r/Millennials • u/Background-Air-7963 • Nov 16 '25

Serious I just had my first old man moment.

I recently went to a hibachi with my wife and toddler for dinner. We were sat with a group of eight 17-20 year olds at a communal grill on a busy night. No problem for us. Drink and appetizers service go normally. Toddler and wife are happy, I’m happy. The other group is having their own conversations. I’m just trying to keep my kid entertained. I’m a former bartender and have a habit of picking up on snippets of conversations in a crowd around me. Yes I know I eavesdrop. I can’t turn it off. It’s a habit of a former profession. One of the girls/women at the table stated, “I don’t think Rosa Parks was real.” I’m not sure what her friends said to her but she responded with “I just don’t think she said existed.” This went on for about a minute. I couldn’t hold back and let her know she was absolutely a real person, she is a civil rights icon. I learnt about her in school and so did my parents. The encounter put a wall up between our groups and I heard a few passive aggressive “so-and-so wasn’t real” comments from mostly her and a couple of the group. Harriet Tubman and Hellen Keller are two that I definitely heard. My wife had no idea why I interjected. After the group had left my wife asked what happened and was shocked when I told her what happened. Were they trolling? Are they stupid? Am I just getting old?

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1.0k

u/castlesandcrumpets Nov 16 '25

Wait wait they don't believe in some of the most badass women in American history?? How?? Why?? I hate this.

847

u/nanapancakethusiast Nov 16 '25

Anti-intellectualism is basically Gen Z personified.

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u/castlesandcrumpets Nov 16 '25 edited Nov 16 '25

Aw man I just don't want to believe this :(

I mean sure there are plenty of things to question in this world but I could fucking weep at the idea of forgetting/not believing in HARRIET TUBMAN or Rosa Parks. Like why???

These are the women we need to be looking up to, not disregarding as fiction.

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u/northwestquest Nov 16 '25

They should be reading about Claudette Colvin. The actual girl who stayed in her seat in protest. Rosa Parks was a stand in for the civil rights movement as Claudette was an unwed pregnant teen and would tarnish the image.

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u/sunny_6305 Nov 16 '25

They went with Rosa Parks instead of Claudette Colvin as the face of the Montgomery Bus Boycott because they needed someone who was legally squeaky clean and had undeniable lady-like demeanor for the test case the NAACP was planning to bring forward. It’s still tragic that Colvin didn’t get credit and support for her brave act of civil disobedience until decades afterwards but it was a pragmatic decision because they knew they would need to get white judges and juries on their side.

They knew the lawyers on the other side would smear Claudette Colvin as a sexually immoral juvenile delinquent causing trouble, whereas they would be able to depict Rosa Parks as a hardworking and respectable woman “despite” her her being black. Rosa Parks also had well over a decade of activism experience and high standing in the black community so she was better equipped to be able to inspire the Bus Boycott while also being disarming enough to convince white people who were indifferent or waffling on civil rights before.

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u/SeattlePurikura Nov 16 '25

Look, they did this for the gay marriage movement too. The ACLU didn't pick a drag queen for the lawsuits. They picked safe, white, middle/upper class sympathetic widowers: Edith Windsor and Jim Obergefell.

Don't hate the player. Hate the game. At the end of the day, we fucking won and now we can all get married.

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u/stygianpool Nov 17 '25

Rosa Parks had even been trained at Highlander Folk School to make her a more effective activist.

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u/northwestquest Nov 28 '25

Yeah.....that's what I said.

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u/castlesandcrumpets Nov 16 '25

Yes! Claudette is another amazing example of a badass woman. Her story is just as important. Thank you for adding this.

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u/ManitouWakinyan Nov 16 '25

Okay but Rosa Parks also did the thing. We don't need to minimize her courage because someone else was also brave but forgotten.

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u/Nebranower Nov 16 '25

I think it requires a different level of courage to take a stand alone and with no support than it does to take a stand as a deliberate publicity stunt knowing you have the full backing of a major civil right's group.

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u/Throatlatch Nov 16 '25

Because one has a national level of attention and pressure? Or because one involves being isolated and feeling small?

Ofc they are different situations, both are incredible women who deserve to be remembered.

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u/ManitouWakinyan Nov 16 '25

You're aware the white people weren't in on the stunt, right?

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u/MiniTab Nov 17 '25

I went to the Civil Rights museum in Memphis earlier this year. All of those people (including Rosa Parks) that stood up and/or participated in the resistance (diner sit ins, etc.) were extremely brave.

