomb or teens with machetes might end their existence tomorrow. The Internet is both horrible and wonderful.
It's here (at least where we live) and we have the resources to access to it, so maybe we can find its better uses to further the type of person we each are?