Ron: 0:29

what's up lounge lizards? Welcome back to the uncannery uh tale of um joy and woe.

Speaker 2: 0:38

That's uh I think we need a subtitle for the podcast can?

Ron: 0:42

we can do that, don, just for today's episode. No I want to go back to all of them. Why don't podcasts have subtitles? Or we could also do the Melville thing, where it's like Moby Dick or the Whale.

Speaker 2: 0:57

Why don't we have two titles, the Uncannery or usually Three Guys, but not today.

Ron: 1:10

If you're joining us, uh, doug is still out with child and um, that's uh great for him and better for us. And uh, uh, we are here today to 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 the world is a crazy place. It's a magical place. There's a lot in this world sometimes. I was just thinking this morning.

Don: 1:31

Were you how magical.

Ron: 1:33

Yeah, what magic were you focusing on? What magic it is to be alive.

Don: 1:37

I opened my eyes, you know, and just was happy to be part of it.

Ron: 1:42

You know, I don't know if you're sort of joking, but I literally feel that way most mornings. There was like a time in my life where I was like kind of afraid to go to sleep because I was like not sure what happens if I don't wake up, it's like what if this is my last moment, like me, having like a mildly sore neck, trying to use this uncomfortable pillow to just get six hours sleep before I go to work? What if this is my last moment and that would keep me up longer?

Don: 2:11

So you could enjoy your last moment and just stretch it out. Yeah, exactly, staring at the ceiling, melinger.

Ron: 2:19

It is magical to be here. And you know what else is magical? A little thing called the internet. You ever heard of it?

Don: 2:26

You ever use the internet Is that does that? Is that the thing that comes on the the disc that they send?

Ron: 2:32

in the mail. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you've been stockpiling those discs, right, well, yeah they, they come with 1,099 free minutes.

Don: 2:39

You gotta, you gotta, keep them in the safe.

Ron: 2:42

This is why I always ask my grandparents for internet discs, like at Christmas time, and then I just use those for my internet for the rest of the year. What was your first kind of memory of the internet? Like for some of our listeners, maybe this might I feel like we're kind of in a privileged situation, kind of like like in 2000,. Like anyone who fought in World War II, it's kind of like we were all like mining their brains for like what was it like?

Don: 3:05

I feel like you and I are similar it's true, we are the, the gentrified, the old, the calcified, uh veterans yes exactly.

Ron: 3:12

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: 3:22

um, oh, so we're not talking about before then. We're talking about the moment of.

Ron: 3:27

No, nothing before the internet matters Don obviously.

Don: 3:32

I don't know about that. I had MTV before the internet. Well, actually I have some very strong memories of the very first moments of using the internet. I'm not positive, this is actually the very first time I encountered the internet, but my strongest memory of uh, of internet was right when, uh, uh, I started college and uh, and so friends from high school, we'd all gone to different universities and uh, uh, my best friend at the time, uh, we were roommates and uh, we were friends with a, um, a friend who'd gone back east to college. So we, I'm trying to think what it was called like Usenet.

Ron: 4:10

That was definitely a. Thing.

Don: 4:13

So it was magic because our computers were connected, like our computer in our dorm room and her computer back east, and we could type live back and forth to each other. But that was all it was, was just like just live typing it was like text screen, like it looks like ms-dos and just like you know, you put in like hi, how are you? And then like a second later, I'm good, you know a telegram with a keyboard.

Ron: 4:38

That's what it was exactly.

Don: 4:40

Yeah, full stop and uh, but uh, but I have, uh, I don't know why I had such a good memory, but it, we had fun and it was uh, it was magic, it literally, because sure, I mean we could call and right, right, like to see it visually appear on your screen that you know with yeah it was a. It was a different kind of communication.

Ron: 5:01

It was uh, yeah there must be something about like any new kind of communication device. Like whether or not there must be something about like any new kind of communication device, like whether or not it actually makes communication simpler. It's just sort of fascinating to use right For sure.

Don: 5:13

Like I mean along those lines, beepers would be the.

