Zoomers

[a system is failing]

3. Zoomers do not understand trends and the passage of time. This is somewhat a result of a lack of any good media in modern culture but Zoomers don't understand that trends come and go. A Zoomer does not understand why people stop talking about a game from 15 years ago even if it's still good, a Zoomer will see a cartoon that was incredibly popular in 2005 and say "why is no one talking about this underrated classic?". Zoomers do not understand that in the paradigm of pre-ubiquitous-internet instant access media that people would enjoy a show/song/game for the period of time it came out and then move on to something else. Zoomers don't realize that every conversation they have after finding something for the first time has already been had, they don't realize that every "insight" they come up with regarding a TV show was discussed ad nauseum 5 years before they were born on internet forums because they don't know these sites exist and haven't seen "discussion" surrounding it on youtube/tumblr/twitter etc. Zoomers exist in a media stasis bubble where everything is accessible at any time and as a result if someone is not talking about something that they like, that it is "slept on" instead of the fact that people just moved on.

I think they're right and you're wrong actually. Your entire frame is dumb poptimist bullshit. Either a piece of media is worthy or it isn't, it doesn't matter how many times its been discussed in the same way and it doesn't magically become bad because its old. You sound like a retarded meta-game nigger with this nonsense. Oh, we can move on from talking about things? How about we move on from your tv feedbag monocultural idiot paradigm then? URRRRRPPPP URRRP NO YOU CAN'T DO THAT THAT'S ZOOMERS "not realizing" how people consumed media before their time which they apparently have to respect for no good reason. And of course the usual "nothing new happens, nothing new can ever happen" millennial cliche. It's true zoomers are by and large shit artists but its only because they listen to idiots like you.

[capgras]

How many negative zoomer traits are perennial and only associated with zoomers because of the staggering extent to which their lives and thoughts are recorded? A Jury Of Our Peers would condemn anyone to death, or at least imprisonment in an asylum, if they had complete access to their lives and thoughts. Civilization is built not on the repression of instinct, which can not be repressed (increasingly unearthed by extensive documentation along with confessional pressure for both acceptance and attention on social media) but repressing the expression of instinct. You and D'Metrius both momentarily wish death on the driver of the Nissan that cut them off in traffic; the difference is D'Metrius is far more likely to snap. Our lives are lived on camera and recorded via public diaries, but judged according to standards designed for a time when a clear distinction between public, private, and inner life existed.

All of womanobliterator's complaints apply equally to previous generations, who were lucky they had far fewer people watching them who could see only a much smaller part of themselves.

[anthony]

How many negative zoomer traits are perennial and only associated with zoomers because of the staggering extent to which their lives and thoughts are recorded? A Jury Of Our Peers would condemn anyone to death, or at least imprisonment in an asylum, if they had complete access to their lives and thoughts. Civilization is built not on the repression of instinct, which can not be repressed (increasingly unearthed by extensive documentation along with confessional pressure for both acceptance and attention on social media) but repressing the expression of instinct. You and D'Metrius both momentarily wish death on the driver of the Nissan that cut them off in traffic; the difference is D'Metrius is far more likely to snap. Our lives are lived on camera and recorded via public diaries, but judged according to standards designed for a time when a clear distinction between public, private, and inner life existed.

All of womanobliterator's complaints apply equally to previous generations, who were lucky they had far fewer people watching them who could see only a much smaller part of themselves.

D'METRIUS, GO TO THE BATHROOM.

[womanobliterator]

I think they're right and you're wrong actually. Your entire frame is dumb poptimist bullshit. Either a piece of media is worthy or it isn't, it doesn't matter how many times its been discussed in the same way and it doesn't magically become bad because its old. You sound like a retarded meta-game nigger with this nonsense. Oh, we can move on from talking about things? How about we move on from your tv feedbag monocultural idiot paradigm then? URRRRRPPPP URRRP NO YOU CAN'T DO THAT THAT'S ZOOMERS "not realizing" how people consumed media before their time which they apparently have to respect for no good reason. And of course the usual "nothing new happens, nothing new can ever happen" millennial cliche. It's true zoomers are by and large shit artists but its only because they listen to idiots like you.