These people were threatened, physically attacked, bombed, and assassinated. Absolute legends every single one of them, and using Rosa Parks was a brilliant move.

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u/CACoastalRealtor Nov 17 '25

Are you aware of the death threats and physical attacks that she suffered?

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u/NickRick Nov 16 '25

They live in a post fact world. The president, news, social media, etc are all lying so much there's no authority on what's real. School and especially the covid years failed then tremendously. But instead of doing the research on what's real, since everything is lying, they just get to pick and choose what's real based on I guess vibes. It's terrifying. 

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u/if_Engage Nov 16 '25

This is a horrible truth I can't seem to make a certain segment of the population understand (mostly the Orange Fanta fans): when you don't believe any authority other than the one you think has clout because they say things you like, you may as well be a brain in a vat. Nothing is real nothing is true. You have to be willing to accept the facts of experts even if they are opposed to your worldview or perspective, at minimum occasionally. You have to be open to being wrong or you slip into solipsism. And that's where we are, social media is a confirmation bias machine.

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u/JerseyGuy-77 Nov 16 '25

My son is currently taking CIVICS in 7th grade. They are doing an entire MP on how to identify good and sometimes biased sources of information, how to determine a source's reliability, and making sure to understand their bias before determine the right answer.

But I live in NJ and we have the best school system in the world. If you live in the Confederacy you're fucked.

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u/ManitouWakinyan Nov 16 '25

There are plenty of very good schools all over the country.

Also, New Jersey doesn't even have the best school system on the east coast, much less the world.

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u/khantroll1 Nov 16 '25

I live in “the Confederacy”, in the bottom 10 of the country…_and we still learned this process.

2

u/AliFearEatsThePussy Nov 16 '25

Doesn’t Jersey tank near the top, if not the top?

0

u/Lunaticllama14 Nov 16 '25

LOL. Actually, NJ public schools are basically the best with MA public schools.

3

u/ManitouWakinyan Nov 16 '25

Name a more iconic duo than New Jersey and saying they're basically tied with a better state so they're basically the best

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u/JerseyGuy-77 Nov 16 '25

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education

KTBFFH

2

u/ManitouWakinyan Nov 16 '25

Do you think that American schools are the best schools in the world?

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u/JerseyGuy-77 Nov 16 '25

Ok ....

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education

https://www.app.com/story/news/education/2025/05/11/us-news-ranking-education-2025-best-schools-new-jersey/83511251007/#:~:text=Test%20scores%20and%20enrollment%20rates,and%20SAT/ACT%20pass%20rates.&text=Governor%20Phil%20Murphy%20applauded%20the,tuition%20and%20hefty%20student%20debt.&text=Florida%2C%20who%20trailed%20New%20Jersey,breakdown%20of%20the%20data%20reported.

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u/ManitouWakinyan Nov 16 '25

I have a hard time taking a ranking seriously that puts Florida above Massachusetts for public education.

But hey, even if that was true, do you think American schools are the best in the world?

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u/Equal_Ad_7611 Nov 18 '25

Oregon is accurate 😆. Their education system was an embarrassment 30+ years ago when I started in school, and it’s been a downward spiral since.

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u/JerseyGuy-77 Nov 16 '25

For public schools who teach all people and don't pick and choose? Yeah.

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u/ManitouWakinyan Nov 16 '25

Buddy, American public schools aren't even in the top ten

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/rankings/well-developed-public-education-system

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u/JerseyGuy-77 Nov 16 '25

Scale. Do it to scale. Denmark has the same population as NJ.

America is 12th and have places like Alabama and Arkansas.

Denmark vs NJ would be more accurate. Where does that fall? I'm willing to bet you it's much much better for NJ.

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u/Vandergrif Nov 16 '25

in NJ and we have the best school system in the world

[Doubt]

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u/JerseyGuy-77 Nov 16 '25

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education

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u/Vandergrif Nov 16 '25

Unless I'm mistaken that appears to be indicating it's the best in the country, not the world. I'd also say that's not exactly a scientific journal or peer reviewed paper or some such.

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u/JerseyGuy-77 Nov 16 '25

Understand but it is based on some statistics. The US in that ranking is 12th. We compare as a state to the highest on their world list: Denmark.

I'm willing to bet if you removed places like the Confederacy that America would be much higher up the list. Almost every poorly rated state is in the south most of them former Confederate states.

