Covid was forced on them. AI slop wasn’t. Each generation has its share of shit they were handed, and shut they could have easily avoided.

AI slop was absolutely forced on them. Even if they’re not personally balls-deep into ChatGPT or some shit, they’re still stuck navigating an enshittified internet that’s gone from bad to shitstorm in just a few years almost entirely due to AI.

It’d be frustrating as all hell to try to write a research paper or piece together a presentation using today’s internet.

It wasn’t. But to do you.

…um… would you mind pointing me to the other internet that wasn’t soiled by AI that genZ is using to dodge all the AI slop that would otherwise be forced on them? I’d very much like to use it.

No one forced Gen Z to use the trash to validate themselves with it. No one forced them to use it to do their thinking for them. We all use the same internet. Yet it seems only Z got dumber from it.

Imagine that.

*Gestures broadly towards boomers, who seem to be accelerating their dementia by consuming endless facebook slop reels.

We absolutely do not use the same internet. The internet millennials grew up with in their developmental period no longer exists.

This comes off as you disliking an entire generation more than anything else, not gunna lie.

No, it comes off as finding lack of accountability fucking annoying.

I’m not really sure what your point is. Did they all use the internet wrong and become dumber due to some sort of inherent moral failing predestined for humans born after the late 90s? Does being gen z on its own make someone somehow worse than everyone else? If the same people who now are gen z were somehow born instead in the 80s or 60s would they somehow improve or be the same people we see today? Are you suggesting it is their genetics from some generational decline? Or is there a supreme being who decided people born in that time frame wouldhave souls more inclined to make worse decisions for their intellectual development?

I can understand that you feel attacked and therefore defensive, but understand that saying a generation is bad because some studies prove it is not useful. We can say that overuse of LLMs or social media or digital classrooms has hindered their development. Blaming them for the fact that the people that raised them provided a provably poor developmental environment seems to be ducking the very accountability you claim to be striving for.

I never said a generation is bad. Just that it’s obnoxious that they consider themselves blameless and seemingly perfect in every way with next to no accountability for anything. I don’t hate them, I just have zero respect for anyone that doesn’t take respond for themselves.

Counterpoint with proof: yes it was.

Okaybuddy.

Ah shit, you got me with that one. That right there is undisputable.

ggs 🤝

I’m hopeful that by the time my nephew has worked out what his fingers are for the AI bubble will have popped and we can have moved back to some sort of reality.

The thing with us Millennials is we had to learn like multiple generations worth of stuff and then proceed to not only teach the older generation what we learned but also the younger generations. So naturally there are gaps.

It didn’t include us because we taught ourselves a lot of things because we had to, there was no one teaching us these things. We went from living in the early 80s and having dial up phones, tvs with maybe 3 channels, and for the vast majority of us no access to a computer. then suddenly we transition to cable tv, computers, cell phones, the internet, how to use the internet, how to build websites for the internet, how to communicate with others on the internet, online gaming, smart phones, how to use smart phones, high speed internet, CRT tvs to Plasma to HD, Beta to VHS to Laser discs to DVDs to bluray. having access to very little information to suddenly having access to all the information.

We had to learn how to use ALL this stuff and then teach Gen X and older how to use it followed up by Gen Z and younger. and that’s just the technology. that’s not including all the massive changes to society that happened during our formative years.

The younger generations don’t have any of these massive leaps because it’s all kind of stagnated or regressed. They’re not “forced” to learn anything new to use it or navigate it because we already did that for them. Gen Z doesn’t have to create content like we did, it’s all provided for them and most of it is of poor quality. Our content creation consisted of building our own websites, PHP forums, IRC rooms, building our own social networks, chatrooms, games, etc. They don’t have to do this.

And as far as education it’s the same deal. Remember we were told that we had to learn all this math because we’d never be able to “carry around a calculator with us at all times”. or we had to learn cursive because “that’s how everyone writes”. or that we MUST go to college because THAT’S the only way to get a job. Again because of the technology we built Gen Z and younger doesn’t need any of that, they don’t need to learn it and they’re not learning it.

At the end of the day we thought we’d be making their lives easier with what we HAD to learn but in turn, we’ve made their lives harder because we didn’t tell them WHY we had to learn it. we just handed it all to them and said “good luck.”

Millennial here. The only thing surprising about a downward trend is that it didn’t start with Gen X and get progressively worse, to include us, with each generation.

Having less lead floating around probably helped raise the intelligence level a bit from when boomers were mainlining that shit from all the cars driving around.