Same gen (42). I feel like we have a really unique lens on all of this, too: old enough to remember being in a smoky bar, socializing (not healthy, but fun as hell), but also young enough to have had some technological exposure at a crucial time of our youth. We _leveraged_ technology for socializing in person. Our online pursuits were around organizing lighthearted social goofiness like "getting iced", LARPing, and flash mobs. All of which would probably make younger generations eye roll to death out of secondary cringe.
I guess at some point people started taking themselves way too seriously. Worrying about what others think, or something, I don't know. In a way, social interaction is kind of like a standoff in the dusty streets of an old west town. Someone has to make the first move to expose themselves, and it doesn't seem like anyone wants to be that person anymore.
I'm about to be 41 and likewise very distinctly remember a time when cell phones were a vehicle for organizing the evening or weekend's plans, quickly making a connection with someone you met ("let me get your number"), whatever, buying weed or something. The point was to make friends, get laid, network without calling it that. The idea was that some of those random people would become your crew of friends, one of those girls would become your wife, and you'd end up settled down to kick off the next generation. And I know some people who did end up settled dowm...but not that many, not like the generation right before mine. Kind of hit or miss in my cohort.
Near as I can tell that was still roughly the model on paper if less and less until COVID and lockdown and all that. Something snapped, you can see it walking down the street of any city you knew well before. People never came back outside with the same vigor.
I don't claim to understand the causal structure between all the various factors: the bleak economic prospects, the decline in institutions, the increasingly rapacious and cynical Big Tech cabal, there are a ton of factors.
But COVID before and after, that's when it collectively became too much to easily bounce back from.
> I guess at some point people started taking themselves way too seriously. Worrying about what others think, or something, I don't know.
When I was a teenager, precisely one guy had videoed his teenage self waving around a broomstick like a lightsaber, and had it end up online. Video cameras and editing equipment were rare and expensive. And that one man was a cautionary tale, not to wave a broomstick like a lightsaber anywhere there are video cameras.
Now the video cameras are in everyone's pockets 24/7, and with the internet connection built in. Is it any wonder nobody's waving a broomstick like a lightsaber?
A look on TikTok for "lightsaber duel" draws me to the opposite conclusion. Yeah, lightsaber kid was cringe worthy; I'm glad it wasn't me. But in the meantime, Star Wars got cool, After Effects went subscription, and there are some really cool videos of fan-made lightsaber duels up on the Internet now.
A friend of mine had passes to Rage Against the Machine with Run the Jewels at MSG a couple years ago and brought me. A few songs into the RATM set I realized there weren't that many young people in the stadium, because there wasn't a sea of phones recording everything for social media. Just tens of thousands of people pretty locked in to the moment. A younger act and all you see are thousands of screens glowing.
I've always felt that we (older millennials) sort of hit a sweet spot technology wise. We pretty naturally straddled that analog to digital world.
I notice when just out and about other people my age and older still have the familiar vibe. Young people are in another universe and it doesn’t seem like a more pleasant one.
I guess at some point people started taking themselves way too seriously. Worrying about what others think, or something, I don't know. In a way, social interaction is kind of like a standoff in the dusty streets of an old west town. Someone has to make the first move to expose themselves, and it doesn't seem like anyone wants to be that person anymore.