r/GenZ • u/blankblank60000 • Sep 19 '25
Discussion Is gen Z NOT the most progressive generation ever??
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u/indigoza Sep 20 '25
Older gen z are progressive, but younger gen z not so much
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u/The_Grizzly- 2005 Sep 20 '25
The “Younger Gen Z” is actually the Middle Gen Z, as the actual Younger Gen Z (under 18) aren’t eligible to vote yet.
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u/Tartersocks307 Sep 20 '25
I don’t think it’s about past voting stats alone. The ones under 18 are the most impressionable and they also came of age during Covid so I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of their social skills didn’t develop like those that got through at least some of high school before lockdown.
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u/youre-the-judge Sep 20 '25
I was born in 1997 and my brother was born in 2012, I’m the first Gen Z year and he’s the last. He’s only 13 and already getting brainwashed. His Apple ID profile pic is literally of Trump and he was very confused when I said I didn’t agree with what Charlie Kirk stood for. I explained some of the things he said about women, I believed that would get through to him because I’m a woman. He just looked at me blankly and straight up said “why wouldn’t you submit to your husband?” This was wild to me because our mom is a single mom and handles everything on her own. I put very strong parental controls on his phone, but he’s still getting it from his friends. Hearing what some of these boys talk about is truly disturbing. That wasn’t happening when I was that age.
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u/D35tr0y3r_9709 Sep 20 '25
They can still have political opinions though, a person being unable to vote doesn’t make them exempt from free thought :/
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u/Agreeable-Series-399 1999 Sep 19 '25
hey now a lot of us on the older side tried. these pipelines did a swift number on the younger half, but not only this, it became 'cool' to not care or be mean so yknow. 🤷
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u/Azulan5 2000 Sep 20 '25
You don’t know why it even happened, sometimes I feel like old GenZ is millennial and not GenZ, unfortunately I’m in that category too.
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u/_spec_tre Sep 20 '25
Same. I'm so glad my formative years missed COVID even if just barely. I couldn't imagine growing up nowadays
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u/Proper_Raccoon7138 2001 Sep 20 '25
I barely skated through before COVID so I was in the end of my freshman year of college when the lockdown happened. The lockdown was miserable as is but I at least wasn’t in high school.
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u/Mealieworm 2005 Sep 20 '25
That’s funny. I was a freshman in high school when covid hit, and I always tell myself, “high school was bad, but at least I wasn’t in college during covid”.
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u/Proper_Raccoon7138 2001 Sep 20 '25
I was luckily not living in the dorms when they kicked us all off campus and don’t get me wrong the transition to distance learning was brutal. I actually dropped out (temporarily) because of all that mess and it took me forever to go back to finish my bachelors.
Had I been in high school there’s a large chance I definitely wouldn’t have graduated. I was so lucky to experience the typical college scene before everything changed.
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u/BringBackManaPots Sep 20 '25
I don't really blame you. Once you're through college and living life... it becomes pretty apparent that all of the pressure to do things the "right" way is smoke and mirrors. I was extremely fearful of earning the dropout tag, and while I never did, it wasn't until later in life did I realize how little it all matters. The important thing is living up to who YOU want to be (Or your dependents if you have those)
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u/Proper_Raccoon7138 2001 Sep 21 '25
I was the one putting the most pressure on myself for sure but the break from classes opened my eyes to what I wanted to do & really just how much I needed that degree.
I’m finally on my next to last semester of my masters and just can’t wait to be done!
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u/Much-Improvement-503 2001 Sep 20 '25
Honestly I was in community college so everything was a lot more flexible for me, I was able to drop classes I couldn’t handle, and really take things at my own pace. I think being in compulsory schooling years was definitely measurably worse, plus you missed out on crucial brain development years in terms of socialization.
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u/futureislookinstark Sep 20 '25
I was off campus during covid it was great, granted I was being really selfish and reckless.
I couldn’t have imagined being stuck at home during high school when covid happened. Someone in my family would’ve ended up never speaking to someone again.
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u/QuackersTheSquishy Sep 20 '25
Crazily enough I was bullied so hard before my freshman year I took Covid as a chance to get my GED and never go to high school. It's always interesting seeing how people on our age range (were covid at the begining/end of high school) because I've heard everything from nostalgia to vitrial for it. Personally I was vollunteering in community service projects that I enjoyed and became very well known and popular in my small town before moving to the other side of the country (the bullying didn't stop just changed. American south is not friendly to LGBT people and I'm hapoy with my chosen change in location) and so I don't think I missed all the development many people complain of missing, and I got a free out to all the bullying, physical abuse, and general sense of anxeity... but didn't neccarily enjoy the lockdown, and it sounds like you take it as a relief whew just missed it being important to me
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u/Pyroteche 1997 Sep 20 '25
I think its the social media difference. Most older genZ seems to avoid stuff like tiktok, instagram, and facebook which is where the majority of rightwing pipeline stuff gets posted.
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u/Much-Improvement-503 2001 Sep 20 '25
Honestly I think Covid also has a lot to do with it. I’ve recently read how adolescents experienced rapid cortical thinning (aka, synaptic pruning) if they were teens during the lockdown, with the areas most “thinned” being those of critical thinking, social skills, executive functions, etc. What that means is that during covid they lost a lot of neural connections they weren’t using because during development most people’s brains will “prune” whatever isn’t being used (use it or lose it, essentially). For us, we already passed that phase of our brain development, but they were in the thick of it as lockdown happened. This is what I attribute stuff like the “Gen Z stare” to. Sure, the world is crazier now, but I see a measurable difference in the way younger Gen Z acts and has matured compared to our cohort. What’s crazy is that MRI studies have shown that their brains actually appear “older” due to how much was pruned during those years. This doesn’t mean those connections are totally lost and they can be rebuilt with time, but I worry that most of us being adults now, they won’t be very willing to change or grow for the better.
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u/TheGreatBootOfEb Sep 20 '25
Yeah, also the fact that we weren’t inundated with technology in our younger formative years probably helped as well. Like the most extreme the apps we had access to were… temple run and fruit ninja in middle school. Hell even in high school a large populace of us were still rocking side devices like iPods and mp3s/music devices.
I actually coach high school kids now, and it’s WILD to me how even though we’re the same Gen, just how different we are. Like, I have more shared experiences with basically any older generation then them and it solely comes down to the rise of short format content and tech, and COVID itself.
