#gen z problems

[fongus-the-ninth]

Likely one of the funniest things we will get from the extremely late-to-the-party among us show

[gcx23]

POV: your Gen X boss lectures you about the good ol' days while you live in a dumpster fire

[unsolicited-opinions]

In today's example of what happens when much of a generation mistakenly believes they can become educated through memes and reels:

Let's be precise about what @queercodedangel got wrong.

What the IRD list actually was:

A private notebook, handed to one person at the IRD, listing individuals Orwell thought were unsuitable to write anti-stalinist propaganda - not people he wanted arrested, surveilled, fired, or harmed - and none of them were.

Orwell believed these specific people were Stalinist sympathizers who would undermine the work of countering Stalinism. You can legitimately think that was a bad call - it was certainly a morally complicated one for Orwell. It was not, however, the act of an imperialist snitch. It was the act of someone who hated authoritarian Stalinism enough to do something uncomfortable about it, while continuing to publicly criticize the British state.

The tension between those two things evaporates the moment you understand Orwell's position: Stalinism wasn't socialism. It was fascism with better branding, and it was destroying the socialist project from within.

History proved Orwell right.

Orwell:

Got shot through the throat while fighting fascists in Spain

Spent decades producing some of the most devastating critiques of British imperialism ever written, including Burmese Days, and Shooting an Elephant.

Called himself a Democratic Socialist his entire adult life and meant it.

Wrote that "every line of serious work I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism."

@queercodedangel is taking one late-life episode, stripping it of all context, and canceling one of the sharpest anti-totalitarian, anti-imperialist pens of the twentieth century - because he wouldn't excuse Stalin's crimes. That's apparently the price of admission to the 2026 left - being ignorant enough to deny that Stalin was a monster.

Calling that "snitching" tells you nothing about Orwell. It tells you that for some people, anti-Stalinism is a greater sin than imperialism ever was - and you can only take that position if you know nothing about what Stalinism was.

That sucking vacuum of ignorance where actual knowledge should be doesn't inspire a single second of hesitation before they confidently preach provable falsehoods. The less @queercodedangel knows about Orwell, the IRD list, or Stalin's crimes, the more confident the verdict. This is what happens when a generation decides memes and reels are sufficient substitutes for actually reading anything.

Orwell spent his life fighting this kind of epistemic laziness - the willingness to flatten complex realities into politically useful, emotionally resonant, self-affirming fictions.

This is why Gen Z desperately needs to read the Orwell and Huxley they've been told to avoid.

There hasn't been a generation in living memory simultaneously more vulnerable to propaganda and more thoroughly convinced they are completely immune to it.

[flowers-in-book]

you can tell a person is in a dark place when tumblr means a lot to them

[xantia1997]

Original PlayStation via RGB cables on a 1997 Sony Trinitron retro gaming special CRT box TV i paid for £10 at Cash Converters in 2016 before Reddit and Covid made it worth $500,000 on eBay for Gen Z. In the shop there was a wall of TVs like this all chained up to the same TV station for £10 each as back then it was just a crappy old tube TV for grandad to watch his old Match of the Day tapes he recorded in 1988-2002 on VHS worth £5 at Oxfam.

[bunnyschaoticrealm]

Get a job. Go to work. Find a work-life-balance. Workout. Eat healthy. But don't deny yourself. Find time for yourself. Spend time with friends and family. Get a partner. Enjoy being single. Work. Workout. Be healthy. Be confident in yourself. Read a book. Go outside. Enjoy the sun. Work. Drink enough water. Eat healthy. Go out with friends. Work. Move your body. Love your body. Take time to relax. Work. Live your life the way you want to. Aaaaaaaargh

[grangvr]

calling gen z lazy and easily offended is ironic and hypocritical.

i refuse to be called lazy and easily offended by the same group of people who were able to buy a house for a grape and 3 raisins whilst doing the bare minimum as their parents fought hard to give them an easier future and cried at the sight of someone of a different race sitting next to them on a bus.

you have to remember the oldest gen z people are pushing 30 btw

[commanderdianashepard]

All my fellow 2006 kids turning 20 this year hang in there, we gotta stick together.