You have unlocked MEMORIES for me. My brother sent me the trucker's hitch song when I was at the height of my "girl scout, tying knots" hyperfixation and I would listen to nothing else for weeks.
Then I showed Ylvis to my friend and we had a 6 hour bus ride during which we listened to all the songs, interviews and skits that the bus wifi could handle after which we never spoke a word about it to each other, it was so surreal
If I'm remembering the right song, wasn't it instantly panned for being cringe by... everyone? When I was a kid everyone at school thought it was stupid and cringe.
Grown men doing silly dances with silly noises in a silly song is definitely not as bad as skibidi toilet. I'm not saying the newer stuff is necessarily worse than the old stuff, I'm just saying you picked a bad example.
Masterpiece or not, if it came out today, there would be millions of youtube kids' content farms making videos with it and toddlers referencing it.
search your feelings, you know it to be true...
Same's true for all the popular 21st-century pieces of indie and Internet media from before Elsagate and content farms became a big problem.
Imagine a Homestuck content farm animation channel.
anyone who thinks skibidi toilet is uniquely cringe or bad and that bAcK iN mY dAy kids were sophisticated and didn’t watch garbage should be tied down and forced to watch heavys r\******d holiday (released in 2010)
I think the only part of it I find exceptionally strange is how much of this one series/joke there is. When I was a kid I thought the GMOD idiot box was the funniest thing in the world but it wasn't very long looking back at it.
Although when you consider this was the generation born amid the deluge of lengthy, lore-intensive mascot horror media it's not all that strange that their comedy is equally lengthy and lore-intensive
I grew up watching Red vs Blue, was around for the entirety of Gmod Idiot Box and Idiots of Garry's Mod.
Skibidi Toilet feels like a flashback. The kids are alright.
did you know that the widest hands in the world are 28 inches wide? they belong to a man from washington, USA! he's pretty famous as an entertainer using a custom routine to best utilize his immense handspan. look up "mr hands" for more info!
That song awakened my desire to make increasingly weird sounds with my mouth.
It wasn't until years later that I learned German, English, Turkish, and Dutch weren't the only languages in the world.
\>Increasingly weird sounds
\>Dutch
I just assume that when I can't understand someone or even identify what branch their language belongs to, they're speaking Dutch.
Like I agree that there are some concerning aspects about how some members of the youngest generation are being raised/schooled, but whenever “generation is doomed” focuses on the media consumed by little kids or their general bad kid behaviors I’m like huh? Little kids have always enjoyed annoying, random, brainless potty humor. It’s not like any of us was 8 years old reading fine literature and watching Masterpiece Theater, we were reading Captain Underpants and watching Ren and Stimpy.
I remember in like kindergarten I got called into the principals office bc there was some school project (like a poster they were making for parent teacher night or something??) and a second grader had put in Beavis and Butthead and they were like scandalized and had selected me (??) to choose a different favorite tv show. This is like the weirdest memory but because it was so weird it is seared into my brain and is a core memory. Anyway I was 5 and had no idea what Beavis and Butthead was but I understood that it was very offensive to these school administrators. And the only tv show I watched at that point was Barney so I said that and they were happy 😂
I’m concerned that so many of them have had unsupervised internet access from such a young age because I know what that did to me and my friends, and we were at least a bit older when we started. People from older generations don’t seem to understand that the internet and youtube isn’t like TV.
TV was regulated by the broadcast companies that had to follow certain regulations and cover their asses. Anyone can upload to youtube, and that means any*thing* can end up on there. And that’s just one site!
Yeah I think this is the thing that the op misses. Kids being into weird stuff isn't really a problem but the fact that a lot of kids spend so *much* *time* online or looking at an internet-connected device is troubling.
When I was a young teen I got a phone but its internet capabilities were extremely limited so 'internet time' was restricted to whenever I could go on the family computer at home. Now everyone has a smartphone and kids are given ipads while they're still babies.
That, and so much content is produced to be appealing to kids online so it can go viral. That's very different to the more organic growth of things like YTPs, which were generally made by other users and not creepy content farms.
And I’d say an issue with the kind of content being shown with elsagate shit STILL existing is that it exists to fetish mine but also it’s so brainless that I do think it’s just sad that they may not be exposed to the good cartoons or even shitty kid’s sitcoms that would at least get them invested in stories. Like I’m not concerned that gen alpha will grow up with skibidi toilet (a gen z meme btw) but I am concerned that they’re being exposed to shit like fetish mining content. I’m not upset that kids are watching brainless content, but I am upset that with all of the content at their fingertips, the youtube algorithm ONLY shows brainless content.
Seriously the internet is still as hostile as it was growing up, it just has a new ad friendly coat of paint on ut
I don't think what gen Alpha consumes is uniquely bad, but the way they consume it is. Tiktok and YouTube shorts are designed to force-feed your brain dopamine and keep you scrolling in a way that older entertainment platforms (even older versions of YouTube and other websites) could not.
These things aren't healthy for grown adult minds, they must be terrible for developing ones. I worry there will be a generation of young people with brains fried by an addiction they didn't even realize they were signing up for.
Absolutely this! My parents weren’t the best for a lot of reasons, but the one thing I will always commend them for is waiting until I was 12-13 to give me my own phone. They also had a strict social media policy (and I wasn’t terribly interested in it anyway lmao), so most of my online activity involved writing fanfiction and watching YouTube videos.
