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I was a little disturbed at some of the innuendos and jokes my daughter's former boyfriend made about people of other races and religions sometimes. And also of people who were different in some way--an overweight friend of my daughter's, for example. I was foolishly under the impression that kids nowadays were past all that. And this kid was the son of a pastor and the church he pastored had a mixed-race congregation. My daughter tried to tell me he was always just kidding, but it bugged me. I have black people in my family, and I did NOT raise my daughter to think this was OK.
Anyway, my daughter dumped him during college, and his racism partly did him in. My daughter is a double major in linguistics and Mandarin, and even studied in China last year. When she first told her boyfriend that she was choosing Mandarin as her major (she'd taken Russian and Mandarin in the same semester before she decided), he said, "You're kidding me. Do you REALLY want to talk like that? Those people sound retarded." Then she found out that he was planning to propose to her that summer, partly, she thinks, to keep her from going to China in the fall as she'd planned. The relationship had been getting shaky, but after that statement, he was done.
Too broad of a subject. To be honest, I don't even understand what the OP was asking to begin with. Some things are not gonna be the same, though. For example, now you can just find everyone on Facebook or take online classes. It took years to produce such an advancement.
People also remarked this of music, that music is going downhill. My cousin said, "Oh, please. That's been said for decades. 'Music is dying'."
"The difference is though that now we have machines to manipulate the music, along with other things. In the past, you actually had to work at it. Then again, the world is much more populated now so it's a tradeoff. What are people gonna be saying in sixty more years? They songshopped Bieber so it really is diminished now."
"Yeah, that's true."
Yeah but our "big hair" bands were supposed to be the end of society as we know it....It still dominates this day. I wouldn't want to be a teen these days, they face a lot more temptations and issues than I did.
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Originally Posted by UnexpectedError
You are responsible for the people with whom you surround yourself. If your facebook is overrun with hateful words, it's because you associate with the kind of people who use those words. The world isn't getting darker or ruder or crueler, you just hang out with a bunch of low lifes.
And I really wish you would stop acting like you're an 80 year old man pining for the good ol' days. You're in your 20s, you have no comparison between today and anything that happened before the 1990s and no amount of old movies, TV shows, and documentaries can equip you with the ability to make a rational comparison.
I observe it in teens in general, or maybe I notice it from another POV since I'm not a teen anymore. But I still think that teens back in the 90s even acted a bit more adult-like, even if they weren't necessarily 'better', whereas a lot of teens today lack vocabulary and say stuff like 'that's so gay,' a lot. I don't know for sure how everyday teens were even back in the 90s (my memory was as a kid) but I do think documentaries, TV shows etc do at least give SOME idea of how they were, granted not a perfect one. I'm not saying that society is doomed and on the decline, just it's something I noticed so I was asking if it's always been this bad or if you think it's got worse.
But I still think that teens back in the 90s even acted a bit more adult-like, even if they weren't necessarily 'better', whereas a lot of teens today lack vocabulary and say stuff like 'that's so gay,' a lot. I don't know for sure how everyday teens were even back in the 90s (my memory was as a kid) but I do think documentaries, TV shows etc do at least give SOME idea of how they were, granted not a perfect one. I'm not saying that society is doomed and on the decline, just it's something I noticed so I was asking if it's always been this bad or if you think it's got worse.
I would disagree. We had a similar debate in my college's speech class, and previous generations had their own slang compared to ours. They used to say things like "dip", "crunk", "ace", "bad", and more.
Younger people are different today, especially because there are such vast gulfs between those kids who are raised with money and those who aren't. The disparities in wealth among Americans has created vast differences in how kids are raised. Wealthier kids are stressed out with all of those AP classes. They see Mark Zuckerberg and think if they know how to post photos on Facebook, they are entitled to be the CEO of whatever company hires them after college graduation. Illegals immigrants work in the fast food jobs that the wealthier teens would work. Even kids with money in years past, usually had parents who insisted they work part time to pay for a junkie car or something.
Teens are much more mature today. They get waxed, tanned, and buffed, pedicured and manicured, and spend their money on designer handbags and sunglasses, even designer flip flops. Trust that they are looking down on people who don't have the most up to date iGadgets, if they even bother to acknowledge your presence and look up from their iPhones. And they travel extensively, and fulfill their noblesse oblige with the poor people. They are liberal in their ideas, because they only see poor people as needing handouts and freebies.
