Our previous post about members of Gen Y facing the choice of growing up or becomig a byword gave rise to incisive commentary. Here, in no particular order, are the editor’s pick of the comments.
First, a diagnosis of what ails Generation Y by author JD Cowan:
When I wrote my piece called Ten Years Gone, it was a reflection on how much things changed since 2013, especially compared to, say, 2003 to 2013. I still go back to the piece I’m quoting every now and then
Gen Y’s slow slide into insanity started in the aftermath of 9/11 when the last of them graduated high school and spent the 2000s trying to be the perfect consumers their parents taught them to be. They still had some semblance of self-awareness, still under the illusion that the boring life the Baby Boomers promised them and Gen X made fun of as dull would naturally come to them. When it didn’t, and when they had to accept everything they were raised on wasn’t even so much a lie but not sustainable and was never going to happen, they had the choice to accept it and adapt or rage against reality itself. That is pretty much what the two sides of the last ten years were. That’s where the spike in suicides, depression, and bitterness, came from.
But now that it’s been that long, and especially after lockdown world successfully pushed the remnants of their sanity over the edge, we are in the comedown stage. Gen Y isn’t young anymore, nor are they immortal, as 2020 showed. The ones who made it through aren’t normal anymore, because the old normality is gone.
At this point, I don’t see people like the old version of Pat around anymore. It’s either one direction or the other, and the two sides are not going to come together, as designed by those in charge.
We either become the Gen Y that fulfills our potential and our role, or we implode into a scrap heap of insular rage at reality. There does not seem to be a middleground beyond that anymore.
It’s like Dave Greene said, the Kids Who Read aren’t kids anymore (and they don’t even read anymore either, from my experience), and what they are becoming is currently being decided at this very moment. It will absolutely not be like it is now in 2034. What it will be like then is up to what we do now.
Related: Generation Y—A Warning to Others
Reader Alex reminisces:
In retrospect it’s pretty remarkable how much everyone just got along in a lukewarm pool as late as the early 2010s. We subsisted on the same slop like the Daily Show, Game of Thrones and the NFL. We enjoyed the same memes like, “Winning!”, Rebecca Black and Gangnam Style.
To me there were 3 major events that severed the bloated Pop Cult into either turning to Jesus Christ or the Death Cult.
1. Gamergate: The public got a major expose on how much feminists and anti-racists were injecting propaganda into entertainment. The term “SJW” entered into the public vernacular. The transgender movement is starting to gain traction with public figures like Brianna Wu.
2. Trump’s election: Permanently shattered public trust in mainstream news. For the first time major conservative voices started being outright censored on social media platforms. Terms like “alt-right”, “woke”, and “white nationalist” start circulating widely. The transgender movement becomes fully mainstream with Bruce Jenner winning “Woman of the Year.”
3. The cataclysm of 2020. Lockdowns, social distancing and vaccine debates destroy friendships and families. George Floyd/BLM/DEI effectively legislates the demonization of white people, OnlyFans emerges making pornography a non-stigmatized career choice for young women, transgenderism explodes within Gen Z, the media goes from mocking conservatives to calling for their arrests and deaths following January 6, the Groyper movement changes the dynamic of the conservative movement, “Return to Tradition/Reject Modernity” gains traction among young men with things like traditional Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, Islam and stoicism.
The early 2010s was the dying gasp of “go along to get along.”
Related: SBI BTFO by Brazilian Vidya Curator
Last but not least, commenter Rudolph Harrier observes:
Elsewhere I put 2013 as the year where it was impossible to pretend like the Gen Y dream of “everything will stay the same, except with better tech” was still alive. Reasons included the internet being gobbled up by a few big companies, (indirectly showing that streaming was just going to become cable) social media becoming unavoidable, a set of lackluster console releases, the war in Libya, the George Zimmerman trial and the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage. At that point two things were obvious:
1.) The “everyday is Christmas” level of technological development was over, especially in the entertainment industry.