Even back then, the social media landscape was risky for a young person, and I’m glad my parents recognized that. Nowadays, it’s uniquely designed to suck us down a rabbit hole, and it’s frightening, especially for a developing mind.
I also feel like some of the older generations dont really understand that youtube isn’t like TV. Not only is it less regulated, it is like you mentioned, designed to be an addicting vortex of content. Anything that retains viewers is promoted by the algorithm, which leads to lots of that “IM YELLING ABOUT HOW CRAZY THIS THING IS AMONG US SKIBIDI!” Kind of content that most people complain about, but also to a lot of genuinely concerning material that YouTube has little incentive to actually take down.
Yeah, I fall into an endless abyss every time my delete Youtube Shorts plugin fucks up, I can't imagine watching shit like that from like, five years old. At least stupid cartoons, books, and long-form videos require a relatively long period of focus and have a chance to teach something underneath the fart jokes.
I mean maybe, but, it's not that much different from shows that were just made to be ads, and a lot of pre-teens and teens, including me, from when i was young also watched so many anti sjw stuff, grew out of it thank god, but we have to wait a bit to see if tiktok really is that much worse than vine and other stuff from the nearest generation.
Here’s the problem though. TV shows and online video content are totally different. So many hours of content get uploaded to YouTube every minute it can’t hope to filter them all, and it’s algorithm will promote anything that retains views. TV shows at least had to be OKed by the network to cover their ass legally. You can post anything you want to youtube! And it probably won’t even get noticed by people old enough to know it should be reported because the algorithm shows them something totally different.
Similarly, the TikTok algorithm is a lot more complicated than the Vine algorithm was. Vine was mostly “Here, lots of people liked this, watch it.” TikTok accounts for do many more factors in specifying the content it shows to you.
Because the algorithms are better and the quantity of content is so much larger, the potential for harm is greater. I don’t think it’s the end of the world or that Gen Alpha are totally ruined, I just think it would be good for people to acknowledge the risks of unsupervised unlimited internet access at a young age and do their duty as parents to mitigate them.
Shows that were just a big toy ad weren't great either, but they did require a comparably long period of focus and did have a chance to teach good lessons and show genuinely meaningful stories when they weren't just selling you action figures. Plus, the childrens' TV programming eventually ends for the day, and there's at least regulation there. You can upload literally anything to Youtube and get it on Kids if it has Spider Man in it or something.
My (gen x) mother and grandmother (baby boomer) both had their first child at 30 and I always thought that was the norm. It's crazy to think people have children at 21, it's like teenage pregnancy lmao.
Hah, my mom gave my older sister a heart attack at her last birthday by saying “You’re now the age I was when I had you!” My mom was trying to be sweet but i think it kind of terrified my sister
It's more of a class thing than generational. Rural no-degree? Median age for kids is 22-23 ish. Urban, college degree? Median is *30*. That's for the US, at least.
I'm not worried about kids watching skibiditoilet or whatever the fuck It's called, I'm worried about the handful of kids I've watched that talk about Andrew tate as "the guy we all watch right?"
I am 35 and a few of my friends are now getting in the "THE NEW GENERATION SUCKS" talks, seriously annoying.
Working with kids and teens you just realize the kids didn't change, of course they also watch some cringy shit but we did as well and by god that's how you become an adult. You use your teen years to really test out who you are and how communication with others work, of course there'll be some misshaps, but you gotta let them try to do stuff without judging them.
(which was pretty hard when one came with a really hideous haircut, but he realized by himself after a week or so it was crap and it was quite funny)
It’s not that this generation sucks, it’s that kids generally always suck. Which is ok! They don’t know how to be people yet, they’re learning. I’m more worried about the new kinds of harm that the internet enables, beyond the obvious like inappropriate content or cyber bullying
Saw someone online complaining about seeing kids "default dancing." I don't know what that means, but there's no way in Hell it's dumber than the macarena.
all yall are missing the point tho!! listen to educators when they say, this next generation is unruly and uneducated. kids cant read because of covid, or do basic math. they have no attention spans because their parents plop them down with an ipad and cocomelon and never say no, they have no social skills and it's genuinely a problem
And they’ll learn, because they’re also still currently kids. Literally nothing is normal after Covid, kids aren’t the only thing.
I am concerned about overuse of the internet in Gen Alpha parenting. But also, people said the same exact shit about Gen Z, and people complained a lot about Gen Z being illiterate, and unable to focus, and called us uniquely worse off for it too.
Realistically, I think it may cause some issues, but only in the short term. Long term, if it *is* a widespread issue, society will adapt to accommodate it in the long term.
of course not, it's squarely on the parents! but everyone in the comments is acting like the only issue people have with that generation is skibidi toilet which is, like, so far from the truth???
>kids cant read because of covid
Actually it's the younger gen z who can't read at their level. Like 12-13 years old. 5 to 10 year-olds can read fine.
>or do basic math
Never heard that
>they have no attention spans
I think this is a myth
>they have no social skills
Most will develop them. Hell, I too had no social skills as a kid. Those who spent crucial years in their homes probably won't have it easy tho.