If you disagree with them and their politics, you are a racist homophobe. And if you are over 30, you are too tech illiterate to know how to send email. Makes no sense, considering the ages of Bill Gates and the late Steve Jobs.
I notice that teens and even people in their 20s are really judgemental, and love to mock people, call them names.etc. I think a lot of them get off on being really self-righteous. They also seem pretty angry, preachy - especially when it comes to labelling people. This can come from any direction. Whether it be homophobic, racist, or even against religion. Have people always been like this? Is it more the young or are older people just better at hiding it?
Facebook and other social media like twitter, youtube.etc just makes the rest of humanity seem so alien. They're so emotional, subjective, full of hatred. Sometimes I honestly think people are worse than I imagine. I'm far from that PC yet I find the casual use of the word '******' kind of disturbing. I have a friend who was called a '******' and 'homo' both by girls, mind you (not to say anything that girls are just as bad as the boys). I also recall an innocent where this young girl, maybe about 20, said, 'hurry up you f*cking fatty' to the server at McDonald's for taking so longer. In fact I've witnessed some ugly behaviour.
Not to mention I see a lot of latent hate coming out in racial, homophobic and other epithets. Sadly, it seems we're not really morally evolving as a species much, despite the technology. It just reveals how ugly we can be.
I think Facebook makes this behavior more out in the open.
Is it worse...I'm not sure. To OP, where do you think these kids are learning some of this behavior? IN many cases it starts with their parents.
I think Facebook makes this behavior more out in the open.
Is it worse...I'm not sure. To OP, where do you think these kids are learning some of this behavior? IN many cases it starts with their parents.
They learn this behavior from peers and from television. The behavior is tolerated and often overlooked by parents. Sometimes even encouraged.
I'm sure if Facebook were around back in the 80's when I was a teen we would have used it the same way. It probably would have been worse because things weren't so politically correct back then, it would have been a free for all freak circus.
Agree, it has always been thus. Difference is that kids today have a bigger, more public megaphone in the form of social media.
This is what i was going to respond with. In past generations though I think that youth were more civil in public. Today they aren't shy. Maybe because they are allowed to be so open and free on the internet with their thoughts they get accustomed to letting it out and do so in public.
I think there is a large cultural component in this implied and long-existent meme "it's cool to mock others". Yes, some of it is nature, but I think there's a large cultural component too. Adults also have to look at our own ideas about how we size up the respect-worthiness of other people - for children copy us. Think about your own tastes in comedy. Do you find putdown type comedy funny? If so, then odds are very good that you yourself are contributing to the problem. For example, from the 80s, Rodney Dangerfield. Now I will be the first to admit that as a teen, I found him funny even though he came off as a mix of rude and gauche. I admit my error here. However, the general cultural attitude that influenced my thoughs about this matter certainly did not help.
For the natural part of it, even if you accept the Social Darwinist / Evolutionary Psychology interpretation (one of many) that says "it's just nature's way to weed out the weak and undesirable, thereby strengthening the human species", that interpretation - assuming it's true - is at best based on an obsolte instinct; one that lost its practical purpose when we moved from a hunter-gatherer society to a settled one. Today, the very ways in which we make a living are radically different from the hunter-gatherer ways. Wheras mockery and rudeness might be a test for strength of character or physical attributes, they are less and less valuable today (outside law enforcement, military, bar bouncer, etc situation) - for the simple reason that hunting, gathering, and jobs necessitating physical or emotional asserting are not the only jobs available by any means. That means whatever advantages scorn, rudeness, etc had in the past, it's clear that those attitudes have lost their practical usefulness for most present-day occupations and ways of contributing to society.
Back to the Social Values part -- The simplest explanation for why people engage in such behavior is what I call Image Bigotry - the meaning is self-explanatory. It's bigotry against those who are somehow different in some societally-defined undesirable way. Whether it's the way they dress, walk, talk, their pasttimes and hobbies, whatever. And like racism, homophobia, etc., looking down on those with ultimately trivial shortcomings it is. Having spent 30 of my 45 years in the small town and small city Deep South, I can speak with authority on this subject. This society still has a long way to go to defeat bigotry in all its forms (or at least marginialize it).
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