I'm Gen Z, a lot of us grew up interacting with social media platforms where the default mode of communication is to 1) try and dunk on people by insulting them and 2) put on a false personality, almost as if you were a character in a TV show. Take a look at the average conversation between two people with different opinions on Twitter and without a doubt the person with more interactions/likes is the person being as rude, condescending, and dismissive as possible. It seems like the point of these interactions is never to find commonality or truth between people but instead to identify some kind of difference of opinion and consequently define any and all relationships by those differences. I know this isn't a universal behavior because the majority of content I consume on twitter for example is niche good faith conversations between engineers and academics. However once you venture out into the areas where the bulk of online 'discourse' happens (even around the most mundane of subjects) you quickly expose yourself to the toxicity. Just people arguing over absolutely nothing because social media exaggerates the real state of the world and distracts from what matters. No doubt I'm guilty of this too at times, especially on MR which is basically the only social media site I post on. I've tried to tone it down over time so my posts are more in line with the sort of politeness myself and others in my world convey in person. This becomes easier the more time you spend actually interacting with real people that spend their time constructing the world around them rather than constantly complaining about it. Still, that snarky dismissive behavior I mentioned, that particular brand of hatred and nihilism, is slowly branded within you from day one of using these platforms. You don't necessarily do it consciously, you do it because that's what everyone around you is doing.
All this to say there used to be a separation: you were rude online but toned it down in person. Now for some, especially a selection of young Gen Z'ers and terminally online jaded Millennials, that acidic attitude and tone has made its way into the real world, whether you're interacting with complete strangers or family members. The behavior is reinforced by friend groups (more appropriately in some cases: 'cliques') emulating that behavior and justifying it via a false sense of superiority over everyone around them; like they're the only ones that 'get it' and everyone else is a stupid rube. Some of those friend groups don't even exist in reality, but rather as a group in the online world. It's tribalism on steroids that is disconnected from material reality -- all of it supercharged by the attention economy of social media, YouTube 'influencers,' and media that idolizes being as degenerate and attention seeking as possible. This is where the real problems start, when the facade of the internet world starts to have real consequences in the real material world -- I'm sure I don't need to post examples of this.
The archetype of the moody, rude teenager has existed for aeons, but there usually comes a point where you have to grow up and deal with the real world: to accept the contradictions, the unfairness, the differences, and the ugliness that you may encounter as you transition into an adulthood defined by goals and growth. Once upon a time that transition was aided by everyone around you being an adult too, there were examples to learn from in your own community and in your country (as a Brit I grew up idolizing the industrialist Isambard Kingdom Brunel for example). Nowadays there's an epidemic of people that haven't graduated to adulthood despite being in their late 20s, 30s, 40s, heck even 50s+. The kind of examples for kids today include YouTubers and influencers that have little to no value in the real economy. According to some polls the number one job kids aspire to in America is "Social Media Influencer" meanwhile in China (irrespective of your opinions on that country) it's "Astronaut" and "Engineer." In some ways I agree with those that claim social media is a national security threat, not because of accusations of Russian/Chinese election interference or 'misinformation,' but because of something a lot more tangible: its stupefying effect on the population. Even before concerns over the Chinese owned TikTok became a thing domestic companies like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were already contributing towards the problem, bloody hell they practically kickstarted it, all because their engineers discovered you can induce more usage by enraging users over all other emotions. Jake Paul isn't a misinformation agent, he's just an idiot that makes money from being as dumb as possible.
I'm not necessarily trying to make a judgement over people's souls because I really believe this sort of behavior is redeemable, it may even correct itself as people slowly wake up again... but all of this makes me fearful for the future of my countries (the USA where I live now and my homeland of the UK). I don't put the blame on the majority of people either because the dominant mood today is despair over whether or not we have a future worth working toward. Many people can't afford to start a family for example. I think many of us want the same things but some people have convinced themselves the divide is so large that their own existence is contingent upon the destruction of everyone else and that the only thing worth pursuing, in lieu of any meaningful path to take in the real world, is to be a personality online and thus the descent continues.