Ron: 5:17

My dad had a beeper, for sure.

Don: 5:19

So, and the codes that came with the beepers right, and you had a 411 or a 911, right. Because you couldn't send any like. All you could send were numbers.

Ron: 5:29

You couldn't send any actual you know language. This is how I feel about ham radios. I, like a few years ago, got into a ham ham radios with my friends and we all went and got ham radio licenses.

Ron: 5:40

And mostly because we were doing a lot of like off-roading in the desert. No-transcript, it's way more difficult. It's a pain in the butt. You got to like dial in a specific frequency and hope that the cloud coverage is right so that you can beam it off of a repeater in the somewhere in the hills of Los Angeles. But it's just so cool that when it works it's like wow, I'm, I'm talking to someone in oregon right now. Wow, you know?

Ron: 6:29

Um, my earliest memories of the internet I think I was too young for it to like be useful for me. Like I want to say I was six or seven maybe when I kind of remember us having the internet in 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 aol account and I remember kind of like that splash screen and there was definitely like pictures and stuff there. But I was just kind of like, okay, whatever. And then when I became like a pre-teen teenager, um, we still had aol. And that's when, like aol instant messenger became like huge in my life, which was just like uh, um, I guess like WhatsApp or something, but on your desktop computer, right, you log in. You log in, you have a username and then you have like an address book of other people's usernames you found and then you could just talk to them. And I remember like several nights me like telling my parents frustratedly like you gotta get off the computer because we had like one computer.

Ron: 7:25

Right, that's how most people used to have one computer, one phone line yeah, yeah, exactly right 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 for the next hour and a half so I could talk with my friends on aol, instant messenger or aim, and my parents were just being like what are you talking about? Like this, this is not conducive to the rest of the family.

Ron: 7:47

Just call them on the phone or you'll see them at school tomorrow. Who cares? I was like you don't get it. This is where action happens and I do remember people spoke differently on AOL instant messenger. If you found someone's like username, you could start a conversation with people you would never talk with in real life, like popular girls and jocks and stuff, and everyone was sort of like just talking and because they couldn't see your face. I remember like having like really intimate conversations with kids who I would like we would go to school and see them next day and never acknowledge that we had been speaking.

Don: 8:19

How do you know it was really them you were being. It was. It was pre catfishing is what was happening to you. You were chatting with with, it's possible old men in the cabin somewhere pretending to be a pop girl at your middle school.

Ron: 8:32

This is totally something my mother accused me of doing once because I was talking with uh. There was also a forum back then for like warhammer. I went, obviously, when I was a teenager, I was into warhammer and I found a forum and then people were like, oh you know, dming each other outside of this uh forum, and I was like, mom, these are just my Warhammer friends. You don't get it. And they're like, they're probably very old. Why do they want to talk to you at all? And uh, to be fair, I don't have an answer to that question. She's probably right.

Ron: 8:57

I probably shouldn't be. It was just fun, it was cool, it was different, it was democratic, it was the promise of the internet realized on. But would you be surprised to learn that maybe, maybe the internet secretly harbored a dark and foreboding reality at all times.

Don: 9:16

I can't even imagine what dark purposes the internet could be used for.

Ron: 9:20

No. Yeah, it's just a force for good. It's only a force for good. It's only a force for good. It's only a force for communication.

Don: 9:25

It's how we spread true information, it's how we connect with other people and it has no repercussions on the way we behave in the real space. It just brings goodness, yeah.

Ron: 9:36

Until Generation Z.

Don: 9:41

They screw it all up, yeah.

Ron: 9:42

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 generation right now is Gen Alpha. 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 yeah yeah, we had.

Don: 10:11

Millennial and then Gen Z and there's too fast, you're supposed to have like 40 years in 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 or something like that. Right, these are, this is the boomer generation, right? These are like the oldest people 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, and they'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, and then you've got Gen X. Gen X, correct Gen X is that's me. Then what would that be? 69?

Don: 11:09

through- 65.