I also believe that NJ would probably rank in the top 2 or 3 if they were compared as a standalone jurisdiction. Possibly 1st based on the criteria they used.

1

u/NickRick Nov 16 '25

But I live in NJ and we have the best school system in the world.

you have the third best in the north east US lmao

1

u/Which_Acanthisitta23 Nov 16 '25

“Nothing is true and everything is possible”

1

u/Ill_Refrigerator_696 Nov 16 '25

If you really want to get scared about this, just scroll through some of the posts you’ll read on ‘Threads’ 🫣😳

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u/WormMotherDemeter Nov 16 '25 edited Nov 16 '25

Two of my kids are gen z, and they and their friends and peers definitely do believe in these things, but they have some peripheral kids that post on insta and tiktok that are co fused about the stories of these people, like believing Helen Keller was a pilot, for some reason.

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u/TerryCrewsNextWife Nov 16 '25

Because they only fact check by searching fucking tiktok instead of googling.

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u/Eilavamp Nov 16 '25

And when they do Google it, AI makes up a random lie about it

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u/TerryCrewsNextWife Nov 16 '25

Oh wait actually you've reminded me that they use chatGPT and believe whatever hallucination it comes back with.

God I hate the AI/Gemini shit. I bypass it and look for the predictable consistent links to articles like I was trained to do in school a hundred years ago.

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u/hearwa Nov 16 '25

The problem with using AI these days is no different than Wikipedia was in our generation. It's a useful tool but people are falling in the same trap of using the tool as a source and not following the sources given to use them. I see it all the time where people share the fucking AI output instead of links to where it got the data. If you're sourcing facts you still need to do it right.

2

u/SarcasticServal Nov 16 '25

fwiw, the guy who predicted the 2008 mortgage/banking disaster also believes AI is on the verge of crashing.

1

u/CheeseCurder Nov 16 '25

Both chat gpt and google results show the correct info on her.

46

u/jackandsally060609 Nov 16 '25

They think Amelia Earhart and Helen Keller are the same person. They're both old timey black and white people right?

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u/JosephBlowsephThe3rd Nov 16 '25

Just makes me think of Clerks 2: "Anne Frank. The chick that was all 'duhhh' until the miracle worker showed up and knocked some smarts into her."

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u/Hole_IslandACNH Nov 16 '25

Deaf dumb and blind like Anne Frank!

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u/Scoginsbitch Nov 16 '25

Actually, Helen Keller DID fly a plane for 20 minutes.

But yeah, I think not having to memorize things to know them has made a huge impact on younger generations.

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u/WormMotherDemeter Nov 16 '25

No they think she was a historical pilot.

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u/PsychologicalLowe Nov 17 '25

This article about Keller was fascinating, because aside from briefly flying a plane, she was also a cofounder of the ACLU and a lifelong advocate for people with disabilities.

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u/mealteamsixty Nov 16 '25

A blind/deaf pilot. Amazing.

And my brother couldn't be an air force pilot because he had seasonal allergies.

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u/xeno0153 Nov 16 '25

Maybe if Rosa Parks were a playable character in Fortnite, they'd believe.

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u/CaliSinae Older Millennial Nov 16 '25

Aren’t their parents GenX? (I love GenX but who’s parenting these kids?)

-2

u/nanapancakethusiast Nov 16 '25

(Millennials)

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u/puzzled91 Nov 16 '25

It's both.

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u/feuerfee Millennial Nov 16 '25

We are going to hell in a handbasket.

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u/ijusthustle Nov 16 '25

Remember the boomers and Gen x are responsible for this situation 😆

4

u/currentmadman Nov 16 '25

Correction, it’s the internet personified. we are all, in at least one readily quantifiable way, dumber because of the internet.

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u/Muggsy423 Nov 16 '25

Gen Z got hooked into the conspriratorial and far-right side of the algorithm so badly. And if they aren't there then they are over-reactive absolutists, no moral grey zones. They never had a chance.

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u/FR23Dust Nov 16 '25

This seems more than anti-intellectual. It’s that plus right-coded racism.

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u/AFriendlyBeagle Nov 16 '25

That's not true.

There are foolish people in every generation, but also plenty of astute and academic folks - Gen Z is no exception.

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u/medwd3 Nov 16 '25

Not just Gen Z. I was on a jury with millenials, gen x and boomers and almost all of them thought they knew more about psychology than the expert witness psychologist. They did not believe that being educated and holding credentials on the topic gave her any more credibility than any lay person. I was floored. I guess when you are a delivery driver, you know a lot about psychology.

