February 4, 2025 • 53 mins
Remember the thrill of hearing a dial-up modem connect or the excitement of seeing a message pop up on your screen from a friend miles away? Join us on a whimsical journey down "Memory Lane" as we reminisce about the early days of communication technology. From the simplicity of Usenet and the quirky codes of beepers to the niche world of ham radios, we're celebrating the nostalgia of connecting in ways that felt nothing short of magic. Get ready to chuckle and nod along as we explore the marvels of the past and the joy these technologies brought into our lives.
Fast forward to the present, where we're humorously grappling with the digital age's effect on our brains, affectionately dubbed "brain rot" by Oxford Dictionary as 2024's word of the year. Inspired by a quirky TikTok song, we break down how language is evolving with terms like "gyat" and "Rizzler," influenced by online culture and African-American Vernacular English. Discover how Gen Z is using concise language to navigate platforms like Twitter and hear about their take on "brain rot," an ironic nod to the content they consume and the generational dialogue it sparks.
Finally, we explore the ever-changing dance between generations, each with unique interactions with technology. From Baby Boomers streaming their favorite shows to Gen Z's social media immersion, everyone has their screen time quirks. Through historical anecdotes and modern insights, we unravel the timeless cycle of generational blame, where older folks fret over the young rebels shaking things up. Despite the persistent grumbles, there's a glimmer of hope in the increasing adaptability of older generations. Join us as we wrap up this rich tapestry of communication, culture, and the amusing clash of generations, all with a touch of humor and a heartfelt nod to our loyal listeners.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Ron (00:29):
what's up lounge lizards?
Welcome back to the uncanneryuh tale of um joy and woe.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
That's uh I think we need a subtitle for the podcast
can?
Ron (00:42):
we can do that, don, just for today's episode.
No I want to go back to all ofthem.
Why don't podcasts havesubtitles?
Or we could also do theMelville thing, where it's like
Moby Dick or the Whale.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Why don't we have two titles, the Uncannery or
usually Three Guys, but nottoday.
Ron (01:10):
If you're joining us, uh, doug is still out with child and
um, that's uh great for him andbetter for us.
And uh, uh, we are here todayto talk about another fun topic.
Uh, we hope it's a fun topic,don.
Um, I was thinking you know,there's a.
The world is a crazy place.
It's a, it's a magical place.
There's a fun topic, don.
I was thinking you know theworld is a crazy place.
It's a magical place.
There's a lot in this worldsometimes.
I was just thinking thismorning.
Don (01:31):
Were you how magical.
Ron (01:33):
Yeah, what magic were you focusing on?
What magic it is to be alive.
Don (01:37):
I opened my eyes, you know, and just was happy to be part
of it.
Ron (01:42):
You know, I don't know if you're sort of joking, but I
literally feel that way mostmornings.
There was like a time in mylife where I was like kind of
afraid to go to sleep because Iwas like not sure what happens
if I don't wake up, it's likewhat if this is my last moment,
like me, having like a mildlysore neck, trying to use this
(02:02):
uncomfortable pillow to just getsix hours sleep before I go to
work?
What if this is my last momentand that would keep me up longer
?
Don (02:11):
So you could enjoy your last moment and just stretch it
out.
Yeah, exactly, staring at theceiling, melinger.
Ron (02:19):
It is magical to be here.
And you know what else ismagical?
A little thing called theinternet.
You ever heard of it?
Don (02:26):
You ever use the internet Is that does that?
Is that the thing that comes onthe the disc that they send?
Ron (02:32):
in the mail.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you've beenstockpiling those discs, right,
well, yeah they, they come with1,099 free minutes.
Don (02:39):
You gotta, you gotta, keep them in the safe.
Ron (02:42):
This is why I always ask my grandparents for internet discs
, like at Christmas time, andthen I just use those for my
internet for the rest of theyear.
What was your first kind ofmemory of the internet?
Like for some of our listeners,maybe this might I feel like
we're kind of in a privilegedsituation, kind of like like in
2000,.
Like anyone who fought in WorldWar II, it's kind of like we
(03:02):
were all like mining theirbrains for like what was it like
?
Don (03:05):
I feel like you and I are similar it's true, we are the,
the gentrified, the old, thecalcified, uh veterans yes
exactly.
Ron (03:12):
You know what the past was like we're matt damon at the
beginning of private ryan and um, we remember a time without the
internet.
So what was it like when you,when you, received the internet?
Don (03:22):
um, oh, so we're not talking about before then.
We're talking about the momentof.
Ron (03:27):
No, nothing before the internet matters Don obviously.
Don (03:32):
I don't know about that.
I had MTV before the internet.
Well, actually I have some verystrong memories of the very
first moments of using theinternet.
I'm not positive, this isactually the very first time I
encountered the internet, but mystrongest memory of uh, of
internet was right when, uh, uh,I started college and uh, and
(03:52):
so friends from high school,we'd all gone to different
universities and uh, uh, my bestfriend at the time, uh, we were
roommates and uh, we werefriends with a, um, a friend
who'd gone back east to college.
So we, I'm trying to think whatit was called like Usenet.
Ron (04:10):
That was definitely a.
Thing.
Don (04:13):
So it was magic because our computers were connected, like
our computer in our dorm roomand her computer back east, and
we could type live back andforth to each other.
But that was all it was, wasjust like just live typing it
was like text screen, like itlooks like ms-dos and just like
you know, you put in like hi,how are you?
(04:34):
And then like a second later,I'm good, you know a telegram
with a keyboard.
Ron (04:38):
That's what it was exactly.
Don (04:40):
Yeah, full stop and uh, but uh, but I have, uh, I don't
know why I had such a goodmemory, but it, we had fun and
it was uh, it was magic, itliterally, because sure, I mean
we could call and right, right,like to see it visually appear
on your screen that you knowwith yeah it was a.
It was a different kind ofcommunication.
Ron (05:01):
It was uh, yeah there must be something about like any new
kind of communication device.
Like whether or not there mustbe something about like any new
kind of communication device,like whether or not it actually
makes communication simpler.
It's just sort of fascinatingto use right For sure.
Don (05:13):
Like I mean along those lines, beepers would be the.
Ron (05:17):
My dad had a beeper, for sure.
Don (05:19):
So, and the codes that came with the beepers right, and you
had a 411 or a 911, right.
Because you couldn't send anylike.
All you could send were numbers.
Ron (05:29):
You couldn't send any actual you know language.
This is how I feel about hamradios.
I, like a few years ago, gotinto a ham ham radios with my
friends and we all went and gotham radio licenses.
And mostly because we were doinga lot of like off-roading in
the desert.
No-transcript, it's way moredifficult.
(06:13):
It's a pain in the butt.
You got to like dial in aspecific frequency and hope that
the cloud coverage is right sothat you can beam it off of a
repeater in the somewhere in thehills of Los Angeles.
But it's just so cool that whenit works it's like wow, I'm,
I'm talking to someone in oregonright now.
Wow, you know?
Um, my earliest memories of theinternet I think I was too young
for it to like be useful for me.
(06:35):
Like I want to say I was six orseven maybe when I kind of
remember us having the internetin our house and by that time it
was like aol, uh, on the disc,uh, my family was using, I think
like my parents had an aolaccount and I remember kind of
like that splash screen andthere was definitely like
pictures and stuff there.
But I was just kind of like,okay, whatever.
And then when I became like apre-teen teenager, um, we still
(06:59):
had aol.
And that's when, like aolinstant messenger became like
huge in my life, which was justlike uh, um, I guess like
WhatsApp or something, but onyour desktop computer, right,
you log in.
You log in, you have a usernameand then you have like an
address book of other people'susernames you found and then you
could just talk to them.
And I remember like severalnights me like telling my
(07:22):
parents frustratedly like yougotta get off the computer
because we had like one computer.
Right, that's how most peopleused to have one computer, one
phone line yeah, yeah, exactlyright you could only use one at
a time dad got a phone call,then the connection broke and I
need to hog the the computer forthe next hour and a half so I
could talk with my friends onaol, instant messenger or aim,
and my parents were just beinglike what are you talking about?
(07:43):
Like this, this is notconducive to the rest of the
family.
Just call them on the phone oryou'll see them at school
tomorrow.
Who cares?
I was like you don't get it.
This is where action happensand I do remember people spoke
differently on AOL instantmessenger.
If you found someone's likeusername, you could start a
conversation with people youwould never talk with in real
life, like popular girls andjocks and stuff, and everyone
(08:07):
was sort of like just talkingand because they couldn't see
your face.
I remember like having likereally intimate conversations
with kids who I would like wewould go to school and see them
next day and never acknowledgethat we had been speaking.
Don (08:19):
How do you know it was really them you were being.
It was.
It was pre catfishing is whatwas happening to you.
You were chatting with with,it's possible old men in the
cabin somewhere pretending to bea pop girl at your middle
school.
Ron (08:32):
This is totally something my mother accused me of doing
once because I was talking withuh.
There was also a forum backthen for like warhammer.
I went, obviously, when I was ateenager, I was into warhammer
and I found a forum and thenpeople were like, oh you know,
dming each other outside of thisuh forum, and I was like, mom,
these are just my Warhammerfriends.
You don't get it.
And they're like, they'reprobably very old.
Why do they want to talk to youat all?
(08:53):
And uh, to be fair, I don'thave an answer to that question.
She's probably right.
I probably shouldn't be.
It was just fun, it was cool,it was different, it was
democratic, it was the promiseof the internet realized on.
But would you be surprised tolearn that maybe, maybe the
internet secretly harbored adark and foreboding reality at
(09:15):
all times.
Don (09:16):
I can't even imagine what dark purposes the internet could
be used for.
Ron (09:20):
No.
Yeah, it's just a force forgood.
It's only a force for good.
It's only a force for good.
It's only a force forcommunication.
Don (09:25):
It's how we spread true information, it's how we connect
with other people and it has norepercussions on the way we
behave in the real space.
It just brings goodness, yeah.
Ron (09:36):
Until Generation Z.
Don (09:41):
They screw it all up, yeah.
Ron (09:42):
Have you heard about Generation Z, gen Z, the Zoomers
?
Is it Gen Z?
Gen Z might be.
Yeah, if you're across the pond, you might call them.
Gen Z.
Sorry if you didn't know.
We were talking about.
English listeners.
Gen Z, as you're probably aware, is not even actually the
youngest generation.
I guess the youngest generationright now is Gen Alpha.
(10:04):
We've moved on to Gen Alpha.
Don (10:06):
How long do you have to be a generation before you get a
name?
Ron (10:08):
I think it's going way faster.
We've gone way fast yeah yeahyeah, we had.
Don (10:11):
Millennial and then Gen Z and there's too fast, you're
supposed to have like 40 yearsin a generation, 25 years at
least.
Ron (10:20):
There's the boomer generation, right which is like
a post-World War II.
This was like what?
48 through, I think like 60.
Yeah, right, yeah, 64 orsomething like that.
Right, these are, this is theboomer generation, right?
These are like the oldestpeople in society alive today.
Don (10:36):
Right.
Ron (10:37):
And then you've got before them, you've got the silent
generation, I think Right, andthey're like the generation who
kind of like, came of age during, like Vietnam, right, and so
what they would have been.
Don (10:54):
I don't know.
59 to such and such.
Who cares?
Before 46.
Okay, Born before 46.
Ron (10:59):
Okay, okay.
So silent precedes boomers,right, right, okay.
And then you got boomers, andthen you've got Gen X.
Gen X, correct Gen X is that'sme.
Then what would that be?
69?
Don (11:09):
through- 65.
Ron (11:10):
65.
80.
80.
Okay, cool, that's Gen X, so 15years.
Then you've got the millennialgeneration and that's like what,
80, 81, through through 95, 96,96, okay.
(11:31):
And then you've got gen z, whowas everyone from 97 through
what?
