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this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2026
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As I turn into an old man, it’s almost overwhelming the realization of just how fucking dumb the average young man is.
Their idiocy is weaponized with social media and omnipresent gambling. Social media wasn't really real for me until I was well into my 20s and gambling was 4 hours away in Vegas. Even though I quit Facebook in 2011 and never got into twitter/insta/tiktok, I still posted on reddit for dopamine hits from strangers and bots.
Parents forcing young boys into concussion (football) camp doesn't help. Brain damage them early
Our parents have lead paint in their blood and our children have microplastics in their blood
Weird angle to take, that's a pretty small segment of the population.
Is it?
https://www.tmslab.org/publications/835.pdf
Yes, it's a small segment of the population. https://projectplay.org/youth-sports/facts/participation-rates
I'm saying the statistical impact on voting trends is likely negligible, not that contact sports are a good idea for prepubescent kids.
And it's gonna get way stupider, just wait until the brainrot Gen Alpha iPad kids have grown up lol.
Cambridge Analytica, gamer gate, and others have steered the younger generation to the right. It was a designed psyop to make Republicans relevant again, and it worked. The younger (white) males are still in my experience pretty fucking stupid and ignorant. I hope they've opened their minds a bit, but there were (and still are) very powerful voices trying to take advantage of their insecurities and turn them into fascists. It's hard to hold them fully accountable for that reason but God damn is it hard to try to get through to these people.
Uh no, it’s not hard at all to hold them accountable. They’re stupid as fuck. The first go around with Trump.. ok I guess maybe a handful of idiots get a pass. They don’t. But since so many people were stuoid you literally have to give the ones that admit they made a mistake the benefit of the doubt.
The stupid dipshit retards that voted for him TWO MORE TIMES. No. You’re a fascist traitor dickhead and you deserve exactly what traitors deserve.
Now give that young man a gun and a fast car!
Let's be honest though, when were were young, we were pretty stupid too. I mean I used to have some level of respect for Libertarians back in the day.
"Stupid" yes, but never "vote Republican" stupid.
Eh, 9/11 did a number on me, and were I of age in 2004, I would have likely voted for Bush because I was young, dumb, and ignorant. By 2008 (the first election I was 18 for) I could see the Republicans for what they were, and made it a point to vote otherwise. How anyone grows beyond a certain age and thinks these guys have the answers to fucking anything is beyond me though.
Sure but to Gen Z 9/11 is old history.
Oh 100%, I think that’s the overwhelming part for me. These fucking idiots keep showing me my past self.
I used to be a libertarian back in the day; partly because I didn’t understand socialism, or libertarianism for that matter. But I think mostly because my prefrontal cortex hadn’t fully developed yet so my capacity for empathy was limited.
I was pretty fucking stupid.
Hey at least we lived and learned, grew past the whole teenaged edgelord phase of things. More than I can say for some of those Gen-Xer's I grew up with.
Right on, and we keep living and learning by remaining humble about how fucking dumb we still are.
As we age, the ego takes a step back and it becomes easier to accept our shortcomings. The more I learn the more I realize I don't know sort of thing.
My self-realization came down to: Sometimes I'm just an asshole despite my best efforts.
Libertarianism makes sense in a culture where you feel markets will keep themselves honest.
Reality , of course, is disappointing and I was a stupid young man for believing that.
I think the unspoken and fatal prerequisite for libertarianism is that it requires a truly equal society that doesn’t have white supremacy baked into it.
It doesn’t cause that kind of society, it needs it to be preexisting, and so in the context of modern America it would just serve to bolster the existing inequalities.
Or just be an anarchist. It rejects these current systems but without the white supremacy bullshit.
Brilliant.
I have been going down a David Graeber rabbit hole for the past few months, and I am certainly on that trajectory. It's funny, I've heard anecdotally that there is a surprisingly direct pipeline from disillusioned evangelical christian to anarchist, and it makes sense. The principles of anarchy resonate with the most basic lessons we are taught and which Christianity has sort of claimed for itself as how to be godly.
Anarchy has an amazingly bad branding challenge though, especially in America. I thought socialism had a bad brand, and then I started learning what anarchy actually is. Yikes.
I would say I am totally aligned intellectually with the principles of anarchy as I understand them today, and yet I still reflexively equate the very word with "disorder" and "chaos". I have to be very intentional to turn my intellectual agreement into an actual warm fuzzy vibe when I hear or read the word. The connotations are set deep. I don't think I'm unique or even in the minority in that regard, and I'm certain that's no accident. Right now my sense of things is that socialism is the most practical path to anarchy, but even reading back the words I just wrote, I think at least half of america would think I was describing some sort of leftist terror plot.
On the bright side, I do think that the open corruption and incompetence of our world leaders has begun to undercut the baked in idea that rulers create order. Hopefully the more we as a society see the man behind the proverbial curtain and parse the real fact that Nobody Knows What They Are Doing, the necessity of mutual aid begins to become more clear.
That's not anarchism. That's literally a direct quote from the Communist Manifesto.
I get what you're saying. I agree with what you're saying. It's why I'd guess most of us are here on Lemmy. Why most of us probably use Android. And why most of us are likely Linux/FOSS entusiasts.
Because the communist one two punch of a) From each according to their capacity to each according to their needs, and b) Give a Brick, get a house.
But those things aren't a function of anarchism at all.
I agree with a lot of the libertarian beliefs, but the people who actually call themselves that are absolutely insane.
Believing in freedom, equality and liberty for all is great until you meet someone that wants to remove all rules and regulations.
It advocates for equality while destroying the institutions that could create equality.
I get why it appeals to young white men - they don’t need the federal government because it was built to work for them, and so it all looks like waste.
You'd be surprised at how much of black separatism is libertarian
It's the gateway to the sovereign citizen phenomenon.
That's because most libertarians are just ashamed conservatives/gop/magats
I fall into a social libertarian political spectrum more than anything else. I believe most people do when they are ok with private companies, socialism for citizens and regulations for said private companies.
Same, and same.
To be old and wise, one must first be young and foolish.
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
Or... Uh. I feel like a dick for bringing it up. But there's also books.
Would it be a better world if there were people like that
always has been
Eh. At least they're (presumably) learning their lesson instead of sticking their heads in the sand. It sucks that they put Cheeto McPedo into power, but hopefully this leads to evwryone waking up and putting a stop to MAGA
It wasn't them. Millenial men voted more for trump than gen Z, and X more than millenials. Looking at the raw data, you'd come away assuming the race was more about gender than age, compared to past elections.