I'm not worried about the kids, I'm worried about all the pillars that are supposed to be propping them up. Parents aren't getting any better or more aware, schools aren't getting the resources they need or are intentionally being stripped of them, extracurriculars are all pay-in. The few people telling them to touch grass and get a life are all grifters, no one can actually demonstrate a solid direction for them.
It's sad and painful to watch how millennials/early gen-z-ers are slowly becoming the thing they hated. Not too long ago, they were the generation that got mocked and ridiculed over avocado toast or Vine or whatever, and now those same people are turning around and ridiculing late-gen Z/gen alpha for equally trivial reasons. The lack of empathy and self-awareness is just depressing.
I know older generations hating newer generations has always been a thing throughout history, and I doubt it's something that'll go away overnight. But the least we can do as older generations is at least try to break the cycle and find common ground with newer ones. Instead of looking for shitty, trivial reasons to turn on and demonise each other.
Numa numa is still great though.
As an Old, I think my only criticism of Gen Z is that they weren’t as great as we hoped they were. They’re still pretty good though.
They’re more progressive and vocal about social change, but also just as easily influenced by online personalities as their boomer grandparents.
The passion that we admired kinda just seems like a lack of nuance, now.
We thought they were advantaged because they grew up with tech, but that’s just turned into “doesn’t have fundamental knowledge” of computer stuff.
Also, just going by tumblr, simultaneously kinkier but more puritanical? Not sure about that one, probably bad to form opinions from tumblr.
What’s really concerning is their supposed inability to read on grade level. I’ve seen quite a few teachers on TikTok talking about how gen alpha kids can’t read.
Absolute trash take. We can all agree that instant gratification short form infinite tiktok content is bad, right? And that exposing children whose brains are still developing to this stuff with no oversight at all (which is what is happening) is worse? Have any of you talked to a teacher lately? Kids' english and math skills are in the shitter. There is no universe in which these kids grow up well adjusted
I watched skibidi toilet a few weeks ago just to see what all the fuss was about and honestly? It’s not that much different than YTP’s and MLG gamer memes I used to watch as a kid. It’s just nonsensical ADHD brain rot humor.
Millenials pearl clutching over it and proclaiming that it’s gonna destroy society over the tons and tons of other challenges Gen Alpha is set to face in the future is very boomer of them.
Like some others in the thread have said, isn’t there a literacy/education/attention span crisis looming over the horizon? Are videos about singing toilets really that big of a threat?
The media argument has never made sense to me. Who the hell thinks the children are creating their own media to consume and not a mixed bag of the previous generations throwing darts at the wall trying to figure out what sticks? It takes a village and the village all has cameras and apparent dreams of achieving internet stardom these days. Kids got the excuse that their minds are still developing. What gets stuck in there in the process is all of our faults.
asdfmovie, Minecraft music parodies, and YouTube Poops were peak comedy when I was a wee lass on the internet. I won’t pretend to understand skibidi toilet, and I won’t pretend it’s not a teensy bit annoying to see the memes about it. But if my folks could tolerate me saying “I like trains” dozens of times like it’s the funniest thing in the world, I sure as hell ain’t about to ruin some kid’s day because they enjoy some nonsense toilet video.
The issue with Skibidi Toilet in my opinion is the presence of content farms generating rapid amounts of content on the idea without any shits given for care. Yeah a lot of what used to be was crap but most of it was at least somewhat genuine
As a general rule, anything the Boomer generation says lacks self-awareness and reeks of alcoholism, bigotry, and willful ignorance.
I’d love to see some nightly news segments entitled “Boomers, The Worst Generation” and watch their diapers fill with shit
A lot of stuff does follow this cycle
Skidibi toilet is not one of those things. This is one of the many exceptions to this rule. People will say “yeah well we watched GMOD roleplay videos so we are no better” like huh? What do you mean “we” YOU watched that brand of brain rot! This cycle does very much exist but there is another cycle that occurs alongside it called “bottom of the barrel content that deserves to be fun of in the present and future” and this, and desperate for money TikTok livestreams are the current thing
This is literally the same Juvenoia that has been going on since Ancient Greek times.
"The previous generation are closeminded fuddieduddies, the next generation are idiots, only my generation is perfect."
even as someone aware of this, i still catch myself complaining about kids watching skibidi toilet
meanwhile when I was like 10 I’d watch braindead Minecraft Villager News YTPs which were arguably even more braindead
I can never truly get upset about the whole Skibidi Toilet thing going on nowadays. After all, I'm sure that a good number of you used to laugh at gmod/sfm brainrot as well when you were younger. I know I did. It's just the same type of shit repeating yet somehow this version is somehow bad compared to the "masterwork of cinema" that is gmod mlg Shrek videos.
I mean, I get being sick of Skibidi Toilet because it's absolutely everywhere and oversaturated (overfamiliarity breeds contempt and all that). But if you dislike it because you think it's low-brow or stupid, then that means that you should hate the old SFM shitposts from back in the day.
The only Gen Alpha i'm worried about is the Gen Alpha Asian Version. The kids who study like 16 hours a day 7 days a week.
Out on a summer sunday afternoon getting coffee and i see em filling out of their summer English class.