No because Zoomers do this with *every* piece of media and they *don't* appreciate it, they just consume it and regurgitate it. The point of my post was not to oldfag about "oh it was so much better in the forum days" it was to point out that Zoomers live in their own echo chamber bubble which is downstream of Millennial nostalgia, and cultural context *is* important because without it you have no frame of reference to properly enjoy something. This is why when Zoomers see a piece of media from the 90's with a drag queen/gay character which is obviously making fun of these sub-cultures for being weird and perverted they interpret it as "yas queen slaaaay, omg she/he/xir is so valid!!!", it's why mulatto latinx mystery meat goblins say "character Y from *tv show made before I was born* is nigger coded", it's why every video essay on a movie made before 1965 has to have a 5 minute aside discussing the lack of diversity and how that's a *bad* thing because to Zoomers the western world has *always* been majority brown, it's why as soon as any game made before 2010 is discovered by Zoomers en masse the fanbase devolves into trannies and faggots, their entire frame of reference for media consumption is projecting their own retarded neuroses onto it. Did this happen before Zoomers? Of course, but to most Zoomers this is the only way to "properly" consume media.

As for the end of your response, I didn't say Zoomers were bad artists, they are quite good artists, their art blows the deviantart sparkledog slop of the 2000's out of the water into the stratosphere. What sucks about Zoomer art is that it lacks any form of creativity. They don't view creating art as a hobby to fuck around with or have fun, they treat it like a job where you have to create a portfolio to display to the world to get into some gay twitter art discord clique to ERP with other faggy artists, any interesting artwork created out of this sphere is a by-product of a quest for a friend group and belonging as opposed to an actual desire to create art.

[a system is failing]

This is why when Zoomers see a piece of media from the 90's with a drag queen/gay character which is obviously making fun of these sub-cultures for being weird and perverted they interpret it as "yas queen slaaaay, omg she/he/xir is so valid!!!", it's why mulatto latinx mystery meat goblins say "character Y from *tv show made before I was born* is nigger coded", it's why every video essay on a movie made before 1965 has to have a 5 minute aside discussing the lack of diversity and how that's a *bad* thing because to Zoomers the western world has *always* been majority brown, it's why as soon as any game made before 2010 is discovered by Zoomers en masse the fanbase devolves into trannies and faggots, their entire frame of reference for media consumption is projecting their own retarded neuroses onto it. Did this happen before Zoomers? Of course, but to most Zoomers this is the only way to "properly" consume media.

I'm not sure how accurate this is. The type of politicized attack against media you describe was invented and primarily deployed by millennials. And these attacks themselves in no way should be taken as a sincere reaction to media, the political goal of capturing media or creators to propagandize in favor of the ideology comes first in these cases thus much of the explanation is rationalizing. It seems to me zoomers are more defined as consuming along memetic and community lines similar to what you said before.

As for the end of your response, I didn't say Zoomers were bad artists, they are quite good artists, their art blows the deviantart sparkledog slop of the 2000's out of the water into the stratosphere. What sucks about Zoomer art is that it lacks any form of creativity. They don't view creating art as a hobby to fuck around with or have fun, they treat it like a job where you have to create a portfolio to display to the world to get into some gay twitter art discord clique to ERP with other faggy artists, any interesting artwork created out of this sphere is a by-product of a quest for a friend group and belonging as opposed to an actual desire to create art.

If they completely lack creativity then they are bad artists, or possibly not even artists at all. For the most part they are occupied by fandom and other sorts of the things that necessarily derivative. The unmitigated access to media unfortunately means everyone is in permanent competition with the past from now on, and this is making possibilities seem limited, ideas formulaic, etc, not to mention you can potentially pick up and already-existing audience by commenting on things people already like.

[Virtue]

Day in and day out, the same news on permanent repeat. This is all so ridiculous. This world is rotten.

[Guest]

Zoomer (early 20s) here. After reading this thread, I have some thoughts:

1. The one Zoomer vice mentioned here that I feel guilty of is not "going out" very often. I try my best to combat "passivity" in my personal life, but a combination of schoolwork and introversion still get in my way. That said, when the chance to hang out with people IRL shows up, I will usually take that chance to avoid falling into this particular vice.