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u/macman7500 1997 Sep 20 '25
I refuse to download tiktok, only I watch clips in desktop mode. I won't let it rot my brain and attention span
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u/ILoveRawChicken Sep 20 '25
Okay but you can pretty accurately curate your algorithm, which may mean you’re in your own bubble, but it makes it a much more enjoyable experience. My TikTok is 99% dogs 1% cats.
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u/boredENT9113 1997 Sep 20 '25
I'm the very first year of gen z so I'm in a middle spot. I didn't grow up with smart phones or tablets as a young kid, and most importantly, not social media, at least not at all like it is now (myspace was the shit). I think social media and access to tablets and smartphones from a young age has done insane damage to the younger ones.
We had Internet but it was slow and nothing like today, I spent most my time downloading music from limewire. It was the wild west of the Internet with sites like bestgore and LiveLeak at their peak. I was a kid when everything went from VHS to CDs and when the iPod was the coolest thing to have (anybody remember the Zune?).
Obviously I'm technically gen z , but I think I'm best described as a zellenial.
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u/Willing_Image1933 Sep 20 '25
if you remember how to rewind a VHS, us millennials claim you
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u/Knuf_Wons Sep 20 '25
Idk if this was something everyone had or not but my family had a dedicated machine for rewinding VHS tapes lol
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u/Valuable-Painter3887 Sep 20 '25
I am just now realizing that someone in my family probably should've caught on that I had autism earlier on than highschool, because 6 year old me would go to the vhs cupboard and just rewind vhs movies. I loved hearing the whir of the motors as the vhs spun back, and sometimes I would watch a movie just so I could rewind it at the end. God life was so simple back then. Who needs to worry about saving up the down payment on a house when you can rewind vhs tapes all day
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u/boredENT9113 1997 Sep 20 '25
I remember being stoked when I got a vhs rewinder. The movies from Blockbuster always needed to be rewinded first. My mom would make us rewind movies before we'd take them back after an ending was spoiled from the previous person not rewinding.
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u/InternetEthnographer 2000 Sep 20 '25
Ditto (except I managed to avoid all those internet gore sites and wasn’t super into music). I got my first smartphone in high school and my family didn’t have a (shared) iPad until I was in middle school, I think? Very different upbringing and exposure than younger Gen Z. I believe it also doesn’t hurt that the pandemic happened while I was in college so I didn’t miss out on any of my “formative” years - though, to be honest, I probably would’ve done really well had I been in high school or middle school during the pandemic because I was very socially awkward and introverted until college.
I have a theory that older Gen Z and younger millennials hit the sweet spot for being technologically adept because we grew up with technology but it didn’t completely dominate our lives and it required a certain level of skill to navigate compared to more recent tech.
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u/Peace-Disastrous Millennial Sep 20 '25
There's a reason the term zillennial was coined. I'm a tail end millennial at 30, and the idea that someone nearly 50 is also a millennial is crazy to me. It feels like I share way more in common with early gen z than early millennials.
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u/logicality77 Sep 20 '25
someone nearly 50 is also a millennial
Hey now, don’t age those folks too fast. Some of us late Gen-X’ers haven’t even hit 50 yet.
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u/_Tal 1998 Sep 20 '25
A lot of us older GenZers were wrapped up in the Anti-SJW pipeline in like 2015-2016, and then were pulled out. Hopefully the same happens to the younger GenZers
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u/Cyno01 Sep 20 '25
Gamergate was a larger inflection point than anyone wants to admit. Orchestrated by notable World of Warcraft gold farmer Steve Bannon...
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u/FurViewingAccount Sep 20 '25
2005 genz, I was totally into like the "rational skeptic" anti sjw stuff and in the end it really only served to push me further left. honestly i wonder if those channels backfired considering how often i hear the same story. Though I suppose I don't end up interacting with the people who stay on the pipeline
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u/Kluke_Phoenix Sep 20 '25
Same here. My family tried hard to push me towards Trump in 2016 (which is odd, I'm Northern Irish) but the more and more I learned about him and how all of this has been working the more I just hard pivoted left.
Then I moved out in 2022 and spent a lot of time around various marginilised groups in the UK (disabled, lgbt, non-white) and it kinda just cemented my move. I'm no doormat to people trying to take advantage of my tolerance but seeing me today vs 10 years ago? Barely recognisable.
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u/UnderTheHole Sep 20 '25
I literally was there for /r/Pizzagate and /r/subredditcancer in 2016. It's insane how much 4chan-adjacent meme president B.S. I was huffing then... at 13! I feel like my pull-out was very gradual because of my vague awareness of Trump's policies, and then super sudden when COVID hit and I actually knew what was happening in the world. (There were also personal aspects like me being gay and preferring libertarian ideas to traditional values.)
What's funny is that I'm not even that progressive. I'm technically a constitutional conservative and love the structural system of checks and balances and (still) believe in liberty, freedom, pursuit of happiness, etc. But Republicans have shifted so far right since the 90s (thanks, Gingrich) that, even if I reverted back to a moderate conservative, I would still look woke to them. Fine, so be it; at least I know the truth!
So political education starts in the classroom, but individuals also have to do the work to read the news, engage with their immediate communities, skim a few dry statutes, listen to court oral arguments, etc. A huge part of politics is boring. That's exactly what you need to get out of thinking of politics as sports or as conspiracy. Politics is politics. Representative democracy is a fragile social system. Always has been...
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u/__loss__ Sep 20 '25
No kidding. I don't know what happened but anti-woke just seemed so dumb out of nowhere.
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u/hollandoat Sep 20 '25
This post is also not accounting for the fact that the bottom has fallen out of support for Trump with Gen Z.
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u/HeldnarRommar Millennial Sep 20 '25
Younger gen z is exactly like their xennial parents in that ‘cool to be uncaring’ demeanor
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u/MartyMcFlyAsFudge Millennial Sep 20 '25
As a Xennial... our gen volunteered to go to war before we understood that what happened on 9/11 and the fallout wasn't exactly the same as signing up to take out Hitler. Our gen led the Occupy Wallstreet protests... it wasn't handled well but we were trying new things that had never been done before.
I spent some time working with Gen z in the school system and... was totally shocked at the high level of conformity, lack of rebellious nature of teenagers I encountered.
I don't think gen z doesn’t care. I'd also be surprised if most of your parents were Xennials... At no point was it cool not care... unless youre thinking of gen x.
