Welcome again to everybody! Make yourself at home. Enjoy the expertly designed Stalin flag thing. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is our weekly discussion thread!

We’re also testing a weekly news thread specifically for discussing world news.

We have a Matrix homeserver at genzedong.xyz. See this thread for information about our Matrix space.

Short reading list for new MLs here. To find theory, try https://marxists.org, z-lib, libgen, or Sci-Hub (for scientific articles). If an article is unavailable, try the Wayback Machine.

  • Valbrandur@lemmygrad.ml
    13·
    1 year ago

    I’m an early zoomer (you know, genZ-edong) already living in adulthood. Not long ago I was thinking about that time of my teenage years in which I spent way too much time on the internet, during that era ranging from rage faces, nyan cat and the golden age of creepypastas until the peak in popularity of cringe culture youtube channels, all while browsing completely unsupervised. If you are any like me, you will be familiarised with the feeling that you would like to tell your past self to get off the computer, thinking that probably doing so would have saved you from many problems and made your future life somewhat easier.

    It has been however only now as I have rejoined internet communities (yes, such as lemmygrad) that I have noticed that the later members of gen Z seem not only to be commiting the same mistakes I myself did, but more severely and with a much greater dependency on the internet than I ever had, neglecting to a worrying level the development of skills as basic as socialization and critical thinking. Is it just me who is becoming a grumpy old man yelling at clouds, or does anyone else share the same concerns?

    • QueerCommie@lemmygrad.ml
      15·
      1 year ago

      As one such ‘later’ zoomer, that is very true. Most of us are very alienated. I know some people who spent over half of their day on their phone when they’re not in school. I personally have to force myself to actually read, and talk to people, but I’m making some progress. I’m somewhat lucky for my attention span’s sake that I was a Redditor (no longer) and not a Tiktoker, as that seems to drain brains faster.

      • Valbrandur@lemmygrad.ml
        8·
        1 year ago

        Tik Tok’s format is something that I find terrifying, and even more than the rest of internet social media is trying to follow it, such as with Youtube and its shorts. The fact that instant gratification is being promoted for profit so badly that we have now a flow of videos with Subway Surfers gameplays on the side not to lose watchers’ attentions is simply sinister.

        At least back then we fried our neurons watching things like these for three and a half minutes without blinking instead.

    • Neptium@lemmygrad.ml
      11·
      1 year ago

      Definitely. I think not much is being emphasized in the role of the internet in affecting our own social development.

      It is definitely not natural for a few clicks of a button to lead us to the most vile and disgusting views known to man being espoused.

      Nor is it normal to see other terminally online people deride others for deviating from their specifically flavoured groupthink.

      It isn’t healthy nor normal. The pseudo-anonymous nature of the internet can’t facilitate healthy emotional responses, especially when we disagree about things.

      Over here, unlike the rhetoric found in the West where the youth are incredible “based” or “left-wing”, our recent elections involved the lowered voting age of 18 year olds.

      And you know what happened? Most of the disenchanted Malay youth here voted for a borderline fascist, religious and reactionary Islamic Party.

      They gained prominence through the supposedly “Chinese-controlled” TikTok.

      This is also why I push back on “vulgar developmentalism”, and are much more critical in that regard to those that say any sort of capitalist development is good as it is supposedly “progressive”.

      I admit that my own existence relies upon the fact that my country rapidly industrialized. But now the superstructure is actively inhibiting for further development of the productive forces, and a lot of the present contradictions I see now in this country can never be managed sufficiently under a bourgeois dictatorship.

      I went on a bit of a tangent but my point is, the internet needs to be more heavily regulated, personally. China’s restricted “gaming hours” on weekdays for children I think is a good example that should be copied in other countries.

  • frippa@lemmy.ml
    6·
    1 year ago

    Silvio Berlusconi, dipshit conservative neolib is now, finally, dead, after 20 years of presidency that destroyed Italy (and unironically, lowered the iq, an interesting story) 🍾

    Pls post your best crabs

  • QueerCommie@lemmygrad.ml
    5·
    1 year ago

    Last week eastern North America was plagued by smoke for multiple days thanks to forest fires in Canada. Anyone who thought the west would be free from the environmental crisis, so they could keep on polluting was wrong.

  • Neptium@lemmygrad.ml
    2·
    1 year ago

    I actually forgot that Shit Reactionary Says existed for the past few months. Actually made my experience here really pleasant.

    I unblocked it recently to see what’s up but quickly blocked it again.

    I don’t know how some of you all do it.

    There is only so much AnonymousNazi has to say before it gets really boring and the same arguments get rehashed over and over.

    Also I expected it to become more active since the recent surge in users but seems like it’s been steady.

    • Valbrandur@lemmygrad.ml
      5·
      1 year ago

      I was subscribed to it initially hoping to find funny content, the kind of commentary about communism that you see on the internet once in a while that is so bad that it turns around all the way into being good again, in a comedic way. Instead, it’s just a compilation of all things reactionary ever said on the internet.

      Also, of the 40 posts currently on the community’s front page, 22 are all made by the same user, who I suppose just goes there to post every time they find content posted by a liberal/libertarian/fascist. It is frankly a bad community, and you did well by blocking it.

      • Neptium@lemmygrad.ml
        4·
        1 year ago

        Yup. Although some posts and comments are decent. Just sad that a lot of it is low hanging fruit.