Inching closer to the grave every day

I was talking to my primary-school age kids about their teachers, and one of them says their next teacher will be Mr Smith.

"He's old," they said, "he must be at least fifty".

I said "nah man. Mr Smith is probably only a few years older than me, early forties I reckon".

They had me with "no he's like really old. He reads a newspaper"

Yeah, the other day I was consulting with another therapist, and I was telling her how in EMDR therapy I often say “don’t give me the whole article, just the headline” when I want to explain to the client to avoid talking too much during EMDR. she works with teens, and she went “yeah, that will not fly with my clients.”
We came up with “don’t give me the long-form video, just give me the TikTok” as we both felt we were inching closer to the grave, lol.
- "Give me the clip, not the VOD." How do you do, fellow kids?
- Damn...
  I'm Gen Z and I feel like I'd still understand the article analogy, but when I think about my gen-alpha cousins maybe they would need the TikTok analogy...
- We came up with “don’t give me the long-form video, just give me the TikTok” as we both felt we were inching closer to the grave, lol.
  "Give me the Reader's Digest condensed version."
  "How does what a reader eats have anything to do with this? and why would we need a condensed version of that diet description?"
  oh god, I'm old.
- I’m not a Gen Z but how about, give me the TLDR?
- "Give me the Season 1 recap."
- Skip the labor pains, just give me the baby.
Primary school age children are horrible at guessing age. One time when I was 16 a group of 6 year olds estimated I was 40. And I don't look old, a few weeks ago, I got carded buying beer, which is 16+. I'm 27.
About a decade ago my employer had an intern present their findings from analyzing some survey data. One of the findings was this:
"People who answer surveys are really old. Like really old. Like thirty."
Are you under the impression that newspapers are still in fashion? Feel like they're kind of right on that one.
"no he's like really old. He reads a newspaper"
I think this is a fair dig haha

I don't regret any of this one bit, you look them up and it's always someone shilling products extremely hard while doing extremely low effort content like reaction videos or streaming Minecraft.

The fact that 'influencer' is a legitimate job title is proof that humanity is doomed.
- They aren't some symbol of the end times or anything, they're just a symptom of the sort of attention based economy we've built up here in America. They exist precisely because you can get paid to shill products while playing Minecraft.
  If we reign in the marketing and advertising industries then influencers will fall alongside them.
  Or, if we regulate "proper" ads and fail to do the same to influencers, whether on purpose or not, then they will become a primary source of advertising. Depending how this is handled could be a good or bad thing.
- I work for an influencer now, I went to a reputable film school and have a masters degree. I used to do documentaries on BLM for god's sake.
- I would be ashamed to ever admit that I follow somebody whose explicit job is to influence me. Like, do people refer to themselves as "influencees"?
- there were always similar jobs going all the way back to the rennaisance
This.
The TV stations around me are desperate to attract the young viewers, so they always have influencers as guests on their shows and what not, and I simply do not get it.
Today's guest: Billy Bobberson.
What's he famous for? Oh he posts some selfies on Instagram daily and every other post is a sponsored brand promo.
Why the fuck do people even follow influencers like this???
- Because most people are stupid. It is easier for stupid people to follow fake celebrities aka influencers, than to read a book or think for themselves.
To me, reaction videos are truly astonishing. Like, the number of videos reacting to some thing typically outnumber the thing itself by the hundreds. People prefer watching somebody else watching something so they know how they should feel about it. It's the modern version of the laugh track.

Streamer on doop? Do they know Zapp?

“I find the most erotic part of a woman is the boobies.”
- Kif!
  (at least Zapp remembered how to pronounce champagne by that episode)
- "You win again, gravity!"

and we wondered why everything was a GameBoy or a Nintendo for our parents

No no! THIS is different ! 😀 it's because it's funny to mess with kids.
- My routine when I walk into the room where my daughter is playing a game:
  Identify the game she is playing.
  Ask her how <activity in game she isn't currently playing> is going. Like if she's caught all the Pokémon when she's playing Minecraft.
  I'm not even trying to be subtle about it, but am still not sure she realizes I'm doing it deliberately. Either way, she corrects me with exasperation each time.

In the distant future, when we look back on scattered social media caps, we will regret that the date of posting is not shown. Like scattered pages from books unknown, page numbers elided.

The fun thing is that none of this stuff is going to survive long-term at all. Databases are backed up onto forms of media that have a very short lifespan. Only material that is endlessly copied forward (like DNA) will still be around, and nobody is going to pay for that kind of archiving, at least not for the generally trivial bullshit that comprises social media. FWIW this fact make me happy.
- As civilization has progressed, we've done more and more writing and record keeping and done so an less and less durable media. From stone to clay to papyrus/parchment to paper to film to digital media.
  I feel like there needs to be some kind of write once media that's extremely durable and reasonably dense for digital data specifically for long term archival purposes. What's the digital equivalent to carving something on a stone tablet, that a thousand years from now despite age and weathering could be dug up in a field somewhere and still hypothetically be at least mostly readable?
- What forms of media are you taking about that have short life spans?
  I think that as storage density goes up and price goes down, what used to be cumbersome and expensive amounts of data become easily manageable. So the only reasons we loose data will be business or political. Which will also decrease as there's now money in buying failing platforms.
  But yeah, I'm also happy none of the social media I created when I was young still exists, and the platforms are buried by the sands of time. Having everything you do on the internet stay around forever feels like a nightmare.
- I randomly download scattered memes that I will want to repost endlessly in the future. I assume other people do the same.
Even some articles or blogposts are without publish date. This should be illegal.

