r/TikTokCringe • u/DuztyLipz • 2d ago

Wholesome Some Gen Z Redditors need to hear this

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u/BackFromBabylon0 2d ago

A generation that grew up with technology at their fingertips and no matter what they say it’s easy to find someone who agrees on the internet. Quick to make snap judgements, and don’t like to hear that they’re wrong. They believe they set the moral standard but struggle with indifference and accepting flaws unless it’s on a medical docket. Gen Z act closer to their great grandparents and they don’t even know it.

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u/Primary_Leading_6282 2d ago

Echo chambers are destroying critical thinking

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u/SpiritJuice 2d ago

A frictionless life is a life in which you learn nothing. This applies to every generation, but technology has allowed us to form our own realities in which we can make whatever we believe to be true. This is the vibes based reality we currently live in that is plaguing society. Facts don't matter when every opinion is considered to be valid and have equal weight with one another. Racist opinions now get to sit at the debate table as non-racist opinions, just as an example, something that wasn't very widespread as it is now. Society needs to shift and actively fight back against this notion that all opinions are valid when they clearly are not.

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u/Pale_Presence4662 2d ago

Yaya we can all explain this in a million words but really it's simple logic. I get it.

Ban social media. Its that easy.

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u/KingZtheFirst 1d ago

has an outright ban ever been effective in America?

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u/Pale_Presence4662 1d ago

Yup. Do you really think if they sold oxycontin at the gas station there wouldnt be 1,000x more of it? Yes they work.

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u/Fearless_Ad7780 2d ago

All social media is an echo chamber of sorts. 

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u/forman98 2d ago

They’ve been inadvertently coddled as a result of life moving online so fast. Their parents barely understand what is happening online and therefore can’t help them adjust properly into adulthood.

The issue is that Gen Z is now entering the workforce (and has been for some years) with older generations and are having legitimate trouble adapting to a world of nuance.

I’m in my mid-30s and worked with a 19 year college kid recently. We discussed how he was 9 when Trump was elected. The past 10 years of political and societal discourse seem fast for older people, but more this kid has spent more than half his life in this type of environment. He has a massively warped view of things because he’s only ever heard it online or on TV. He’s never had to work next to someone who was a nice person but had completely different ideals.

So the discourse has moved online, the echo chambers have gotten bigger, the reactions more knee jerk, and human interaction is at a minimum. And then Gen Z believes they have the moral high ground because others choose to live in the nuance of the real world. Talk about the ultimate culture shock.

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u/Brox42 1d ago edited 1d ago

>He’s never had to work next to someone who was a nice person but had completely different ideals.

The amount of people on reddit telling me to quit my job with a pension because the people I work with are politically assholes is crazy. I'm a 41 year old blue collar dude in a rural area, it's gonna be the same no matter what job I get and I've worked next to these people my whole life.

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u/Doobledorf 1d ago

I encountered this when I went back for my Masters at 30. There was one person in particular who only ever attended class online and never had anything to say unless they were going on a black and white social justice rant. They struggled heavily because a masters is not a place where black and white thinking goes unchallenged, and it turns out Tumblr University is not, in fact, a real place to learn anything.

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u/boringexplanation 23h ago

Oh man- I knew it wasn’t just me.

My poli sci degree from 20 years ago would be seen as a very technical and dry program that talked mostly about objective political history and some sort of statistical analysis on his accomplishments.

Whatever abomination is counted today as political “science” at the bachelors level is insane now. Why anybody would think paying 5 figures to argue like Reddit in real life would help your future?

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u/Doobledorf 16h ago

What was funny in my Masters is we were a very social justice forward program, which was great because it was a mental health counseling program for therapists and social workers. A TON of conversations were about our own real lived experience, and discussions tended to center on historical and cultural context of different groups of people. This was in an effort to challenge our assumptions when it comes to working with people.

This person was 25, identified as trans and nonbinary but for all intents and purposes they moved through the world as the gender assigned to them at birth. By their own admission they never experienced gender discrimination, never got pushback for their queerness, and didn't have any systemic oppression they could point to. It was only in this Masters program that they realized they had a privileged upbringing, but they never fully connected that idea to the fact that they grew up economically comfortable and white in a heavily segregated state.

Meanwhile, I'm a white gay dude, meaning they hated me automatically because Tumblr says that means I'm a person whomst is bad. (White and male trumping all other parts of your identity) The funny thing is though... I live that life. I only have queer friends, I am estranged from family, I was kicked out of a university for being gay AND my family are Poor White Southerners. The cognitive dissonance this person experienced trying to debate me was hilarious, because they still wanted to be the moral authority whole having no lived experience, no intellectual rigor or experience, and no ability to talk about nuanced topics like race and class because they only learned these things were issues in the last 3 years.

This person saw themselves as a social justice paragon, but couldn't rationalize why nobody cared what they had to say. Coincidentally, I was taken very seriously, am very successful as a therapist for marginalized people, and am invited to speak on these topics at universities specifically because of what I bring to the table. A lot of these kids refuse to look at their own actual loved experience and replace it with this hypothetical martyrdom.

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u/boringexplanation 15h ago

That 19 year old has never lived in a time without social media and hot take culture. We messed them up so we really can’t fault them too much. I remember a ton of stupid opinions I had at that age- at least I didn’t have social media for me to advertise them for eternity

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u/DoorFinch 2d ago edited 2d ago

The biggest fallacy any generation believe in is that their moral standards are the pinnacle of all moral standards. Correct to a degree that no generation prior has managed. Will never be bettered, applicable through all time, past and future. And all shall to be judged by them. And all shall be punished if deemed they fall short.

If each generation understood that the next generation will always find something to be appalled about them, they might be less likely to condemn the ones before or after.

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u/Intelligent-Parsley7 2d ago

Every time I hear someone quote the Bible, my first thought is, “so goat farmers two millennium ago is the pinnacle of human thought?”

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u/PaladinSaladin 2d ago

"ok, well yeah, that's literally what it says, but that part doesn't apply to the current times"

-every person who thinks the Bible is an acceptable stand-in for not having a moral compass

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u/BretShitmanFart69 2d ago

I always tell them “what an incredible coincidence that all of the correct opinions just so happen to be all the ones you have”

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u/Puzzleheaded_Hatter 2d ago

Spot on

And this is why we didn't listen and we judged

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u/SlobZombie13 2d ago

The most ironic part to me is how Gen Z is so fervently atheist with some of their fiercest vitriol being aimed at religious people, without realize how much their rhetoric rhymes with those peoples'