the whole “i used to be a teen who hated authority only to grow up to become the authority that hates teens” is a bad bad thing that practically every other generation has fallen into and we all need to make an extremely conscious effort not to repeat the fucking pattern
Studies have shown that the shift starts to happen around age 30. If you’re close to that, make a conscious effort to be open to and accepting of younger people. I’m 31 and paying close attention to how I react to young people and new trends and shit and trying to keep myself from developing those thought patterns.
the question of whether modern internet humor is dadaist is fascinating because sure on a surface level, it absolutely resembles dadaist art of the 1920′s but my question is…………..is it art?
the original dada movement emerged specifically to interact with that question, of whether an incoherent collage, or a gold-plated toilet seat, or poetry pulled out of a hat should be considered art
but internet humor? it exists solely for us to entertain one another. it doesn’t give a shit about what art is or isn’t, and comments like “this belongs in a museum” or “where’s her oscar” always come after the fact, and, more importantly, are made specifically to add entertainment value
so my take for today is that internet humor isn’t neo-dada, or post-dada, or even “e-dada” or “#dada”; as a mass movement concerned more with community participation than performance to an audience and wholly unconcerned with questions about higher meaning…………….this is folk dada
We’re not millennials, but most of us aren’t kids anymore.
We actually weren’t born with smartphones in hand – we spent our early childhood bit similarily to millennial. You are thinking about the kids born from 2006-ish that have been exposed to tablets, smartphones and Internet daily. (for example, I grew up rarely watching cartoons and my mother sometimes allowed me to play online for half an hour. That was it.)
So yes, we had the Internet and we love it now, but it wasn’t that essential in our lives up until the late years of primary school & middle-school.
We are savvy in tech & internet stuff and we adjust to new things immediately. It was a huge part of our teenage years and it is VERY important in our lives and we don’t think that the internet is a waste of time and danger because we understand it. We remember how to live without it.
We don’t see social media, technology and the Internet as socially crippling in general because we know that properly used, they are good. We don’t see spending time together with phones in our hand as any different as sitting in together with a newspaper, book or crossword. Meeting and spending time on the smartphone together(plus discussing over it) don’t have to be any less bonding than discussing a book or a movie in our opinion.
We know what a video cassette is. And CD. Same with flip-phones. Pendrives. Non-virtual DVD-rental. Desktop computers.
We used it, actually. Those items were part of our childhood.
We know that we’re ‘privileged’ in terms of medicine standard of life and technology, but we feel pressured.
We’re-entering adulthood in times when the whole world, whether in terms of politics, technology or work market, is changing as rapidly as it had never been changing before.
We feel like we had to change the world. We are expected to be responsible adults, focused on the future and aiming high while in high-school. We feel that we have to be better and better and normal teenage goofing around isn’t an option for us. We are being told that wanting to survive and wanting to have a simple, average life isn’t enough when sometimes, it is.
We feel that we have to change the whole wide world when in reality changing just our life and our close environment would be enough, but society didn’t really tell us that.
We are treated like adults and kids at the same time, not as teenagers we are (and yes, in my mind people in their early 20s should be allowed to be treated like teenagers).
We don’t hate older or younger generations.
Our coping system is usually sarcasm, cynicism, memes and Tumblr.
That doesn’t mean we all wanna die. That doesn’t mean we don’t have ideals. That doesn’t mean we’re pessimists.
We are realists. We know that hope is important but sometimes our dark humour is the only thing that keeps us going.
We are aware of our mental health and our mental illnesses and we want the older generations – actually, all generations, not to treat this matter as a taboo.
As the Silent Generation and Gen X, we suffer from a new version of Weltschmerz (source here).
(of course, those are general characteristics and they don’t apply to all of us or at least not all of them -in case that is not obvious for some people)
I think a big part of why gen z culture is like this is because we’re almost too aware of our own insignificance. We are bombarded each day with news depicting how the world is ending, history repeating itself, injustice everywhere, morality gone and no real way to save or solve anything. We grew up on dystopian books, apocalyptic worlds, rebellion, death and fallen empires and then we see it play out in reality. It’s depressing, it’s shoking, it’s infuriating, and most importantly – we can’t do anything about it.
Like, I recently watched Interstellar, and while my mother complained about not understanding the sub-plots, I was sitting there, trying to process the fact that the world is dying in real life. Perhaps not the same way, but it is. (With global warming, we’re halfway to the critical temperature. Perhaps, our children will know that conifers existed only from books and from stories. Think about that for a second.)
But we have no miracle “flying to another inhabitable planet” solution here. We aren’t even close. Even if we had, nobody would be using it because the world is ruled by the rich and ignorant, and losing money in saving people is the last thing people like that want.
So we, here, children who should be first and foremost caring about grades and first crushes and learning are instead stuck in this hellstate of helplessness.
And that makes us angry. Furious. Depressed. Exhausted.
All of that.
We are like this because of one simple fact: We don’t want to die in a world we couldn’t save.
Oh so you think Steve Rogers, who grew up during the Great Depression & Also fought in WW2, doesn’t have a fatalistic sense of humour that rivals that of the most hardened Gen Z teen? Hah okay then
Peter Parker, after failing his Spanish assessment: Lol when will death befall me
The rest of the Avengers: Ohmygod Peter honey it’s okay it’ll get better I promise please don’t say things like that you’re gonna be okay-
Steve, high-fiving him: We can only pray the reaper will arrive early for his appointment with us kid
The first conversation they ever have is when they both have breakfast at the Avengers Tower. Steve burns his toast & he just looks at the wall and declares, completely deadpan, “There is literally No Point to existence At All’ and then on the other side of the room he hears the instant response of “oh mood” which is basically the story of how Peter Parker & Steve Rogers bonded for life.
i imagine getting my own place all the time and going down to the grocery store early in the morning before everyone else and to the coffee shop and having a really small place with wide windows and lots of plants and shelves of books and a tiny kitchen where i can make tea and noodles and a bed with a pile of blankets and just a place i can make uniquely my own or maybe a place i could share with someone but i just think about this place a lot idk
One of my professors is an extremely famous, well-known painter who has been in galleries since he was a young man in the 80s. He once asked me in class, “Alyssa, what are your dreams and aspirations for the future?”
You should have seen the puzzled look on his face when I described something similar to the post above.
“Why so humble?!” He laughed. “You know you’re talented, right? You could aspire to a lot more than that for sure.”
And I had to take that moment to explain to him that this is what my generation is given, this is how low our standards for happiness have to be. A humble existence, a small piece of the world for ourselves, and comfortable stability are just as out of reach for some of us as fame and reknown was for him in the 80’s. His face went somber immediately.
Peter Parker, a Gen Z kid, screws up: Fuck, guess I’ll kill myself.
Steve Rogers, an artist during the 30’s and a soldier during WWII who knows full well what Dadaism and fatalistic humor are: There’s bleach under the sink–
Bucky Barnes, the guy who listened to Steve’s art rants in the 30’s, watched his back in WWII and went through 70+ years of shit: –And a rope in the supply closet if you want options.
Rest of the Avengers: ?????!!!!!!!?????
Shuri, also a gen z kid: don’t be a coward, jump out the window. Have some style would you
Vision, the human internet who knows what Gen Z humor is: do a flip
artherra 