Gen Z is the most soulless generation to date, and I say so myself as someone born squarely in the middle of this generation before someone thinks this is a millennial goy hating. There is a genuine lack of general curiosity or desire for anything intellectually stimulating, most of them are not bothering to engage with any ideas, and are mostly focused on instant gratification. I left highschool 3 years ago, but the time I spent there I quite literally was considered the most intelligent student by all my teachers simply because I was well read and had enough of a capacity to be able to critically reason. Me mate, I was myself incredibly lazy, a terrible procrastinator and I would very rarely get a barely passing grade in subjects like history, but still be on top of my class simply because nobody could actually reason in accordance with the education system’s standards. If I read a book, I would get asked why the fuck I was reading. It seemed entirely alien to them that I would engage in reading out of my own volition, and it was even more bizarre for them that I could even read non fiction at times too. They already consider fiction a hassle because they actually have to use their brains to imagine the scenes written down, and why make that effort when you can just watch slop on Netflix and let someone else fill that void of imagination. That is actually the answer a guy gave me once when I asked him why he doesn’t read. I think this genuinely all boils down to the general decline in literacy, not using one’s own creative and interpretatory faculties gradually dampens one soul and makes them merely someone who consumes and doesn’t serve any other purpose behind consumption. Now obviously not everyone of this generation is like that, and since I started university this year I have been finding more and more people that actually read, maybe some not to a degree I would want them to, but I take whatever I can get at this point. Now tell me, is this entirely new to gen Z or can some older anons chime in and explain whether or not this was already happening with millenials?
>>25450133>I am a self loathing young person Don't care>>25450137Based
it's because they're brown. either literally, or spiritually.
>>25450133I think you're a pissant shit bad actor who is reinforcing tribal infighting among people pigeonholed into made up labels.Also who cares if people---young or old---can't read. You wanna do something? Go actually do something. Don't whine and bellyache here, shitting up the board with more 'zoomer bad' posts.But really, you're probably just an Ivan or a Jeet. >Inb4 reddit/tranny/zoom etc etc
The decline in reading has been going on since at least the late 1800s. Mark Twain noted it, Henry Adams described it, Gore Vidal in the mid 20th century was well aware of it and wrote on it, James Baldwin wrote about it, Harold Bloom died while mourning it. I was born in 1990 and I certainly noticed it as a high schooler and made many of the complaints you have made here. It seems to be accelerating which makes sense because it is more or less caused by technology. Attention spans for text cannot compete with the onslaught of audiovisual media except with great discipline, and this has only become worse and worse as we spend more time on screens and plugged into earbuds. It will only continue to get worse and it cannot be stopped or helped, the only thing you can do is resign yourself to it and do the best you can to pursue your own reading and build your own discipline. If you have success in this try and avoid becoming arrogant, because reading far above the average population will give you far more understanding and knowledge than anyone else has, especially if you are a critical thinker that has undertaken their own path in selecting books. It's a bit of an illusion however, because reading more books does not necessarily mean more insight. Books can be quite dangerous as well if you are someone who applies their reading to their living-- it will make you strange and it will make your decisions strange. It also becomes very easy to be swept away with this or that ideology as you read deeper and deeper into certain writers or schools of thought. I would advise you not to read in order to change the world. Go with your curiosity and your instincts in your youth but eventually after some years you would be wise to follow your sense of what is right and true. Never, ever read so that you can say "I read such and such book" to others.
>>25450167I don't care. Leave the thread if it offends you so.
>>25450178Make me, bitch.
>>25450171(Cont.)The decline is by no means confined to reading/writing. It is happening to all the arts and all the crafts. And many other components of human society. In fact the only thing that is in ascendancy (other than certain individual souls) is technology. But these are topics for another day.
>>25450182One more caveat: nobody will pay you dues because of your reading. Do not ever expect non-readers to notice your comparatively wider breadth of knowledge and to appreciate it. It is far more likely they will be extremely annoyed by it and will avoid topics you have comparative mastery of without ever respecting the hard work you put in for your views. In fact it will be common for people to say things like "yeah well you have your opinion and I have mine" or even more strangely "you're just repeating stuff you read in a book" or sometimes they may just disengage entirely. It can be lonely and isolating.