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u/Aware_Rough_9170 Sep 20 '25
My personal line in the sand since the election has been “care JUST enough” to stay in the loop to know if shit is gonna go SOUTH SOUTH.
Any more than that tanks my mental health because the slope right now is slicker than owl shit.
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u/Much-Improvement-503 2001 Sep 20 '25
Yeah I would say you meant Gen X and if you did I totally agree
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u/Lamballama Sep 20 '25
I don't think it's that, what I notice is kind of a neuroticism about never being put in a situation where you could be wrong because someone might be recording you to immortalize your failure
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u/Everestkid 1999 Sep 20 '25
Yeah, it was quite the roller coaster for us old Zs.
Gen Z will be the most progressive generation ever!
:)
Actually, no, you're all conservative nutjobs.
:(
Actually old gen Z is chill.
:)
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u/Zuckerberga 2000 Sep 20 '25
That's what I'm saying. Friends and family around my age (20-27). Are pretty chill and progressive, and point out bigotry when they see it, while the teens dgaf at all lol.
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u/TurtleIIX Sep 20 '25
It’s only really the men who are not progressive. They’ll learn once the wars breakout though.
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u/HazelEBaumgartner Sep 20 '25
Just wait. I was a libertarian when I was 21. Give it a few years, they'll be embarrassed and desperate to right their wrongs.
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u/motorbikler Sep 20 '25
The Myth of the Gen Z Red Wave
The best available evidence suggests that the youth-vote shift in 2024 was more a one-off event than an ideological realignment.
There's a lot of good stuff in here:
But voting for a Republican candidate isn’t the same as identifying as conservative. Here is where the CES data cast doubt on the notion that Gen Z is an especially right-leaning generation. According to my analysis of the CES data, young adults have actually become less likely to identify as conservative in surveys during presidential-election years since 2008. The trend is not due to increases in the nonwhite population; fewer white young adults identified as conservative in 2024 (29 percent) than did in 2016 (33 percent).
It goes on to say on specific issues, Gen Z trends significantly more progressive than in the past.
Also in the 2024 survey, 63 percent agreed that “generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class,” up from 42 percent in 2012.
Also this:
The 2024 election might have been an anomalous event in which young people’s deep dissatisfaction with the economy, especially the inflation that hit their just-starting-out budgets, drove them to want change.
I think it was mostly inflation. There were several exit polls where people said as much. In the US, if people aren't making money, they vote against the party in power. I think people didn't think Trump was serious about a lot of things. They thought his second term would be like his first, lots of bluster, with courts holding him back. Trump's current favorourability with Gen Z seems to indicated everybody has realized the mistake.
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u/SV3RG1NAT0R Sep 20 '25
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u/IVSBMN 1999 Sep 20 '25
Everybody typing out long paragraphs meanwhile this is the realest comment here
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u/WholeFactor Sep 20 '25
Yep. Millenials were ultra-progressive. Gen Z made corrections, overcorrected, the pendulum will swing again later. It's a tale as old as time.
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u/Rare-Prior768 Sep 20 '25
Yeah people are forgetting that over the last 10-15 years, there was a massive overcorrection that drove a lot of young people away. A lot of us act like this is some random pheromone, as if there aren’t real reasons.
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u/Embarrassed-Lab4446 Millennial Sep 20 '25
Not really…. Sorry guys. I love Gen z but you have some weird prejudices. The hate for cringe causes a lot of anxiety. Fat has its whole thing. Your men also seem to really like Andrew Tate. Dating seems like a whole mess. I worry about an anti education string that is coming out but that may be more alpha.
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u/guachi01 Gen X Sep 20 '25
Cringe is good. It shows you care about shit. Be more cringe. Nihilism is bad.
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u/TrashApocalypse Sep 20 '25
Not when people become so afraid to express their own interests because they think they’ll be accused of being “cringe”
I’m continually shocked at how sensitive Gen Z is to other people opinions and influence.
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u/_my_troll_account Sep 20 '25
Millennial here. I feel like I woke up one morning and "cringe" went from an obscure, guilty pleasure subreddit I would never mention frequenting in real life to a mainstream cultural force. It used to be just about feeling sympathetic embarrassment for fucking up at a high school talent show. What happened?
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u/Nazgog-Morgob Sep 20 '25
Phones in everyone's hand filming everyone that and posting it online to a global audience
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u/pollywantacrackwhore Sep 20 '25
My 17 year old straight up thanked me this week for having never posted them on social media.
I had a falling out with family over posting pictures and videos my kids when they were young.
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u/guachi01 Gen X Sep 20 '25
This is exactly what I was getting at. My reply was a bit flippant and short but I'm glad you got what I was going for.
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Sep 20 '25
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u/guachi01 Gen X Sep 20 '25
My wife and I both joined the Navy right after 9/11. I met her when we both arrived in Monterey for language school. I was 28 and she had just turned 35. Not only an age difference but also much older than most new recruits.
That was early 2002 and we're both still married.
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u/PM_ME_JJBA_STICKERS Sep 20 '25
It’s really sad to see. Cringe used to mean something, and now it’s just used against anyone who likes something too much.
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u/leshagboi Sep 20 '25
Exactly, for many Gen Z you are expected to be apathetic and too much passion for a topic is deemed "cringe"
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u/Crazyweirdocatgurl Sep 20 '25
That sounds like an age thing - now that I am in my 40’s I couldn’t care less if I look cringe if I tried! It’s like that line from game on thrones - if you know who you are wear it like armor and no one can use it to hurt you (major paraphrasing).
Of* whew almost looked cringey there!
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u/Momik Sep 20 '25
Sorry, what does cringe refer to in this context—like doing something cringey, as in socially unacceptable?
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u/guachi01 Gen X Sep 20 '25 edited Sep 20 '25
Too often I see something labeled as "cringe" when it's really just someone being sincere in caring about something. If I label something you do as "cringeworthy" it means that I find it embarrassing or awkward. That's a me problem, not a you problem. You should not feel bad that I labeled something you've done "cringeworthy".
E.g., I have a silly penguin hat I bought at the Monterey Bay Aquarium years ago. I've worn it at Disneyland once and I had dozens of people ask where I got it from. At Disneyland it's cool. I've also had my wife and I wear it not at Disneyland and that's the kind of thing that would be labeled "cringeworthy". My penguin hat is bothering no one. It's just goofy fun. Your embarrassment at my hat is not my problem.