20, 2010, 10, 11, yeah, andthen after that, anyone born
like 2011 onwards we're nowcalling gen alpha and um, which
I don't think is fair.
Don (11:41):
They haven't, they didn't earn it.
Ron (11:43):
They haven't done anything yet to earn an alpha name.
Don (11:46):
They should just be no name .
Ron (11:48):
It's a super like Apple Microsoft way of naming the
generations Like oh, we ran out,we got to Z, so let's start
over again.
Don (11:56):
This is Xbox One and it's the fifth one.
Let's use the Greek letters.
Yeah, exactly.
Ron (12:04):
So those are our generations and really, if
you've been paying attention, atleast in the United States, I'm
pretty sure in almost all theWestern world, actually I'd say
probably the entire world Peopledon't like Gen Z.
People think Gen Z are bad kids.
They're bad people.
They're entitled.
They're lazy.
Their minds are addled fromtheir overconsumption of the
(12:27):
internet.
What was once so pure and goodfor you and me, Don, absolutely.
They have warped to their darkdesigns, I told you, they ruin
everything and this, I think,kind of like made waves, or at
least made a splash, when aTikTok song was released in
October of 2023.
Don (12:43):
What was it?
Ron (12:44):
A TikTok, a TikTok song.
Don (12:44):
Well, you song was released um in october of 2023 what's it
?
Ron (12:46):
a tic tac, a tic tac song, well, you know, like the game
tic-tac-toe.
Well, imagine if you changesome of those vowels.
So, uh, it was tic-tac.
And then instead of a game, itwas a web application that
people used to share, uh, cutevideos, oh, like a newsreel.
Like a newsreel exactly.
Yeah, like you used to getbefore you saw a film Before the
cereal plays at the movie showat the movie house.
(13:07):
Yeah, exactly Right.
This TikTok video makes it past.
It's a sort of Gen Z realm,where it was probably meant to
remain, and older generationsare listening to the song and
they're going.
What is wrong with the kids Can?
Don (13:22):
I play you a little bit of the song.
The song is written by Gen Z.
Ron (13:25):
The song is written and performed by a member of Gen Z,
so it's a it's a perfect exampleof their um, their, their
culture exactly.
Yeah, this is a, this isanthropology we're conducting
here all right here's the songpretty cool, right?
Don (13:59):
um well, the the yeah the way out, done what I was just
the.
It seems like it was a littlebit off key.
I was was.
Ron (14:12):
Oh yeah no, I mean, it's clearly a young performer.
They've got time to grow intothat sort of talent.
This song features a lot ofwords that people didn't
understand, maybe still don'tunderstand, in case you need,
like you know, a recital if youdidn't hear it entirely, if you
were just sort of like paralyzedby what was happening.
(14:34):
The song goes Sticking out yourgat for the Rizzler, you're so
skibbity, you're so phantom tax,I just want to be your sigma
freaking.
Come here, give me your ohio.
Um, do you recognize any ofthese words?
Don, can you, can you like?
Don (14:49):
lexicon.
I know where ohio is.
Okay, yeah, um back east.
Ron (14:53):
It's uh important place it's west of we love ohio we
love our ohio listeners.
Any other words?
You know what a ghat is?
Don (15:01):
sticking out your ghat.
Um, that's the sound that thefrogs make when they when they
do with their tongue and then itlands on the bug gotcha is that
a budweiser reference.
Ron (15:17):
Um your, your ghat is your behind.
Um, this is a it's, this is auh, like your, your buttocks, um
uh why don't they just use thatword?
Then everybody would understandwell, because this is a sort of
like a mutation of like uh,african-american vernacular
english, which is kind of likewhere a lot of slang terms come
(15:38):
from.
But like this idea, like youwould see someone who is so
prodigious in that in their, intheir backwards capacity I think
I guess we could say, um, thatyou would kind of turn your head
and you say something like goddamn, right, um.
And so they've like, shortenedthis and made it obviously more
appropriate and, uh, removed godfrom the mix by saying gyat,
(16:02):
all right.
So sticking out your god meanslike sticking out your, your,
your gyat.
Given gifts for the rizzler.
Any idea what, who a rizzler is?
Don (16:08):
those are the.
That's the licorice.
I don't really like therizzlers, those, those do suck
You're totally right.
Ron (16:13):
I hate those too.
The Rizzler is to have.
Rizz is a thing you can have.
Rizz is a noun.
If you have Rizz, that meansyou have charisma.
It means you have what we mightcall moxie.
Don (16:31):
So they're just not saying all the no, these are all yeah
exactly, these are decapitatedwords.
Ron (16:37):
Right, Mutated English words that have a meaning but
needs to be parsed out.
Unless you are a member of GenZ, right, you know these words.
You breathe these words.
You're like a fish in the sea.
Right, this is water to you.
Don (16:53):
Were they born with this truncated knowledge, or their
brains are just.
They're not able to say thewhole word.
Ron (16:59):
I think their brains just can't say the words.
I think they uh, yeah, it'sobviously because they got
tiktok brain and characterlimits.
Uh, it means they just can't.
That's what it is, it's twitter.
Yeah, yeah, they can only speakin 144 character thoughts
exactly, and this is what I wantto talk about today.
Don.
This song was considered anexample of a phenomenon that
(17:20):
people are calling brain rot.
Does that?
Don (17:26):
sound like a good thing to you, Don.
I have a good thing.
No, I know people, though Ithink that I can.
Ron (17:33):
We all know people.
Brain rot was the 2024 word ofthe year for the Oxford
Dictionary, and they define itas thus Brain rot is the
supposed deterioration of aperson's mental or intellectual
state, especially viewed as theresult of overconsumption of
material, now particularlyonline content, considered to be
(17:55):
trivial or unchallenging.
Don (17:57):
it is also something characterized as likely to lead
to such deterioration so it'sboth the, the manifestation of
the diminished capacity, as wellas the, the, the content causer
right, yeah the, the catalystof that state.
Ron (18:15):
Um, and this word is actually created by Gen Z.
Right, this is a word they useto describe a lot of the content
they engage with online thevideos, the memes, the jokes
they tell.
Right, they will see something,they will laugh and they'll say
like man, that's brain rot.
Sometimes they use itpejoratively to describe
themselves.
I've it pejorative pejorativelyto describe themselves.
(18:36):
I've seen it being usedpejoratively to describe younger
generations.
I've seen gen z bashing on genalpha already being like that's
gen alpha stuff.
Don (18:45):
Don't get us confused with that skibbity ohio gyat stuff
right, because they want to sayintelligent things like that
instead of whatever ohio orwhatever alpha saying exactly
right, alpha's just babblingyeah, alpha's babbling, they're
just like crawling out of thecrib, and they're.
Ron (19:01):
They don't understand how to utilize or navigate the
internet, unlike gen z,obviously, right it's kind of
like that, uh that batman 3.
Quote by uh bane.
You remember your batman 3?
Quotes by bane where he says Iwas born in the dark.
I think gen z thinks they wereborn in the internet and they
mastered it.
They have a mastery over itrather than like everyone else,
(19:21):
who's just a tourist on it.
Don (19:22):
I don't remember any quote from bane, because he, yeah, it
was terrible um.
Ron (19:30):
So according to oxford dictionary, the first recorded
use of brain rot was actuallyfrom 1854 and it's actually
henry david thoreau.
The internet is that old.
Don (19:39):
Thoreau was on the internet .
Yeah, Thoreau.
Ron (19:41):
That's why he was out there .
Don (19:42):
That's why he was in the woods.
Yeah, he was like I got to getoff Twitter man.
Ron (19:49):
When Thoreau is writing in Walden he has this quote.
He says while England endeavorsto cure the potato rot, will
not any endeavor to cure thebrain rot which prevails so much
more widely and fatally as thissort of criticism or indictment
against his modern age rightthat people's brains are not
(20:10):
being nourished Worse thanpotatoes?
Definitely, I don't know man,one feeds my stomach and the
other feeds my mind, I'm sureEmerson would have said to him.
So this idea that this brainrot is starting to cause like
what I think is a kind of newmodern moral panic, right, there
(20:30):
are people who there's a mentalhealth clinic that thinks brain
rot is like an actual illness.
Right, they define it as amental fogginess, a lethargy,
reduced attention span,cognitive decline that results
from an overabundance of screentime.
And in a lot of cases this canbe true.
Right, with like um studies andresearch about the effects of
(20:56):
like um internet, uh, prolongedinternet usage.
Don (20:59):
Like in both adults and adolescents I am actually a
little bit in, especially withadolescents like the, the, the
measurement of the ability forsustained attention is is
completely, it's almostnon-existent, um, compared to to
even gen z, even Gen X, whichwas a media generation.
(21:20):
We did have a lot of TV and alot of changes in how TV was
delivered and cable TV wasinvented, so there's more than
three channels.
But no, the studies have beenshowing that current teenagers
so both Gen Z and on the edgesof Gen Alpha they literally
cannot put their phone down.
(21:41):
It's a physical inabilitybecause they're so addicted to
the constant stream ofinformation.
Ron (21:48):
Yeah, there's a term for it .
There's nomophobia, which is aliteral fear of not having
access to your phone, not havingaccess to these screens, like a
literal fear of not havingaccess to your phone not having
access to these screens.
Recent studies I found like anumber of different ones, but
they all seem to kind of agreeon this number that teenagers
today are spending around eighthours a day on average on
screens in general, whetherthose are television screens,
(22:10):
desktop, laptop screens, tablets, phones, right, which is up
much higher than, like, say,2015, which that was closer to
like five hours.
Right, we definitely see a lotof rise in that screen usage and
in that internet usage.
Internet addiction is like areal thing, right, this idea
that you just sort of can't getoff the internet, and this is
(22:33):
largely linked to just like thechemical reaction that occurs
like when we are engagingpredominantly with like social
media content that is designedto be very bite-sized, very high
interest, but very likeforgettable.
Right like very disposable.
Right like so, uh, you'veprobably heard the term doom
scrolling, right, this isanother kind of popular modern
idea.
What's doom scrolling?
Don (22:53):
uh, uh, I don't know.
Ron (22:58):
Oh, okay, sorry, I had faith in that.
I thought you were on top ofthings, don.
Uh, I read, I read books.
Okay, maybe you doom read, doomscrolling.
Is this idea that, like youknow, you're on Twitter, uh,
you're on Reddit, you're on, uh,you know, any of these social
media platforms Facebook, Iguess and you know, you're on
Twitter, you're on Reddit,you're on, you know, any of
these social media platformsFacebook, I guess and you know,
(23:18):
each of these platforms has afeed that's just basically just
giving you headlines of thingsor quick images, and you know,
when we see somethinginteresting, it gives us a
little dose of dopamine in ourbrain and that's pleasurable,
that's fun, like, ooh, that'sfunny, that image of that cat,
or wow, that's's insane.
I can't believe that happenedtoday in the news right, and
then you just scroll past it andthat you know that interaction
(23:40):
takes probably less than twoseconds right, or three seconds
sometimes, and uh, it becomessort of addictive to just keep
scrolling, scrolling, scrolling.
But the idea of doom scrollingsthat you realize on some
fundamental level, this isn'tactually nourishing.
Even though your brain isreceiving this sort of small
dopamine hit, you're notactually like nourished or
enjoying your time and you oftenfeel like you can't leave it
(24:00):
right.
Don (24:01):
You're stuck, you're glued to your screen right that the
length of engagement with anyparticular image on a screen is
much reduced.
So you know we talk aboutscreen time, but I think that
(24:23):
it's important that youdifferentiate between like
office screen time, where Imight be staring at a document
you know for an hour or two onmy screen, but it's still just
one document that I'm engagedwith versus you know, the
scrolling on the platformsyou're talking about where
literally it's less than twoseconds and you've processed the
entire.
You know information that isbeing delivered to you and then
(24:44):
you move on to the next item.
So it's not there's nosustained attention to anything,
it's.