2.) It was no longer possible to just have everyone get along. (Not that it really had been in the 90’s or 00’s either if you were paying attention, but it was possible to not pay attention back then.)
But it wasn’t yet obvious how dire things were. I think that most people in Gen Y thought that we’d just kind of coast along with the good stuff maintaining where it was, and perhaps politics getting more heated but nothing too serious. It wasn’t until the events you mention that it became obvious that politics had went from “we have serious disagreements” to “we want you to die and your entire culture to be erased from history.”
I do agree that 2020 was the determining factor. If you refused the jab and refused to make a humiliation oath to DEI, then there’s very little after that that can sway you. This is particularly true by how utterly pathetic both of those movements look without the hysteria caused by the lockdowns and the sense of rage from the riots (though anyone who lived through the OJ Simpson trial really has no excuse for getting caught up in that.) In contrast if you bowed to those demands, you probably are still having a hard time resisting each new demand, no matter how stupid.
I would say that one of the first big events that illustrated the new reality was the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse in 2021. In the 00’s and even most of the 10’s you would expect to see people at least pretend to have some nuance when discussing the event, especially on the conservative side. Now the country is split between people who think that he was 100% in the right and narrowly avoided getting screwed over by a crooked prosecution and people who think that he should have his life ruined even IF he isn’t actually guilty of a crime (since his real crime was opposing rioters.) No one is in the middle ground.
Related: The 1990s—Decade of Despair
My comment:
From time to time, I like to check in on groups outside my immediate social scene to take the temperature of the room and get some perspective. The two key demographics I track as leading indicators are:
1) Death Cultists
2) Gen X & Y Normies
In case you missed it, a new genre of doompoasting has gained traction in online Death Cult hives. The common refrain goes: “Our spells aren’t working anymore. We used the wrong magic word somewhere in the ritual, and they’ve stopped listening to us. Now they just shrug off our most potent hexes and openly blaspheme the most sacred groups. The nonbelievers somehow don’t realize they’re free again, so there’s a slim window to retool the programming and get back on track toward utopia, but we don’t know how!”
Yes, the Death Cult’s default mode is low-grade panic. Prosecuting their infernal revolution requires that they be whipped into a near-frenzy by the looming fear that the Bogeyman is just seconds away from imposing a Pat Robertson theocracy. So I’d take their despair with a bucket of salt, if not for the talk from Normie.
In short, Normie is fed up. He’s not sure what’s going on, but he knows he’s been de facto banned from corporate jobs, his food bill has tripled, and mainstream entertainment sucks. He’s in revolt agains the tranny nonsense, waking up to his status as a racial outlaw, and even questioning the butt stuff. Sure, his rallying cry is “Bring back the 90s!” But just four years ago, it was “Progress for progress’ sake!”
The Death Cult is hyper-sensitive to shifts in the cultural current. So it’s that last item that’s got them on the verge of going Jonestown.
Get get FREE books and first looks at my exciting new projects monthly! Join my elite neopatrons to read my new dark fantasy novel The Burned Book as I write it!
Join on Patreon or SubscribeStar now.
The piece I quote in my post makes me take pause a lot. It was only a decade ago but I remember the world he was describing and the people that inhabited it like it was yesterday. How did they all just disappear? Then you remember the slow slide into madness that occurred over that decade and it all falls into place.
None of it was ever sustainable, and that is the truth some of us just couldn’t accept. Now that it is gone, some still can’t process that truth. We can only pray that they do, because there is no other way forward.
It really is astonishing. I saw the Disappearing firsthand when I went to Gen Con exactly 10 years after last having attended in 2013. Gone were the stereotypical Gen Y nerds in pre-faded Star Wars shirts and cargo shorts. It was like a mad scientist zapped the crowd with a ray that turned all of them into varicolored palette swaps of the same hipster hair, problem glasses, and sodomy flag-wearing Millennial couple.