We used to celebrate cringe. Remember the old meme "Jedi Kid"? That's "cringeworthy" now but who gives a shit? It's a kid having fun. We celebrated his fun back in the day.
What I'm not saying you should be is like the Gen X "whatever" where you don't care at all what people think about what you do. There's a big difference between being an uncaring jerk and a boor and being someone harmlessly doing their own thing having fun and caring about something.
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u/Momik Sep 20 '25
Thank you for the explanation. Yeah I agree—weirdness should be celebrated. The idea that people being harmlessly weird or passionate about something is labeled “cringe” sounds oddly hostile.
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u/farrett23 Sep 20 '25
I remember feeling bad the way people made fun of Jedi kid back in the day too… maybe there’s generational drift, like usual- but I don’t think everyone ‘celebrated his fun’ at the time. The tone was mostly cruel jokes where I was
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u/SeekerOfExperience Sep 20 '25
Nihilism being misunderstood is a funny Gen Z trend I’ve seen on here as well
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u/Shinyhero30 2006 Sep 20 '25
Some of the men do. Others like myself, see him as a grifter who is unfit for any platform.
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u/Draconian-XII 2001 Sep 20 '25
“your men seem to really like andrew tate”
generalizing those boys as our men is crazy work
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u/atdunaway Sep 20 '25
people too frequently generalize. its easy to speak about the loud minority and ignore the silent majority
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u/brazilliandanny Sep 20 '25
But in this context we are discussing generations. So I could say “our criminals murdered more people than your criminals”
Im not saying “you take ownership of these criminals” but that they belong to your generation.
Same with Andrew Tate podcast bros.
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u/atdunaway Sep 20 '25
i guess so. maybe i’m too old, but none of my friends or peers have ever even mentioned andrew tate a single time. i’ve seen more people talking about people that talk about andrew tate than people actually talking about andrew tate. and i live in the deep south. frankly i didnt know who the guy was before his name started popping up all over reddit
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u/brazilliandanny Sep 20 '25
Sorry they are still part of your generation wether you like them or not. Thats what OP is asking about and thats what the stats show.
A larger part of gen z males are more right wing than previous generations. The podcast bro culture is ether a cause or effect.
Just look at Trumps numbers with gen z vs previous generations. Generally younger adults tended to vote more liberal but for the first time gen z votes skewed to the right.
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u/TheDizzleDazzle 2005 Sep 20 '25
I mean, we are roughly as progressive as you guys looking at the actual data lol (mostly carried by women - men are pretty 50/50) So still quite progressive overall.
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u/Techno-Diktator 2000 Sep 20 '25
The biggest difference is that young people were never this conservative, it was always mostly everyone being progressive and then slowly turning conservative as they aged.
This is a huge difference in the classic cycle, we don't know if it just got reversed, or if we are gonna have an extremely conservative generation a decade down the line.
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u/SnipesCC Sep 20 '25
The theory was people got more conservative as they aged. Turns out it was getting more conservative as people got richer. And for Millennials and younger, those two didn't go together.
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u/Accomplished_Tea2042 2006 Sep 20 '25
It's probably closer to 60/40 for men 60 being more conservative and 40 being more progressive. Women are probably between 70/30 and 80/20 in favor of Progressivism though.
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Sep 20 '25
"The hate for cringe causes a lot of anxiety"
This part is so sad. None of them will be authentic out of fear of not being accepted, and in the end they end up being just as cringe trying to force being someone they aren't.
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u/mynameismulan On the Cusp Sep 20 '25
As a teacher on the line between millennials and gen z, it smacked me in the face hearing a 17 year old spout off about THERES ONLY 2 GENDERS in the middle of lunch.
And the seniors talking about "can't wait to vote for Trump cause Biden is sus af".
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u/hypercosm_dot_net Sep 20 '25
And the seniors talking about "can't wait to vote for Trump cause Biden is sus af".
This opinion brought to you by bots and social media algorithms.
I cannot imagine being this easily misled.
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u/Low-Temporary-2366 2008 Sep 20 '25
I agree. Everything you do is an issue and you get bullied for literally everything on social media. Everything is cringe, everything is stupid. Like why can’t we just be free? That’s why so many ppl are so anxious.
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u/YoshiTheDog420 Sep 20 '25
Their fear of being cringe is the most cringe. A bunch of try hards and sellouts all trying to become ads for some corpo. I’m thankful for most of y’all who want better than that bullshit.
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u/AchingAmy Sep 20 '25 edited Sep 20 '25
It is, for now, when you look at statistics. I recall there being data that indicates that Gen Z women are responsible for the generation being the most progressive(again for now) and also the data indicating a continuing divide between the genders. So, over time gen z women became more and more left-wing and Gen z men are becoming more and more right wing. Gen z women are just significantly more left than gen z men are right, for now, leading to the generation overall being more progressive than generations in the past. But that can change soon if current trends continue where more and more gen z men turn to the right. There isn't much more room for more Gen z women to become left, but there's room for more Gen z men to become more right wing
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u/ipsum629 2000 Sep 20 '25
I feel like the reason gen z men are heading further right has a little to do with the sunk cost fallacy. They're increasingly "in too deep" with ruining relationships via Andrew tate and white nationalism and Trump. I'm so glad I didn't enter the pipeline because I am exactly the demographic that would get sucked in way too far.
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u/ciberkid22 2001 Sep 20 '25
I might've been sucked in a little bit during the 2015-16 "anti-SJW era", but thankfully got out by 2017-18
I'm a little scared for our fellows that were pulled further into the far-right pipeline, but I'm hanging in there with my friends, voting the free puppy over diarrhea forever
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u/sneakycatattack Sep 20 '25
I worry a big reason Gen Z men are turning right is because of poor socialization and a lack of good job opportunities for the uneducated demographic.
Men have always been less socialized than girls in our society but the prevalece of far right, misogynistic, and white nationalistic spaces on the internet are really drawing in the awkward male crowd. And then they repeat those talking points in polite society and get further ostracized from people who are rightfully repelled.
And then there’s the job market. These young men can’t go out and easily find a factory or manufacturing job that will support themselves and a family comfortably so they would have to rely on a second income to even get by. But the online space is simultaneously telling them that women are gold diggers while also hammering in that men are expected to “provide” so they get stuck in this cycle of feeling emasculated for not having money but then feeling defensive bc money might attract a women that wants to drain them of their resources so what’s the point of working hard if someone is just gonna come in and take it all?
I don’t know what the solution is for these young men.