Ron (24:48):
It's it's training you to only pay attention for those
micro slices yeah, and I foundsome interesting facts about,
like if we were to divideinternet usage by generation,
right, Like, what are thosespecific tasks that people are
spending the most time on Right?
And if we look at boomers righttoday's, you know, elder
(25:10):
statesmen, the eldest amongst usthe most venerable amongst us,
right, um, they spend most oftheir internet time uh,
streaming tv right, like that'swhere the majority of their uh
internet usage comes from.
Um and uh gen x they're.
They spend also the majority oftheir time streaming television
(25:31):
right.
So again, the idea is likethat's their.
It seems like the implicationis like that's how they know
screens most.
That's like screens wheretelevision sets right and you
can hook up the internet to themand now you can watch netflix
or hulu on it.
So it's a replacementtechnology not a innovative
exactly right um millennials.
They spend most of their time umon a uh uh, on a desktop
(25:55):
computer or a laptop.
Don (25:58):
Playing Doom.
Ron (25:59):
Yeah, playing Doom, exactly Living the good old days.
And also the majority of theirtime, though, is spent for work,
so they spend less of theirtime, still a lot of time
streaming TV, streaming musicand social media browsing, but
the majority by a couple minutes.
Here they say about, on average, three hours and 48 minutes
they spend uh on screens doingwork and then, like, the next
(26:21):
highest would be three hours and20 minutes uh doing social
media browsing.
Um gen z um has the highestamount of uh social media
browsing, at three hours and 28minutes um and uh.
They uh also spend three hoursand 37 minutes just streaming
music, but their usage ofscreens in all categories are
much higher than previousgenerations.
(26:41):
So they are definitely engagingwith it much more than previous
generations.
And, yeah, there are certainpernicious effects that have
been associated with it.
They have decreased offlinecommunity participation
Oftentimes they reportrelationship issues or decreased
(27:03):
academic performance.
Don (27:05):
Decreased offline community participation.
Is that what you said?
That means they just don't gooutside and play, is that?
That's exactly yeah, that's avery fancy way to say that.
Ron (27:14):
Yeah, I've had students researching this idea lately and
this is why it's mostly in myhead.
I found this article aboutbrain rot and I was kind of like
I work with young people, Iwork with adolescents, I should
get their point of view on this,and so I showed them a lot of
these articles.
And you regretted that decisioninstantly when you asked.
Yeah, one of the questions Iasked them was do you think
(27:35):
teenagers are dating more orless now than they used to?
And they had their own ideas.
But I made them go research andfind articles about it and a
lot of them came back withevidence that there was reduced
dating amongst Gen Z than therewas in previous generations.
And when I asked them to comeup with reasons why, oftentimes
I don't think their reasons wereas fully researched as they
(27:57):
think, but a lot of times theyjust came up with boys are
playing too many video games.
Don (28:04):
And what was their source of information for how much
dating previous generations haddone?
Ron (28:09):
I think there are a number of studies.
Don (28:11):
I think that your adolescent students worked
through oh.
Ron (28:16):
I mean like, uh, I'm having them find articles online and
sure, yes, we can.
You know those are ofquestionable veracity frequently
.
Um, but it seemed like therewas some academic consensus that
, um, I think one of the metricsthey're using is like where do
people meet um their spouses andstuff?
And there's just like a generaldecline in spouses being met at
(28:37):
work or in clubs or in schools.
Don (28:40):
I meet my wife usually at home.
Like every time I come home,she's there.
Ron (28:44):
That's the problem.
Right, that's some boomer humor.
So, anyways, obviously, theinternet, yes, it can have some
very bad effects effects righton us, right, it's not.
It's not all gold, it's not allgravy, as the kids say, or
maybe once said, um but um, thisarticle I found, uh was trying
(29:07):
to make a counter argument thatlike, hey, you know, the older
generations aren't totallyunderstanding this brain rot
idea and there's a little bitthere.
They're sort of like missingthe point.
This is an article by uh, angelgal Mendoza, who is a
self-proclaimed member of Gen Z,an ambassador, if you will, and
he kind of says like look, yes,are there, are there negative
impacts of like, uh, um,internet addiction and social
(29:31):
media and all these things likethat are affecting my generation
.
Of course, obviously, obviously.
But this like brain rot thingis not something to be targeted
and sort of like it's not anissue to be fixed it's not
should be embraced.
Don (29:42):
Yeah, just let them wither that on the vine.
Ron (29:45):
That's kind of what he's saying.
It's like he's brain.
He says brain rot is not amedical condition and he thinks
oxford dictionary kind of missesthe mark.
It is not like brain rotdoesn't describe like the
literal um, uh, uh deteriorationof your mind.
It is, it's a perceiveddeterioration of your mind that
is kind of caused by what hedescribes mendoza describes as
(30:06):
predominantly like generationalin jokes, slang, and uh and and
uh humor so it's not, but it is.
Don (30:18):
we just, but, like you, just cited a study that that
told us that the the moreinternet usage is causing a
decrease in attention span,ability to focus, and like it's
making us dumber.
Ron (30:30):
Sure, but I would, I would like to argue that it hasn't.
Hasn't every generation had,like, had their generation had
their issue, had their moment ofdecline almost right, or their
moment of perceived decline,where we kind of like get up in
arms and we collectively, asadults, say, hey, there's
something wrong with these kidsand we need to step in and fix
(30:53):
them, otherwise, this magicalgame that we experience every
day we wake up in our bed, it'sall going to go away.
It's all good.
It's all going to be for not, doyou think?
Hasn't that happened before?
Don (31:06):
Well, I mean, sure, I mean the baby boomers complained
about.
Ron (31:10):
Gen.
Don (31:10):
X, but they were wrong about everything that they
brought up.
That's different.
Ron (31:13):
That's different.
What were the complaints leviedagainst you, Don, when you were
growing up?
What was wrong with Gen?
Don (31:19):
X.
Well, video games was one ofthem, so we were Pac-Man and
Mario Mario.
Yeah.
Ron (31:26):
Spending too much time with the Pac-Man arcade machine.
Don (31:29):
And asteroids, and MTV was another one.
What was wrong with MTVtv socool?
So it was.
It was actually a lot of thesimilar uh complaints you're
describing now.
So it was too much time, so itwould be something that you turn
on in the afternoon and youwould watch it, um, and and,
rather than doing other thingslike play outside or um, meet
(31:54):
with friends or do your homeworkor like.
So it was uh, it was a, a mediadistraction from, and this was
this is original MTV.
So this is when MTV was actuallymusic television before it not
skateboarding reality TV shows,right, right, so, uh so yeah
those were the, those were theand probably the content of MTV
(32:14):
was probably cause for alarm.
Ron (32:15):
Right, you can't be watching Madonna.
You know Satanic Panic and yeah.
Don (32:21):
And you had to Judas Priest and Satan is going to enter.
Enter your soul through thetelevision screen.
Ron (32:28):
Yeah, and and as a millennial, I feel like I.
You know, I, my, my whole adultexistence has been some sort of
blame game of why my generationis tanking the economy.
Don (32:39):
Well, because they are.
They are, you can't hold a job.
You move around from place toplace.
Nothing is important enough.
Ron (32:46):
We're getting married too late and we like dogs and cats.
Don (32:50):
The population is going to collapse.
Ron (32:51):
Yeah, exactly right.
And none of these have any sortof material motivators.
They're only psychological,social right.
They're locked inside of ourbrain cases, our brain stems, as
it were.
When I was researching thisepisode, I came across this
phenomenon called generationalblame, which is this idea that,
(33:13):
pretty much at any given time inhistory, the older generation
has uh blamed the, the troubles,the travails of the modern era
on the youth.
The youth are at fault, theyouth are, uh, there's something
rotten in the state of theyouth you know what I?
mean um, and?
And I found a quote.
(33:34):
This quote is often attributedto Socrates.
You remember Socrates?
You know Socrates, socrates,yeah, socrates.
That's a Gen X joke, it is.
That's from Bill and Ted's.
Yes, exactly.
Socrates has been misattributedto this quote, but I found a guy
(33:56):
who was doing a dissertationabout what the classic Greeks of
antiquity thought about theyouth, and the guy making this
dissertation summarized theirindictments of the youth as
being about luxury, bad manners,contempt for authority,
disrespect to elders and a lovefor chatter in place of exercise
(34:16):
.
Children began to be thetyrants, not the slaves, of
their households.
They no longer rose from theirseats when an elder entered the
room.
They contradicted their parents.
They chattered before company.
They gobbled up the dainties attable and committed various
offenses against Hellenistictastes, such as crossing their
legs.
They tyrannized over.
They did cross their legs, orthey didn't.
(34:37):
They crossing their legs?
Uh, they tyrannized over.
Uh, they did cross their legs,or they didn't.
Don (34:39):
They uh said they crossed their legs.
Yeah, yeah, you're supposed toman spread in ancient hellenic
culture.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
Um, and these kids tyrannized over the pedagogy and
school masters right, who wouldhave been the teachers?
Ron (34:51):
right, um, and so this is like a list of just things this
man managed to find aboutancient Greeks complaining about
the youth.
Any of those sound applicableto your generation or either the
present generation.
Don (35:06):
I've never complained about the youth crossing their legs.
No, that's not something on myradar.
Ron (35:13):
But there's this idea that there's a customs and the kids
they follow the customs, they'renot doing what they're supposed
to right, the fear of change?
Don (35:22):
Yes, yes, exactly.
Ron (35:23):
Right, the kids.
They don't do what they'resupposed to do.
They're not like kids.
When I was a kid, you know whatI mean.
There's another quote here Ifound from Yoshida Kenko, who's
a Japanese author and Buddhistmonk from the 1300s.
He said modern fashion seemedto keep on growing more and more
debased.
The ordinary spoken languagehas also steadily coarsened.
(35:43):
People used to say raise thecarriage shafts or trim the lamp
wick.
But people today say raise itor trim it, when they should say
let the men of the palace staffstand forth.
They say torches, let's havesome light when?
Don (36:03):
when was he?
Ron (36:03):
writing.
He was writing in the 1300s,wow, and already against
pronouns yeah, exactly right.
So again this idea like weraised earlier.
They're shortening language,right.
Why can't they just saycharisma?
Why do they got to say riz?
You know, this must demonstratesome sort of shortcoming in
their faculties.
I found one by Thomas Barnes,an Englishman in the 1600s.
(36:27):
He says youth were never moresaucy yay, never more savagely
saucy.
The ancient are scorned, thehonorable are contemned, the
magistrate is not dreaded.
And so I I've really.
I feel very kind of likenourished by this idea that the
youth have always beenrebellious.
(36:47):
They've always been punk,they've always been like screw
the magistrate, you know, downwith the old right.
We're saucy, we're body right.
This is just the tale of youthright.
This goes all the way back.
I think this is not nothing.
Don (37:02):
This is not novel right, but is that the source of it?
Is it that the youth are bodyand saucy, or is it that the
older generations perceive them?
Because they are different,they do things differently, they
face different challenges, theyhave a different context, and
their approach to solutions,then, is different than what the
older generation used.
Ron (37:24):
yeah, I think that's an important part of this right
because, uh, obviously the theonly, the only constant is that
there is no constant right thatthe times change, right, society
changes the concept.
Okay, right, every society isprogressing or changing in some
way, and youth are obviouslygoing to adapt to it differently
(37:47):
.
Their experience of the worldis going to be different than
the experience of someone born20, 30, 15 years prior right.
Like they're just going to adaptin different ways.
And I'm kind of interested inthis question of like.
Why?
Why this this urge to blamethem?
Though?
Right, because, okay, let'sadmit something Are kids
(38:08):
annoying?
Yeah, do they kind of suck?
Absolutely, this is their humoralien and not as funny as uh
Bill and Ted or uh Adam Sandler,like when I was a kid.