>>25450133It's probably not helping
>>25450137kek
>>25450167/thread
>>25450133it's the jews. among other things, if zoomers are what they are it's because of the jews.keepng jews in your country is like ignoring an untreated infection
>>25450171I didn’t know that people as far back as the late 1800s already lamented about a decline in literacy. I certainly do not wish to get arrogant about my reading, I grew up expecting it to be normal that everybody reads. But by the time I left high school it already became very clear that almost no one does. You are indeed correct that there is no way for books to ever compete with audiovisual media, but my gripe with audiovisual media is that it is mostly directly tied in with a profit incentive. So you have thousands of videos shitting up the algorithm with a guy just reading about an event from Wikipedia, even if one tries to get knowledgeable about a topic he will find something barely scratching the surface.So far I do try to apply my reading to my living, as I come from a third world country with a lot of issues ranging from economic to straight up repression. I try not to become dogmatic even a bit, I feel it would make me blind to notice any actual way to change things if it came up to that point. The youth here are obviously discontent, and we have had people dying protesting for change, yet most of them can’t even point out why things are like this or any idea on how to achieve the changes they want. But reading just to say I have read such and such do indeed seems like a time waste since 95% of people can’t name an author outside of their childhood if their life depended on it.
>>25450133whats some gang gang lit for me and my niggas to black out to?
The future generations will consist of low iq twinks and twunks to take advantage of looolThe future is looking gooood
Boomers have already given up. The youths are beyond saving.I’m just going to drop this here.
>>25450571pimp
>>25450133>the soulless quality of Gen Z i would say zoomers lack an unconscious - as does everybody right now to an extent.we took the unconscious for granted when the economy fortuitously produced it as a byproduct. but now the unconscious is no longer getting produced in a meaningful way, we need to go back to first principles and work out the actual mechanics of fabricating networks through which desire can flow. ''You have to produce the unconscious ... and it is not easy,' sez deleuze somewhere.what creeps people out about ai, what makes ai feel like a hostile force with alien aims, is that it's purely automatic production, without the need for an unconscious to be even tangentially involved. the opposite of the direction we need to go in.old books are irreplaceably valuable for the project of understand desiring-machines, because they're records of the successful production of the unconscious. it's like taking a tour of a successful factory, inspecting the various production lines and interviewing the kind of people who work and hang out there. zoomer picks up dickens and the words mean nothing to him. fine. it's not his fault. he lacks an unconscious. dickens in his day had a huge collective unconscious at his disposal, it could incorporate, like a spider web catching flies, every stratum of london society. his books meant something for his readers because each word resonated through this entire unconscious - like touching a corner of that web and watching the whole structure tremble in response. stupid lowly zoomer encounters tattered remains of web, strands dangling, no tension, no response, and thinks there was never anything there - fatal mistake. good noble zoomer knows better.what's interesting about the internet is that it seems to bring us so close yet so far. that's how it feels, that's the underlying strangeness of internet: so close yet so far. through the internet we become aware of flows of desire and attention in their raw abstract form, the objects they flow through can all be described in terms of the basic building blocks of abstract numerical data, it's like we have an infinitely vast factory floor opening out in front of us, all the tools we need, but we don't know how to actually go about producing anything worthwhile. very strange. but this is the research question anons should focus on. how do we produce the unconscious? wayward zoomers, who have reached intensity zero of desire, apathetic, atomised - this is also a kind of infinite freedom, you have been atomised, totally disintegrated, but now as roaming unattached molecules you are free to re-form into any combination, as long as you're not first sucked inescapably into black holes of capture (doomscrolling, gooning, everyone can provide examples).step one is research. sharing research. humble local micro-theorising informed by ultra-ambitious global aims. practical philosophy. start with deleuze.
