Aren’t they just as dumb as teenagers have always been?
First off, let me state the inescapable fact that I, too, was a moron when I was a teenager. I was just as rigidly righteous, just as stupidly savvy, and just as annoyingly arrogant as these Gen-Z morons…but back then the world didn’t care.
The Gen-Z teenagers of today are, of course, righteous, stupid and arrogant. They’re teenagers, it’s just a part of the process. However, for some reason I cannot fathom, the world is intently listening to the off-hand reactionary semi-opinions of this current batch of unformed masturbation machines.
The decidedly deadly combination of the perceived anonymity of social media and the fact that we’re now buying cell phones for seven-year-olds has led us to a place where we’re actually listening to the poorly-thought-out nonsense that the teens are spouting nowadays. If only their parents hadn’t been too afraid to spank the living shit out of them back when it would’ve helped, we might could’ve cut this one off at the pass. But we didn’t, and that part’s on us, not you. Still, one day you’re going to BE us, so listen up.
To their credit, I do believe that way down deep, the stuff they believe is fundamentally right. The problem is that they’re too young to recognize that their pseudo-fascistic methodology actually hurts their cause. Racial harmony is a good goal. No more Saturday night police beat-downs of drag queens is a good goal.
These Gen-Zers want tolerance, but they think the best way to get there is through mass intolerance. They want to be able to invent a new gender for every day of the week, and whine when the lady at the DMV doesn’t put “non-binary” on their drivers licenses (mainly because non-binary is just something you made up to fuck with your parents and therefore not, medically-speaking, a real thing).
At heart these Gen-Zers are extremely cowardly. Shunning people, which is all this Cancel Culture thing really is, is something popular girls in high schools have always done. A herd mentality is nothing new for American high schools, but that crap used to end with graduation. Now we seem to be encouraging it well into 23rd grade.
Teenagers have always wanted to save the world…from whatever their parents believed. This was once called by its true name, rebellion. It’s a completely natural part of the maturation process, allowing kids to slowly slip out of their parents’ house and into the real world (not that this generation actually leaves their parents’ houses, or really enters the real world). However, the real world never used to listen to teenagers before now, and rightly so…BECAUSE TEENAGERS ARE STUPID. Do we honestly think that there’s such a thing as a technology that magically makes teenagers not stupid? If so, it sure ain’t cell phones. If anything, cell phones now allow everyone to act like teenagers well into their forties, which is sort of the opposite of what’s supposed to happen.
OK, that was my rant. Now, since I continue to have hope for the future, and since if there’s one universal truth about teenagers it’s that those fuckers can change their minds faster than schizophrenic kittens on meth, I’d like to speak directly to the people of tomorrow here:
“Dear Generation Z, rest your weary thumbs, shut the fuck up and do something! When given the chance to actually put your beliefs into practice, you routinely run away, shouting self-righteous nonsense through your inane pocket rectangles and trying to ruin the lives of people you hate. Instead, may I recommend actually engaging the people who you think are destroying the world. Talk to the people you hate sometime. Use calm, rational rhetoric and lay out your points. You might be surprised what an honest conversation can lead to. Talk to a businessman sometime. He, too, might prefer solar power on the roof of his Golden Gallon. Talk to a Republican sometime. She, too, might want to pay her people a living wage. Talk to an old white man sometime. I know you’ve been taught that all old, white men are evil (and admittedly some of them are), but most of them were stupid, self-righteous teenagers with save-the-world dreams too at some point. They, too, once annoyed their parents with their plans for changing the world. The only difference is that, back then, people knew that teenagers were not yet fully formed human beings, and so the world, rightly, ignored them. Essentially, just do something. Get involved in society. I should add the caveat that yelling at politicians isn’t actually getting involved, but working on a political campaign might. Get involved in society. Do it calmly. It’s the only way to change it. Tweet-shunning people is nothing more than your ego telling you that you need to do something decent, and that you really should’ve bought that homeless guy a tuna fish sandwich yesterday instead of pretending not to see him. Simply put, you’re not going to accomplish shit with less than 140 characters, but you might actually do something worthwhile if you take the time to sit down and talk with someone you disagree with, instead of going full-on Fascist High School crazypants (Go Fighting Delusionary Complaint Factories! Beat your rival school, the Preening Pronoun Police!)!”