Of course, of course, nothingthey do is as funny as uh bill
and ted or uh adam sandler, likewhen I was a kid.
Of course, of course, nothingthey do is as funny, right, um,
but I think these are likematters of taste.
So why do older generations, oryou know, feel this need to
(38:28):
kind of like, point at them andsay you're doing it wrong,
you're saucy?
Don (38:35):
whoops.
So the the question is why arewe doing this?
Ron (38:40):
yeah, why this urge?
Don (38:43):
I think, like I said, I think it comes down to the ideas
that the older generation has,um, has an initial grip on older
forms of communication, so theycan share ideas between each
other which basically are sayingthis the, this new generation
is doing things differently thanwe did.
So therefore it must be wrong,yeah, without ever really
(39:06):
acknowledging that that thecontext that the youth are
living in is different, so thatit it, it's good that it's
different, because it has tonecessarily be different.
You know, um, uh, I have anolder brother, right, who's,
who's a baby boomer, um, and uh,uh was able to raise a family
with one income and buy a houseand have kids and um, and you
(39:30):
know, uh, today, our Gen Z, likethat's not possible, you can't
do that, it's not.
Uh.
You know, with, with studentdebt and um, and the cost of
housing and and what pay is, andstagnant pay rates and and
inequality between uh pay gaps,and like it's the, the context
is different than it was in the1960s.
(39:50):
So the, the approach to solvingall those problems, has to be
different.
So I think what's happening isthe older generations are
forgetting and and obviouslythis goes back to ancient Greece
, right, they forget that the um, the context, is different for
the young generation becausewe're living in it too Like.
I'm Gen X and I'm still Gen Xand I'm going to be Gen X until
(40:13):
I die.
But my view of the world iskind of, uh, framed through that
lens of Gen X, so I don'treally know what it's like to be
a millennial.
Ron (40:23):
Right, exactly, and.
And is it impossible for you tolearn, though?
Don (40:28):
To learn what?
To?
Not to learn about it, but toto experience it right.
To be to be a, I don't know, acomrade in millennialism.
Comrade millennial, here hecomes.
Ron (40:43):
I think that's the kind of that's part of that I find so
interesting about this isbecause, like I have, yeah, like
obviously none of us canexperience right what a previous
or future generation hasexperienced right, but I do
think there is like a side, asort of drive to want to
understand or to keep thechannels of communication with
(41:06):
those generations open, right.
I think back to like the oldergenerations who raised me, and
from different people it waslike I can't like stereotype.
Every boomer I ever met wasalways mean to me and every Gen
X guy was kind of cool, right,Like it's never like that, right
, it's always going to bedifferent amongst different
people.
But like I had a grandpa whowas just like always openly
(41:29):
derisive of anything like I didas a kid and me and my friends
and siblings did, and just hadzero interest in like trying to
understand, like what is thisshow you're watching?
What is the charm of it?
What is funny?
Let me participate in this game, let me play basketball with
you, right, and like just nointerest in doing any of that
Right, just completely a closedbook in regards to like trying
(41:52):
to extend uh uh, an ear right,uh, to uh who who are the
younger kids.
Like because of that, he wasjust always sort of openly
afraid of or like angry at kidsfor like being different than he
was right for having a verydifferent life experience.
And he, yeah, yeah, we were.
Often we didn't understand thecomfort we grew up in, we didn't
(42:13):
understand how easy we had itand and a lot of those things
probably true.
Like I, I would not argue onhim that I had a much easier
upbringing than he did, growingup in like the dirt fields of
minnesota.
Don (42:24):
You know like but, it's different, like even in even
given that extreme, like there'sproblems that don't exist in
the dirt fields of minnesota,it's true that no internet
addiction no brain run yeah, um,but uh, but there's think.
So what you're bringing up isone of the solutions.
Right is that the oldergenerations need to be a little
(42:47):
bit more nimble in our abilitiesto accept new technologies,
especially communicationtechnologies technologies.
But, um, and, and I think it'sinteresting to see that that is
kind of happening right nowbecause, like you say, the, the
baby boomers and and older Gen Xis like they are using the
internet and and technologies tostream and TV now, which is a,
(43:10):
it's a replacement technology.
It's basically they're stilljust watching TV, but they're
doing it in a completelydifferent way.
The, uh, the idea of schedulingwatching TV is no longer a thing
.
You don't have to be, exceptfor the, you know, except for
the, the, the Superbowl, theworld series, nothing else
starts on time and you can justwatch whatever you want,
whenever you want.
And I I don't even know thatthat I think about that very
(43:32):
often because, like sure, I'llwatch that show.
And then you know, it doesn'tmatter if I watch it tonight or
if I watch it tomorrow, but,like there was a time when oh my
gosh, it's Thursday at seven Ihave to stop everything I'm
doing to watch the show on TV,cause it was the only time it
was available.
Ron (43:46):
Right.
I remember our family gettingtogether to watch survivor every
night.
That was like a big occasion.
Don (43:50):
We might make popcorn sometimes but there's an,
there's an esoteric element tosome of the language issues that
you have raised and I'm curiousabout, like, so, the Gen Z
slang you're bringing up Skivityin Ohio.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And some of that is intended tomake communication isolated to
(44:16):
that generation.
It's intended to not beunderstood by the baby boomers,
by the Gen X.
Ron (44:21):
Totally, totally.
Don (44:22):
And I'm wondering if that is and that's always been a
thing.
Yeah, like going back it's notnew to Gen Z this is the current
crop of slang.
But you go back to ChubbyChecker and the rock movement.
You know chubby checker and youknow and and the the rock
movement, like you know the my,what my grandpa would call the
(44:42):
ya-ya music and the.
That was rock and roll yeah,right, because it didn't have
words you could understand andbut that was part of the, that
was part of the culture of rocktoo.
Was that?
It was a, a specific youthculture that was intended to be
youth communicating to youth,and outsiders were not supposed
to understand what wasnecessarily being explicitly
said.
Then I'm wondering if thatmovement of creating this you
(45:04):
know, insular culture, uh, ofyouth, is helpful or hurtful.
So, like, should I?
Like I think it's cringy when,when I start using those words
and and the only way that I canget away with it is by verbally
acknowledging the cringe, right,so, so I have a, I have a, uh,
(45:25):
a student who, uh, will tell me,you know, goodbye, and have a
skivvity day.
And I'll say have a skivvityday, don't be Ohio, right, and
like.
I know that that sounds goofy,um, but, but, but we both are
acknowledging my use of thelanguage is intended to be
ironic.
Yes, I'm not trying to be ascool as as she is, because, well
(45:47):
, I'm not part of thatgeneration that uses those words
.
So is that that's?
My question is, is that okay?
Should the older generationstart to pick up and, you know,
know, increase their riz withthe youth, or should we hang on
to our own you know generation'sslang, so that we're not
(46:09):
encroaching on that culture?
Ron (46:11):
So I think you can do this.
I think the example youprovided is a great example of
how to do it.
Well, I think honestly, likethere's a difference between
acknowledging and and for me,it's a question like curiosity,
generational curiosity.
Right.
I feel like I remember growingup and, um, I know like I feel
like right now, the media isreally interested in portraying
(46:33):
like a lot of generationalanimosity right, it's not just
older generations being angry atGen Z, but also Gen Z and
millennials hating boomers andlike almost like a generational
war, right, and I think that'scompletely wrong.
I don't think that's healthy.
I don't think that's like I'mnot saying like yeah, one side
is right and one side is wrong.
I remember growing up and beinglike incredibly curious about
(46:56):
my like Gen X parents x parentsright, and their boomer
grandparents right I wanted tolearn about.
Like their experience, I wantedto learn about their world, like
I listened exclusively to, likemusic from the 70s and 80s,
like as a teenager right, justlike wanting to like on 8-track,
not on 8-track, no, on cds youdon't really know what it sounds
like remastered versions yeah,yeah exactly here you go again.
(47:19):
It's never enough, don but justlike wanting to understand their
experiences, right Likelearning their lingo.
I remember watching like VH1, Ilove the 90s or.
I love the 80s.
I love the 70s right All thesethings and learning their like
in-jokes and their pop culturemoments that they all kind of
shared and like really enjoyingthat kind of stuff, and I think
(47:41):
like what you are expressing isa similar desire in reverse,
right.
Like you are interested in thepresent generation, you want to
understand their culturaltouchstones.
It's not about understandingtheir language so that we can
pass as them, right, it's justabout understanding the language
so we can move a little closerto their experience, right.
And then not so that we cancommunicate with them in these
(48:03):
ways?
Cause again, that's you'reright.
That's not the point.
You can't co-opt that yeahexactly, and I think there's
this idea amongst brain rot.
They're like oh, the kids canonly speak in Skibbity and Aura
and Riziz, and you know like nowthey're uh the big one.
Now that all my students aredoing is like, uh, uh, low taper
fade is like another annoyingtiktok song that now they're all
(48:25):
repeating.
Um, that's also just part ofkids is like they just repeat
stuff they hear.
Right, like they like there'snot always as much
intentionality behind thesethings as they think.
Right, it's just I can thinkback when I was like 10, I was
probably repeating, liketerrible Adam Sandler jokes from
Billy Madison and stuff.
Right, like we all have ourcringe era.
(48:46):
Um, but, uh, again, it's notabout like I need to talk with
my kid by saying no cap.
It's like I should know what nocap means.
So it's like I should know whatno cap means.
So when my kid uses it, I knowwhat they're saying and then I
can respond to them in, you know, oxford English and they will
still be able to communicatewith me.
You know what I mean.
Does that kind of answer yourquestion or am know?
Don (49:07):
something as cool or like rad.
I can't ever remember sayingrad or radical to an adult.
I know we used it between eachother, but I'm trying to think
if I ever said it to my grandma,but I know like I would say
(49:28):
cool or whatever and like that'ssomething that she would
understand and I don't think sheever said it back no, yeah,
like she would never saysomething was cool, but no, yeah
(49:58):
, kind of what's key, and shedidn't try to, you know, alter,
change or make fun of my patternof speaking.
Um, which I think that'sactually, you know, your.
One of your questions a whileago was like why are these
generation, generational warsand conflicts happening and what
can we do about them?
I think that's really the keyis it doesn't matter, like it
doesn't matter, if the, if theboomers room, the economy, if
gen z is lazy, if you knowmillennials are ruining the job
(50:20):
market, like it.
What matters is we all havedifferent skills and experiences
, even though we're fromdifferent generations, that we
can bring to the table to wantincrease our understanding of
each other and improve whateverthe current situation is,
because the current situation iswhat needs to be improved, not
what happened 20 years ago thatmy generation did or didn't do
(50:41):
in a certain way.
Ron (50:42):
Exactly, and I think a sort of blame game is really good at
getting people to sort of checkout right and be like well, I
don't need to join in thateffort too, Right?
Like if they think I'm the onewho's bad, then screw them,
right, I'll just stay in my ownlittle generational bubble and,
uh, I don't need to kind ofextend that olive branch, extend
(51:03):
that understanding or anythinglike that.
All right, um, I, I.
You know there's a lot of wordswe could go over here and
define, but I think, like in thespirit of the show, like, if
you don't understand something akid says to you, uh, you can
ask them.
Right, like, just just ask themto say hey, what do you mean by
that?
Right, and I find usuallythey're very happy to tell you
they're like oh, this is whatthat means, right, like they're
(51:23):
just excited to know that olderpeople take an interest in them.
And you know, uh, cause, again,like, young people look to old
people for guidance, right, asmuch as they probably don't want
to say that out loud, theyfrequently do.
They're paying attention to us,whether we know it or not, and
they, they, in many ways.
You know that their behaviormimics our behavior in ways that
(51:44):
I think some, some oldergenerations, aren't always keen
to address.
All right, don, now we'vehealed the divide, we've solved
all the people.
Don (51:55):
That's good.
Ron (51:56):
We do good work here.