"CURTAINS FOR ZOOSHA? K-SMOG AND BATBOY CAUGHT FLIPPING A GRUNT."

I'm 29 so maybe I'm too young for this statement but if you ask me it's because younger celebrities tend to be the result of nepotism and don't have any actual talents.

which has always been true
- The nepotism part has always been true, and talentless celebrities have been around as long as the concept of "celebrity" has, but the category of celebrities "being famous for no reason" did not truly exist until Paris Hilton. Princesses and Kings aren't "celebrities".

My friend with young cousins was telling me that kids are using "sigma" instead of "cool" now?

"That's so sigma, bruh."

The fuck?

Start speaking in Greek to them. Asspro means white.
'The fuck" is now "what the sigma" at least that's what I gathered from lurking on shitposting communities
Edit: and I'm deeply afraid of using it around people who don't know what that means. And also around people who do know what it means.
- 50% of what Gen X thinks is zoomer slang is actually jokes at zoomer slang's expense
how is that worse than "dope" or "fire"?

I used to work at a hikers' hostel on the Appalachian Trail. A group of hikers needed a ride into town but were short on cash. One of them suggested they offer the hostel owner some weed in exchange for a ride. Another one said, "He doesn't smoke weed. He's old, like in his 40s." He actually was in his 50s and bought his weed from me lol

Just remember folks, those 2007 people are able to vote now.

I just aged 40 years
- Fuck im 25 and feel 40, this is why I will not shy away from my day of destined death. I can feel that it'll be before I'm 40 and I frankly want nothing to do with being 40.
Don't worry, they won't. (at least most of them)

They're lucky not to know, doop fell hard off after it was acquired by Skoot Corp.

I'm still so mad at the Skoot Corp CEO for that ridiculous re-skeet where they memed the javalina charrp boys on doop.
Am I having the stroke? Or is everyone else?
- We're all part of the stroke

As somebody who was born in 2007, I have no clue who modern celebrities are either. People consider me out of touch but I have no idea what half of what people around me are saying. The acronyms don't help and I am too scared to search them up.

Woah, 2007ers are 18 now. 👴
- Well 17 still. I still got like 6 months.
I watch NBA basketball and back in the day (1990s) there was exactly one player that was referred to by his initials: Michael Jordan. Nowadays fans use initials (with their jersey number occasionally tacked on as if that's the cleverest thing to do in the world) for almost every player and it's almost impossible to know who they're talking about. For some players this is legitimate (e.g. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is a mouthful so SGA is a good replacement) but for most it is not.
- In baseball now, they like to make nicknames by taking the first initial and the first syllable of the last name. Like J-Hey. It's annoying and unoriginal. Baseball used to have the best nicknames too.

When I hear "20 yrs ago" I still think 90s. 😭

I remember in 2010 when someone posted a meme on ragecomics that showed how sad they are that some people still use 'years ago' to refer to the early 90s...
I still think 90s when I hear 8-9 years ago.

Why even care about those "celebrities"? Stuff they do is usually mediocre at best anyways.

I mean, are they materially worse than Paris Hilton and Kimberly Kardashian? Or the Jersey Shore crowd? I'm not here to judge.
But I didn't really follow them when I was age-appropriate to care about that shit, anyway. Was too busy reading blogs about the newest feature list of an up-and-coming MMORPG or tearing through the latest edition of my favorite TTRPG, because I was focused on what truly mattered.
At some point, its not an age thing, its just a taste thing. I could probably name more web comix artists and indie board games than C-list celebrities and Reality TV shows, and that's fine.
Listening to what their interests are is a good way to connect with much younger (or much older!) people. I'll happily listen to a kid explain Fortnite to me, or my to grandpa talk about his favourite TV show. I'll ask them some questions about it and get a conversation going.

I used to be really into new music. Now I have 10 bands I listen to and just hope they keep releasing new albums.

I used to be really into standup. Now people mention it and all I can think to say is "Kyle Kinane is still doing comedy, right?"

I used to be really into movies. The newest I've seen recently is the Bob's Burgers movie.

But hey, at least I'm ignoring a lot of my hobbies these days!

I had no idea there was a Bob's Burgers movie. Im apparently out of touch. Lol.

Well and here we are! I don't even know if peeble and doop are real places online or she just made it up to make a point 😆

You've seen boomer humor. Get ready for milly mirth

There's a whole lot of people who are basically famous with being famous...

And most of them have the surname "Kardashian".
- If you mean the literal Kardashians, they're only a dozen, but figuratively it's like a genericised trademark and there are thousands of people like that.

I wish it was like that, reality is there's like 3 platforms that make you IRL famous. Youtube, Twitch and TIk Tok.

I'm a school bus driver and my elementary school kids go on about somebody named "Queso" (sp?) on Youtube and I find myself constantly fighting the urge to see what he's all about. It can't possibly be good.

He's a streamer whose chat makes fun of him for being fat. Caseoh.
I guess he won streamer of the year in 2024 - that was the first I'd heard of him

You keep joking about Doop and it's going to come true.