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Why can't people just be outcasts and loners like they used to be? Why do they need to seek out a community of weirdos on the internet that they can conform to?
All the talk about toxic masculinity, radicalism, tribalism, identity politics, group think, etc. seems to ignore the fact that they all draw from the same well of insecurity and a lack of self-determination.
Is there something preventing people from just being individuals and interacting like adults with the people in their lives?
I think it’s social media and a computer in your pocket.
But is that what's driving their need for validation, or is it just giving them access to it?
You're getting somewhere.Quote:
Originally Posted by Doc Holliday
Says the decades long poster on a video game message board?Quote:
Originally Posted by kedawa
The difference is that I'm not really looking for an identity or trying to fit in. I don't think any of us are. We disagree about most things and DGAF.
That's true, but we are (hopefully) a lot more comfortable with who we are at this point in life than the children still trying to figure things out on 4chan, etc.
Some of us absolutely built our identity around gaming back in our 20's. Some of us still do.
This was you?
http://www.the-nextlevel.com/tnl/att...chmentid=81246
I think you're thinking about it backwards - the toxic masculinity, tribalism, etc. *causes* the insecurity and lack of self-determination.Quote:
Originally Posted by kedawa
I think it is also easier for young people to get on phones and deal with people that think like them already, than it is to get involved with their community and allow people that don't think like them to help shape their Identity.
I don't really think it is a good or bad thing. Its just easier.
So, if you live in the middle of NC and have depression, you can google it and find a group. If you're a 16 year old gay boy in a town of 200 people you can google and find a group and not spend your life pretending to be straight. And if you're a bigot, you can go online and find bigots.
Which isn't a specifically a white thing. There are plenty of prejudiced minorities that use the internet to find others that think like they do. A lot of the new rhetoric is a way to absolve themselves of guilt from prejudice. On the bright side it is a sign of social progress. The more visible assholes you have in a group, the more free that group is. You're always going have a % of any group that will abuse their freedom to hurt others.
I'm still skeptical because both those articles are making an attempt to hide the source article in which the data comes from, lol. I also don't trust economists as far as I can throw them because they have a tendency to misread sociological data.Quote:
Originally Posted by Doc Holliday
Okay, I finally found it, jfc. https://link.springer.com/content/pd...016-0798-z.pdf
Sooo.....as usual, Newsweek misinterprets another academic study. First, it's a commentary on popular media: there is a pop culture idea that millennials are hyper-sexed, which the authors look to disprove via data. Second, it's also saying that the waiting for sex may be a cohort trend, which simply means that "it's more socially acceptable for millennials to wait to have sex than their Gen-X counterparts." Media twists this to "THERE MUST BE A SOCIAL PROBLEM OMFG!" But, it really just means there are more acceptable social reasons for why this is happening.
In the study, if Mr. Economist could patiently wait the whole ten pages, he would see these reasons are pretty clearly laid out:
1. Millennials live with their parents longer (in fact, those on the survey who delayed sex tended to not have attended college, so "hookup culture" and living away from home delayed their sexual activity)
2. The fear of HIV and AIDS has struck deep into the heart of every quivering millennial, who is taught via formal sexual education programs (K-12) that if you have sex you WILL get sick and die, so they delay casual sex with strangers (I'm actually working on a paper about this now and #3, cool!)
3. The rise of abstinence-only and EBI (evidence based) sex education programs in K-12 put a very strong stress on waiting until adulthood for sexual activity. Now, here's where it gets a little sticky. According to sexual health researchers, abstinence-only programs have little positive effect in actually causing kids to wait (again, I am working on a paper about this rn! and theres like 400000 studies on it! and they all say abstinence-only doesn't work.) This study says basically the complete opposite of that. It's saying abstinence-only IS having a positive effect and causing children to delay sexual activity. So...................who is right?
The limitations in the study indicate that the survey question "have sex with," can be interpreted in a variety of ways. The definition of "have had sex with" has changed drastically over time (say, from between Gen-X to Millennials.) I.e., a Gen-Xer may be more likely to consider oral sex "having sex with," while a millennial may not. So, this may be a very flaw in the GSS question itself, which is why we are receiving such varied data over generations. The author doesn't seem to think so, but I'm not entirely convinced.
Long story short, I don't believe there are any definitive conclusions we can draw from this, other than it *appears* to be more socially acceptable to wait for sex. More studies are needed, and exclusively pointing fingers at the internet is probably edging in the wrong direction.