Don (51:57):
We do great work, we're almost as good as the internet.
Ron (52:00):
I think we are one of the internet's best, one of its
juiciest fruits.
We are.
Don (52:09):
And we appreciate all of our uncannibals, and what would
help us out is if you wouldshare your uncannibal experience
with at least one other person.
Ron (52:17):
Yeah, make a new uncannibal today.
Go out there, find someone,look them in the eye and say I
bet you are an uncannibalmaterial.
Would you like to know moreabout horse manure?
Yeah, did you know about thedyer situation the horse manure
created nearly 200 years ago orwhenever?
That was All right.
(52:37):
Thank you everyone.
This is going to wrap up ourseason this time and we're
hoping to be back with some moreuncannibal bites in the summer.
See you then.
(53:14):
Bye, thank you.
what's up lounge lizards?
Welcome back to the uncanneryuh tale of um joy and woe.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
That's uh I think we need a subtitle for the podcast
can?
Ron (00:42):
we can do that, don, just for today's episode.
No I want to go back to all ofthem.
Why don't podcasts havesubtitles?
Or we could also do theMelville thing, where it's like
Moby Dick or the Whale.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Why don't we have two titles, the Uncannery or
usually Three Guys, but nottoday.
Ron (01:10):
If you're joining us, uh, doug is still out with child and
um, that's uh great for him andbetter for us.
And uh, uh, we are here todayto talk about another fun topic.
Uh, we hope it's a fun topic,don.
Um, I was thinking you know,there's a.
The world is a crazy place.
It's a, it's a magical place.
There's a fun topic, don.
I was thinking you know theworld is a crazy place.
It's a magical place.
There's a lot in this worldsometimes.
I was just thinking thismorning.
Don (01:31):
Were you how magical.
Ron (01:33):
Yeah, what magic were you focusing on?
What magic it is to be alive.
Don (01:37):
I opened my eyes, you know, and just was happy to be part
of it.
Ron (01:42):
You know, I don't know if you're sort of joking, but I
literally feel that way mostmornings.
There was like a time in mylife where I was like kind of
afraid to go to sleep because Iwas like not sure what happens
if I don't wake up, it's likewhat if this is my last moment,
like me, having like a mildlysore neck, trying to use this
(02:02):
uncomfortable pillow to just getsix hours sleep before I go to
work?
What if this is my last momentand that would keep me up longer
?
Don (02:11):
So you could enjoy your last moment and just stretch it
out.
Yeah, exactly, staring at theceiling, melinger.
Ron (02:19):
It is magical to be here.
And you know what else ismagical?
A little thing called theinternet.
You ever heard of it?
Don (02:26):
You ever use the internet Is that does that?
Is that the thing that comes onthe the disc that they send?
Ron (02:32):
in the mail.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you've beenstockpiling those discs, right,
well, yeah they, they come with1,099 free minutes.
Don (02:39):
You gotta, you gotta, keep them in the safe.
Ron (02:42):
This is why I always ask my grandparents for internet discs
, like at Christmas time, andthen I just use those for my
internet for the rest of theyear.
What was your first kind ofmemory of the internet?
Like for some of our listeners,maybe this might I feel like
we're kind of in a privilegedsituation, kind of like like in
2000,.
Like anyone who fought in WorldWar II, it's kind of like we
(03:02):
were all like mining theirbrains for like what was it like
?
Don (03:05):
I feel like you and I are similar it's true, we are the,
the gentrified, the old, thecalcified, uh veterans yes
exactly.
Ron (03:12):
You know what the past was like we're matt damon at the
beginning of private ryan and um, we remember a time without the
internet.
So what was it like when you,when you, received the internet?
Don (03:22):
um, oh, so we're not talking about before then.
We're talking about the momentof.
Ron (03:27):
No, nothing before the internet matters Don obviously.
Don (03:32):
I don't know about that.
I had MTV before the internet.
Well, actually I have some verystrong memories of the very
first moments of using theinternet.
I'm not positive, this isactually the very first time I
encountered the internet, but mystrongest memory of uh, of
internet was right when, uh, uh,I started college and uh, and
(03:52):
so friends from high school,we'd all gone to different
universities and uh, uh, my bestfriend at the time, uh, we were
roommates and uh, we werefriends with a, um, a friend
who'd gone back east to college.
So we, I'm trying to think whatit was called like Usenet.
Ron (04:10):
That was definitely a.
Thing.
Don (04:13):
So it was magic because our computers were connected, like
our computer in our dorm roomand her computer back east, and
we could type live back andforth to each other.
But that was all it was, wasjust like just live typing it
was like text screen, like itlooks like ms-dos and just like
you know, you put in like hi,how are you?
(04:34):
And then like a second later,I'm good, you know a telegram
with a keyboard.
Ron (04:38):
That's what it was exactly.
Don (04:40):
Yeah, full stop and uh, but uh, but I have, uh, I don't
know why I had such a goodmemory, but it, we had fun and
it was uh, it was magic, itliterally, because sure, I mean
we could call and right, right,like to see it visually appear
on your screen that you knowwith yeah it was a.
It was a different kind ofcommunication.
Ron (05:01):
It was uh, yeah there must be something about like any new
kind of communication device.
Like whether or not there mustbe something about like any new
kind of communication device,like whether or not it actually
makes communication simpler.
It's just sort of fascinatingto use right For sure.
Don (05:13):
Like I mean along those lines, beepers would be the.
Ron (05:17):
My dad had a beeper, for sure.
Don (05:19):
So, and the codes that came with the beepers right, and you
had a 411 or a 911, right.
Because you couldn't send anylike.
All you could send were numbers.
Ron (05:29):
You couldn't send any actual you know language.
This is how I feel about hamradios.
I, like a few years ago, gotinto a ham ham radios with my
friends and we all went and gotham radio licenses.
And mostly because we were doinga lot of like off-roading in
the desert.
No-transcript, it's way moredifficult.
(06:13):
It's a pain in the butt.
You got to like dial in aspecific frequency and hope that
the cloud coverage is right sothat you can beam it off of a
repeater in the somewhere in thehills of Los Angeles.
But it's just so cool that whenit works it's like wow, I'm,
I'm talking to someone in oregonright now.
Wow, you know?
Um, my earliest memories of theinternet I think I was too young
for it to like be useful for me.
(06:35):
Like I want to say I was six orseven maybe when I kind of
remember us having the internetin our house and by that time it
was like aol, uh, on the disc,uh, my family was using, I think
like my parents had an aolaccount and I remember kind of
like that splash screen andthere was definitely like
pictures and stuff there.
But I was just kind of like,okay, whatever.
And then when I became like apre-teen teenager, um, we still
(06:59):
had aol.
And that's when, like aolinstant messenger became like
huge in my life, which was justlike uh, um, I guess like
WhatsApp or something, but onyour desktop computer, right,
you log in.
You log in, you have a usernameand then you have like an
address book of other people'susernames you found and then you
could just talk to them.
And I remember like severalnights me like telling my
(07:22):
parents frustratedly like yougotta get off the computer
because we had like one computer.
Right, that's how most peopleused to have one computer, one
phone line yeah, yeah, exactlyright you could only use one at
a time dad got a phone call,then the connection broke and I
need to hog the the computer forthe next hour and a half so I
could talk with my friends onaol, instant messenger or aim,
and my parents were just beinglike what are you talking about?
(07:43):
Like this, this is notconducive to the rest of the
family.
Just call them on the phone oryou'll see them at school
tomorrow.
Who cares?
I was like you don't get it.
This is where action happensand I do remember people spoke
differently on AOL instantmessenger.
If you found someone's likeusername, you could start a
conversation with people youwould never talk with in real
life, like popular girls andjocks and stuff, and everyone
(08:07):
was sort of like just talkingand because they couldn't see
your face.
I remember like having likereally intimate conversations
with kids who I would like wewould go to school and see them
next day and never acknowledgethat we had been speaking.
Don (08:19):
How do you know it was really them you were being.
It was.
It was pre catfishing is whatwas happening to you.
You were chatting with with,it's possible old men in the
cabin somewhere pretending to bea pop girl at your middle
school.
Ron (08:32):
This is totally something my mother accused me of doing
once because I was talking withuh.
There was also a forum backthen for like warhammer.
I went, obviously, when I was ateenager, I was into warhammer
and I found a forum and thenpeople were like, oh you know,
dming each other outside of thisuh forum, and I was like, mom,
these are just my Warhammerfriends.
You don't get it.
And they're like, they'reprobably very old.
Why do they want to talk to youat all?
(08:53):
And uh, to be fair, I don'thave an answer to that question.
She's probably right.
I probably shouldn't be.
It was just fun, it was cool,it was different, it was
democratic, it was the promiseof the internet realized on.
But would you be surprised tolearn that maybe, maybe the
internet secretly harbored adark and foreboding reality at
(09:15):
all times.
Don (09:16):
I can't even imagine what dark purposes the internet could
be used for.
Ron (09:20):
No.
Yeah, it's just a force forgood.
It's only a force for good.
It's only a force for good.
It's only a force forcommunication.
Don (09:25):
It's how we spread true information, it's how we connect
with other people and it has norepercussions on the way we
behave in the real space.
It just brings goodness, yeah.
Ron (09:36):
Until Generation Z.
Don (09:41):
They screw it all up, yeah.
Ron (09:42):
Have you heard about Generation Z, gen Z, the Zoomers
?
Is it Gen Z?
Gen Z might be.
Yeah, if you're across the pond, you might call them.
Gen Z.
Sorry if you didn't know.
We were talking about.
English listeners.
Gen Z, as you're probably aware, is not even actually the
youngest generation.
I guess the youngest generationright now is Gen Alpha.
(10:04):
We've moved on to Gen Alpha.
Don (10:06):
How long do you have to be a generation before you get a
name?
Ron (10:08):
I think it's going way faster.
We've gone way fast yeah yeahyeah, we had.
Don (10:11):
Millennial and then Gen Z and there's too fast, you're
supposed to have like 40 yearsin a generation, 25 years at
least.
Ron (10:20):
There's the boomer generation, right which is like
a post-World War II.
This was like what?
48 through, I think like 60.
Yeah, right, yeah, 64 orsomething like that.
Right, these are, this is theboomer generation, right?
These are like the oldestpeople in society alive today.
Don (10:36):
Right.
Ron (10:37):
And then you've got before them, you've got the silent
generation, I think Right, andthey're like the generation who
kind of like, came of age during, like Vietnam, right, and so
what they would have been.
Don (10:54):
I don't know.
59 to such and such.
Who cares?
Before 46.
Okay, Born before 46.
Ron (10:59):
Okay, okay.
So silent precedes boomers,right, right, okay.
And then you got boomers, andthen you've got Gen X.
Gen X, correct Gen X is that'sme.
Then what would that be?
69?
Don (11:09):
through- 65.
Ron (11:10):
65.
80.
80.
Okay, cool, that's Gen X, so 15years.
Then you've got the millennialgeneration and that's like what,
80, 81, through through 95, 96,96, okay.
(11:31):
And then you've got gen z, whowas everyone from 97 through
what?
20, 2010, 10, 11, yeah, andthen after that, anyone born
like 2011 onwards we're nowcalling gen alpha and um, which
I don't think is fair.
Don (11:41):
They haven't, they didn't earn it.
Ron (11:43):
They haven't done anything yet to earn an alpha name.
Don (11:46):
They should just be no name .
Ron (11:48):
It's a super like Apple Microsoft way of naming the
generations Like oh, we ran out,we got to Z, so let's start
over again.
Don (11:56):
This is Xbox One and it's the fifth one.
Let's use the Greek letters.
Yeah, exactly.
Ron (12:04):
So those are our generations and really, if
you've been paying attention, atleast in the United States, I'm
pretty sure in almost all theWestern world, actually I'd say
probably the entire world Peopledon't like Gen Z.
People think Gen Z are bad kids.
They're bad people.