Ron: 11:10

65. 80. 80. Okay, cool, that's Gen X, so 15 years. Then you've got the millennial generation and that's like what, 80, 81, through through 95, 96, 96, okay. And then you've got gen z, who was everyone from 97 through what? 20, 2010, 10, 11, yeah, and then after that, anyone born like 2011 onwards we're now calling 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, at least in the United States, I'm pretty sure in almost all the Western world, actually I'd say probably the entire world People don'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 from their overconsumption of the internet. What was once so pure and good for you and me, Don, absolutely. They have warped to their dark designs, I told you, they ruin everything and this, I think, kind of like made waves, or at least made a splash, when a TikTok 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 change some of those vowels. So, uh, it was tic-tac. And then instead of a game, it was a web application that people used to share, uh, cute videos, oh, like a newsreel. Like a newsreel exactly. Yeah, like you used to get before you saw a film Before the cereal plays at the movie show at the movie house.

Ron: 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 generations are 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 example of their um, their, their culture exactly. Yeah, this is a, this is anthropology we're conducting here all right here's the song pretty 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 little bit 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 into that sort of talent. This song features a lot of words that people didn't understand, maybe still don't understand, in case you need, like you know, a recital if you didn't hear it entirely, if you were just sort of like paralyzed by what was happening. The song goes Sticking out your gat 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 of these 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 the frogs make when they when they do with their tongue and then it lands 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 a uh, like your, your buttocks, um uh why don't they just use that word? Then everybody would understand well, because this is a sort of like a mutation of like uh, african-american vernacular english, which is kind of like where a lot of slang terms come from. But like this idea, like you would see someone who is so prodigious in that in their, in their backwards capacity I think I guess we could say, um, that you would kind of turn your head and you say something like god damn, right, um.

Ron: 15:52

And so they've like, shortened this and made it obviously more appropriate and, uh, removed god from the mix by saying gyat, all right. So sticking out your god means like 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 the rizzlers, 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 means you have charisma. It means you have what we might call moxie.

Don: 16:31

So they're just not saying all the no, these are all yeah exactly, these are decapitated words.

Ron: 16:37

Right, Mutated English words that have a meaning but needs to be parsed out. Unless you are a member of Gen Z, 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 the whole word.

Ron: 16:59

I think their brains just can't say the words. I think they uh, yeah, it's obviously because they got tiktok brain and character limits. Uh, it means they just can't. That's what it is, it's twitter. Yeah, yeah, they can only speak in 144 character thoughts exactly, and this is what I want to talk about today. Don. This song was considered an example of a phenomenon that 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 I think that I can.

Ron: 17:33

We all know people. Brain rot was the 2024 word of the year for the Oxford Dictionary, and they define it as thus Brain rot is the supposed deterioration of a person's mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material, now particularly online content, considered to be trivial or unchallenging.

Don: 17:57

it is also something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration so it's both the, the manifestation of the diminished capacity, as well as the, the, the content causer right, yeah the, the catalyst of that state.

Ron: 18:15

Um, and this word is actually created by Gen Z. Right, this is a word they use to describe a lot of the content they engage with online the videos, 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 it pejoratively to describe themselves. I've it pejorative pejoratively to describe themselves. I've seen it being used pejoratively to describe younger generations. I've seen gen z bashing on gen alpha 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 say intelligent things like that instead of whatever ohio or whatever alpha saying exactly right, alpha's just babbling yeah, alpha's babbling, they're just like crawling out of the crib, 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 I was born in the dark. I think gen z thinks they were born in the internet and they mastered it. They have a mastery over it rather than like everyone else, 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 actually from 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 get off Twitter man.

Ron: 19:49

When Thoreau is writing in Walden he has this quote. He says while England endeavors to cure the potato rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain rot which prevails so much more widely and fatally as this sort of criticism or indictment against his modern age right that people's brains are not being nourished Worse than potatoes? Definitely, I don't know man, one feeds my stomach and the other feeds my mind, I'm sure Emerson would have said to him. So this idea that this brain rot is starting to cause like what I think is a kind of new modern moral panic, right, there are people who there's a mental health clinic that thinks brain rot is like an actual illness. Right, they define it as a mental fogginess, a lethargy, reduced attention span, cognitive decline that results from an overabundance of screen time. And in a lot of cases this can be true. Right, with like um studies and research about the effects of like um internet, uh, prolonged internet usage.