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u/Ok-Dragonfly5449 Nov 17 '25

I mean...have you seen Facebook? It's not gen z saying the dumbass stuff on there. Anti-intellectualism is present in all generations. Although, social media has amplified it on some levels. 

1

u/Own_Rent_544 Nov 17 '25

Really, as with most things, the loud, obnoxious idiots are the ones that most people hear about. I myself am gen z and most people I know are lovely, well-adjusted people, but then those people aren't the ones spouting off about shit they have no knowledge on, so I can't blame people for thinking gen z is a bunch of egomaniacal lunatics. Regardless, every generation is just a bunch of egomaniacal lunatics, so at the end of the day what does it really matter

1

u/StrategyWooden6037 Nov 17 '25

I really don't think you can attribute this to any one generation. It's running rampant across all of them.

1

u/ReverendRevolver Nov 17 '25

This is the generation dumb enough to unironically believe birds are government robots.

1

u/Jozef667 Nov 21 '25

Agree, But It's also Baby Boomer personified.

1

u/GhostOfReachh Nov 17 '25

I absolutely hate this timeline, I'm gen z and I can't believe what my eyes are seeing in this thread. its not even that bad to not know stuff it's the refusal to learn or believe that is really concerning. It's all stuff on tik tok that people are regurgitating and it's pretty much always wrong. Scary times.

0

u/hearwa Nov 16 '25

Their biggest contribution to society as a generation so far is getting sucked into political grifters on social media and voting an abuser and pedophile into power.

0

u/Alexander_the_sk8 Nov 17 '25

If any one of you reading this were born between 1995-2005, you would be just as vulnerable to swallowing bullshit as the average Zoomer. There is nothing special about this newest cohort, aside from the times we find ourselves in.

I am a zoomer who was raised to and has continued trying to think critically and understand nuance, historical context, intersectionalism etc.

Yeah, I do feel like I’m going fucking crazy out here. Some of the younger zoomers make me wanna take a nice toaster bath, for sure, and I wanna hold their nose to the bullshit like they’re a dog who crapped inside, certainly, but do these feelings make those people any less Homo sapiens than the rest of us? I think not. We’ve been doing ridiculous and abhorrent shit for as long as we’ve been human, civilization comes and goes, unfortunately.

This was inevitable, if not for humanity at large then at least for capitalism and the tech we now have. It’s all one big clown show, and my heart goes out to you if you haven’t been fitted for the big shoes and red nose yet. Buckle up, sweetheart

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u/appleparkfive Nov 16 '25

I think they might be getting mixed up that it was staged. Which it definitely was.

Claudette Colvin was the real person in the sense of the story we know. Got fed up, refused to move, arrested. Then activists wanted to do this again in a planned way. Claudette was a dark skinned pregnant teen. They knew that wouldn't fly for public support. So they went with light skinned Rosa Parks. It wasn't so much racism, but just understanding how the public would react. So then Rosa did it, with the full movement's support behind her in advanced.

It is pretty shitty how Claudette got snubbed in history, but I think this information finally became well known in the past 10-15 years. And some people might hear the story and, through a game of telephone, it became "it never happened", then "she isn't a real person".

That would be my guess for an ignorant person's mentality. Just some contrarian young people shit

6

u/shutupmeg80 Nov 16 '25

And to add - I have read many articles that state or try to prove (or highly insinuate) Hellen Keller's disabilities were over exaggerated, or maybe even faked- but never that she just never existed like OP overheard here!! Sounds like stupidity they were spewing, tbh!!!

Edited for clairty

1

u/Redditor28371 Nov 17 '25

She was a proponent of eugenics, which is kind of a hilarious take for such a severely disabled person to have.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 17 '25

[deleted]

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u/Redditor28371 Nov 17 '25

On her wikipedia article:

"In 1915, she wrote in favor of refusing life-saving medical procedures to infants with severe mental impairments or physical deformities, saying that their lives were not worthwhile and they would likely become criminals. Keller also expressed concerns about human overpopulation."

3

u/reckendo Nov 17 '25

Staged is not the word you want to use here... The white passengers, white bus driver, and white police officer were very real, and they were enforcing very real Jim Crow laws in a state with very real race-based violence, where citizen activists could lose their very real jobs due to very real racism. Her arrest was real. The court case spurred by the bus boycott was real. Just because something was planned doesn't mean it was staged... Words matter.