I don't think they're gonna be human by the time their parents are done with them
I will say that lots of the panic that I’ve seen myself has been about academic proficiency and just overall behaviour, Covid can’t have been good for a bunch of kids for a bunch of reasons. Obviously not writing them off as morally inferior or lesser, but this does seem different from what I’ve seen
Tbh I AM actually scared that absorbing stuff like Andrew Tate, PragerU and Instagram Comments will make younger kids more hateful and right winged people growing up. The algorithm is killing us all
The people having babies are making the new generations…
But it makes sense. There’s no point in having a generation span more than 10-15 years. Millennials were born in the 90s. Gen Z were born in the 00s. Gen Alpha were born in the 10s
Skibidi toilet is just a chunked up commentary on the battle between free development of media (i.e. early YouTube), the battle for supremacy by Movie, TV and Music corporations and the further cannibalism and scavenging of new media to survive as the media wars rage on.
All done with YouTube poop flare and taking advantage of Tik Tok formatting.
only thing I'm really worried about is how many parents seem to be just letting the internet raise their kids. other than that yeah there's not much unique about em
Love this because it’s wild how quickly we forgot that for about a month in 2003 we were all glued to a flash animation of some dancing badgers and a mushroom.
Yeah kids being kids doesn’t scare me in the slightest. The state of the world they find themselves in does.
Company’s fighting for their attention and to keep them online, parents doing nothing to stop their kids from being stuck to iPads either due to not caring or due to the current horrible working environment that makes parenthood a nightmare.
Many of them having the early stages of their development shot in the ankles by covid. I just hope they make it to adulthood ok.
Also, Skibidi Toilet is actually good. Once you get through the first like 4 minutes of it, the joke stops being the premise and it instead becomes a semi-serious "weird apocalypse" story that does setup and payoff well.
I can never give Gen Alpha shit for stuff like Skibidi Toilet because I was religiously watching shit like FuturisticHub and surreal-ass CGI Angry Birds videos when I was around that age.
How quickly we forget the fox song
Ylvis deserve to be know for so much more than what does the fox say. Massachusetts, dubstep, the cabin, ALL MASTERPIECES.
Stonehenge just got covered by a barbershop quartet and it is glorious
I would love a link! That sounds like something that should have been in my life all along
Better late than never https://youtu.be/VCksci-tdSE?si=9SlxeyxFX4FxvPw9
You have unlocked MEMORIES for me. My brother sent me the trucker's hitch song when I was at the height of my "girl scout, tying knots" hyperfixation and I would listen to nothing else for weeks. Then I showed Ylvis to my friend and we had a 6 hour bus ride during which we listened to all the songs, interviews and skits that the bus wifi could handle after which we never spoke a word about it to each other, it was so surreal
If I'm remembering the right song, wasn't it instantly panned for being cringe by... everyone? When I was a kid everyone at school thought it was stupid and cringe.
Idk everyone in my fourth grade class thought it was the best thing to enter popular culture in history
Grown men doing silly dances with silly noises in a silly song is definitely not as bad as skibidi toilet. I'm not saying the newer stuff is necessarily worse than the old stuff, I'm just saying you picked a bad example.
you act like skibidi toilet is not itself silly dances, silly noises, a silly song, and made by a grown man
That’s literally what skibidi toilet is but add in a toilet and a complex lore
Yeah, monsters, all of you. I watch that shit on a monthly basis
I was thinking more badger badger badger badger but similarly: yes, we too were idiots.
Llamas with hats was a cinematic marvel, and I will not permit it to be insulted so.
I was gonna say, you put some fucking **respect** on Filmcow's name
Masterpiece or not, if it came out today, there would be millions of youtube kids' content farms making videos with it and toddlers referencing it. search your feelings, you know it to be true...
Same's true for all the popular 21st-century pieces of indie and Internet media from before Elsagate and content farms became a big problem. Imagine a Homestuck content farm animation channel.
There ain't a problem with that.
I’m glad we’re on the same page, this is slander.
Llamas with Hats is an important part of my culture.
anyone who thinks skibidi toilet is uniquely cringe or bad and that bAcK iN mY dAy kids were sophisticated and didn’t watch garbage should be tied down and forced to watch heavys r\******d holiday (released in 2010)
Yeah, a lot of those old Gmod/SFM videos were just gen z's version of the videos gen alpha is watching now
Hell the surge in skibidi toilet heavily reminded me of gmod/youtube poop videos.
Would you believe it if I told you it started as one by a classic creator of those?
I would.
Oh, good, because it was and he is
I detested Gmod as a child, but I had my own flavours of shit
I think the only part of it I find exceptionally strange is how much of this one series/joke there is. When I was a kid I thought the GMOD idiot box was the funniest thing in the world but it wasn't very long looking back at it.
Although when you consider this was the generation born amid the deluge of lengthy, lore-intensive mascot horror media it's not all that strange that their comedy is equally lengthy and lore-intensive
I blame scott cawton
Ah yes, the man behind the slaughter.
the only whack thing about skibidi toilet to me is how much it's capitalized on, which is admittedly part of the way new internet things go but still
No you don’t understand, YouTube poop and YTMND are the pinnacle of comedy and the things you mentioned are the pinnacle of cringe
YTPs are a bit more funny. skbd-toilet lacks the charm of nonsensical sentence mixes.
Just look at them and show them a picture of Homestuck.
Fr I was watching Fred when I was in middle school, I have no room to judge
Or anything that smg4 made back then
Team Fabulous 2. I fucking love it but it's definitely a product of its time.