Don: 20:59

Like in both adults and adolescents I am actually a little bit in, especially with adolescents like the, the, the measurement of the ability for sustained attention is is completely, it's almost non-existent, um, compared to to even gen z, even Gen X, which was a media generation. We did have a lot of TV and a lot of changes in how TV was delivered and cable TV was invented, so there's more than three channels. But no, the studies have been showing that current teenagers so both Gen Z and on the edges of Gen Alpha they literally cannot put their phone down. It's a physical inability because they're so addicted to the constant stream of information.

Ron: 21:48

Yeah, there's a term for it. There's nomophobia, which is a literal fear of not having access to your phone, not having access to these screens, like a literal fear of not having access to your phone not having access to these screens.

Ron: 21:56

Recent studies I found like a number of different ones, but they all seem to kind of agree on this number that teenagers today are spending around eight hours a day on average on screens in general, whether those are television screens, 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 lot of rise in that screen usage and in that internet usage. Internet addiction is like a real thing, right, this idea that you just sort of can't get off the internet, and this is largely linked to just like the chemical reaction that occurs like when we are engaging predominantly with like social media content that is designed to be very bite-sized, very high interest, but very like forgettable. Right like very disposable. Right like so, uh, you've probably heard the term doom scrolling, right, this is another 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.

Ron: 23:02

I thought you were on top of things, don. Uh, I read, I read books. Okay, maybe you doom read, doom scrolling. Is this idea that, like you know, you're on Twitter, uh, you're on Reddit, you're on, uh, you know, any of these social media platforms Facebook, I guess and you know, you're on Twitter, you're on Reddit, you're on, you know, any of these social media platforms Facebook, I guess and you know, each of these platforms has a feed that's just basically just giving you headlines of things or quick images, and you know, when we see something interesting, it gives us a little dose of dopamine in our brain and that's pleasurable, that's fun, like, ooh, that's funny, that image of that cat, or wow, that's's insane.

Ron: 23:34

I can't believe that happened today in the news right, and then you just scroll past it and that you know that interaction takes probably less than two seconds right, or three seconds sometimes, and uh, it becomes sort of addictive to just keep scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. But the idea of doom scrollings that you realize on some fundamental level, this isn't actually nourishing. Even though your brain is receiving this sort of small dopamine hit, you're not actually like nourished or enjoying your time and you often feel like you can't leave it right.

Don: 24:01

You're stuck, you're glued to your screen right that the length of engagement with any particular image on a screen is much reduced. So you know we talk about screen time, but I think that it's important that you differentiate between like office screen time, where I might be staring at a document you know for an hour or two on my screen, but it's still just one document that I'm engaged with versus you know, the scrolling on the platforms you're talking about where literally it's less than two seconds and you've processed the entire. You know information that is being delivered to you and then you move on to the next item. So it's not there's no sustained 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 found some interesting facts about, like if we were to divide internet usage by generation, right, Like, what are those specific tasks that people are spending the most time on Right?

Ron: 25:06

And if we look at boomers right today's, you know, elder statesmen, the eldest amongst us the most venerable amongst us, right, um, they spend most of their internet time uh, streaming tv right, like that's where the majority of their uh internet usage comes from. Um and uh gen x they're. They spend also the majority of their time streaming television right. So again, the idea is like that's their. It seems like the implication is like that's how they know screens most. That's like screens where television sets right and you can hook up the internet to them and now you can watch netflix or hulu on it. So it's a replacement technology not a innovative exactly right um millennials.

