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  • Artemisartemis@dice.camp
    Aug 5, 2026, 3:34 PM

    The thing I didn't understand as a child was that all the mechanisms for abuse, injustice, & fucking genocide were already built into the power structures of our society. I didn't yet know that the fascism was already here: quiet, bureaucratic, & largely hidden from the eyes of the middle class whites.

    I certainly didn't have context for previous times, such as the Civil Rights movement, when much of the country WAS engulfed in turmoil.

    Some things have gotten clearer in recent years.

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Replies

  • Artemisartemis@dice.camp
    Aug 5, 2026, 3:40 PM

    I did not expect the world to look like this.

    I no longer long for the "simpler times" I once imagined I might enjoy if the rise of Trump & his cronies had not destroyed my chance.

    The "simpler times" got us here. The violence, the bigotry, the exploitation, & the control... They all contribute to the current authoritarian crisis. I don't want to ignore it all & pass the problem to a future generation. I want it to fucking stop already.

    I don't want decency & decorum. I want liberation.

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  • Artemisartemis@dice.camp
    Aug 5, 2026, 3:52 PM

    I have mutuals on here who are old hands at resistance to authoritarianism & capitalistic power structures.

    While Trump/MAGA & the global popularization of open fascism taught me as a young adult that all this shit is very real & present, I wasn't exactly learning anything "new", but we ARE in a new stage of it.

    Something can be both very old & familiar AND brand-spanking-new at the same time. The oppression isn't new, but the world keeps changing.

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  • Artemisartemis@dice.camp
    Aug 5, 2026, 3:52 PM

    There is power in the fact that we ARE shaped by our specific experiences & circumstances.

    Generational infighting misses the point: there is value in the memory of how things were. There is value in having experience with tactics of resistance. There is also value in the intimate knowledge of the present moment which younger people seem to have. The immediacy of it. There is value in those at my point in life: enough perspective & education to start to build bigger mental pictures than before.

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  • Artemisartemis@dice.camp
    Aug 5, 2026, 3:55 PM

    Humans are born, age, & then die. Endless cycle. Same thing again & again.

    The best thing we can do with that is share our knowledge & experience with each other.

    You're going to die some day, so you better HOPE that the youth do have some knowledge & understanding. The world doesn't die with you. It goes on. We go on. We keep reaching for better futures. It takes all of us all of our lives.

    Getting arrogant like you know it all doesn't move us forward. There is always something new to learn.

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  • Artemisartemis@dice.camp
    Aug 5, 2026, 4:00 PM

    That's what I'm finding amazing about my 30s: I don't feel like additional perspective invalidates my past. Saying "I can see it better now" doesn't mean I was just fucking around & didn't know shit.

    The only reason I can see it better now is that I went through all that time of learning & growth. It's nothing to be arrogant about. It's literally just a stage of life & development that depends on everything that came before.

    Given the organic nature of humans, we need to embrace this process.

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  • Artemisartemis@dice.camp
    Aug 5, 2026, 4:28 PM

    Likewise, you shouldn't be required to "respect your elders" for easily-abused bullshit social hierarchy reasons, but you should respect what they have learned & the perspective they can share.

    Knowledge is a collective endeavor. We need each other. The average human lifespan is well under a century, so if we don't learn from each other, we won't be able to move forward. It's too short a timeframe. We have to carry forward knowledge from the past AND continue innovating & learning.

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  • Artemisartemis@dice.camp
    Aug 5, 2026, 4:34 PM

    I've got no patience for anyone who despises people either for their youth or their advanced age.

    Sure, you should decide if a person is worthy of your respect or not. But if you're an old hand at resistance, you've got to put some trust in youthful people & fucking hear them. They are the future.

    If you're young, you've got to learn from people & expand your knowledge-base & perspective: you haven't had TIME yet to collect a wealth of knowledge. Other people can shorten the process for you.

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  • Artemisartemis@dice.camp
    Aug 5, 2026, 4:49 PM

    I do think it is important how we interact with each other in this area:

    It can be very discouraging to young people to feel like they are being told they are ignorant & useless by people showing up to say "well, *I've* known this for decades," as if a 20 year old should be ashamed that they are learning something for the 1st time.

    But you will also see "shut up, older person. What do you know? That was then, this is now." This is now, sure, but you can learn some shit from what happened THEN.

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  • Artemisartemis@dice.camp
    Aug 5, 2026, 4:49 PM

    As a Millennial, I got a front row seat to a feverish performance of "young people today suck at everything". Being angry about "kids today" is a tale as old as time, but it still isn't fucking helpful.

    I try really fucking hard not to reflexively pass judgement on people younger than me for behavior or attitudes I simply don't understand. I don't think it does anything good to get mad at younger people for being shaped by & responding to a world so different from what you yourself experienced.