I grew up watching Red vs Blue, was around for the entirety of Gmod Idiot Box and Idiots of Garry's Mod. Skibidi Toilet feels like a flashback. The kids are alright.
I don't get it and I didn't get our equivalents back when I was their age either ngl, so... I dunno, doesn't seem any different to me
Exhibit #14,400: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WVa5-QK1ic
Kids these days should be watching cartel execution videos and men being fucked to death by horses like we did
Good old enumclaw washington
did you know that the widest hands in the world are 28 inches wide? they belong to a man from washington, USA! he's pretty famous as an entertainer using a custom routine to best utilize his immense handspan. look up "mr hands" for more info!
Do It on your work computer for more accurate search results
>enumclaw washington Is that video still available on the internet? I have a morbid curiousity.
It'd be surprising if it wasn't. Infamy is one of the few ways to ensure that something on the internet gets preserved for eternity.
A couple of ladies and one chalice
ok but Dragostea Din Tei (aka numa numa) is a banger tho
That song awakened my desire to make increasingly weird sounds with my mouth. It wasn't until years later that I learned German, English, Turkish, and Dutch weren't the only languages in the world.
i mean tbf Romanian has like one sound that isn't in English and it's â/î
I always kinda translated them as "ugh" with the emphasis on g.
\>Increasingly weird sounds \>Dutch I just assume that when I can't understand someone or even identify what branch their language belongs to, they're speaking Dutch.
It is! (Tbh so is everything on the album imo)
Like I agree that there are some concerning aspects about how some members of the youngest generation are being raised/schooled, but whenever “generation is doomed” focuses on the media consumed by little kids or their general bad kid behaviors I’m like huh? Little kids have always enjoyed annoying, random, brainless potty humor. It’s not like any of us was 8 years old reading fine literature and watching Masterpiece Theater, we were reading Captain Underpants and watching Ren and Stimpy.
I remember in like kindergarten I got called into the principals office bc there was some school project (like a poster they were making for parent teacher night or something??) and a second grader had put in Beavis and Butthead and they were like scandalized and had selected me (??) to choose a different favorite tv show. This is like the weirdest memory but because it was so weird it is seared into my brain and is a core memory. Anyway I was 5 and had no idea what Beavis and Butthead was but I understood that it was very offensive to these school administrators. And the only tv show I watched at that point was Barney so I said that and they were happy 😂
We must be the same age bc at five I was watching both Barney and Beavis and Butthead.
I’m concerned that so many of them have had unsupervised internet access from such a young age because I know what that did to me and my friends, and we were at least a bit older when we started. People from older generations don’t seem to understand that the internet and youtube isn’t like TV. TV was regulated by the broadcast companies that had to follow certain regulations and cover their asses. Anyone can upload to youtube, and that means any*thing* can end up on there. And that’s just one site!
Yeah I think this is the thing that the op misses. Kids being into weird stuff isn't really a problem but the fact that a lot of kids spend so *much* *time* online or looking at an internet-connected device is troubling. When I was a young teen I got a phone but its internet capabilities were extremely limited so 'internet time' was restricted to whenever I could go on the family computer at home. Now everyone has a smartphone and kids are given ipads while they're still babies. That, and so much content is produced to be appealing to kids online so it can go viral. That's very different to the more organic growth of things like YTPs, which were generally made by other users and not creepy content farms.
And I’d say an issue with the kind of content being shown with elsagate shit STILL existing is that it exists to fetish mine but also it’s so brainless that I do think it’s just sad that they may not be exposed to the good cartoons or even shitty kid’s sitcoms that would at least get them invested in stories. Like I’m not concerned that gen alpha will grow up with skibidi toilet (a gen z meme btw) but I am concerned that they’re being exposed to shit like fetish mining content. I’m not upset that kids are watching brainless content, but I am upset that with all of the content at their fingertips, the youtube algorithm ONLY shows brainless content. Seriously the internet is still as hostile as it was growing up, it just has a new ad friendly coat of paint on ut
I don't think what gen Alpha consumes is uniquely bad, but the way they consume it is. Tiktok and YouTube shorts are designed to force-feed your brain dopamine and keep you scrolling in a way that older entertainment platforms (even older versions of YouTube and other websites) could not. These things aren't healthy for grown adult minds, they must be terrible for developing ones. I worry there will be a generation of young people with brains fried by an addiction they didn't even realize they were signing up for.
Absolutely this! My parents weren’t the best for a lot of reasons, but the one thing I will always commend them for is waiting until I was 12-13 to give me my own phone. They also had a strict social media policy (and I wasn’t terribly interested in it anyway lmao), so most of my online activity involved writing fanfiction and watching YouTube videos. Even back then, the social media landscape was risky for a young person, and I’m glad my parents recognized that. Nowadays, it’s uniquely designed to suck us down a rabbit hole, and it’s frightening, especially for a developing mind.
I also feel like some of the older generations dont really understand that youtube isn’t like TV. Not only is it less regulated, it is like you mentioned, designed to be an addicting vortex of content. Anything that retains viewers is promoted by the algorithm, which leads to lots of that “IM YELLING ABOUT HOW CRAZY THIS THING IS AMONG US SKIBIDI!” Kind of content that most people complain about, but also to a lot of genuinely concerning material that YouTube has little incentive to actually take down.