Ron: 25:49

They spend most of their time um on a uh uh, on a desktop 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 their time, though, is spent for work, so they spend less of their time, still a lot of time streaming TV, streaming music and 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 doing work and then, like, the next highest would be three hours and 20 minutes uh doing social media browsing. Um gen z um has the highest amount of uh social media browsing, at three hours and 28 minutes um and uh. They uh also spend three hours and 37 minutes just streaming music, but their usage of screens in all categories are much higher than previous generations. So they are definitely engaging with it much more than previous generations. And, yeah, there are certain pernicious effects that have been associated with it. They have decreased offline community participation Oftentimes they report relationship issues or decreased academic performance.

Don: 27:05

Decreased offline community participation. Is that what you said? That means they just don't go outside and play, is that? That's exactly yeah, that's a very 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 my head. I found this article about brain rot and I was kind of like I work with young people, I work 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 decision instantly when you asked.

Ron: 27:31

Yeah, one of the questions I asked them was do you think teenagers are dating more or less now than they used to? And they had their own ideas. But I made them go research and find articles about it and a lot of them came back with evidence that there was reduced dating amongst Gen Z than there was in previous generations. And when I asked them to come up with reasons why, oftentimes I don't think their reasons were as fully researched as they think, but a lot of times they just 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 had done?

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 of questionable veracity frequently. Um, but it seemed like there was some academic consensus that, um, I think one of the metrics they're using is like where do people meet um their spouses and stuff? And there's just like a general decline in spouses being met at 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, the internet, yes, it can have some very bad effects effects right on us, right, it's not. It's not all gold, it's not all gravy, as the kids say, or maybe once said, um but um, this article I found, uh was trying to make a counter argument that like, hey, you know, the older generations aren't totally understanding this brain rot idea and there's a little bit there. They're sort of like missing the point. This is an article by uh, angel gal 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 media and all these things like that are affecting my generation. Of course, obviously, obviously. But this like brain rot thing is not something to be targeted and sort of like it's not an issue 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 a medical condition and he thinks oxford dictionary kind of misses the mark. It is not like brain rot doesn't describe like the literal um, uh, uh deterioration of your mind. It is, it's a perceived deterioration of your mind that is kind of caused by what he describes mendoza describes as predominantly like generational in 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 more internet 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 of decline almost right, or their moment of perceived decline, where we kind of like get up in arms and we collectively, as adults, say, hey, there's something wrong with these kids and we need to step in and fix them, otherwise, this magical game that we experience every day we wake up in our bed, it's all going to go away. It's all good.

Ron: 31:01

It's all going to be for not, do you 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 levied against you, Don, when you were growing up? What was wrong with Gen?

Don: 31:19

X. Well, video games was one of them, 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 so cool? So it was. It was actually a lot of the similar uh complaints you're describing now. So it was too much time, so it would be something that you turn on in the afternoon and you would watch it, um, and and, rather than doing other things like play outside or um, meet with friends or do your homework or like. So it was uh, it was a, a media distraction from, and this was this is original MTV.

Don: 32:02

So this is when MTV was actually music television before it not skateboarding reality TV shows, right, right, so, uh so yeah those were the, those were the and probably the content of MTV 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 the television screen.

Ron: 32:28

Yeah, and and as a millennial, I feel like I. You know, I, my, my whole adult existence has been some sort of blame game of why my generation is tanking the economy.

Don: 32:39

Well, because they are. They are, you can't hold a job. You move around from place to place. 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 sort of material motivators. They're only psychological, social right. They're locked inside of our brain cases, our brain stems, as it were. When I was researching this episode, I came across this phenomenon called generational blame, which is this idea that, pretty much at any given time in history, the older generation has uh blamed the, the troubles, the travails of the modern era on the youth. The youth are at fault, the youth are, uh, there's something rotten in the state of the youth you know what I?

Ron: 33:30

mean um, and? And I found a quote. This quote is often attributed to 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.

Ron: 33:51

Socrates has been misattributed to this quote, but I found a guy who was doing a dissertation about what the classic Greeks of antiquity thought about the youth, and the guy making this dissertation summarized their indictments of the youth as being about luxury, bad manners, contempt for authority, disrespect to elders and a love for chatter in place of exercise. Children began to be the tyrants, not the slaves, of their households. They no longer rose from their seats when an elder entered the room. They contradicted their parents. They chattered before company. They gobbled up the dainties at table and committed various offenses against Hellenistic tastes, such as crossing their legs. They tyrannized over. They did cross their legs, or they didn't. 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 to man spread in ancient hellenic culture.

