581–590 of 624 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Teens aren't ... having sex. Nor are people in their 20s (that is, both groups are having much less sex). That is the most worrying thing to me. People are not even engaging in the most fundamental, unavoidable, pleasurable human drive. They seem very much like traumatized people, on a massive scale, just trying to survive.
When you don't get matches, it's pretty easy to avoid sex.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find it easy to drink in moderation because I only do it socially. One or two drinks at a dinner party has never cost me a day of work. But I have spent a whole morning in bed scrolling Instagram Reels instead of going in to work. Passive consumption of short-form videos lacks that social feedback mechanism that keeps my behavior in check. It’s easy to stay up way later than I meant to and be wrecked the next day.…
Would you say the same for people looking at the clouds passing by the window ? Should we classify these clouds as worse than alcohol because they were looked at alone in a room instead of doing some other work ? To get more personal, I had a CD player as my alarm in the morning, and a few times skipped worked because I couldn't get myself to stop the playing album. I didn't blame the CD. That's also how I realized t…
There is definitely something different about TikTok, or video games, compared to your examples.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The other thing I haven't seen in this thread yet is that kids today are really focused on is: lifestyle -- they want to work hard at school so they can get great jobs to make a lot of money so they can afford to own a home and live healthy lives. With the cost of living, and everything else, they're going to have to make a lot of money to life the kind of life that they're used to as kids. My kids are not on social…
It's great but the way you write I can't stop comparing them to what used to be brainwashed communist kids. People aren't robots, or we would be living in a sad world What did you do to make them behave like that ? That's uncommon, at least in occidental society. Closer to what the CCP does.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The other thing I haven't seen in this thread yet is that kids today are really focused on is: lifestyle -- they want to work hard at school so they can get great jobs to make a lot of money so they can afford to own a home and live healthy lives. With the cost of living, and everything else, they're going to have to make a lot of money to life the kind of life that they're used to as kids. My kids are not on social…
> My kids are not on social media. Your kids are big outliers then. I wouldn't extrapolate to the general young population.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
i am just old enough to have experienced 9/11 when i was in elementary school. it was a similar change to society to how covid screwed everything when i was a child, there was no security in airports. like literally NONE. you could walk in and buy a flight with physical cash. if you wanted an international flight, there was a metal detector like you might find in a night club government ID and drivers licence did not…
I thought the AR-15s that the police carried in America were semi-auto. More like a sporting rifle than what the military uses. AR-15s are more versatile than shotguns, though less powerful they are more accurate. If your going to carry a long gun around, it's probably the most logical option. Basically anyone who isn't a prohibited person in America can field the same equipment. Though I think police have more acces…
echoing wat titanomachy said, there was a time where it was unthinkable to see police with anything more than a sidearm. a lot of police still had revolvers into the 90s as well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is exactly the parasocial way my girlfriend's niece and friends experience life. No relationships of their own, it is all celebrities and their lives, ingested on their phones. I don't have the heart to tell them that 95% of it is stuff created by PR firms.
playing devils advocate for a minute... isnt that similar to what our parents said in the 80's/90's about our generation? all that "tv and phone" brain rot
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not contradicting you, but it appears that the suicide rate hasn't changed since 2018. See this interactive chart and switch the Injury Type to Suicide: https://wisqars.cdc.gov/fatal-injury-trends/ That chart shows the rate has hovered around 4000 per month for years. That's 4000 too many, but at least it's not increasing.
That is the raw number, not the rate. Since the spread of social media, suicide rates are up for children, significantly: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db471.pdf > The suicide rate for people aged 15–19 did not change significantly from 2001 through 2009, then increased 57% from 2009 through 2017 > For people aged 10–14, the suicide rate tripled from 2007 through 2018
Earlier quoted context omitted.
AOL. In the late 90s, I was in the chat rooms, by the early 00s me and my friends would swap between AIM and text messaging depending when texts were free. Kids definitely had an online presence, but it wasn't like the mid-00s and after when social media rose up.
I wasn't in instant messaging until I was an analyst in the 2000s. Never had an AOL account outside of being IM I used for some subset of mostly journalists. So, yeah, didn't really communicate with social contacts with email/IM until the 2000s for the most part.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm starting to think many people just aren't into sex that much, in the same way many people aren't into food. Many people just get hungry and inhale the most convenient thing they can to scratch the hunger itch. McDonald's is always busy. People would be there on Christmas day if it was open. These people aren't into food as pleasure, they just don't want to be hungry. Of course with meal replacements bottles etc M…
You should do what you feel, of course, and there is no right or wrong. I still think that, generally, we have evolved to have a strong sex drive and to very much desire and enjoy it.
But I'm not disputing that this is (or will be) probably a problem. Not because of sex specifically, but because of people having no meaning in their lives. In less than a decade we might be facing a bunch of enslaved virgins approaching 30 realising they have nothing in life. No assets, no relationships, no family, and no prospects. Tik Tok isn't going to work out for 99% of them. It's going to be interesting.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The bigger win is the government subsidies and tax breaks. You need very little on hand cash to get a very low interest rate. Much lower than asset loans at equivalent levels of wealth.
There is little tax break for home ownership currently with the SALT cap + high standard deduction. You get some break if you have a large enough mortgage or high enough interest rate but it has been very nerfed.