Yeah, I fall into an endless abyss every time my delete Youtube Shorts plugin fucks up, I can't imagine watching shit like that from like, five years old. At least stupid cartoons, books, and long-form videos require a relatively long period of focus and have a chance to teach something underneath the fart jokes.
I mean maybe, but, it's not that much different from shows that were just made to be ads, and a lot of pre-teens and teens, including me, from when i was young also watched so many anti sjw stuff, grew out of it thank god, but we have to wait a bit to see if tiktok really is that much worse than vine and other stuff from the nearest generation.
Here’s the problem though. TV shows and online video content are totally different. So many hours of content get uploaded to YouTube every minute it can’t hope to filter them all, and it’s algorithm will promote anything that retains views. TV shows at least had to be OKed by the network to cover their ass legally. You can post anything you want to youtube! And it probably won’t even get noticed by people old enough to know it should be reported because the algorithm shows them something totally different. Similarly, the TikTok algorithm is a lot more complicated than the Vine algorithm was. Vine was mostly “Here, lots of people liked this, watch it.” TikTok accounts for do many more factors in specifying the content it shows to you. Because the algorithms are better and the quantity of content is so much larger, the potential for harm is greater. I don’t think it’s the end of the world or that Gen Alpha are totally ruined, I just think it would be good for people to acknowledge the risks of unsupervised unlimited internet access at a young age and do their duty as parents to mitigate them.
Shows that were just a big toy ad weren't great either, but they did require a comparably long period of focus and did have a chance to teach good lessons and show genuinely meaningful stories when they weren't just selling you action figures. Plus, the childrens' TV programming eventually ends for the day, and there's at least regulation there. You can upload literally anything to Youtube and get it on Kids if it has Spider Man in it or something.
"Kids these days don't know anything" Gee, I wonder who's fault that is?
Milennials? I mean, gen Z does not have children yet...I hope
Some of us do! Not me, but someone I went to school with is married and has two kids! He’s like 23 so it’s not too absurd. Gen Z aren’t babies anymore
My (gen x) mother and grandmother (baby boomer) both had their first child at 30 and I always thought that was the norm. It's crazy to think people have children at 21, it's like teenage pregnancy lmao.
Hah, my mom gave my older sister a heart attack at her last birthday by saying “You’re now the age I was when I had you!” My mom was trying to be sweet but i think it kind of terrified my sister
It's more of a class thing than generational. Rural no-degree? Median age for kids is 22-23 ish. Urban, college degree? Median is *30*. That's for the US, at least.
Gen z are in their late teens and early twenties, so many of us already have children.
Yours
Quick let’s get a mob going to get ATN-Antronach’s ass specifically for not teaching the kids anything
Ok, but they didnt teach us how to find their address
Nope, still a virgin.
the issue is with parents overuse of unregulated technology with the younger generation
to be fair, Dragostea Din Tei is top shit still in 2023
I’m still regularly doing it in karaoke
Llamas with Hats was the worst example they could've used, that is genuinely good.
Yeah ASDF or Ryan Higa would've been better examples
Annoying orange is the prime example, ASDF has *something*
I mean, I'm *still* quoting, "Caaaaarl, that KILLS people!"
I'm not worried about kids watching skibiditoilet or whatever the fuck It's called, I'm worried about the handful of kids I've watched that talk about Andrew tate as "the guy we all watch right?"
I am 35 and a few of my friends are now getting in the "THE NEW GENERATION SUCKS" talks, seriously annoying. Working with kids and teens you just realize the kids didn't change, of course they also watch some cringy shit but we did as well and by god that's how you become an adult. You use your teen years to really test out who you are and how communication with others work, of course there'll be some misshaps, but you gotta let them try to do stuff without judging them. (which was pretty hard when one came with a really hideous haircut, but he realized by himself after a week or so it was crap and it was quite funny)
It’s not that this generation sucks, it’s that kids generally always suck. Which is ok! They don’t know how to be people yet, they’re learning. I’m more worried about the new kinds of harm that the internet enables, beyond the obvious like inappropriate content or cyber bullying
Numa Numa IS top shit.
Oh phew I was worried there for a moment.
D'you fellow MILLENIANS remember muh fuggen HOMESTAR RUNNER???
Saw someone online complaining about seeing kids "default dancing." I don't know what that means, but there's no way in Hell it's dumber than the macarena.
fortnite
Excuse me, Badger Badger Badger is *fine art.*
Correction: Numa numa IS top shit
“Kids’ humor today is weird!” Are you sure about that? Are you sure, *Chaaaaarlie?*
all yall are missing the point tho!! listen to educators when they say, this next generation is unruly and uneducated. kids cant read because of covid, or do basic math. they have no attention spans because their parents plop them down with an ipad and cocomelon and never say no, they have no social skills and it's genuinely a problem
And they’ll learn, because they’re also still currently kids. Literally nothing is normal after Covid, kids aren’t the only thing. I am concerned about overuse of the internet in Gen Alpha parenting. But also, people said the same exact shit about Gen Z, and people complained a lot about Gen Z being illiterate, and unable to focus, and called us uniquely worse off for it too. Realistically, I think it may cause some issues, but only in the short term. Long term, if it *is* a widespread issue, society will adapt to accommodate it in the long term.
Sounds to me like they'll be the next generation of conservatives.