Speaker 2: 34:45

Um, and these kids tyrannized over the pedagogy and school masters right, who would have been the teachers?

Ron: 34:51

right, um, and so this is like a list of just things this man managed to find about ancient Greeks complaining about the youth. Any of those sound applicable to 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 my radar.

Ron: 35:13

But there's this idea that there's a customs and the kids they follow the customs, they're not 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're supposed to do. They're not like kids. When I was a kid, you know what I mean.

Ron: 35:30

There's another quote here I found from Yoshida Kenko, who's a Japanese author and Buddhist monk from the 1300s. He said modern fashion seemed to keep on growing more and more debased. The ordinary spoken language has also steadily coarsened. People used to say raise the carriage shafts or trim the lamp wick. But people today say raise it or trim it, when they should say let the men of the palace staff stand forth. They say torches, let's have some 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.

Ron: 36:10

So again this idea like we raised earlier. They're shortening language, right. Why can't they just say charisma? Why do they got to say riz? You know, this must demonstrate some sort of shortcoming in their faculties. I found one by Thomas Barnes, an Englishman in the 1600s. He says youth were never more saucy yay, never more savagely saucy. The ancient are scorned, the honorable are contemned, the magistrate is not dreaded. And so I I've really. I feel very kind of like nourished by this idea that the youth have always been rebellious. They've always been punk, they've always been like screw the magistrate, you know, down with the old right. We're saucy, we're body right.

Ron: 36:56

This is just the tale of youth right. 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 body and saucy, or is it that the older generations perceive them? Because they are different, they do things differently, they face different challenges, they have 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 the only, the only constant is that there is no constant right that the times change, right, society changes the concept. Okay, right, every society is progressing or changing in some way, and youth are obviously going to adapt to it differently. Their experience of the world is going to be different than the experience of someone born 20, 30, 15 years prior right.

Ron: 37:55

Like they're just going to adapt in different ways. And I'm kind of interested in this question of like. Why? Why this this urge to blame them? Though? Right, because, okay, let's admit something Are kids annoying? Yeah, do they kind of suck? Absolutely, this is their humor alien and not as funny as uh Bill and Ted or uh Adam Sandler, like when I was a kid. Of course, of course, nothing they do is as funny as uh bill and ted or uh adam sandler, like when I was a kid. Of course, of course, nothing they do is as funny, right, um, but I think these are like matters of taste. So why do older generations, or you know, feel this need to kind of like, point at them and say you're doing it wrong, you're saucy?

Don: 38:35

whoops. So the the question is why are we 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 they can share ideas between each other which basically are saying this the, this new generation is doing things differently than we did. So therefore it must be wrong, yeah, without ever really acknowledging that that the context that the youth are living in is different, so that it it, it's good that it's different, because it has to necessarily be different. You know, um, uh, I have an older 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 house and have kids and um, and you know, uh, today, our Gen Z, like that's not possible, you can't do that, it's not. Uh. You know, with, with student debt and um, and the cost of housing and and what pay is, and stagnant pay rates and and inequality between uh pay gaps, and like it's the, the context is different than it was in the 1960s. So the, the approach to solving all those problems, has to be different.

Don: 39:55

So I think what's happening is the older generations are forgetting and and obviously this goes back to ancient Greece, right, they forget that the um, the context, is different for the young generation because we're living in it too Like. I'm Gen X and I'm still Gen X and I'm going to be Gen X until I die. But my view of the world is kind of, uh, framed through that lens of Gen X, so I don't really know what it's like to be a millennial.

Ron: 40:23

Right, exactly, and. And is it impossible for you to learn, though?

Don: 40:28

To learn what? To? Not to learn about it, but to to experience it right. To be to be a, I don't know, a comrade in millennialism. Comrade millennial, here he comes.