They're entitled.
They're lazy.
Their minds are addled fromtheir overconsumption of the
(12:27):
internet.
What was once so pure and goodfor you and me, Don, absolutely.
They have warped to their darkdesigns, I told you, they ruin
everything and this, I think,kind of like made waves, or at
least made a splash, when aTikTok song was released in
October of 2023.
Don (12:43):
What was it?
Ron (12:44):
A TikTok, a TikTok song.
Don (12:44):
Well, you song was released um in october of 2023 what's it
?
Ron (12:46):
a tic tac, a tic tac song, well, you know, like the game
tic-tac-toe.
Well, imagine if you changesome of those vowels.
So, uh, it was tic-tac.
And then instead of a game, itwas a web application that
people used to share, uh, cutevideos, oh, like a newsreel.
Like a newsreel exactly.
Yeah, like you used to getbefore you saw a film Before the
cereal plays at the movie showat the movie house.
(13:07):
Yeah, exactly Right.
This TikTok video makes it past.
It's a sort of Gen Z realm,where it was probably meant to
remain, and older generationsare listening to the song and
they're going.
What is wrong with the kids Can?
Don (13:22):
I play you a little bit of the song.
The song is written by Gen Z.
Ron (13:25):
The song is written and performed by a member of Gen Z,
so it's a it's a perfect exampleof their um, their, their
culture exactly.
Yeah, this is a, this isanthropology we're conducting
here all right here's the songpretty cool, right?
Don (13:59):
um well, the the yeah the way out, done what I was just
the.
It seems like it was a littlebit off key.
I was was.
Ron (14:12):
Oh yeah no, I mean, it's clearly a young performer.
They've got time to grow intothat sort of talent.
This song features a lot ofwords that people didn't
understand, maybe still don'tunderstand, in case you need,
like you know, a recital if youdidn't hear it entirely, if you
were just sort of like paralyzedby what was happening.
(14:34):
The song goes Sticking out yourgat for the Rizzler, you're so
skibbity, you're so phantom tax,I just want to be your sigma
freaking.
Come here, give me your ohio.
Um, do you recognize any ofthese words?
Don, can you, can you like?
Don (14:49):
lexicon.
I know where ohio is.
Okay, yeah, um back east.
Ron (14:53):
It's uh important place it's west of we love ohio we
love our ohio listeners.
Any other words?
You know what a ghat is?
Don (15:01):
sticking out your ghat.
Um, that's the sound that thefrogs make when they when they
do with their tongue and then itlands on the bug gotcha is that
a budweiser reference.
Ron (15:17):
Um your, your ghat is your behind.
Um, this is a it's, this is auh, like your, your buttocks, um
uh why don't they just use thatword?
Then everybody would understandwell, because this is a sort of
like a mutation of like uh,african-american vernacular
english, which is kind of likewhere a lot of slang terms come
(15:38):
from.
But like this idea, like youwould see someone who is so
prodigious in that in their, intheir backwards capacity I think
I guess we could say, um, thatyou would kind of turn your head
and you say something like goddamn, right, um.
And so they've like, shortenedthis and made it obviously more
appropriate and, uh, removed godfrom the mix by saying gyat,
(16:02):
all right.
So sticking out your god meanslike sticking out your, your,
your gyat.
Given gifts for the rizzler.
Any idea what, who a rizzler is?
Don (16:08):
those are the.
That's the licorice.
I don't really like therizzlers, those, those do suck
You're totally right.
Ron (16:13):
I hate those too.
The Rizzler is to have.
Rizz is a thing you can have.
Rizz is a noun.
If you have Rizz, that meansyou have charisma.
It means you have what we mightcall moxie.
Don (16:31):
So they're just not saying all the no, these are all yeah
exactly, these are decapitatedwords.
Ron (16:37):
Right, Mutated English words that have a meaning but
needs to be parsed out.
Unless you are a member of GenZ, right, you know these words.
You breathe these words.
You're like a fish in the sea.
Right, this is water to you.
Don (16:53):
Were they born with this truncated knowledge, or their
brains are just.
They're not able to say thewhole word.
Ron (16:59):
I think their brains just can't say the words.
I think they uh, yeah, it'sobviously because they got
tiktok brain and characterlimits.
Uh, it means they just can't.
That's what it is, it's twitter.
Yeah, yeah, they can only speakin 144 character thoughts
exactly, and this is what I wantto talk about today.
Don.
This song was considered anexample of a phenomenon that
(17:20):
people are calling brain rot.
Does that?
Don (17:26):
sound like a good thing to you, Don.
I have a good thing.
No, I know people, though Ithink that I can.
Ron (17:33):
We all know people.
Brain rot was the 2024 word ofthe year for the Oxford
Dictionary, and they define itas thus Brain rot is the
supposed deterioration of aperson's mental or intellectual
state, especially viewed as theresult of overconsumption of
material, now particularlyonline content, considered to be
(17:55):
trivial or unchallenging.
Don (17:57):
it is also something characterized as likely to lead
to such deterioration so it'sboth the, the manifestation of
the diminished capacity, as wellas the, the, the content causer
right, yeah the, the catalystof that state.
Ron (18:15):
Um, and this word is actually created by Gen Z.
Right, this is a word they useto describe a lot of the content
they engage with online thevideos, the memes, the jokes
they tell.
Right, they will see something,they will laugh and they'll say
like man, that's brain rot.
Sometimes they use itpejoratively to describe
themselves.
I've it pejorative pejorativelyto describe themselves.
(18:36):
I've seen it being usedpejoratively to describe younger
generations.
I've seen gen z bashing on genalpha already being like that's
gen alpha stuff.
Don (18:45):
Don't get us confused with that skibbity ohio gyat stuff
right, because they want to sayintelligent things like that
instead of whatever ohio orwhatever alpha saying exactly
right, alpha's just babblingyeah, alpha's babbling, they're
just like crawling out of thecrib, and they're.
Ron (19:01):
They don't understand how to utilize or navigate the
internet, unlike gen z,obviously, right it's kind of
like that, uh that batman 3.
Quote by uh bane.
You remember your batman 3?
Quotes by bane where he says Iwas born in the dark.
I think gen z thinks they wereborn in the internet and they
mastered it.
They have a mastery over itrather than like everyone else,
(19:21):
who's just a tourist on it.
Don (19:22):
I don't remember any quote from bane, because he, yeah, it
was terrible um.
Ron (19:30):
So according to oxford dictionary, the first recorded
use of brain rot was actuallyfrom 1854 and it's actually
henry david thoreau.
The internet is that old.
Don (19:39):
Thoreau was on the internet .
Yeah, Thoreau.
Ron (19:41):
That's why he was out there .
Don (19:42):
That's why he was in the woods.
Yeah, he was like I got to getoff Twitter man.
Ron (19:49):
When Thoreau is writing in Walden he has this quote.
He says while England endeavorsto cure the potato rot, will
not any endeavor to cure thebrain rot which prevails so much
more widely and fatally as thissort of criticism or indictment
against his modern age rightthat people's brains are not
(20:10):
being nourished Worse thanpotatoes?
Definitely, I don't know man,one feeds my stomach and the
other feeds my mind, I'm sureEmerson would have said to him.
So this idea that this brainrot is starting to cause like
what I think is a kind of newmodern moral panic, right, there
(20:30):
are people who there's a mentalhealth clinic that thinks brain
rot is like an actual illness.
Right, they define it as amental fogginess, a lethargy,
reduced attention span,cognitive decline that results
from an overabundance of screentime.
And in a lot of cases this canbe true.
Right, with like um studies andresearch about the effects of
(20:56):
like um internet, uh, prolongedinternet usage.
Don (20:59):
Like in both adults and adolescents I am actually a
little bit in, especially withadolescents like the, the, the
measurement of the ability forsustained attention is is
completely, it's almostnon-existent, um, compared to to
even gen z, even Gen X, whichwas a media generation.
(21:20):
We did have a lot of TV and alot of changes in how TV was
delivered and cable TV wasinvented, so there's more than
three channels.
But no, the studies have beenshowing that current teenagers
so both Gen Z and on the edgesof Gen Alpha they literally
cannot put their phone down.
(21:41):
It's a physical inabilitybecause they're so addicted to
the constant stream ofinformation.
Ron (21:48):
Yeah, there's a term for it .
There's nomophobia, which is aliteral fear of not having
access to your phone, not havingaccess to these screens, like a
literal fear of not havingaccess to your phone not having
access to these screens.
Recent studies I found like anumber of different ones, but
they all seem to kind of agreeon this number that teenagers
today are spending around eighthours a day on average on
screens in general, whetherthose are television screens,
(22:10):
desktop, laptop screens, tablets, phones, right, which is up
much higher than, like, say,2015, which that was closer to
like five hours.
Right, we definitely see a lotof rise in that screen usage and
in that internet usage.
Internet addiction is like areal thing, right, this idea
that you just sort of can't getoff the internet, and this is
(22:33):
largely linked to just like thechemical reaction that occurs
like when we are engagingpredominantly with like social
media content that is designedto be very bite-sized, very high
interest, but very likeforgettable.
Right like very disposable.
Right like so, uh, you'veprobably heard the term doom
scrolling, right, this isanother kind of popular modern
idea.
What's doom scrolling?
Don (22:53):
uh, uh, I don't know.
Ron (22:58):
Oh, okay, sorry, I had faith in that.
I thought you were on top ofthings, don.
Uh, I read, I read books.
Okay, maybe you doom read, doomscrolling.
Is this idea that, like youknow, you're on Twitter, uh,
you're on Reddit, you're on, uh,you know, any of these social
media platforms Facebook, Iguess and you know, you're on
Twitter, you're on Reddit,you're on, you know, any of
these social media platformsFacebook, I guess and you know,
(23:18):
each of these platforms has afeed that's just basically just
giving you headlines of thingsor quick images, and you know,
when we see somethinginteresting, it gives us a
little dose of dopamine in ourbrain and that's pleasurable,
that's fun, like, ooh, that'sfunny, that image of that cat,
or wow, that's's insane.
I can't believe that happenedtoday in the news right, and
then you just scroll past it andthat you know that interaction
(23:40):
takes probably less than twoseconds right, or three seconds
sometimes, and uh, it becomessort of addictive to just keep
scrolling, scrolling, scrolling.
But the idea of doom scrollingsthat you realize on some
fundamental level, this isn'tactually nourishing.
Even though your brain isreceiving this sort of small
dopamine hit, you're notactually like nourished or
enjoying your time and you oftenfeel like you can't leave it
(24:00):
right.
Don (24:01):
You're stuck, you're glued to your screen right that the
length of engagement with anyparticular image on a screen is
much reduced.
So you know we talk aboutscreen time, but I think that
(24:23):
it's important that youdifferentiate between like
office screen time, where Imight be staring at a document
you know for an hour or two onmy screen, but it's still just
one document that I'm engagedwith versus you know, the
scrolling on the platformsyou're talking about where
literally it's less than twoseconds and you've processed the
entire.
You know information that isbeing delivered to you and then
(24:44):
you move on to the next item.
So it's not there's nosustained attention to anything,
it's.
Ron (24:48):
It's it's training you to only pay attention for those
micro slices yeah, and I foundsome interesting facts about,
like if we were to divideinternet usage by generation,
right, Like, what are thosespecific tasks that people are
spending the most time on Right?
And if we look at boomers righttoday's, you know, elder
(25:10):
statesmen, the eldest amongst usthe most venerable amongst us,
right, um, they spend most oftheir internet time uh,
streaming tv right, like that'swhere the majority of their uh
internet usage comes from.
Um and uh gen x they're.
They spend also the majority oftheir time streaming television
(25:31):
right.
So again, the idea is likethat's their.
It seems like the implicationis like that's how they know
screens most.
That's like screens wheretelevision sets right and you
can hook up the internet to themand now you can watch netflix
or hulu on it.