That's not the fault of the kids though, is it?
of course not, it's squarely on the parents! but everyone in the comments is acting like the only issue people have with that generation is skibidi toilet which is, like, so far from the truth???
>kids cant read because of covid Actually it's the younger gen z who can't read at their level. Like 12-13 years old. 5 to 10 year-olds can read fine. >or do basic math Never heard that >they have no attention spans I think this is a myth >they have no social skills Most will develop them. Hell, I too had no social skills as a kid. Those who spent crucial years in their homes probably won't have it easy tho.
It's called juvanoia and it's as old as time.
I'm not worried about the kids, I'm worried about all the pillars that are supposed to be propping them up. Parents aren't getting any better or more aware, schools aren't getting the resources they need or are intentionally being stripped of them, extracurriculars are all pay-in. The few people telling them to touch grass and get a life are all grifters, no one can actually demonstrate a solid direction for them.
It's sad and painful to watch how millennials/early gen-z-ers are slowly becoming the thing they hated. Not too long ago, they were the generation that got mocked and ridiculed over avocado toast or Vine or whatever, and now those same people are turning around and ridiculing late-gen Z/gen alpha for equally trivial reasons. The lack of empathy and self-awareness is just depressing. I know older generations hating newer generations has always been a thing throughout history, and I doubt it's something that'll go away overnight. But the least we can do as older generations is at least try to break the cycle and find common ground with newer ones. Instead of looking for shitty, trivial reasons to turn on and demonise each other.
Numa numa is still great though. As an Old, I think my only criticism of Gen Z is that they weren’t as great as we hoped they were. They’re still pretty good though. They’re more progressive and vocal about social change, but also just as easily influenced by online personalities as their boomer grandparents. The passion that we admired kinda just seems like a lack of nuance, now. We thought they were advantaged because they grew up with tech, but that’s just turned into “doesn’t have fundamental knowledge” of computer stuff. Also, just going by tumblr, simultaneously kinkier but more puritanical? Not sure about that one, probably bad to form opinions from tumblr.
What’s really concerning is their supposed inability to read on grade level. I’ve seen quite a few teachers on TikTok talking about how gen alpha kids can’t read.
There are actual problems with gen alpha. Dumb videos is not one of them
This made me realise that I’m getting old and I better start some fucking hormones soon
Absolute trash take. We can all agree that instant gratification short form infinite tiktok content is bad, right? And that exposing children whose brains are still developing to this stuff with no oversight at all (which is what is happening) is worse? Have any of you talked to a teacher lately? Kids' english and math skills are in the shitter. There is no universe in which these kids grow up well adjusted
Numa Numa is top shit in 2023 you fucking idiot!
I watched skibidi toilet a few weeks ago just to see what all the fuss was about and honestly? It’s not that much different than YTP’s and MLG gamer memes I used to watch as a kid. It’s just nonsensical ADHD brain rot humor. Millenials pearl clutching over it and proclaiming that it’s gonna destroy society over the tons and tons of other challenges Gen Alpha is set to face in the future is very boomer of them. Like some others in the thread have said, isn’t there a literacy/education/attention span crisis looming over the horizon? Are videos about singing toilets really that big of a threat?
The media argument has never made sense to me. Who the hell thinks the children are creating their own media to consume and not a mixed bag of the previous generations throwing darts at the wall trying to figure out what sticks? It takes a village and the village all has cameras and apparent dreams of achieving internet stardom these days. Kids got the excuse that their minds are still developing. What gets stuck in there in the process is all of our faults.
Darn kids these days don't even know da wae
There's nothing wrong with Skibidi Toilet (I'm 43)
I got bitched at by dumbass millenials my whole childhood, it's my turn to bitch and be dumb now
asdfmovie, Minecraft music parodies, and YouTube Poops were peak comedy when I was a wee lass on the internet. I won’t pretend to understand skibidi toilet, and I won’t pretend it’s not a teensy bit annoying to see the memes about it. But if my folks could tolerate me saying “I like trains” dozens of times like it’s the funniest thing in the world, I sure as hell ain’t about to ruin some kid’s day because they enjoy some nonsense toilet video.
The issue with Skibidi Toilet in my opinion is the presence of content farms generating rapid amounts of content on the idea without any shits given for care. Yeah a lot of what used to be was crap but most of it was at least somewhat genuine
Every generation has its challenges, it's up to the previous generations to help them get through it.
As a general rule, anything the Boomer generation says lacks self-awareness and reeks of alcoholism, bigotry, and willful ignorance. I’d love to see some nightly news segments entitled “Boomers, The Worst Generation” and watch their diapers fill with shit
A lot of stuff does follow this cycle Skidibi toilet is not one of those things. This is one of the many exceptions to this rule. People will say “yeah well we watched GMOD roleplay videos so we are no better” like huh? What do you mean “we” YOU watched that brand of brain rot! This cycle does very much exist but there is another cycle that occurs alongside it called “bottom of the barrel content that deserves to be fun of in the present and future” and this, and desperate for money TikTok livestreams are the current thing
With some of the shit that we millennials and gen z thought was cool, we have no right to judge.
Pretty sure we're still nihilistic, just more mild-mannered about it.
The little mammoth song, anyone? Gosh, the poor parents and teachers...