Ron: 40:43

I think that's the kind of that's part of that I find so interesting about this is because, like I have, yeah, like obviously none of us can experience right what a previous or future generation has experienced right, but I do think there is like a side, a sort of drive to want to understand or to keep the channels of communication with those generations open, right. I think back to like the older generations who raised me, and from different people it was like I can't like stereotype. Every boomer I ever met was always 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 be different amongst different people. But like I had a grandpa who was just like always openly derisive of anything like I did as a kid and me and my friends and siblings did, and just had zero interest in like trying to understand, like what is this show 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 no interest in doing any of that Right, just completely a closed book in regards to like trying to extend uh uh, an ear right, uh, to uh who who are the younger kids.

Ron: 41:59

Like because of that, he was just always sort of openly afraid of or like angry at kids for like being different than he was right for having a very different life experience. And he, yeah, yeah, we were. Often we didn't understand the comfort we grew up in, we didn't understand how easy we had it and and a lot of those things probably true. Like I, I would not argue on him that I had a much easier upbringing than he did, growing up 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's problems 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.

Don: 42:40

So what you're bringing up is one of the solutions. Right is that the older generations need to be a little bit more nimble in our abilities to accept new technologies, especially communication technologies technologies. But, um, and, and I think it's interesting to see that that is kind of happening right now because, like you say, the, the baby boomers and and older Gen X is like they are using the internet and and technologies to stream and TV now, which is a, it's a replacement technology. It's basically they're still just watching TV, but they're doing it in a completely different way.

Don: 43:15

The, uh, the idea of scheduling watching TV is no longer a thing. You don't have to be, except for the, you know, except for the, the, the Superbowl, the world series, nothing else starts on time and you can just watch whatever you want, whenever you want. And I I don't even know that that I think about that very often because, like sure, I'll watch that show. And then you know, it doesn't matter 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 I have 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 getting together 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 to some of the language issues that you have raised and I'm curious about, like, so, the Gen Z slang you're bringing up Skivity in Ohio. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And some of that is intended to make communication isolated to that generation. It's intended to not be understood 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 not new to Gen Z this is the current crop of slang. But you go back to Chubby Checker and the rock movement. You know chubby checker and you know and and the the rock movement, like you know the my, what my grandpa would call the ya-ya music and the.

Don: 44:43

That was rock and roll yeah, right, because it didn't have words you could understand and but that was part of the, that was part of the culture of rock too. Was that? It was a, a specific youth culture that was intended to be youth communicating to youth, and outsiders were not supposed to understand what was necessarily being explicitly said. Then I'm wondering if that movement of creating this you know, insular culture, uh, of youth, 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 can get away with it is by verbally acknowledging the cringe, right, so, so I have a, I have a, uh, a student who, uh, will tell me, you know, goodbye, and have a skivvity day. And I'll say have a skivvity day, don't be Ohio, right, and like.

Don: 45:33

I know that that sounds goofy, um, but, but, but we both are acknowledging my use of the language is intended to be ironic. Yes, I'm not trying to be as cool as as she is, because, well, I'm not part of that generation that uses those words. So is that that's? My question is, is that okay? Should the older generation start to pick up and, you know, know, increase their riz with the youth, or should we hang on to our own you know generation's slang, so that we're not encroaching on that culture?

Ron: 46:11

So I think you can do this. I think the example you provided is a great example of how to do it. Well, I think honestly, like there's a difference between acknowledging and and for me, it's a question like curiosity, generational curiosity. Right.

Ron: 46:25

I feel like I remember growing up and, um, I know like I feel like right now, the media is really interested in portraying like a lot of generational animosity right, it's not just older generations being angry at Gen Z, but also Gen Z and millennials hating boomers and like almost like a generational war, right, and I think that's completely wrong. I don't think that's healthy. I don't think that's like I'm not saying like yeah, one side is right and one side is wrong. I remember growing up and being like incredibly curious about my like Gen X parents x parents right, and their boomer grandparents right I wanted to learn about.