So it's a replacementtechnology not a innovative
exactly right um millennials.
They spend most of their time umon a uh uh, on a desktop
(25:55):
computer or a laptop.
Don (25:58):
Playing Doom.
Ron (25:59):
Yeah, playing Doom, exactly Living the good old days.
And also the majority of theirtime, though, is spent for work,
so they spend less of theirtime, still a lot of time
streaming TV, streaming musicand social media browsing, but
the majority by a couple minutes.
Here they say about, on average, three hours and 48 minutes
they spend uh on screens doingwork and then, like, the next
(26:21):
highest would be three hours and20 minutes uh doing social
media browsing.
Um gen z um has the highestamount of uh social media
browsing, at three hours and 28minutes um and uh.
They uh also spend three hoursand 37 minutes just streaming
music, but their usage ofscreens in all categories are
much higher than previousgenerations.
(26:41):
So they are definitely engagingwith it much more than previous
generations.
And, yeah, there are certainpernicious effects that have
been associated with it.
They have decreased offlinecommunity participation
Oftentimes they reportrelationship issues or decreased
(27:03):
academic performance.
Don (27:05):
Decreased offline community participation.
Is that what you said?
That means they just don't gooutside and play, is that?
That's exactly yeah, that's avery fancy way to say that.
Ron (27:14):
Yeah, I've had students researching this idea lately and
this is why it's mostly in myhead.
I found this article aboutbrain rot and I was kind of like
I work with young people, Iwork with adolescents, I should
get their point of view on this,and so I showed them a lot of
these articles.
And you regretted that decisioninstantly when you asked.
Yeah, one of the questions Iasked them was do you think
(27:35):
teenagers are dating more orless now than they used to?
And they had their own ideas.
But I made them go research andfind articles about it and a
lot of them came back withevidence that there was reduced
dating amongst Gen Z than therewas in previous generations.
And when I asked them to comeup with reasons why, oftentimes
I don't think their reasons wereas fully researched as they
(27:57):
think, but a lot of times theyjust came up with boys are
playing too many video games.
Don (28:04):
And what was their source of information for how much
dating previous generations haddone?
Ron (28:09):
I think there are a number of studies.
Don (28:11):
I think that your adolescent students worked
through oh.
Ron (28:16):
I mean like, uh, I'm having them find articles online and
sure, yes, we can.
You know those are ofquestionable veracity frequently
.
Um, but it seemed like therewas some academic consensus that
, um, I think one of the metricsthey're using is like where do
people meet um their spouses andstuff?
And there's just like a generaldecline in spouses being met at
(28:37):
work or in clubs or in schools.
Don (28:40):
I meet my wife usually at home.
Like every time I come home,she's there.
Ron (28:44):
That's the problem.
Right, that's some boomer humor.
So, anyways, obviously, theinternet, yes, it can have some
very bad effects effects righton us, right, it's not.
It's not all gold, it's not allgravy, as the kids say, or
maybe once said, um but um, thisarticle I found, uh was trying
(29:07):
to make a counter argument thatlike, hey, you know, the older
generations aren't totallyunderstanding this brain rot
idea and there's a little bitthere.
They're sort of like missingthe point.
This is an article by uh, angelgal Mendoza, who is a
self-proclaimed member of Gen Z,an ambassador, if you will, and
he kind of says like look, yes,are there, are there negative
impacts of like, uh, um,internet addiction and social
(29:31):
media and all these things likethat are affecting my generation
.
Of course, obviously, obviously.
But this like brain rot thingis not something to be targeted
and sort of like it's not anissue to be fixed it's not
should be embraced.
Don (29:42):
Yeah, just let them wither that on the vine.
Ron (29:45):
That's kind of what he's saying.
It's like he's brain.
He says brain rot is not amedical condition and he thinks
oxford dictionary kind of missesthe mark.
It is not like brain rotdoesn't describe like the
literal um, uh, uh deteriorationof your mind.
It is, it's a perceiveddeterioration of your mind that
is kind of caused by what hedescribes mendoza describes as
(30:06):
predominantly like generationalin jokes, slang, and uh and and
uh humor so it's not, but it is.
Don (30:18):
we just, but, like you, just cited a study that that
told us that the the moreinternet usage is causing a
decrease in attention span,ability to focus, and like it's
making us dumber.
Ron (30:30):
Sure, but I would, I would like to argue that it hasn't.
Hasn't every generation had,like, had their generation had
their issue, had their moment ofdecline almost right, or their
moment of perceived decline,where we kind of like get up in
arms and we collectively, asadults, say, hey, there's
something wrong with these kidsand we need to step in and fix
(30:53):
them, otherwise, this magicalgame that we experience every
day we wake up in our bed, it'sall going to go away.
It's all good.
It's all going to be for not, doyou think?
Hasn't that happened before?
Don (31:06):
Well, I mean, sure, I mean the baby boomers complained
about.
Ron (31:10):
Gen.
Don (31:10):
X, but they were wrong about everything that they
brought up.
That's different.
Ron (31:13):
That's different.
What were the complaints leviedagainst you, Don, when you were
growing up?
What was wrong with Gen?
Don (31:19):
X.
Well, video games was one ofthem, so we were Pac-Man and
Mario Mario.
Yeah.
Ron (31:26):
Spending too much time with the Pac-Man arcade machine.
Don (31:29):
And asteroids, and MTV was another one.
What was wrong with MTVtv socool?
So it was.
It was actually a lot of thesimilar uh complaints you're
describing now.
So it was too much time, so itwould be something that you turn
on in the afternoon and youwould watch it, um, and and,
rather than doing other thingslike play outside or um, meet
(31:54):
with friends or do your homeworkor like.
So it was uh, it was a, a mediadistraction from, and this was
this is original MTV.
So this is when MTV was actuallymusic television before it not
skateboarding reality TV shows,right, right, so, uh so yeah
those were the, those were theand probably the content of MTV
(32:14):
was probably cause for alarm.
Ron (32:15):
Right, you can't be watching Madonna.
You know Satanic Panic and yeah.
Don (32:21):
And you had to Judas Priest and Satan is going to enter.
Enter your soul through thetelevision screen.
Ron (32:28):
Yeah, and and as a millennial, I feel like I.
You know, I, my, my whole adultexistence has been some sort of
blame game of why my generationis tanking the economy.
Don (32:39):
Well, because they are.
They are, you can't hold a job.
You move around from place toplace.
Nothing is important enough.
Ron (32:46):
We're getting married too late and we like dogs and cats.
Don (32:50):
The population is going to collapse.
Ron (32:51):
Yeah, exactly right.
And none of these have any sortof material motivators.
They're only psychological,social right.
They're locked inside of ourbrain cases, our brain stems, as
it were.
When I was researching thisepisode, I came across this
phenomenon called generationalblame, which is this idea that,
(33:13):
pretty much at any given time inhistory, the older generation
has uh blamed the, the troubles,the travails of the modern era
on the youth.
The youth are at fault, theyouth are, uh, there's something
rotten in the state of theyouth you know what I?
mean um, and?
And I found a quote.
(33:34):
This quote is often attributedto Socrates.
You remember Socrates?
You know Socrates, socrates,yeah, socrates.
That's a Gen X joke, it is.
That's from Bill and Ted's.
Yes, exactly.
Socrates has been misattributedto this quote, but I found a guy
(33:56):
who was doing a dissertationabout what the classic Greeks of
antiquity thought about theyouth, and the guy making this
dissertation summarized theirindictments of the youth as
being about luxury, bad manners,contempt for authority,
disrespect to elders and a lovefor chatter in place of exercise
(34:16):
.
Children began to be thetyrants, not the slaves, of
their households.
They no longer rose from theirseats when an elder entered the
room.
They contradicted their parents.
They chattered before company.
They gobbled up the dainties attable and committed various
offenses against Hellenistictastes, such as crossing their
legs.
They tyrannized over.
They did cross their legs, orthey didn't.
(34:37):
They crossing their legs?
Uh, they tyrannized over.
Uh, they did cross their legs,or they didn't.
Don (34:39):
They uh said they crossed their legs.
Yeah, yeah, you're supposed toman spread in ancient hellenic
culture.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
Um, and these kids tyrannized over the pedagogy and
school masters right, who wouldhave been the teachers?
Ron (34:51):
right, um, and so this is like a list of just things this
man managed to find aboutancient Greeks complaining about
the youth.
Any of those sound applicableto your generation or either the
present generation.
Don (35:06):
I've never complained about the youth crossing their legs.
No, that's not something on myradar.
Ron (35:13):
But there's this idea that there's a customs and the kids
they follow the customs, they'renot doing what they're supposed
to right, the fear of change?
Don (35:22):
Yes, yes, exactly.
Ron (35:23):
Right, the kids.
They don't do what they'resupposed to do.
They're not like kids.
When I was a kid, you know whatI mean.
There's another quote here Ifound from Yoshida Kenko, who's
a Japanese author and Buddhistmonk from the 1300s.
He said modern fashion seemedto keep on growing more and more
debased.
The ordinary spoken languagehas also steadily coarsened.
(35:43):
People used to say raise thecarriage shafts or trim the lamp
wick.
But people today say raise itor trim it, when they should say
let the men of the palace staffstand forth.
They say torches, let's havesome light when?
Don (36:03):
when was he?
Ron (36:03):
writing.
He was writing in the 1300s,wow, and already against
pronouns yeah, exactly right.
So again this idea like weraised earlier.
They're shortening language,right.
Why can't they just saycharisma?
Why do they got to say riz?
You know, this must demonstratesome sort of shortcoming in
their faculties.
I found one by Thomas Barnes,an Englishman in the 1600s.
(36:27):
He says youth were never moresaucy yay, never more savagely
saucy.
The ancient are scorned, thehonorable are contemned, the
magistrate is not dreaded.
And so I I've really.
I feel very kind of likenourished by this idea that the
youth have always beenrebellious.
(36:47):
They've always been punk,they've always been like screw
the magistrate, you know, downwith the old right.
We're saucy, we're body right.
This is just the tale of youthright.
This goes all the way back.
I think this is not nothing.
Don (37:02):
This is not novel right, but is that the source of it?
Is it that the youth are bodyand saucy, or is it that the
older generations perceive them?
Because they are different,they do things differently, they
face different challenges, theyhave a different context, and
their approach to solutions,then, is different than what the
older generation used.
Ron (37:24):
yeah, I think that's an important part of this right
because, uh, obviously the theonly, the only constant is that
there is no constant right thatthe times change, right, society
changes the concept.
Okay, right, every society isprogressing or changing in some
way, and youth are obviouslygoing to adapt to it differently
(37:47):
.
Their experience of the worldis going to be different than
the experience of someone born20, 30, 15 years prior right.
Like they're just going to adaptin different ways.
And I'm kind of interested inthis question of like.
Why?
Why this this urge to blamethem?
Though?
Right, because, okay, let'sadmit something Are kids
(38:08):
annoying?
Yeah, do they kind of suck?
Absolutely, this is their humoralien and not as funny as uh
Bill and Ted or uh Adam Sandler,like when I was a kid.
Of course, of course, nothingthey do is as funny as uh bill
and ted or uh adam sandler, likewhen I was a kid.
Of course, of course, nothingthey do is as funny, right, um,
but I think these are likematters of taste.
So why do older generations, oryou know, feel this need to
(38:28):
kind of like, point at them andsay you're doing it wrong,
you're saucy?
Don (38:35):
whoops.
So the the question is why arewe doing this?
Ron (38:40):
yeah, why this urge?
Don (38:43):
I think, like I said, I think it comes down to the ideas
that the older generation has,um, has an initial grip on older
forms of communication, so theycan share ideas between each
other which basically are sayingthis the, this new generation
is doing things differently thanwe did.
So therefore it must be wrong,yeah, without ever really
(39:06):
acknowledging that that thecontext that the youth are
living in is different, so thatit it, it's good that it's
different, because it has tonecessarily be different.