2. On that note, a Zoomer vice I have noticed elsewhere is (for lack of a better phrase) embracing incompetence. Ever notice how some Zoomers have mental issues (autism, ADHD, etc.) in their bios? I think some Zoomers seeing their learning challenges as an excuse to be lazy. I was diagnosed ADHD as a kid (thankfully I wasn't put on meds), but no matter how much I struggled with focusing in school, I still actually did it. Yet some others seem to think of their learning challenges as an excuse to not learn.

3. That said, I think the education system is partly to blame here, as most of the systems meant to help kids with learning challenges only help them pass school instead of actually learn things. Combine this with a heavy dose of helicopter parenting and you have a generation pretty much reared to be dependent on their elders.

4. On a different topic, many Zoomers are uwu prog leftoids, and I suspect this is part of the "reared to be dependent" thing. Under every social media post about the US Republicans' newest plan that won't actually work, I can find comments like "as a queer teen I'm terrified for my life." The narrative on the Zoomer Left is that queer folx just want to exist and Christofascist RethugliKKKans want to torture them to death. I suspect the recent Zoomer support for Palestine stems from seeing the Arabs blockaded and helpless before Israel.

5. As for the (less prominent) Zoomer Right, the narrative seems to be the same but with the roles reversed: Christians just want to exist and Satanist Demoncraps want to torture them to death. I think the one thing that gets Zoomers to care about politics (regardless of which side they choose) is fear that the system they depend on might fall into the hands of people who hate them. That probably ties into the aforementioned "reared to be dependent" issue. So if you want to give Zoomers a political cause, give them an enemy who controls everything they need to live.

6. I haven't noticed much in regards to religion, but I will say what little I have noticed. Among atheist Zoomers, the conversation is all about "religious trauma" they have from having fundie parents; same goes for Wiccan/NeoPagan Zoomers. As for Christian Zoomers, their spirituality tends to emphasize self-help and being relieved of worldly stresses. You know that "Stop giving me your hardest battles" Wojak meme? Yeah, that's Zoomer Christianity.

7. Zoomers have culture beyond recycled Millennial stuff. Our "surreal" and nonsensical memes are probably a result of SpongeBob and Phineas & Ferb screwing up what we consider funny. YA novels, as cringe as their "fandoms" may be, encouraged Zoomers to actually read books (I, personally, had Percy Jackson). But there's a point to be made in the general Zoomer lack of creativity, which I suspect to be because Zoomers think of content creation as being done for an audience in some way. Hence why Zoomers tend to be really influenced by aesthetics.

8. Zoomers do latch on to identities for the sake of community (this is an urge that I am aware of and try to prevent from defining me as much as possible). That's what happens when you have a system that atomizes people and discourages IRL community.

[Edge]

Zoomers have culture beyond recycled Millennial stuff. Our "surreal" and nonsensical memes are probably a result of SpongeBob and Phineas & Ferb screwing up what we consider funny.

Sorry but I'd say you can draw a straight line from Tumblr humor to this stuff, and I'd say that website's culture generating userbase was probably quite a bit older than they'd want to let on. I generally consider its spread a bad sign as its the only type of humor (if you can really call it that) that can survive under strict censorship and certain moral strains. Its (probably unintentionally) designed never to be at anyone or anything's expense. Early examples include Here Comes Dat Boi and weird pictures of food like Cold Pockets or soda bottles full of baked beans.
You could maybe connect this to the random humor of the early internet if you want to go further.

[a system is failing]

I have been thinking about zoomers today and wanted to write down some things. In particular I have realized there are a few points I have with zoomers which I continually come back to and have held consistently for a few years.  I want to see if maybe any discussion can come out of these. But first some context. 

I have a theory of generations that has also sustained for roughly a year and this comes up here. So allow me to explain. 

Generations have deeply ingrained base traits, as well as a media / social environmemt that affects their mind in various ways. The former comes from parents as a direct consequence of childhood experiences, and the latter changes slowly and retains similar artifacts across periods of time which are greater than a single generation. To simplify...

Generation A and Generation B have cross-over in the media / social environment. Generation A and Generation C have cross-over in their "base traits" because Generation A raises Generation C. 

This is as much as i will say on this topic, but it'a useful to maybe make more sense of why certain things are the way they are here. 