Ron: 47:01

Like their experience, I wanted to learn about their world, like I listened exclusively to, like music from the 70s and 80s, like as a teenager right, just like wanting to like on 8-track, not on 8-track, no, on cds you don't really know what it sounds like remastered versions yeah, yeah exactly here you go again.

Ron: 47:19

It's never enough, don but just like wanting to understand their experiences, right Like learning their lingo. I remember watching like VH1, I love the 90s or. I love the 80s. I love the 70s right All these things and learning their like in-jokes and their pop culture moments that they all kind of shared and like really enjoying that kind of stuff, and I think like what you are expressing is a similar desire in reverse, right.

Ron: 47:46

Like you are interested in the present generation, you want to understand their cultural touchstones. It's not about understanding their language so that we can pass as them, right, it's just about understanding the language so we can move a little closer to their experience, right. And then not so that we can communicate with them in these ways? Cause again, that's you're right. That's not the point.

Ron: 48:06

You can't co-opt that yeah exactly, and I think there's this idea amongst brain rot. They're like oh, the kids can only speak in Skibbity and Aura and Riziz, and you know like now they're uh the big one. Now that all my students are doing is like, uh, uh, low taper fade is like another annoying tiktok song that now they're all repeating. Um, that's also just part of kids is like they just repeat stuff they hear. Right, like they like there's not always as much intentionality behind these things as they think.

Ron: 48:36

Right, it's just I can think back when I was like 10, I was probably repeating, like terrible Adam Sandler jokes from Billy Madison and stuff. Right, like we all have our cringe era. Um, but, uh, again, it's not about like I need to talk with my kid by saying no cap. It's like I should know what no cap means. So it's like I should know what no cap means. So when my kid uses it, I know what they're saying and then I can respond to them in, you know, oxford English and they will still be able to communicate with me.

Ron: 49:04

You know what I mean. Does that kind of answer your question or am know?

Don: 49:07

something as cool or like rad. I can't ever remember saying rad or radical to an adult. I know we used it between each other, but I'm trying to think if I ever said it to my grandma, but I know like I would say cool or whatever and like that's something that she would understand and I don't think she ever said it back no, yeah, like she would never say something was cool, but no, yeah, kind of what's key, and she didn't try to, you know, alter, change or make fun of my pattern of speaking. Um, which I think that's actually, you know, your.

Don: 50:03

One of your questions a while ago was like why are these generation, generational wars and conflicts happening and what can we do about them? I think that's really the key is it doesn't matter, like it doesn't matter, if the, if the boomers room, the economy, if gen z is lazy, if you know millennials are ruining the job market, like it. What matters is we all have different skills and experiences, even though we're from different generations, that we can bring to the table to want increase our understanding of each other and improve whatever the current situation is, because the current situation is what needs to be improved, not what happened 20 years ago that my generation did or didn't do 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 check out right and be like well, I don't need to join in that effort too, Right?

Ron: 50:53

Like if they think I'm the one who's bad, then screw them, right, I'll just stay in my own little generational bubble and, uh, I don't need to kind of extend that olive branch, extend that understanding or anything like that. All right, um, I, I. You know there's a lot of words we could go over here and define, but I think, like in the spirit of the show, like, if you don't understand something a kid says to you, uh, you can ask them. Right, like, just just ask them to say hey, what do you mean by that? Right, and I find usually they're very happy to tell you they're like oh, this is what that means, right, like they're just excited to know that older people take an interest in them.

Ron: 51:26

And you know, uh, cause, again, like, young people look to old people for guidance, right, as much as they probably don't want to say that out loud, they frequently do. They're paying attention to us, whether we know it or not, and they, they, in many ways. You know that their behavior mimics our behavior in ways that I think some, some older generations, aren't always keen to address. All right, don, now we've healed 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 would share 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 uncannibal material. Would you like to know more about horse manure? Yeah, did you know about the dyer situation the horse manure created nearly 200 years ago or whenever? That was All right. Thank you everyone. This is going to wrap up our season this time and we're hoping to be back with some more uncannibal bites in the summer. See you then. Bye, thank you.