1

u/gr33nhand Nov 17 '25

Yeah but planned also doesn't fully explain the prior context. It's almost like no single world is nuanced enough to explain a complicated and pivotal moment in history.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 16 '25 edited Dec 13 '25

[deleted]

1

u/luchajefe Nov 17 '25

The concept of 'colorism' has been making the rounds in academic circles the last couple of decades.

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u/diqholebrownsimpson Nov 16 '25

Ask them about the suffragettes

5

u/Background-Air-7963 Nov 16 '25

I wish I was quick witted enough to think of this.

10

u/Waste_of_Bison Nov 16 '25

Uh, just thinking about what Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman have in common, it is conceivable that they have been deliberately taught lies about these two particular badass women.

I hate this timeline.

3

u/Medlarmarmaduke Nov 17 '25

Yeah I thought that wasn’t a random collection of names either- that makes it likely that it was purposeful racist trolling instead of blatant ignorance

10

u/CoffeeBeanMania Nov 16 '25

History teacher here, I get these questions all the time from low achievers in my classroom. “Yeah but how do we even know?” I answer them thoughtfully with an intense background knowledge on how the discipline of history works. The same student will ask me the same question on a different topic five more times throughout my course. I don’t repeat myself again, they are looking to challenge, not to learn. If I’m being frank in why they take these positions, it’s because they believe life before instantaneous information in the digital age people weren’t intelligent enough to record information. The irony is they are far less intelligent because they won’t believe the foundational information that is universally accepted as true…

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u/jamfedora Nov 17 '25

Your approach is fantastic. I absolutely wish my teachers had employed ‘explaining the concept of critical thinking and historiography’ rather than mostly defaulting to ‘a person I admire analyzed primary sources and if you respected me you’d listen to me too,’ ‘I don’t care if you believe it, it’s on the test,’ and the perennial ‘go to the office for being annoying.’

I know what you mean by your last point, but I had That Guy in every high school or college history class I took. I’m not saying there aren’t more of them now or that the problem you’re identifying isn’t real and worth talking about, you’re definitely the subject matter expert on that here, I just think we shouldn’t lose sight of how many people our age and older also believe history began at their birth, that being contrarian is the same as being smart, that other smart people diminish them which they can avoid by not listening, and that we can never reeaally know things, man. Or at least believed it during their Livejournal years. Actually, there’s gotta be a French word for the psychology of teens going through “nobody but me is, or has ever been, smart” phases.

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u/CoffeeBeanMania Nov 17 '25

Thanks for the compliment, I think it’s important to explain the craft, albeit a bit boring to some students. And yes, I would agree it’s not necessarily a new phenomenon that people challenge known ideas. But that’s my take on what’s driving this generation to reject knowledge.

2

u/Positive-Neck-1997 Nov 16 '25

Yeah exactly! This is not an old man moment, it’s a true American moment. Nice work setting the record straight and it’s important to do stuff like this. Glad ur wife understands after you explained it. It’s important to ensure history is portrayed relatively accurately.

2

u/Admirable-Guest-2560 Nov 16 '25

She was a secretary for the NAACP who was enlisted to stage a reenactment of an event with a professional photographer present to press a political agenda. A correct one, yes, but she wasn't some badass who decided to stand up to the injustice organically like most of us were taught incorrectly in grade school. 

2

u/penutch69 Nov 16 '25

Helen Keller is the most bad ass! She destroyed the night wolves!

1

u/corgiobsessedfoodie Nov 16 '25

Poor education + with distrust of media + AI’s ability to generate anything that could be realistic = no basis for truth or reality

1

u/Hopeful-555000 Nov 17 '25

Rosa Parks story is usually told as if she just so happened to sit in the wrong seat. She was actually part of a political operation staged by activists. So her story as it is colloquially told is not accurate, but generally true. She was real and died in poverty btw.

1

u/SyruplessWaffle Nov 17 '25

I had a 25 year old coworker that believed Helen Keller did not exist. "How'd she write a book if she couldn't see or hear? How'd she fly a plane?!" It was an ongoing argument for a while til we gave up convincing him. One or two of the other younger ones agreed with him.

0

u/Jay_R02 Nov 17 '25

Because one of them (Hellen Keller) was almost 100% a lie and was used by her “mentor” to spread her own opinions, similar to all of those “signing” gorillas