***** 

• Zoomers and Millennials are both true nihilists. Gen X and Boomers more closesly retained religiosity or substituted it with some kind of ideology. Not to say Millennials and Zoomers are beyond ideology, but they don't have ideologies based on any kind of principles or vision. These people choose their ideology on aesthetics or in the case of Millennials power politics. Millennials are espcially nihilistic, no millennial alive cares about anything at all whatsoever. The Millennial overculture is moralistic and puritanical for power tripping reasons...the underground of millennial culture are just as nihlistic with the maximum of their deeply held principles consisting of thinking you should be allowed to behavely repulsively online (represented at fullest extent by Null and SomethingAwful). Absolutrly no millennial cares about anything more than that.

• Millennial nihlism begets complete and utter abandonment of anything objective or measurable or real. Zoomers, in their rebellion against the previous generation care about things that are real. Over the period of their lives millennials exercised their nihilistic attitude by corroding all existing categories and norms to the point of parody. Millennials penultimate act in this regard was inventing wokism and SJW culture. This mehtod behavior at once asserted total untruth about the world while giving justification to disregard everything polite and civil about discourse and public engagement with politics. The image of millennial nihilism is precisely the fat, old bald hipster of disgusting visage who lectures you with zero self awareness about how totally uncool you are being by taking anything seriously. This is a person who truly believes reality is completely malleable to sufficient social pressure.

By contrast zoomers believe in things that are real. Zoomers know what mogging is and made it part of their lexicon. Zoomers have seemingly little to no resentment towards attractive or "cool" people in the way millennials did. A large contingent also cares considerably about making money. Many care about power and influence. These are all real things and in the end I think this is preferrable to my experiences around millennials who are constantly being ironic, self-deprecating, and still display the worst of the power-seeking status-obsessed traits anyways when the chips are down. Nonetheless, I would consider this nihilism, zoomers are not a PRINCIPLED generation. Their beliefs and principles, not unlike millennials who are also nihilists, tend more often to adapt or bend to where power and influence and coolness and money are concentrating.

• Zoomers are shallow. Unfortunately as related to the former point most things about zoomers tend to be shallow. Zoomers have trouble caring about anything that isn't surface-level. The orientation towards "real" that zoomers makes them interested in cool things, but as members of a nihilist generation CARING about things deeply not only won't reward them but even will cost them socially. Zoomercore interests are often in good things or interesting concepts. Dreaminess and disortion and surreality are all things zoomers like a lot, which are all quite cool. But they tend to appreciate it all in a very basic and immediate way. Aesthetics. Tiktok. Zoomers enjoy things in bit sized low engagement chunks with no strings attached. Video Essays may seem to contradict this but that is simply an extension of this phenomena into more complex domains. Tracking down and obtaining and playing an old game takes less time than watching a one and a half hour video on it over all. Their shallowness can also extend to material or social domains as well. Influence and money are real enough to satisfy a zoomer without being unintuitive or complex to judge so as to upset their superficiality. 

• Incidentally nostalgia is one of the other shared traits with millennials, but the millennial version is quite different. Millennial nostalgia is liking and defending crap, saying its crap, but loving it and remembering it and talking about anyways because muh childhood. This why AVGN and Nostalgia Critic and so forth are products of millennial generation while things like Backrooms and FNAF are zoomercore. Zoomer nostalgia is about experiencing complex and uncanny emotions in response to childhood artifacts. Millennial nostalgia is being a snarky asshole to stuff from your childhood, judging it, "correcting" it. I think the impulse to just and correct is potentially an X-Millennial crossover, but that is a topic for another time. 

• Zoomers inherited a generationally-submissive disposition from their Xer parents. Anybody who has talked to a person of gen X will hear them rant about boomers overwhelming them and never giving them space to be their own generation. Boomers were an incredibly overbearing generation and Gen X always lived in their shadow. Well, a similar but less extensive dynamic plays out with Millenials and Z. The boomers, the big (fat) dogs, are still in control, but in the wake of that Gen X doesn't assert itself on millennials at all, whereas the millennials are extremely stifling towards both gen Z and their own kids (the Alphas). As a result zoomers tend to be passive and relaxed and often desire political neutrality. The median zoomer dislikes both redpill and SJWs, albeit the latter more viscerally and the former more commonly (because thats whats allowed) due to both factions being overbearing, which is antithetical to zoomer mindset.