Zoomers are in opposition to everything that's good and desirable in life. From arts, to mating and procreation. Self-castration as a way of life. Perfectly propagandized against themselves. Zoomers are the elites' masterpiece, the ultimate golems.
this essay is one of the most lucid yet on the question of how to collectively produce the unconscious under current material and economic conditions: https://harmonyzone.org/blog/posts/soapbox/
>>25450604too pessimistic, it's not a settled battle.
>>25450606only u could have written sth so bad and then post it
>>25450617i would do terrible things to be able to write half as well as gilmurphy: https://myfriendpokey.tumblr.com/post/778118548818182144/my
>>25450558Audiovisual is more interesting to the senses but it is a far inferior form of knowledge/learning. And you are right to be suspicious of it, it indeed developed entirely alongside advertisements. In the internet age a huge amount of content exists because certain interested groups have (behind closed doors) invested in getting this or that group of people to think a certain way. It's all a bunch of propaganda really, and the brief moment when alternative online media could act as a foil to television media free from the influence of marketing has ended completely. And it's much worse than just marketing (selling products), it's general manipulation of how people see reality (selling worldviews) and it's often extremely subtle.
>>25450133Truth is, older generations don't read non fiction either.We have no statistics about how many people actually read Philosophy. But it must be abysmally low.
>I left highschool 3 years agoWe can tell.>>25450137fpbp.
How do you even measure soul lmao
>>25451698takes one to know one
>>25450137>>25450156>>25450167>>25450158>>25450580>>25451510you all smeared your shit on the wall and clapped with your shit covered hands as children
Every time I hear the word “bro” being uttered I cringe. Every time I hear what what zoomers are listening to I cringe. Every time I see kids do that weird slap thing as a greeting I cringe. Everything about the youth of today is just so fucking cringe.
>>25451319>We have no statistics about how many people actually read Philosophy. But it must be abysmally low.good. philosophy is the worst thing you can read.
>>25451934weird ... slap thing?
op sounds like u went to a shitty school bro
>>25451987basically
>>25451989They swing their arms out and do a slap hand shake thing. I hate it. Everyone is trying SOOO hard to be cool.
>>25451859>i'm smart and i belong here
>>25451989i think he's talking about "dapping up".
>>25452023>thinks anyone here is smart
>>25452032Yeah it’s like that but it’s far worse. They swing their arms out a lot farther. It’s a lot slower.
>>25450604Your heart's in the right place, but it's being misused. You've just described millennials but somehow didn't even tap into the worst of them. I'll never forgive what they've done to gen alpha
>>25450190You certainly shouldn't expect attention for your hobbies or passions. That should be completely irrelevant to your pursuit thereof. I've found that if you're a generally humble person who offers help, guidance or insight where socially appropriate and nowhere else, people will come to respect that. Don't make reference to authors, but instead explain your line of reasoning you learned from a given author in a way suitable to your task. I've several co-workers, family members, and friends who seem to genuinely appreciate my relevant insight when it's needed. The reciprocal of this is to know when to keep your mouth shut. Don't reply with baseless conjecture -- have solid backing for what you say, always. My circles have simultaneously berated me for not making my views on many subjects clear or known, because I refuse to give definitive answers on topics I'm not certain of. Shooting the shit at the bar or whimsical musings at coffee are a different matter, mind you.
>>25452036>i too belong
>>25451859Mass repliers should be shot in the dick
>>25452537What. The. Fuck... what fucking mother would send her kids to this? Is this more fetishism for the mother? Like I am genuinely confused. It is so fucking bizarre...
>>25451859I may have assburgers but I never smeared my burgers on the wall growing up
>>25450133>I have been bitching about this new generation of kids and nothing is changing, how much more bitching needs to be done?Congrats, you're old and have joined the ranks of old people bitching about 'kids these days' a time honored tradition since Plato was drawing air and bitching about them. Your reward is higher blood pressure, a mistaken sense of superiority because you can write in cursive and all the adult diapers your personal care home can afford.
>>25450604What is even happening in this video? I don't understand it at all??
>>25450604are they hounding that guy out because he tried to talk to a girl?Jesus Christ...