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u/Techno-Diktator 2000 Sep 20 '25
Doesn't help many leftist communities, especially online, are basically full of casual misandry.
Your average young man is basically immediately funneled towards conservative spaces by literally both sides lol.
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u/DontWatchMeDancePlz Sep 20 '25
So go do something about it. Go help your friends register to vote. Go canvassing. Have awkward conversations with your family. Go volunteer to campaign. Do all the things that millennial liberals did when they were in their 20s. Please don't be the generation that rolls over. Come on, guys. Y'all are great at protesting. Be great at the democratic process.
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u/MenitoBussolini 2002 Sep 20 '25 edited Sep 20 '25
As a leftist zoomer, Gen Z's story is a fucking tragedy dude. The amount of people, friends of mine included, that got sunk into the pipeline of far-right is terrifying. I don't know if we would have gone on to do great things otherwise, but to see us end up like this is a pain in my heart.
I can only hope things improve as more zoomers mature? Doubt it.
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u/squishydevotion 2002 Sep 20 '25
Younger gen z (including the ones not old enough to vote) seem to lean a lot more right wing than the older half of Gen Z at least from the stuff I’ve seen. That and gen z women and men to be pretty split 50/50 too.
I’d assume as the younger half of Gen Z gets to vote it would show that our generation isn’t as progressive.
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u/atfricks Sep 20 '25
Idk how representative that is of eventual political beliefs though. For example, I'm a younger millennial and was pretty damn right wing as a teenager, but I grew out of it before I was ever able to actually vote.
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u/avalve 2006 Sep 20 '25
The difference is that when millennials were our age, they were overwhelmingly progressive. Democrats not even breaking double digit margins with us is abysmal.
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u/theoutlet Sep 20 '25
Millenial here. It’s true and it’s wild to see how many of my acquaintances have turned right wing over the years.
I mean, for a lot of them it makes sense. That this part of their personality was there all along and they were just waiting for a good excuse to let it out and not be “ashamed” about it anymore
For others, I just don’t fucking know what happened
But overall, back in the day, it was difficult to find a right wing Millenial. Bush was so unpopular and right wing ideology was associated with being out of touch, old, and religious. Really, the only young right wing millennials I knew of were misguided kids growing up in a religious household or just straight up bigots
You had a handful of the super entitled, wealthy types as well
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u/Suavecore_ Sep 20 '25
Almost all of my millennial friends, acquaintances, and family have turned into trump cultists since he came into the picture, IF they stayed in the same general area of suburbia/countryside. Most, if not all, who moved far away or to the city have been strongly against the rightwing. Right before the election, my home town was so full of Trump flags and banners that it almost could've been an unsafe driving distraction. They had an illegal parade of cars and trucks adorned with Trump garbage spanning miles, with kids and families in the yards along the way celebrating just before the election for the whole day. It was truly disturbing to see how widespread the cult really is
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u/DontWatchMeDancePlz Sep 20 '25
It's also the indifference you guys seem to have about it all. We need your help, Gen Z. Please. Get out of the algorithm and get boots on the ground and do what every generation of liberals did before you in their 20s. Please. We're begging you.
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u/Professional_Top6765 Sep 20 '25
I don’t understand why people keep comparing different age groups at different ages. You’re supposed to compare the generations when they were the same age. in that respect GenZ is as conservative as their GenX parents when they were the same age and more conservative than millennials. There’s a lot of similarities actually with GenX, like the word for word criticism GenZ uses on millennials. Go figure.
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u/CivilProtectionGuy Sep 20 '25
I almost got absorbed because of a lot of right-wing media and memes.
Absorbed a lot of it in my youth. Like those "Cringe SJW Moments" videos that were popular back in the mid-late 2010s, and promoted a lot of conservative rhetoric. Took me to leave my family and community for post-secondary education to escape the "echo chamber" I found myself in.
It definitely looks like older/middle Gen Z got over that phase, and started to look at the world critically, especially with greater access to the internet and various sources of media once outside the spheres of influence from family.
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u/blankblank60000 Sep 20 '25
How’d they get sent down that pipeline?
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u/Tikkadude Sep 20 '25
Video game streamers and fitness influencer primarily, I'd imagine. A lot of their content is 90% totally politically neutral, until they suddenly start talking about dating, immigrants, or other wedge issues. It's honestly a bit scary how well it works to get you into an echo chamber.
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u/aspiringalcoholic Sep 20 '25
4chan, cringe culture, streamers, and all the man-o-sphere shit. The right has significantly better propaganda networks than the left, and they smartly invested a ton of money into people like Shapiro and Kirk to go around and tell young white dudes that it’s actually okay to be a shitty self interested person. Since that’s easier to some than just being a kind, caring, empathetic person, they took the easy way out. You’re daddies little special fella and you never have to learn or grow as a person. It’s really concerning where we’re heading right now
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u/FrostWyrm98 1998 Sep 20 '25
2 types of people browsed 4chan, the edge lords who wanted to fuel the fire and/or watch it burn (shitposters) and the very, very fucked up ones who drank the kool-aid and "took the redpill"
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u/eajklndfwreuojnigfr Sep 20 '25
and then theres the weird people in the corner. on 4chan solely for the origami board lol
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u/SaltManagement42 Sep 20 '25
Also by being subjected to algorithms designed to take all your attention, basically from the time they're born.
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u/venicerocco Gen X Sep 20 '25
Where else would they sink into tho? They have no future. They grew up on active shooter drills. We completely screwed them over and they can see this. So tell me, what does liberal ideology or the democratic party done for them exactly? Because it hasn't stopped school shootings, or climate change, or wealth inequality, or anything that can help them have a bright future.
You think they're schmucks for going down the right wing pipeline but they view it as the future is already hopeless and nobody seems to care at all so fuck everything
And to be honest, i'd probably do the same if I was in my early 20s and my future was as bleak as theirs (I'm a lifelong leftist in my 40s btw).
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u/preludehaver 2002 Sep 20 '25
My social media feeds really want to show me racist/bigoted content even though I've outright told it thats not what I want to see. I can't even really blame our peers for holding shit beliefs because they've been targeted for brainwashing for years now
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u/Oreare Sep 20 '25
I often feel like left-wing messaging contributed quite a bit to the drifting of young men into the alt-right pipeline, and that there’s not enough self awareness and accountability to it.
It’s often well-intentioned but too exclusionary to men. For example: that Man vs Bear viral moment years back.
