Teenagers’ being stupid isn’t new. They’ve always been stupid. You were stupid too when you were sixteen. You might not admit it, and you definitely didn’t admit it back then, but you were. We all were.
As far as I can see, the only real difference between now and then is that, for some reason passing all understanding, corporate America started listening to teenagers and taking their nonsense seriously. Why? I have no idea.
If you’re middle-age, then all of the political ideas you hate are really teenage ideas for saving the world. In the Sixties they promoted free love (a good one). In the Seventies they wanted a wide variety of drugs (not too bad). In the Eighties they wanted parachute pants and pre-ripped jeans (stupidity rearing its ugly head). In the Nineties they wanted black eye-liner and depressing music to give themselves a soundtrack when they killed themselves (even dumber). Now they want to redefine gender and turn David into Goliath (mildly well-meaning but mainly stupid).
The fact is teenagers want to separate themselves from their parents. That’s it. Period. Apart from the surface level changes (fashion, new slang, musical choices), they tend to want to come up with new ideologies, ostensibly to create a better world. The new gender ideology is mainly just that, teenage rebellion gone mainstream that will look silly in retrospect.
I get why the government now adopts this nonsense. It keeps us arguing over small, silly nonsense while they rob us blind, sending our tax dollars to Ukraine for a cause we don’t understand.
I don’t understand why corporations adopt it. Is it just fear of the power of the teenage internet? Is it catering to the next generation of consumers? If so, they should look back at history and realize that even the most strident hippie turned into at least a semi-capitalist after a few years, even the most aggressively depressing Goth kid in Seattle in 1998 wiped off the black make-up within a few years.
In other words, don’t listen to teenagers. They’re different people every five minutes. Next year they’re going to insist that all cows be painted purple to stop Global Warming, or some such other well-meaning idiocy.