- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
Summary
Donald Trumpās popularity among Generation Z voters has sharply declined since the 2024 election, according to a new Economist/YouGov poll.
His net favorability among 18-29-year-olds has dropped from +19 in November to -18, raising concerns for Republicans about sustaining youth support.
While Trump gained ground with young voters in 2024, recent policiesāsuch as his mass deportation plan and targeting of DEI initiativesāmay have contributed to this decline.
People have done things where they start with a clean VM and set up something like Youtube, watching the most innocuous of things. Doesnāt take too long before they start getting the red pill shit.
That doesnāt happen with broadcast media. You donāt start off watching, say, C-SPAN or PBS, and next thing you know you are getting shown Nazi propaganda.
you have to consciously consume it though, as a consumer of information and media, you hold a responsibility to ensure that what youāre consuming is both good, and factually accurate. If you arenāt doing that, thatās your fault.
People can argue all they want about content algorithms pushing this content, itās because itās good content, thatās why its fucking propaganda. It wouldnāt be if it didnāt.
You really donāt have to consciously consume it. You can literally leave auto-play on YouTube and it will steadily pull you down the rabbit hole. These people arenāt logging in to
nazi.comand ravenously looking for content (at least most arenāt).Itās served directly to them in mainstream platforms, prepared exactly how they like it. And theyāre the first generation to be bombarded by this algorithmic targeting for their entire lives.
Should adults still be responsible for what they consume and analyzing it critically? Of course. But given weāre in unprecedented territory and this is (at most) their second time voting in a presidential cycle, Iāll give them a mulligan.
maybe if you have degenerative brain damage, or are asleep, otherwise yes, you are making the conscious choice to watch nazis talk about nazi things for 3 hours, thatās literally something you consciously engage with simply by listening to, or even looking at.
This is why itās so important to be conscious of the media youāre consuming, in the same way itās important to be conscious about the products youāre buying and the services youāre using.
look bro, all iām saying is that you donāt accidentally become a nazi, if i gave you a knife, and told you to murder somebody, and walked away, you wouldnāt do that, you would probably call the police on me because thatās really fucking weird.
No, theyāre making a conscious choice to use the platform. The content itself is whatever pops up and looks entertaining.
If the algorthim shows you 2 center-right videos, 3 hard-right videos, and one nazi rant then are you choosing to be a nazi by watching the center right ones?
Its never actually 3 hours of nazi things. Its an otherwise entertaining video making some off color jokes. Itās a streamer going on one politically dubious rant in a 6 hour stream. Itās a weekly podcast talking to āinterestingā people; some benign, some funny, some actual problemsā¦ Itās about normalizing the conversation and the ideas. Nobody is getting handed a knife.
Yeah, there are some people take the red pill and actively go down the conspiracy rabbit hole and watch nazi shit. But Iām not gonna go out of my way to crucify people who have shitty ideas in their head at some point, there are lots of people that have stories of escaping the funnel.
Because at the end of the day a vote is just voicing an opinion to most people.
āI was told tariffs arenāt a bad ideaāā¦ āMusk has points that there might be wasteful spendingāā¦ āWell Rogan endorsed him hahaāā¦
If they were told theyāre getting drafted to invade Greenland before they voted, they look at you the same way as the knife guy.
you still need to physically and mentally engage with it in some fashion, otherwise itās literally not being consumed at all, the only possible exception to this is being asleep, which isnāt particularly well understood.
if you watch the center right videos, you are choosing to consume the center right leaning content, given that you are a content consumer equipped with the standard human feature of a functioning brain and sense. It would only be logical that if you were to see the nazi content in the corner and go āOOH NAZI CONTENT!ā youāre probably leaning nazi already, and if you see it and go āoh good, nazi contentā youāre probably not.
Even if you are slowly subsumed by the nazi content and slowly become a nazi over the course of 4 years, it doesnāt matter, you still made the choice, even as slowly as you did, to become a nazi, this is why the ability to recognize where you are, whether or not youāve grown as a person, and what you should do about it is a good thing to be engaging with from time to time, otherwise you risk becoming a serial killer, or other various bad things.
you should be conscious and aware of these things, these things are the reason that people get killed, you cannot simply ignore it and pretend they donāt exist, you must be aware of them, and try to be as conscious of them as you physically and mentally can. If you are not able to be conscious of these things, you are simply not fit to consume content, because clearly, you are just willing to assume the position of whoever is yapping currently, and therefore, offer no functional utility to the rest of humanity.
thatās entirely understandable, my problem is that people simply arenāt aware of it, and yet, still consume the exact same type of problematic, or potentially problematic content, without being aware of what they could be experiencing and then they go āoh boy i sure am glad im not being indoctrinated to be a nazi!ā as theyāre being indoctrinated to some other bullshit actively because they subvert their own concerns. This is a fundamental problem with political media, you simply cannot uncritically consume it, itās not tenable. In the same way that as a lawyer, you canāt just clap your hands and go āyeah boss i got this one ez pz, done twenty of these before today.ā and expect everything to go well. You simply NEED to do your due diligence. You cannot afford the lack of due diligence, itās potential destruction is simply too great.
and thatās the problem, a vote is not āvoicing an opinionā itās giving your piece on who you think should be running the country, and how. But people do not understand the consequences of their own actions because they simply arenāt conscious of what they consume, and why. And this is why weāre where we are now, with republicans that think the democrats literally tried to steal an election, even though zero proof has been presented.