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  • Artemisartemis@dice.camp
    Aug 5, 2026, 4:52 PM

    The Who song "My Generation" is fucking hilarious to me, because it is perennial. Any young person can listen to that song & fucking relate despite the fact it was released 60 years ago. 😂

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  • Artemisartemis@dice.camp
    Aug 5, 2026, 4:59 PM

    Anyway: age divides are yet another way to divide & isolate us.

    It's beneficial to anyone trying to control a population if we distrust & are angry with each other. It is beneficial to them if you have no access to the past & if you slowly become cut off from the present over time.

    There is slice of MAGA fueled by anger at young people. Makes you think perhaps all those "avocado toast" articles were MEANT to create that anger, because it's one way to get votes & create division & strife.

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  • Artemisartemis@dice.camp
    Aug 5, 2026, 5:04 PM

    So many people cross a threshold after which they just fucking despise people younger than them, thinking they are worthless, lazy, & badly-behaved.

    The wild thing about it to me is that this is a continuous process: we experience the alienation when we are young & then turn back around & do it to the generations after us.

    Ironically, it's a repeating pattern passed down from generation to generation. It's also unhealthy as fuck & creates unbelievable resentment on all sides.

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  • Artemisartemis@dice.camp
    Aug 5, 2026, 5:08 PM

    That seems like a cycle that needs to be broken. We can't keep fighting this Youth vs Age battle forever. It's such a fucking waste of time.

    Yes, younger people can be hard to understand. Yes, they probably think about things differently from you & define their values in a different way. That's just how fucking time works. They weren't raised by your parents during your childhood.

    We're going to have to stop hating the young for being young at some point. Time passes.

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  • DThorisDejahEntendu@dice.camp
    Aug 5, 2026, 3:59 PM

    @artemis

    "There is always something new to learn." And that's exciting!

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  • Gemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐gcvsa@mstdn.plus
    Aug 5, 2026, 5:12 PM

    @artemis I think the thing that rankles me is that the rise of the Internet since the mid-1990s seems to have given the younger generations the idea that so much of what is merely new to them is entirely unknown to older generations. Internet culture glorifies youth and beauty over lived experience and the wisdom that cannot be gained but through time. Video killed the radio star. Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

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  • mother not wifeglassresistor
    Aug 6, 2026, 7:54 AM

    @artemis

    i think the tension and breaking the cycle has always been there and as generations get shorter and more fine grained(more people and faster info)

    i think its naturally creeping. like with HIV we lost of a whole generation of fun awesome amazing people(our dark ages) but its been 40yrs and at this point we have multi generational polycules and also found families with elders and babys

    im 30yrs older than my oldest and the micro generation before her currently looks like furry goth kids in rave pants

    which means furry grunge kids in rave pants with holes will be 3yrs from now

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  • mother not wifeglassresistor
    Aug 6, 2026, 7:56 AM

    @artemis my point is awesome is ageless and cringe has a shelf life so no one will remember it

    so the most multi generational people and spaces rock

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  • 🔥Cassandra🔥Cassandra@ottawa.place
    Aug 6, 2026, 1:54 PM

    @artemis Thanks for all the thoughts. I agree that it’s useful to imagine and role play. It’s why they try so hard to get people to shut down and accept. But if you’ve rehearsed standing up for your principles, it might be less scary.

    Agreed about the youth. I read a really thoughtful article about the Cockroach Janta Party in India the other day and was really impressed by the kids. They see how things are, what the future is, so much more clearly than politicians.

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  • FoolishOwlfoolishowl@social.coop
    Aug 6, 2026, 5:27 PM

    @artemis There's an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Q shows Picard what his life would have been like if he'd been cautious rather than bold at a critical moment, and goes on to remain a low-ranking technical specialist rather than a high-ranking officer. And what struck me was the barely disguised contempt all the other characters expressed for alternate Picard, as well as the outright loathing of Picard himself.

    There's something very similar to patriarchy in our attitudes towards aging, an up-or-out model that too few people question. In activist spaces, some older people seem to expect to hear "Captain on the deck" when they enter a room, and sometimes they get that and sometimes they're angrily rebuffed. But a lot more older people seem to expect to be just barely tolerated, as if had little to offer and could no longer learn.

    It's polarized and harmful.

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  • FoolishOwlfoolishowl@social.coop
    Aug 6, 2026, 5:44 PM

    @artemis Relatively recently I'd been around a small group, and there was an argument about participating in a mass demo, one of the big liberal marches against Trump, and most of the group was opposed on the grounds that mass demos were useless.

    So I argued for participating, explaining how I thought we'd overemphasized such mass demos in the 90s and 00s, but I'd since come to think we'd overcorrected and that they were important, just not enough in themselves. The argument was grounded in my personal experiences.