You know, um, uh, I have anolder brother, right, who's,
who's a baby boomer, um, and uh,uh was able to raise a family
with one income and buy a houseand have kids and um, and you
(39:30):
know, uh, today, our Gen Z, likethat's not possible, you can't
do that, it's not.
Uh.
You know, with, with studentdebt and um, and the cost of
housing and and what pay is, andstagnant pay rates and and
inequality between uh pay gaps,and like it's the, the context
is different than it was in the1960s.
(39:50):
So the, the approach to solvingall those problems, has to be
different.
So I think what's happening isthe older generations are
forgetting and and obviouslythis goes back to ancient Greece
, right, they forget that the um, the context, is different for
the young generation becausewe're living in it too Like.
I'm Gen X and I'm still Gen Xand I'm going to be Gen X until
(40:13):
I die.
But my view of the world iskind of, uh, framed through that
lens of Gen X, so I don'treally know what it's like to be
a millennial.
Ron (40:23):
Right, exactly, and.
And is it impossible for you tolearn, though?
Don (40:28):
To learn what?
To?
Not to learn about it, but toto experience it right.
To be to be a, I don't know, acomrade in millennialism.
Comrade millennial, here hecomes.
Ron (40:43):
I think that's the kind of that's part of that I find so
interesting about this isbecause, like I have, yeah, like
obviously none of us canexperience right what a previous
or future generation hasexperienced right, but I do
think there is like a side, asort of drive to want to
understand or to keep thechannels of communication with
(41:06):
those generations open, right.
I think back to like the oldergenerations who raised me, and
from different people it waslike I can't like stereotype.
Every boomer I ever met wasalways mean to me and every Gen
X guy was kind of cool, right,Like it's never like that, right
, it's always going to bedifferent amongst different
people.
But like I had a grandpa whowas just like always openly
(41:29):
derisive of anything like I didas a kid and me and my friends
and siblings did, and just hadzero interest in like trying to
understand, like what is thisshow you're watching?
What is the charm of it?
What is funny?
Let me participate in this game, let me play basketball with
you, right, and like just nointerest in doing any of that
Right, just completely a closedbook in regards to like trying
(41:52):
to extend uh uh, an ear right,uh, to uh who who are the
younger kids.
Like because of that, he wasjust always sort of openly
afraid of or like angry at kidsfor like being different than he
was right for having a verydifferent life experience.
And he, yeah, yeah, we were.
Often we didn't understand thecomfort we grew up in, we didn't
(42:13):
understand how easy we had itand and a lot of those things
probably true.
Like I, I would not argue onhim that I had a much easier
upbringing than he did, growingup in like the dirt fields of
minnesota.
Don (42:24):
You know like but, it's different, like even in even
given that extreme, like there'sproblems that don't exist in
the dirt fields of minnesota,it's true that no internet
addiction no brain run yeah, um,but uh, but there's think.
So what you're bringing up isone of the solutions.
Right is that the oldergenerations need to be a little
(42:47):
bit more nimble in our abilitiesto accept new technologies,
especially communicationtechnologies technologies.
But, um, and, and I think it'sinteresting to see that that is
kind of happening right nowbecause, like you say, the, the
baby boomers and and older Gen Xis like they are using the
internet and and technologies tostream and TV now, which is a,
(43:10):
it's a replacement technology.
It's basically they're stilljust watching TV, but they're
doing it in a completelydifferent way.
The, uh, the idea of schedulingwatching TV is no longer a thing
.
You don't have to be, exceptfor the, you know, except for
the, the, the Superbowl, theworld series, nothing else
starts on time and you can justwatch whatever you want,
whenever you want.
And I I don't even know thatthat I think about that very
(43:32):
often because, like sure, I'llwatch that show.
And then you know, it doesn'tmatter if I watch it tonight or
if I watch it tomorrow, but,like there was a time when oh my
gosh, it's Thursday at seven Ihave to stop everything I'm
doing to watch the show on TV,cause it was the only time it
was available.
Ron (43:46):
Right.
I remember our family gettingtogether to watch survivor every
night.
That was like a big occasion.
Don (43:50):
We might make popcorn sometimes but there's an,
there's an esoteric element tosome of the language issues that
you have raised and I'm curiousabout, like, so, the Gen Z
slang you're bringing up Skivityin Ohio.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And some of that is intended tomake communication isolated to
(44:16):
that generation.
It's intended to not beunderstood by the baby boomers,
by the Gen X.
Ron (44:21):
Totally, totally.
Don (44:22):
And I'm wondering if that is and that's always been a
thing.
Yeah, like going back it's notnew to Gen Z this is the current
crop of slang.
But you go back to ChubbyChecker and the rock movement.
You know chubby checker and youknow and and the the rock
movement, like you know the my,what my grandpa would call the
(44:42):
ya-ya music and the.
That was rock and roll yeah,right, because it didn't have
words you could understand andbut that was part of the, that
was part of the culture of rocktoo.
Was that?
It was a, a specific youthculture that was intended to be
youth communicating to youth,and outsiders were not supposed
to understand what wasnecessarily being explicitly
said.
Then I'm wondering if thatmovement of creating this you
(45:04):
know, insular culture, uh, ofyouth, is helpful or hurtful.
So, like, should I?
Like I think it's cringy when,when I start using those words
and and the only way that I canget away with it is by verbally
acknowledging the cringe, right,so, so I have a, I have a, uh,
(45:25):
a student who, uh, will tell me,you know, goodbye, and have a
skivvity day.
And I'll say have a skivvityday, don't be Ohio, right, and
like.
I know that that sounds goofy,um, but, but, but we both are
acknowledging my use of thelanguage is intended to be
ironic.
Yes, I'm not trying to be ascool as as she is, because, well
(45:47):
, I'm not part of thatgeneration that uses those words
.
So is that that's?
My question is, is that okay?
Should the older generationstart to pick up and, you know,
know, increase their riz withthe youth, or should we hang on
to our own you know generation'sslang, so that we're not
(46:09):
encroaching on that culture?
Ron (46:11):
So I think you can do this.
I think the example youprovided is a great example of
how to do it.
Well, I think honestly, likethere's a difference between
acknowledging and and for me,it's a question like curiosity,
generational curiosity.
Right.
I feel like I remember growingup and, um, I know like I feel
like right now, the media isreally interested in portraying
(46:33):
like a lot of generationalanimosity right, it's not just
older generations being angry atGen Z, but also Gen Z and
millennials hating boomers andlike almost like a generational
war, right, and I think that'scompletely wrong.
I don't think that's healthy.
I don't think that's like I'mnot saying like yeah, one side
is right and one side is wrong.
I remember growing up and beinglike incredibly curious about
(46:56):
my like Gen X parents x parentsright, and their boomer
grandparents right I wanted tolearn about.
Like their experience, I wantedto learn about their world, like
I listened exclusively to, likemusic from the 70s and 80s,
like as a teenager right, justlike wanting to like on 8-track,
not on 8-track, no, on cds youdon't really know what it sounds
like remastered versions yeah,yeah exactly here you go again.
(47:19):
It's never enough, don but justlike wanting to understand their
experiences, right Likelearning their lingo.
I remember watching like VH1, Ilove the 90s or.
I love the 80s.
I love the 70s right All thesethings and learning their like
in-jokes and their pop culturemoments that they all kind of
shared and like really enjoyingthat kind of stuff, and I think
(47:41):
like what you are expressing isa similar desire in reverse,
right.
Like you are interested in thepresent generation, you want to
understand their culturaltouchstones.
It's not about understandingtheir language so that we can
pass as them, right, it's justabout understanding the language
so we can move a little closerto their experience, right.
And then not so that we cancommunicate with them in these
(48:03):
ways?
Cause again, that's you'reright.
That's not the point.
You can't co-opt that yeahexactly, and I think there's
this idea amongst brain rot.
They're like oh, the kids canonly speak in Skibbity and Aura
and Riziz, and you know like nowthey're uh the big one.
Now that all my students aredoing is like, uh, uh, low taper
fade is like another annoyingtiktok song that now they're all
(48:25):
repeating.
Um, that's also just part ofkids is like they just repeat
stuff they hear.
Right, like they like there'snot always as much
intentionality behind thesethings as they think.
Right, it's just I can thinkback when I was like 10, I was
probably repeating, liketerrible Adam Sandler jokes from
Billy Madison and stuff.
Right, like we all have ourcringe era.
(48:46):
Um, but, uh, again, it's notabout like I need to talk with
my kid by saying no cap.
It's like I should know what nocap means.
So it's like I should know whatno cap means.
So when my kid uses it, I knowwhat they're saying and then I
can respond to them in, you know, oxford English and they will
still be able to communicatewith me.
You know what I mean.
Does that kind of answer yourquestion or am know?
Don (49:07):
something as cool or like rad.
I can't ever remember sayingrad or radical to an adult.
I know we used it between eachother, but I'm trying to think
if I ever said it to my grandma,but I know like I would say
(49:28):
cool or whatever and like that'ssomething that she would
understand and I don't think sheever said it back no, yeah,
like she would never saysomething was cool, but no, yeah
(49:58):
, kind of what's key, and shedidn't try to, you know, alter,
change or make fun of my patternof speaking.
Um, which I think that'sactually, you know, your.
One of your questions a whileago was like why are these
generation, generational warsand conflicts happening and what
can we do about them?
I think that's really the keyis it doesn't matter, like it
doesn't matter, if the, if theboomers room, the economy, if
gen z is lazy, if you knowmillennials are ruining the job
(50:20):
market, like it.
What matters is we all havedifferent skills and experiences
, even though we're fromdifferent generations, that we
can bring to the table to wantincrease our understanding of
each other and improve whateverthe current situation is,
because the current situation iswhat needs to be improved, not
what happened 20 years ago thatmy generation did or didn't do
(50:41):
in a certain way.
Ron (50:42):
Exactly, and I think a sort of blame game is really good at
getting people to sort of checkout right and be like well, I
don't need to join in thateffort too, Right?
Like if they think I'm the onewho's bad, then screw them,
right, I'll just stay in my ownlittle generational bubble and,
uh, I don't need to kind ofextend that olive branch, extend
(51:03):
that understanding or anythinglike that.
All right, um, I, I.
You know there's a lot of wordswe could go over here and
define, but I think, like in thespirit of the show, like, if
you don't understand something akid says to you, uh, you can
ask them.
Right, like, just just ask themto say hey, what do you mean by
that?
Right, and I find usuallythey're very happy to tell you
they're like oh, this is whatthat means, right, like they're
(51:23):
just excited to know that olderpeople take an interest in them.
And you know, uh, cause, again,like, young people look to old
people for guidance, right, asmuch as they probably don't want
to say that out loud, theyfrequently do.
They're paying attention to us,whether we know it or not, and
they, they, in many ways.
You know that their behaviormimics our behavior in ways that
(51:44):
I think some, some oldergenerations, aren't always keen
to address.
All right, don, now we'vehealed the divide, we've solved
all the people.
Don (51:55):
That's good.
Ron (51:56):
We do good work here.
Don (51:57):
We do great work, we're almost as good as the internet.
Ron (52:00):
I think we are one of the internet's best, one of its
juiciest fruits.
We are.
Don (52:09):
And we appreciate all of our uncannibals, and what would
help us out is if you wouldshare your uncannibal experience
with at least one other person.
Ron (52:17):
Yeah, make a new uncannibal today.
Go out there, find someone,look them in the eye and say I
bet you are an uncannibalmaterial.
Would you like to know moreabout horse manure?
Yeah, did you know about thedyer situation the horse manure
created nearly 200 years ago orwhenever?
That was All right.
(52:37):
Thank you everyone.
This is going to wrap up ourseason this time and we're
hoping to be back with some moreuncannibal bites in the summer.
See you then.
(53:14):
Bye, thank you.
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
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The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.