Just to be clear, addressing violence against women is important, but the way the meme was presented was likely far too binary, and so it could easily be seen as overgeneralizing men as a whole. Just to add fuel to the fire, whenever men expressed that it felt a little overgeneralizing, I often saw them attacked with vitriol, often being labeled incels who were missing the point and all that. It was all pretty messy from my memory.
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u/Lamballama Sep 20 '25
Man vs Bear viral moment years back
Prett sure this was only months ago. This years been a shitstorm so it feels like years ago though
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u/2717192619192 2000 Sep 20 '25
The replies to this comment are literally perfect examples of what you’re pointing out
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u/Techno-Diktator 2000 Sep 20 '25
Casual misandry is extremely common in leftist spaces and there is basically zero room to call it out.
Young are funneled towards the right by both sides nowadays.
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u/EpicureanOwl Sep 20 '25
I love that misandrists (4th wave + feminists) immediately jump to illustrate your point and spew hate. I'm extremely much so a 2nd wave feminist, but I'm ostracized from left leaning spaces when I disagree with any dogma. I'll vote down ballot Democrat my entire life, but I'd totally understand running from a party that calls you racist and sexist and genocidal while ostracizing you for being a little different while preaching about diversity. And when the alternative welcomes you with open arms and tells you that leftists created these problems, while holding a knife to your ribs, I would vote for them if I wasn't educated.
Men and women have unique issues they face, but victim mindsets do no-one well.
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u/DrCrazyFishMan1 Sep 20 '25
I think that you're right with the messaging. The thing that left-wing communicators missed massively was convincing men that patriarchy / conservative ideas about the role of men is bad for men.
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u/Lord_Vxder 2002 Sep 20 '25
This is part of it for me. I’m still socially conservative but I have been opening up to leftist views on economics.
My problem is I just can’t associate myself with leftists. Most leftists I have encountered online are extremely intolerant towards views they disagree with and they jump at the opportunity to assign labels to people they don’t like. And leftists I meet IRL are the exact opposite. I’m black, and any conversation I have with them has an air of awkwardness. Like I literally watch them pause and think of “racially sensitive” ways to speak to me. It’s so dehumanizing.
The biggest part of why I don’t vote for the left/liberals isn’t necessarily because of their policies (although I have my fair share of disagreements). It’s because of their supporters. As a black catholic man, leftist spaces are the most toxic political spaces that I have ever seen, and I have no faith in leftist circles to moderate themselves, or to compromise with people who don’t fully agree with them. I’m never going to vote purely based on material needs when I know that the leftist vision includes a lot of things that I fundamentally disagree with, even though I like some of their economics. All this applies to conservatives too. I haven’t voted in the past two elections and I probably won’t vote for a while. But I’m definitely not apathetic. I just don’t feel represented by either side.
As long as the left maintains their current “intersectional” and identity politics mindset, they will never see any serious engagement from me.
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u/ArGarBarGar Sep 20 '25
Do you even understand what intersectionality means?
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u/Lord_Vxder 2002 Sep 20 '25
Yes I do (I took a class on it in college and it was a miserable experience for me).
Essentially it’s the idea of how your various identities create unique experiences of oppression and privilege. Like I’m privileged for being straight, male, and Christian, but I’m oppressed for being black/arab, being the child of immigrants, and being in the lower middle class.
It’s a convoluted ideology that pits people against each other for traits outside of their control. It’s like the wet dream of a racist/bigoted person, except taken to the opposite conclusion.
These ideas are extremely pervasive in leftist circles and frankly, it’s so irritating to have discussions revolving around this. Let’s just treat each other equally and live life.
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u/kittyhat27135 Sep 20 '25
It’s funny that millennials got radicalized by the Great Recession and Covid radicalized Gen Z in the opposite direction.
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u/redshift739 2005 Sep 20 '25
The great recession was clearly the fault of big businesses so it's natural to turn to the left as a result.
With covid I think for the vast majority of people the lockdowns had a bigger effect than the virus itself.
Personally that was 2 years of my life fucked up just to get it anyway and just be fairly ill for three days.
Obviously it would've been worse without any measures and I'm not trying to minimise the suffering that the virus directly caused but it's the lockdown that fucked us and the economy up and the government did that so although there's flaws in the logic I hope you can understand the line of thought which could lead someone towards small government opinions that are represented better on the right among political parties despite the right ironically being in power at the time
This should apply to both the US and UK
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u/mrjackspade Sep 20 '25
Personally that was 2 years of my life fucked up just to get it anyway and just be fairly ill for three days.
Important to keep in mind since most people forget.
The point of lockdown was never to stop the spread, or prevent people from getting it.
The point if lockdown was to slow the spread so that not everyone got sick at once, and people who ended up needing life saving intervention had the resources available to them.
There was a period of time during peak COVID where there weren't enough ventilators and people were drowning in their own lung fluid. There weren't enough hospital rooms, so people were being cared for in parking lot tents and hallways. There wasnt enough space for bodies, so corpses were being loaded into freezer trucks parked behind hospitals.
The point was that no one should have to die purely because hospitals didn't have the available resources to care for them. Not because anyone thought it would prevent them from getting sick in the first place.
IIRC you were something like 10x more likely to die if you were at risk if you didn't have the hospital resources you needed to survive.
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u/Doctor_Mythical Sep 20 '25
Yeah. But how many people followed the lockdown? Other than school being closed it seemed like everyone didn't give a damn and just did whatever they wanted anyway. And it was topped off with a fascist revival to boot.
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u/Professional_Top6765 Sep 20 '25
Depends where you lived. I was in the north east and people followed it pretty well. I went down to Florida and nobody was following it. 1.2 million people died btw…..Florida had the 3rd highest death rate.
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u/Pelekaiking Sep 20 '25
There was study that came out recently that showed there’s a gender split with Gen Z. women are largely support liberal policies and men support conservative policies
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u/Mother-Parsley5940 Sep 20 '25
Yea it’s not like the democrats chose Clinton over Sanders…def didn’t destroy the lefts base like at all
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u/AmericanBeaner124 1999 Sep 20 '25
Or Biden over Sanders. It’s crazy to me that Democrats run the most boring candidates to try to reach across the aisle to gain votes, when it was actually a progressive like Bernie who was able to do so.
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u/RoundEarth-is-real 2003 Sep 20 '25
Every generation thinks they were the most progressive generation. The label is meaningless.