Given that WotC has spent the past decade migrating D&D from a game through a Brand to a recruiting tool for the Death Cult and their master Asmodeus, I can’t say I’m too shocked by this. 🙂
It was eye-opening to see most of the gaming events half-empty despite WotC renting out an entire football stadium. The whole affair reeked of outside money. Finding out later that Blackrock is one of Hasbro’s largest stockholders connected a lot of dots.
In somewhat related news, the former President of WotC has now become CEO of Funko, apparently having decided to multiclass from Warlock into Idol-Maker … 😉
The sad thing is when I see “anti-woke” cultural commentators like Critical Drinker and the like who are stuck in the Gamergate mentality. They think all we have to do is dunk on Hollywood and woke producers hard enough and we can have our beloved IPs back.
There’s a few problems with that. First is that they don’t understand that the people they’re mocking aren’t trying to turn a profit but rather reshape the culture. Disney, Netflix and Hollywood will continue to put out degenerate, anti-white Christian male propaganda because it’s a teaching tool and it desensitizes people. Even if they lose money, they’ll receive bailouts from global conglomerates that want them to propagandize.
The second issue with these YouTube channels is that they’re fundamentally not redpilled because they don’t have a Christian worldview. They don’t think (or at least won’t say) that homosexuality is wrong but rather that it’s annoying that it’s shoved down their throats. Critical Drinker complimented TLOU on HBO for the episode which was focused entirely on a gay romance.
They don’t mind if the entertainment is degenerate as long as it isn’t too heavy handed or preachy.
It’s the people clinging desperately to 2000s era libertarianism of “I don’t care what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own room”, “I wouldn’t personally get an abortion but I respect a woman’s right to choose,” and “politics and religion should be kept private because separation of church and state.”
It’s like when a grift like Ashley St. Clair says that she’s not conservative but rather a “normal person from 10 years ago.”
On your point about CriticalDrinker – A right winger’s version of art is political commentary in the form of podcasts and books. It’s a destructive activity, not a creative one. They refuse to understand art is emotional fist, not intellectual. Creation will always win the war of attrition over destruction which is why Hollywood and the like won the long game. The problems of today won’t be the problems of tomorrow, but creating an reinforcing your message can last a lifetime.
So long as right wing liberalism continues this streak, they will continue their circle jerk of criticizing modern art, refusing to make actual art, and then crying why they are losing the culture war (it was lost long ago).
Tolkien, Lewis, and Fulton Sheen all have long lasting legacies and influence because they understood this.
Nobody will remember your dime a dozen YT channel complaining about Kathleen Kennedy or Brie Larson.
Movies like the Passion, On the Waterfront, Braveheart and Rocky will never be forgotten because they inspire indomitable spirit and carrying your cross (literally in the case of the Passion.)
There’s something about a bloodied, battered and bruised man failing to give up and putting their trust in God that speaks to men especially.
Kvetching about how life is unfair and offering no solutions on how to change things and pining for the “good ol’ days” inspires no one.
I love how Sheen puts it: “You can’t build down.” and having react videos about how bad things are or telling people they need to change does nothing.
We must build up something tangible, everlasting, and spiritually everlasting so when the rubble of this crumbling world finally comes crashing down, we can rise up through it.
That’s one of the strange things. When you look up what happened to the old GamerGate crowd from back then, most of them either gave up and joined the mob or turned it around and started creating or promoting work on their own.
The ones still about muh both sides centrism and anti-woke brigading are themselves wedded to a time and place that left them behind years ago and is never returning. Whether they wake up or not is up to them, but they are very much relics of a time and place and self-isolating themselves from wider communities or the reality of how things are.
We’re past the time where we need to still be criticizing and taking people who hate us seriously. We have alternatives springing up all over the place that need the support. I don’t know when this group will figure it out, but I hope it’s soon. The quicker we live that era in the past the better it will be in the end.