People donāt understand the gravity of politics, and they donāt understand the importance of their action, both of these in combination has lead to the āmarketizationā of politics into a form of content not dissimilar from reality TV, the simplest solution here is for you to be conscious about the content youāre consuming, itās pitfalls, potential pitfalls, and the other content in existence around it, unfortunately most people consume this content with about 1 active braincell, obviously, not meeting these requirements.
and the problem is that these statements go from āwell, there is some truth in these statements, as there is in an any statement, however these paint an entirely misleading and inaccurate pictureā to āwell duhh the government is inefficient, obviously we need to cull the entire fucking thing!ā Thatās the difference between what i have a problem with, and what youāre proposing. You are quite literally given every opportunity in the world to be conscious at ANY point in the content consumption pipeline, and yet people CHOOSE not to be. WHY?
iām sure they would, and i believe this to be the case, however they donāt even get past the āread the words written on the paperā stage of comprehending a written work, before they completely ingest it and homogenize it into their viewpoint and worldview, they are quite literally sticking an IV of poison straight into their bloodstream, by choice.
the question i ask, is why? Whatās the reason?
I wonāt lie, I donāt think weāll ever totally agree. Iām getting the gist that we fundamentally have a different understanding of the human race.
Youāre holding people to your own standards, which is admirable because you clearly have your head on straight. I just view people as generally more base and malleable. Animals that react to the stimulus theyāre given and environment theyāre put in.
Itās why propaganda can work with simple repetition; itās why ancient cultures and atrocities feel so alien; itās why thereās a natural evolutionary drift toward tribalism.
From that: this is a generation being left behind educationally, economically, and socially. They know their quality of life is regressing but donāt know why. Theyāre an audience searching for clear answers.
Theyāre also the only humans in history to spend more of their formative adolescence on screen time than on other traditional activities.
So theyāre starting on the back foot and getting unprecedented exposure to privately operated, centralized media sources. It follows that whoever owns those platforms (or pays enough) can selectively amplify any narrative they want to great effect.
It would have been just as feasible to push their politics to the left as right. If you look at who operates these platforms youāll find, unsurprisingly, its right wing media moguls. The capitalists with the capital and mechanisms to spread their gospel have done so.
So at the end of the day I think it is reasonable to scold a person who you know should have better media literacy. I just donāt think it makes any sense to extend that to an entire voting block. Its more productive to direct that effort toward the root of the problem, the people pushing the content.
thatās unlikely, and thatās fine, iām mostly just here to share my position.
100%, i have a higher standard for the average general populous, than most people do, but i simply believe that we cannot function as a society if we are below that threshold, and given recent global events, and the trend towards politics becoming worse and worse, i feel highly justified, and think you would be on a long uphill argument against that point.
Youāre correct about your conception of humans as animal, this is 100% why we act the way that we do, and why weāre susceptible to these problems, weāve engineered our way out of these problems however, now only to fall into the hole weāve just dug with no way out? I donāt believe that. I think any single person owes themselves at least some level of autonomy, and critical thinking alongside intelligence, to at the very least break through that problem barrier, otherwise youāre at a āeating shit contaminated drinking water and dying from any number of given ailmentsā level of behaviorism. Other people, and i assume you would argue that we should protect people from doing this to themselves, but i think especially given the recent timeline, that this is simply impossible, you cannot do that, it will never work. Fixing it of course, is a bigger problem. But thatās not why im here, iām here to providing commentary in the hopes that it changes peoples outlook on life, and how they view their position in the world.
you make an interesting point about the generational divide in upbringing, though itās worth noting that, this is not particularly new, since the industrial revolution at least, and it affects more than the young, the primary age group being targetted by the kind of stuff i like to work against, is people in their 50-70 age range, people who have been around for along time, remember āwhen it was betterā and are mentally, not as engaged as they once were, starting to coast into retirement, if not in retirement already.