    And a couple of people answered that they'd just done a study group on a book that said demos were useless, so I was wrong.

    Like, I wasn't assuming my argument was going to convince everyone, but I found "Your experience is irrelevant" to be pretty infuriating. So I basically left the group over it.

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  • Gary Houstonghouston@mamot.fr
    Aug 7, 2026, 2:34 AM

    @foolishowl @artemis The "utopian" society of Star Trek seems to retain its strict hierarchies, like it's the Soviet Union but with more enlightened leadership. But then bad leadership (at the levels above the protagonists) still turns up frequently.

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  • bloomtime!thesquirrelfish
    Aug 5, 2026, 5:18 PM

    @artemis I tend to think this is very lumped in with normative supremacist attitudes generally - they have a concept of what is normal and deviation from that, even when it's a whole generation(or culture, language, whatever), is considered a negative. Even when it's something that would seem like a positive if it was a different type of the same group!

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  • Blain Smithblainsmith@fosstodon.org
    Aug 5, 2026, 7:50 PM

    @artemis It also feels like these "generation" gaps are also much much smaller lately. When I was a teen and in my 20's the folks that were my parents age and older would do this to me, but rarely folks in their 30s. Now it seems like folks in late 30s have VASTLY different points of view than folks in early 30s. I am 44 and I can't imagine having anything in common with someone in their mid-30s, but I certainly don't look down on them.

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  • Faith, Purple haired feminist 🧋 :v_tg: :v_lb: :v_greyace:faithisleaping@anarres.family
    Aug 5, 2026, 5:27 PM

    @artemis Oh, those avocado toast articles absolutely were. So is every article on quiet quitting or job doubling or really anything written in Forbes about GenZ. There’s a constant stream trying to stoke anger in boomers and GenX and make their “kids these days” feel genuine and like there’s data behind it.

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  • Just Tom... 🐁tompearce49@mastodon.scot
    Aug 5, 2026, 5:10 PM

    @artemis Thank you for what I am becoming accustomed to - another thoughtful and interesting thread from you. I am old enough to have teenage grandchildren. I am hugely impressed by their maturity (that coexists alongside a delightful immaturity). I like to think that they will try to make the best of whatever those of my generation (sadly all too often dyed-in-the-wool reactionaries) leave behind us for them. Surmising what lies ahead, I am ashamed of our failure to care about their futures.

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  • Deb Chachradebcha@saturation.social
    Aug 6, 2026, 4:24 PM

    @artemis I remember when I first realised that the moral panic around punk was preceded by ones around the hippies, and the Beatles, and Elvis, and succeeded by panics around heavy metal, and rap, and on and on. Since then I’ve failed to understand how anyone can have any kind of intergenerational panic around anything anymore.

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  • K-ZO da Snowmankzodasnowman@spore.social
    Aug 6, 2026, 4:39 PM

    @debcha @artemis great framing, thanks for putting it like that. I don't have any inter generational fear about the younger gen, only fear about what is being done to them. Normalization of COVID, social media/surveillance, etc.

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  • Deb Chachradebcha@saturation.social
    Aug 6, 2026, 7:25 PM

    @kzodasnowman @artemis I’ve been working closely with young adults my entire professional life, and AFAICT any handwringing about ‘kids these days’ is a failure to recognize that people are responding in totally understandable ways to a *world* that’s changed incl eg climate change, employment precarity, rising inequality, etc.

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  • Matildajunklight@mastodon.art
    Aug 5, 2026, 5:22 PM

    @artemis

    I've always loved the XKCD about that xkcd.com/1053/

    we prioritise cynicism in our culture rather than enthusiasm and joy.

    We are taught to hate saying "I don't know" - especially as part of male culture (Something I was guilty of when younger when pretending to be a man - now saying "I don't know" is something I embrace)

    I also love seeing things through my childrens (well now young people) eyes and listening & learning from them (something our culture ALSO discourages)

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  • Faith, Purple haired feminist 🧋 :v_tg: :v_lb: :v_greyace:faithisleaping@anarres.family
    Aug 5, 2026, 5:37 PM

    @artemis One of the biggest shifts in my perception in the last few years is the visceral understating that there is something on the other side of the current crisis.

    I lived through Y2K. I lived through 9/11. I lived through the Obama presidency (which people in my circles made out like it was the end of the world.) I’ve seen more rapture dates come and go than I can count. I lived through the COVID lockdowns. Now I’m living through the rise of American fascism.

    At one point, I was forced to look back and see evening I’ve lived through and then it struck me: This is what people mean when they talk about our grandparents living through the Great Depression or WWII. I’ve lived through some shit.

    And I will live through this, too, if I don’t die in the fight.