[Mason Hall-McCullough]

Good post, I hadn't thought about much of this before but it rings true to me.

About zoomer nihilism in particular, you note that zoomers care about things that are real, but I'm not sure if they often really care or just wish they cared. The examples you give (beauty, wealth, influence) are still superficial aesthetics that are abstract proxies for real things (even money is a proxy, but it might be the most real). In a reaction to the meaning-destruction of ironic millennial culture, zoomers have latched onto these aesthetics as totems of meaning without a foundational sense of why they matter in the real world, since they mostly live online. They're disconnected from their own physicality and are fed corrupt ideology in school, so can't do much better than to grasp blindly at illusions following a gut feeling that something is wrong.

The caring itself often feels performative and hollow, zoomers will leave lengthy embellished Youtube comments telling a story about how some shitty video or song contextualized their entire life. Troons especially do this. But if the Frutiger Aero aesthetic doesn't matter... then what does? That would mean Rick and Morty were right, which can't be so.

Wholesomeness is probably the best example of this, the concept as used today exclusively describes false, affected endearment, often played for laughs with something unlikely such as an insect.

[a system is failing]

About zoomer nihilism in particular, you note that zoomers care about things that are real, but I'm not sure if they often really care or just wish they cared. The examples you give (beauty, wealth, influence) are still superficial aesthetics that are abstract proxies for real things (even money is a proxy, but it might be the most real). In a reaction to the meaning-destruction of ironic millennial culture, zoomers have latched onto these aesthetics as totems of meaning without a foundational sense of why they matter in the real world, since they mostly live online. They're disconnected from their own physicality and are fed corrupt ideology in school, so can't do much better than to grasp blindly at illusions following a gut feeling that something is wrong.

The caring itself often feels performative and hollow, zoomers will leave lengthy embellished Youtube comments telling a story about how some shitty video or song contextualized their entire life. Troons especially do this. But if the Frutiger Aero aesthetic doesn't matter... then what does? That would mean Rick and Morty were right, which can't be so.

This is why I made their shallowness another bold point. I think it still counts for something, nonetheless. I would maybe choose something less like an "aesthetic" to compare to Rick and Morty since thats media...The Backrooms or FNAF or whatever other zoomercore media you can think of is still better than Rick and Morty. And Rick and Morty isn't even the worst of what the millennials did. Look up Brad Neely's Harg Nallin' Sclopio Peepio some time if you want to see how bad their crap really gets.

[gipazugos]

Like any generation, most zoomers are retards or NPCs, but the 10-20% capable of thought seem more retarded, or at least less curious, than their past equivalents. I don't think it's because they're not reading: self-improvement memes promoting reading are very popular among zoomers, and there are many zoomers who on the surface are very well read. You can go to zoomer leftist spaces and see them sharing "read theory" charts. Leftie zoomers will quote Marx, Fanon, etc., even Hegel, and many right wing zoomers have read Spengler, Evola, Junger.

However, like some posters above were saying, they are very surface level. Their affinity for a particular thinker is mostly just due to vibes, and they probably already believed in whatever the author wrote before they even opened the book because the Wikipedia summary made him sound based. They're mostly reading the book to give themself more 'cred' with their Twitter and Discord friends, it's not really due to intellectual curiosity or fleshing out their views. They probably already believed in a cyclical view of history because they saw some "hard times create strong men" meme that had good vibes, far before they knew who Spengler was. But after they read Spengler, they'll become completely committed. They're now a "Spengler guy", with a Spengler profile picture, and they'll defend their senpai relentlessly. They're not just someone influenced by Spengler's ideas, and they're probably not going to adopt some of his views and critique others. Anyone critiquing part of him is critiquing all of him. (You can swap out Spengler for any thinker)

Now I bring up zoomers interested in politics specifically here because it seems most discussion about books among zoomers concerns politics. There are certainly zoomers who are both capable of thought and less politically inclined, and I find they mostly drift towards being really into obscure video games, music, anime, etc. There are thousands of zoomers who have basically formed their entire identity around discussing obscure Japanese RPGs in Discord servers. I find that higher IQ zoomers are either into politics (and adjacent fields like sociology, history, etc.) or they just stick themselves into the media IQ shredder.