In fact, if you look at the younger age ranges, itās quite heavily split between the sides, it doesnāt seem to be a hugely generational issue until you get older, where it skews conservative, which is an established trend, and a rather obtuse one i would argue.
youāre 100% right about the media narrative, and the media environment, however i would like to counter it with two points, for one thing, it only works because people are WILLING to consume it. If people arenāt, it will never be successful, this is obviously not the case, as these companies rake in millions of dollars on the regular. And two, i donāt think you can simply āregulateā this issue out, humans have an innate tendency toward the unknown, the taboo, and the bizarre, there are probably studies on the effects of restricting access to certain materials and the effects on the consumption of these materials in the general populous. It leads to a sort of self fulfilling prophecy of āthe ELITES dont want YOU to see THISā because they quite literally, do not want you to see it, because itās not productive, but again, people are stupid, and will consume whatever slop they get presented. Evidently, it should follow that if this fact suddenly becomes true, things will only get worse.
You either have to convince the public that this shit is fake and not real, move them to another source of media naturally (literally how?) or simply forcibly remove it, and then i guess crack down on consumption and distribution of that media ad infinitum? There isnāt exactly a good solution here, unless you take the most optimal approach of āculling the problematic individualsā which is of course, deeply unpopular, but you may be able to justify it, ethically and morally. Thatās ultimately what im getting at here. You very quickly begin to approach a sort of event horizon of non truths, and i think weāve passed that point, or at least passed the point of no return, and im not sure weāre capable of returning. Maybe it is, but i truly do not think we can recover, at least before something drastic happens.
Perhaps we should refer to this as the KTI razor, lmao.
If itās a human failing then no, it should be regulated against to prevent abuse.
there are definitely arguments to regulate against it, iām not here to make those arguments, or argue against it, iām just here to argue that you as an individual person have a right to hold yourself responsible for the media you consume, itās not difficult, itās taught to you in high school, assuming you can read and write, if you went to college, great, you literally do that the entire time youāre there, thatās the one thing you should be doing.
If you donāt and you work in a blue collar job, it probably requires similar attention from you in the same manner, just apply it universally.
I realize that I, as an individual can make choices and am responsible for those choices. Iām not here to talk about that today, Iām only referring to the fact that when a natural human failing is set upon by money men with the intention of exploitation it is only regulation or destruction that will end that exploitation.
or like, you could educate people, because for as long as these failings exist, they will be exploited, and the best preventative measure, is one that cannot be subverted.
People donāt want to hear the truth. Look at the sales on fiction vs. non-fiction.
Thatās not a problem in most media because most of the time people are honest about whatās fiction and whatās non-fiction.
On social media, people have these para-social relationships with the people making the content that makes them want the content creators to be āauthenticā. Problem is the algorithms donāt select for actual authenticity, because people prefer fiction over reality. So instead people making content need to appear to be authentic to get the para-social juice, but give people fiction because thatās what people really want.
Adults who remember the times before social media became dominant are better equipped to understand the distinction between the fiction social media presents us from reality. To those raised on this content, whatās on social media is reality.
I really do think (fear) that may be true, and thatās probably why I go on about teaching media literacy and critical thinking (most especially spotting logical fallacies) so much.
I already think many that were around before social media were ill-equipped as-is (as an example - how many people think āreality televisionā is not heavily edited and heavily scripted? That artifice came on the scene before social media did and many were and are duped by it); I worry even more about people raised on it, many of them foolishly thinking that knowing their way around apps and certain sites makes them more āmedia-savvyā, thinking that āmy generationā just gets this like no other when itās definitely a prior generation that has handed them these things.
This kind of thinking - that your generation is somehow uniquely equipped like no other prior human beings before - is complete delusion. Itās not like this conceit is confined to gen alpha or z or whatever, either - virtually every generation has their version of it.
to be completely devils advocate here, the human mind is not a static blob of inputs and outputs, itās a variable soup of neurons with connections between different neurons as they try and establish patterns and reasons between things. People who have grown up today, compared to people who grew up 200 years ago, are quite literally fundamentally different. Every generation is raised differently to the previous, itās why every generation behaves differently to the previous generations. Itās just that the difference is less significant than most would think.
The entire reason why āpost truth societyā is even a thing now is because of this fundamental operation of human psychology, shit changes, and we change with the shit.
This is an unfair comparison, itās like taking university textbook sales and comparing it to the bible and going āclearly people donāt want science and data!ā
To be fair, it is probably a true statement, if you were to analyze the content and media that people consume, itās likely to be very low in āhard factsā so i will give you that one, i just think itās an unreasonable comparison to be making.
A lot of the big sales in non-fiction (at least the heavily fact valued ones) are going to be books about like, psychology, sociology, math, science, biology, the one weird guy who wrote 20 books on trains because he has an extremely bizarre knowledge based on like three specific trains in general, probably a book about a plane as well, because why not. And a handful of other boring educational books, shit like cookbooks, machining, manufacturing, etcā¦
Iām not sure how much ābased on a true storyā bleeds into non-fiction, but iām basing on a strict separator so.
and to be fair, thatās because it literally is, modern social life has moved to social media, people are lonelier than ever, thereās a reason for it.