    It makes me think a lot more about what we’re going build on the other side than just what’s happening in the moment. It doesn’t mean that the moment doesn’t matter. It just means that the moment isn’t all that matters. We also need to be thinking about the future and about future generations.

    But an also look forward with a perspective that’s informed by how my parents thought they were building a better future while they were active contributors to the hell we’re living in right now.

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  • MaddieM4MaddieM4@raphus.social
    Aug 5, 2026, 4:03 PM

    @artemis This is something I've thought about repeatedly over my life, and one of the reasons I find it so horrifying (and unsurprisingly TikTok culture-ish) to hear so many people be like "I don't talk to minors, that's gross."

    Intergenerational solidarity is powerful. It supports (and is supported by) youth liberation. It is another way of binding ourselves tight together against the fascists that want to atomize us - we hear a lot about racism and sexism being fascist wedges, for good reason, but age is an axis most people don't even realize matters. And while support needs are a complicated topic, I do think we're a sick culture in the way that so many of our elders get forced into homes to rot and die quietly out of view like lepers. Part of the fragility of the human race against oppression is that living memory can *only* ever span about a hundred years - we don't need to artificially shorten it further.

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  • Matildajunklight@mastodon.art
    Aug 5, 2026, 4:12 PM

    @MaddieM4 @artemis if I didn’t talk to younger people I’d go mad. So many people of my age seem oblivious. As the world changes you need to see it through all kind of view points

    Ageism beginning to bother me (& affect me) a lot though. Not all of us older people are useless ;-)

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  • MaddieM4MaddieM4@raphus.social
    Aug 5, 2026, 4:16 PM

    @junklight @artemis Yes, exactly! There are plenty of older people who frustrate me, but it's because with their level of experience, uselessness* becomes more and more a choice. Even the boomers - that's a nickname chosen based on how many of them there were, and for all the stereotypes, a crowd that big has tons of wonderful, compassionate, clever people in it, who see through the jackbooted nonsense of far-right ideology.

    *a highly loaded word in a world where, no matter your age, usefulness is often only considered narrowly in terms of whether a rich person can use you to get richer.

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  • Matildajunklight@mastodon.art
    Aug 5, 2026, 4:19 PM

    @MaddieM4 @artemis certainly for me one thing I think is important is still learning! Lots of people my ago seem to have decided (often some time ago) that they now know everything

    Mind you one problem with continuous learning is I’m way more aware of how little I know compared to how much I thought I knew when younger ;-)

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  • MaddieM4MaddieM4@raphus.social
    Aug 5, 2026, 4:22 PM

    @junklight @artemis god, so true. There's also this use-it-or-lose-it aspect. Like, imagine if you did somehow know all you needed to know forever. Do you want to retain that information? Do you want to keep being able to apply it even as the world changes? Learning keeps you sharp! Learning is retention!

    And frankly, when you do it on your own terms, learning just feels good. I can't imagine wanting to stop learning at any age. It would be a violation of my identity and a far less interesting life.

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  • Rachel "atomic butt girl"YKantRachelRead@treehouse.systems
    Aug 5, 2026, 4:59 PM

    @MaddieM4 @artemis I don't think it's gross for adults to talk to minors, and I feel like adult-minor friendships can be fulfilling for both parties. that said, I'm minors DNI on this account because I post a lot of lewd/NSFW content and don't want to chance a minor wandering in on that, and I don't have the time or energy to maintain a separate SFW account to interact with minors on.

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  • MaddieM4MaddieM4@raphus.social
    Aug 5, 2026, 5:29 PM

    @YKantRachelRead @artemis Understandable, and I can respect the practicality. My stance at this point is that respect for young people, their freedom of movement and association, means letting *them* make censorship decisions in terms of what they consume. Which they will, in an experimental and water-testing way, given tools to do so (like content warnings!). And in the case of an account like yours, it's basically an account-wide content warning, because that just makes more practical sense in context.

    Where it gets more complicated is when things go from monologue to dialogue. I'm not opposed to answering frank questions about taboo topics, but if that shit gets flirty, I shut it down real fast, because somebody's gotta be the adult and put the brakes on that, and the responsibility is obviously mine. I've had to do that with several people. Can't hate 'em for shooting their shot, but like, no, literal child. And if you find an adult who says yes, they're not your friend! Run!

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  • the mei~ renaissancemei@amazonawaws.com
    Aug 5, 2026, 9:09 PM
    @MaddieM4 @artemis I really appreciate this bit about not disregarding your elders' viewpoints prematurely. Because even if we don't send our old loved ones to a retirement home, it's hard to contextualize their thoughts as part of the broader consensus we're trying to build in our groups. Crossing the vintage is an exercise in empathy. I think that gets lost in the most important times to heed such advice..

    I get good advice from my grandparents if I can bear to refuse a third serving about once a minute :P
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