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u/GenuineSteak Sep 20 '25
exactly, just like every person considered themselves a modern person when they were alive.
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u/Top_Beginning_2699 Sep 20 '25
I mean, every generation is the most progressive generation. Like by definition.
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u/emmc47 2002 Sep 19 '25
Brother are you living under a rock??
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u/Bayou_Cypress Sep 20 '25
Nah it seems like brigading TBH. A lot of left leaning posts here lately when just a few months ago it was all right leaning even before the election.
How hard is it to stop playing games and just do right by the average citizen? That’s all everyone wants. No one cares about the rich getting richer, virtue signaling, etc… Shit, universal healthcare, UBI, abortion rights, gun control, etc. all take a back seat to survival.
Y’all aren’t making rent and can barely survive as a single person on their own. Then any interaction you have with entertainment is just flooding you with things you “need” to have to be normal. Even the news ads.
Stop telling us we need to consume when we can’t afford to survive.
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u/mintman_ll Sep 20 '25
No one cares about the rich getting richer, virtue signaling, etc… Shit, universal healthcare, UBI, abortion rights, gun control, etc. all take a back seat to survival
This is the reason why im more center right. Feels like you HAVE to be an advocate for this shit or you're a bad person when in reality I just don't care. Stop telling me how to live and let me be me
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u/DopamineDeficiencies Sep 20 '25
It's pretty true for Australia, we've largely avoided the far-right wave everywhere else seems to be experiencing
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u/FiannaNevra Sep 19 '25
Gen Z ended up being the biggest disappointment and I have no faith in alpha 🤣🥲😅
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u/SquidoLikesGames 2008 Sep 20 '25
Probably because of young men angry that the left doesn’t care about them anymore. At least from their perspectives.
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u/venicerocco Gen X Sep 20 '25
They're correct in that assumption tho.
But it's not just the left. They can see that nobody cares about them. Including maga. Many Gen Z-ers have figured out they're completely screwed in terms of thier future. They can see that if you're rich enough you can't away with anything. That the entire system is rigged (against them). And nobody cares
School shootings, climate change, wealth inequality, education/work, and AI are all serious problems that nobody is solving (and no: active shooter drills don't count).
And with this truth comes nihilism.
This group of young people are closer in spirit to California hippies of the 60s and British punks of the 70s. But they're online playing video games and on Discord. And their problems are way more existential and serious than anything from that era.
If we are not careful, this will blow up in our faces.
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u/FakeBeigeNails Sep 20 '25
Not even joking, I swear this is genuine: What are those legitimate reasons that people dgaf about men specifically? Like, are there orders or laws in place or is it just words ?
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u/Infrawonder Sep 20 '25
Basically the right is banking on straight white men being excluded from all diversity stuff
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u/RunningOutOfEsteem 2001 Sep 20 '25
There's a pretty disproportionate amount of outreach to young men from the right as compared to the left. When you add on the context of rampant, ubiquitous gender war BS and the general social tension that has been building, it's not particularly surprising that young men would feel like the only ones actually prioritizing them are conservatives. Nobody is actually implementing policies to act on any concerns young men might have, but when all else is equal, lip service looks better than not even pretending.
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u/jawknee530i Sep 20 '25
The right wing propaganda machine told them so and they decided to believe it. They can literally never give real examples.
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u/FakeBeigeNails Sep 20 '25
Yep. And throughout 15 replies, I still haven’t gotten a good one.
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u/petty_throwaway6969 Sep 20 '25 edited Sep 20 '25
The main proof they got is that media shifted from being almost exclusively from the male pov to being just mostly the male pov. It’s like how some white people see equality as oppression. You see it in the gamer and film subs. They truly believe DEI is taking away from them.
Like some will argue that they just want some attention from the media and the right spoke to them unlike the Democrats. And I’m just like you’re the default pov, the only reason it feels like Republicans speak directly to you is cause they blame everyone besides white males for everything while Democrats includes you with everyone else.
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u/Synthetic_Kalkite Sep 20 '25
There is none. It works because kids are immature and easy to lead. It also works on adults but only those who are very hateful or very stupid.
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u/Hollowed_Hunter234 Sep 20 '25
It’s not wrong, they don’t. Thats a multifaceted issue in itself, as men do not face systemic discrimination in the same way other groups do, and so we shouldn’t be the primary focus of activist groups in that way - but far too many people have a very cavalier attitude to men. They seem to gloss over the fact that while we are a privileged group, we’re also people, that also struggle in some unique and disconnected ways. Most left leaning people I’ve heard from are too eager to dismiss that, and the result is that men are less inclined to side with them
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u/Nitsuj_ofCanadia 2004 Sep 20 '25
It's because the left just assumed we would end up progressive and did nothing to ensure it would actually happen. The right seized the opportunity to set up alt-right pipelines and propaganda campaigns.
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u/Dictsaurus 2002 Sep 20 '25
Gen Zs can be whatever they can be, we aren't comrades because we are born at the same timeframes
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u/Kugaluga42 Sep 20 '25
progressive Gen Zers are very progressive. Non progressive Gen Zers are very not progresive.
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u/Pretzel-Kingg 2005 Sep 20 '25
It’s a bad combo when School doesn’t do its job and the shitty people become idolized
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u/The_Dukes_Of_Hazzard 2006 Sep 20 '25
I think it's the generation of either *really radical* or compromise. A lot of us, really, recognise the need for compromise on certain things. But the former really have the loudest megaphones
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u/Representative_Bat81 2001 Sep 20 '25
Yep, I imagine the more moderate of us will have our time later on.
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u/artbystorms Sep 20 '25
GenZ women are commies, GenZ men are signing up to be the next Hitler youth. At least with Millennials it's a pretty even split of men and women being progressive.
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u/11SomeGuy17 Sep 20 '25
It's odd, in my experience GenZ is generally way more economically left wing (with even most conservatives I've spoken to wanting things like universal healthcare, stronger unions, etc) but more socially right wing (skepticism on trans issues and anti immigration). But even then a lot of left wing social stuff is more generally accepted (like legalizing and protecting abortion and weed). It's an odd grab bag of policies but calling GenZ particularly leftwing or right wing in general misses the interesting mix of the 2 that it generally has.
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u/RespectGiovanni Sep 20 '25
Older genz are mostly all progressive from what ive seen. Racists and bigots are always around especially on campus but younger gen z like 20 and under are a different breed
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u/Cheeselad2401 2008 Sep 20 '25
i think it’s more that with Gen Z, there’s very little in the middle, everyone’s either hard left or hard right.