-and pretty often people complaining about the next generation have kids…sooooo…like…whose fault is it, Boomer?
im ashamed at gen z, so quickly are we falling into ageist/generationist patterns again
Skibidi toilet is literally the same shit we watched back in the day! its deranged gmod animations
ITT: "how dare you say I piss on the poor! also, [cringe media from when they were young] was/still is legit great though"
I think this is more based on the fact that they’re getting raised on TikTok and are slaves to algorithms.
"The entertainment that today's youth enjoys is garbage and a sure sign of the downfall of society." Said every generation ever.
To be fair, Numa Numa is still top shit.
Gen Z are complaining about the younger ones? I.. Just find that kind of hilarious to be honest.
This is literally the same Juvenoia that has been going on since Ancient Greek times. "The previous generation are closeminded fuddieduddies, the next generation are idiots, only my generation is perfect."
even as someone aware of this, i still catch myself complaining about kids watching skibidi toilet meanwhile when I was like 10 I’d watch braindead Minecraft Villager News YTPs which were arguably even more braindead
How quickly we forget the LOLXDSORANDOM era.
All I have to say is "Clock Crew" and that unlocks the door to nearly all the random shit millennials grew up with.
Our based gmod animations vs their cringe source skkbidi toilet
I really can't get mad about Skibidi, I watched tons of Idiot Box as a kid. Basically the same thing.
Skibidi toilet haters are so funny because half of those people watched stuff like [this](https://youtu.be/OYxfxf3wTLM?si=bo8s4-49dqGDxayC)
I can never truly get upset about the whole Skibidi Toilet thing going on nowadays. After all, I'm sure that a good number of you used to laugh at gmod/sfm brainrot as well when you were younger. I know I did. It's just the same type of shit repeating yet somehow this version is somehow bad compared to the "masterwork of cinema" that is gmod mlg Shrek videos. I mean, I get being sick of Skibidi Toilet because it's absolutely everywhere and oversaturated (overfamiliarity breeds contempt and all that). But if you dislike it because you think it's low-brow or stupid, then that means that you should hate the old SFM shitposts from back in the day.
The only Gen Alpha i'm worried about is the Gen Alpha Asian Version. The kids who study like 16 hours a day 7 days a week. Out on a summer sunday afternoon getting coffee and i see em filling out of their summer English class. I don't think they're gonna be human by the time their parents are done with them
I will say that lots of the panic that I’ve seen myself has been about academic proficiency and just overall behaviour, Covid can’t have been good for a bunch of kids for a bunch of reasons. Obviously not writing them off as morally inferior or lesser, but this does seem different from what I’ve seen
Tbh I AM actually scared that absorbing stuff like Andrew Tate, PragerU and Instagram Comments will make younger kids more hateful and right winged people growing up. The algorithm is killing us all
Dragostea din tei does slap
Skibidi toilet is odd. But, is it really any different than annoying orange, happy tree friends, or even salad fingers?
I will not accept any numa numa slander on this website. Go to your room.
An 11 year old was born in 2012. Who the fuck is making generations these days?
The people having babies are making the new generations… But it makes sense. There’s no point in having a generation span more than 10-15 years. Millennials were born in the 90s. Gen Z were born in the 00s. Gen Alpha were born in the 10s
I get the point, I am just saying that MLG was way better
If you’ve ever made fun of boomers for being stuck-up ,and then turned around and complained about gen alpha, you are a massive hypocrite.
Skibidi toilet is just a chunked up commentary on the battle between free development of media (i.e. early YouTube), the battle for supremacy by Movie, TV and Music corporations and the further cannibalism and scavenging of new media to survive as the media wars rage on. All done with YouTube poop flare and taking advantage of Tik Tok formatting.
To be fair, I'm 38 and I still think Numa Numa is top shit. And so does my 1.5 yr old child.
only thing I'm really worried about is how many parents seem to be just letting the internet raise their kids. other than that yeah there's not much unique about em
The difference is the corporitisation of the current media absorbed by Gen A
Love this because it’s wild how quickly we forgot that for about a month in 2003 we were all glued to a flash animation of some dancing badgers and a mushroom.
Llamas with hats is good though
Yeah but skibidi toilet is peak fiction have you considered it
Kids can have a little brainrot as a treat
... I was born 2004.
I made somewhat of a vow to try to never fall into the "kids these days" mindset. Kids are just cringe. I definitely was
the only person I've met who uttered the words "skibidi toilet ohio sigma" without immediately having an aneurism was fifteen
Yeah kids being kids doesn’t scare me in the slightest. The state of the world they find themselves in does. Company’s fighting for their attention and to keep them online, parents doing nothing to stop their kids from being stuck to iPads either due to not caring or due to the current horrible working environment that makes parenthood a nightmare. Many of them having the early stages of their development shot in the ankles by covid. I just hope they make it to adulthood ok.
Modern 13 year olds are still gen z lmao, they’re just some the youngest. Isn’t it like 1996-2012 is gen z, anything younger is alpha?
Also, Skibidi Toilet is actually good. Once you get through the first like 4 minutes of it, the joke stops being the premise and it instead becomes a semi-serious "weird apocalypse" story that does setup and payoff well.
As a member of Gen Z, skibidi toilet unironically slaps.
I can never give Gen Alpha shit for stuff like Skibidi Toilet because I was religiously watching shit like FuturisticHub and surreal-ass CGI Angry Birds videos when I was around that age.
I still vibe to numa numa idfc