>>25450171>>25450558>>25450747What are people getting better at? There must be some things. People are getting pretty good at videogames, which can have cognitive benefits (certainly better than TV). People are skimming media more, so maybe they are getting better at multitasking or making quick decisions. In my circles, men are cooking more than ever before, and the meals they do cook are better than have ever been cooked by normies due to proliferation of good recipes and techniques.
>>25450597You are basically describing internet meme culture. The spiderweb of memes that form the meme canon, etc. It's just that that web is focused on humor. Literary memes are focused on pathos and soul, mostly.
>>25450604>>25455752>>25455766it's part of a new trend of basically going after "older" guys going after "younger" girls. Iirc this dude was only like 25 or something and the girl 18, it's zoomer chris hansen/predator hunter bullshit.
>>25455808One of them says "you're 22!", like that's an accusation.So literally two legal adults, who are more or less the same age, and zoomers think this is some kind of grooming thing. Jesus fucking Christ...These mental slaves are never going to have children.
>>25450133You'd be surprised how little most 4channelers relate to being smart without trying, you probably offended more than half the board to start. But it's not the generation, anyone even older have become retarded due so much stimulation, some won't even watch series or movies because why? You can watch short reels. But even in the past the same logic happened that they skipped the hard entertainment for the easier one. It's just that now it's so abundant, the easy entertainment. But the critique some will give you that you get off your high horse is actually important, you that are like 21 or so. Being someone to be admired is quite hard, it takes a lot of effort, and you should put the effort since it clearly bothers you so much to not be appreciated. Nobody will grade you after college is done, what will matter is you have a good life, some stable income and shit going on for you. And being able to talk with people with respect despite them being clearly retarded and rage-baiting unintentionally.Okay the first part was ragebait, but most have realized the second paragraph I wrote is true. Being smart in highschool is worthless and very likely you can lose that intelligence too by complaining all the time not building yourself.>>25450604kek>>25455771aren't you reading retard? people are becoming better consumers like dumb cattle, what does that make you better for? making better decision, are you joking? better decisions to consume the better slop? you might be onto something, with goys obsessing over choosing the perfect product for hours before making a purchase to save the most goycoin. kek everyone is becoming more retarded there's no upsides, even I am becoming more stupid and I am aware of what's happening, avoiding movies and series, trying to cut on what's bad, but it's simply shoved into your face and by proxy with everyone that doesn't care. It's over, just have fun on the way down: taking care of yourself will never be uncool even if others are fucking themselves up.
>OP notices that the economic systems that maximizes profit by turning us into better consumers is stunting younger generation growth.>decides that it's the younger generations faultEvery time, without fail
>le sigh...I was born in the wrong generationstop being a cocksucking faggot
>>25455993all this justified concern about gen z has made me want to study the emergence of youth mass culture and the teenager as an identity, which i think only really took off in the america of the early 50s. something so interesting about how the economy constantly produces these possible new zones of experience out of nowhere, but at the price of flattening them out into a banal consumer lifestyle that can get broken up and reconfigured at any moment by the invisible hand.
>>25455815Imagine zoomie finally making it at 35. A young 22 girl is open to discussion and more. He'll mentality block himself access to the future mother of his children. Maybe there is a problem with gen Z after all.
>>25455815Two zoomies homo, or an interacial couple, are less choking for zoomies than an adult white couple with seven year difference.
>>25458507The "teenager" concept was heavily tied to industrialization of pop music and "rock n roll". All a package deal
>>25450133What is there to work for in the kiked West except profits for the chosenites? No house, no wife, no kids, no family, no community, no culture, no nation, no race and no religion. Why wouldn't I just play vidya, watch animu, read manga and masturbate to JAV and hentai?
>>25450133societal decline is caused by increasing diversity.
You’re making it sound like imagination is the entire purpose of reading. Imagining scenes in your head when you read fiction is like giving each character a different voice in your head. It’s not necessary and kind of silly. Reading is also just plain consumption not entirely distinct from other forms of entertainment. What makes it definitively superior is that most literature (excluding YA shlock for women) is more high brow than almost any other form of media, and the vast majority of people in every previous era overwhelmingly gravitated toward low brow media whether it was theaters or TV, so no, it wasn’t that different from today.