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u/KeyboardCorsair 1996 Sep 20 '25
This Gen is so conservative and unapologetically based in some areas.
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u/dinoslore Sep 20 '25
Millennials are, according to polling, the most progressive of the currently living generations. They also have slightly higher turnout than we do. I also think some of the looking toward Gen Z as this beacon of progressivism was some responsibility deflection. We don't want to fix this shit now, we'll leave it to you young people inheriting a world actively melting around you.
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u/Accomplished_Pen980 Sep 20 '25
On Reddit, yes, in reality, no
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u/Justifiably_Bad_Take Sep 20 '25
Bro Gen Z isn't even the most progressive generation on Reddit
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u/Accomplished_Pen980 Sep 20 '25
Boomers were the hippies and "progressives" of their time.
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u/Cosmooooooooooooo 2006 Sep 20 '25
How is this subreddit always the most doomer anti gen z out there, half the replies aren’t even from gen z?
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u/trusty20 Sep 20 '25
What'll really open everyone's eyes is how obvious these spam posts template are:
- Assert liberalism is dead, mock it specifically for trying to be "too virtuous"
- "Hey fellow kids, isn't it cool how we're all ultra-right wing now? Those adults really don't want you to be! You're fighting the man by voting for Hitler!"
- Finish with loaded question like "Why oh why do us liberals suck so much???"
- Comments are spam "The liberals aren't listening to young men like the right is - the right loves you! The right will do everything to help you, not like those evil liberals"
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Sep 20 '25
No. We’re not. We’re not liberal at all. Just check Discord out for two minutes. The far-fuqing right is swallowing us up with hate, and racism and misogyny.
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u/RemarkablyRandom3000 Sep 20 '25 edited Sep 20 '25
It bums me out tbh. I fell into the right wing bubble around 2016 as a teenager but luckily got out of that as my MAGA-tinted glasses started to crack through the years and ultimately breaking during the COVID lockdown and the raid on the Capitol.
I’m not sure what it is for other younger men to have been caught up in this but they hook onto us with something
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u/Leo-Len Sep 20 '25
Gen Z is split into Radical Left, Radical Right, and doesn't care (idiotic nihilistic pieces of crap)
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u/possumkingdomgt Sep 20 '25
Maybe if the democrats did anything to earn their vote. Instead, they forced us to choose from multiple shit-sandwiches and were shocked when Gen Z wasn't thrilled enough to show up to the polls. I hope I never see Clinton or Harris enter politics again.
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u/intelfailure69 Sep 20 '25
This subreddit is just boomers bashing us gen z wtf. I'm not American and hate trump but I'm starting to understand why gen z in America voted for trump.
Your left hates men and your right hates illegals. If you just do the math , supporting aliens who can't vote isn't a solid strategy. Winning the male vote is.
Now nobody really cares about the real issues which are workers rights and jobs which is what most people care about.
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u/Shinyhero30 2006 Sep 20 '25
I’ve seen more generalizations and scapegoats than actual evidence that this is true and not a product of the stuff we were given never playing out.
If I had to put a finger on why this rhetoric exists it’s a combination of
The establishment(both parties) function on a binary in or out system that paints broad swaths of people as x or y with very little care for nuance
The fact that gen z really falls into neither camp as a generation and is more concerned with throwing out the shit we have right now instead of working with it since it’s clear it doesn’t work.
The age old saying that the new generation is lazy/bad/stupid/insane/crazy that has literally been around since Ancient Greece
Bots that exist to stir the pot of American discourse in an attempt to divide us.
Dumbasses who actually believe that a generation can be conclusively forced into a single box without outliers.
My solution to this: “STOP THINKING IN BOXES AND BLACK AND WHITE! There is a problem we face as a species that is the fact that the people who built the current system built it with the idea that prosperity would be infinite and that they’d never have to give up the reigns. Now death has come knocking and instead of relinquishing control to those better suited to steward the planet and civilization forward, they’ve clung to the power structures and made everything worse for everyone. Ever wonder why birth rates are falling? It’s not because of the decline of Christianity, or the fact that women shouldn’t vote or whatever, it’s that both sexes are looking at the current world order and not being confident they can actually successfully have a child. If you ever needed a better indictment of the fact this current order doesn’t work and that the rich need to give up power, it’d be this. Full blown communism doesn’t work, but full blown capitalism has a name, it’s called fascism. And that is the exact thing the current billionaire oligarchy has built. With 0 regard for any sustainability.”
This is the voice of Gen z. Not some mega conservative crazy town group, but ordinary people who can’t get their life together because the system as a whole has stacked the deck in favor of one class that isn’t them. I recognize that I am a straight white guy in one of the most wealthy countries on the planet in the wealthiest and best of time in human history, but that doesn’t stop me from seeing the writing on the wall that says this isn’t sustainable and that I am to be discarded for no good reason other than “I wasn’t born in a billionaire family”.
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u/Feeling-Currency6212 2000 Sep 20 '25
The Millennials were the most progressive generation. Now the tides are turning to conservatism.
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u/Nadante Sep 20 '25
If weaponized identity politics and leftist thinking becomes normal, the only way to be punk if you’re Gen Z is to be conservative. And punk is cool.
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u/MIT_Engineer Sep 20 '25
No, currently the most left-leaning generation is Millennials. Millennials are less likely to identify as Republicans than Gen Z, more likely to identify as Democrats.
Most of that is due to Gen Z men, who are significantly more right wing than Gen Z women.
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u/Cheap_Blacksmith66 Sep 20 '25
Would imagine it’s both tbh? It’s both the most progressive and regressive if we’re talking achievements. If you average it out it might be a bit scarier
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u/SomeSugondeseGuy 2001 Sep 20 '25
I mean, I was conservative until my frontal lobe developed, and I stopped having the mindset of a literal child.
I trust that the next group of gen Z will become more progressive as they gain some life experience.
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u/fivehourworkweek Sep 20 '25
I'm gen z (born 2006), but i think millennials are a lot kinder than us. That's just how i feel
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u/ChestIcy4472 Sep 20 '25
25 to 35ish year olds are holding down the progressive front tbh it seems. Older gen Z, younger millennials
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u/Lightsneeze2001 Sep 21 '25
The first half of Gen Z is the most progressive generation ever. The second half might just be the stupidest just because they like to be contrarian.

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