cross-posted from: https://feddit.online/c/usa@midwest.social/p/2035642/everything-got-worse-gen-z-express-frustration-regret-after-trump-vote
cross-posted from: https://feddit.online/c/politics@piefed.world/p/2034306/navigating-the-vote-buyers-remorse-gen-z-on-trump
ITT: People act smug about Gen-Z when in fact 54% of them voted Harris… And OLDER WHITE MEN were Trump’s biggest voting block once again.
…and that’s a repeating pattern for Republicans. Stop letting old white men off the hook just because it’s more “expected” for them to be shit.
What’s more blaming young people is just a way to get MILLENNIALS to BECOME rightwing/old in their opinions.
Gen-Z are fine they’re just out there with no idea, trying shit. Like every generation has to in order to find themselves.
https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-2024
I remember when, to find myself, I needed to look at and then step into a bear trap.
Old White men are stupid and at fault, so is some large proportion of Gen Z, and probably others. If they have regret, fuck all of them. Next time do your homework, this was all knowable in advance. Welcome to the “school of hard knocks” (hurr durr), better known in 2026 as the school of FAFO.
The fact that only 54% voted for Harris is the reason why Gen-Z gets so much hate.
Everybody expects old white men to vote Conservative. Meanwhile Gen-Z was born into the era of ubiquitous internet access. They’ve had access to the entire world’s knowledge from the very moment they learned to read. So what’s their excuse? They didn’t have to just blindly follow whatever they told you to believe on the TV and in the newspaper, they’ve had access to cold, hard facts from the very beginning.
Therefore it is mind-blowing to me that a whopping forty six percent of them could manage to be this ignorant and dumb, when all they gotta do is pull out their always-online pocket computer and read to easily figure out that MAGA is completely and utterly full of shit.
Bottom line is that old white men at least had an excuse for ignorance at one point. Gen-Z never did. And that’s why they deserve the most criticism out of any voting-age generation IMO.
That’s not how algorithmic social media, which is where they source all their “facts” from, works. Gen Z is not a generation that goes out and researches things; they are spoon-fed information (true or false) in bite-sized pieces which they use to piece together a basic world view that aligns with that of their tribe. They are more concerned with being seen to be good or smart by their peers, another product of being raised by algorithmic social media, than they are with being educated on a topic or developing an independent opinion or thought. This is a generation that is notorious for its inability to focus or concentrate or anything, and that severely impairs its ability to think critically and deeply about issues.
Yeah, what most people have in their pockets is providing them access to a well-oiled propaganda machine. Maybe the people on Lemmy are on average less trusting of such things, but that’s not normal. The right picks and champions influencers nearly constantly. The Dems don’t have much success here.
Oh we’re just going to pretend the children should have been the parents? The youngest and most vulnerable to manipuation should have been the adults in the room.
You’re doing the EXACT thing I complained about.
You simply haven’t made the case. Sorry, your argument is that more experience = a good excuse for ignorance? That first time voters should be the most expert… And that Internet access for young people, didn’t also subject them to one of the biggest online propaganda campaigns ever seen.
Did you just not notice how memes were used in the Trump campaigns?.. And then this whole idea that millennials and older just don’t have Internet access? WTF is wrong with you? How out of touch with reality are you?
STOP EXCUSING OLD WHITE MEN, UNLESS YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OLD WHITE MEN IN CHARGE.
…it’s not that difficult.
I think you completely missed the point. They’re not saying genz should be the adults in the room.
They’re surprised that a generation who never drew breath without the internet came of age without the wisdom they hypothesized such a life would avail.
You gotta understand: earlier generations couldn’t trivially verify things. Anyone they ever interacted with were the people like… On their street. Diversity of thought was informed by limited contact. The internet, at one point, appeared to promise a radical solution to both. The optimism for the future, as a result, was essentially unbounded.
It’s not fair to ask gen z to save anyone. I don’t think its what buddy was saying, but if it was, it was unfair.
I think buddy was coming to the very late realization that the optimism of the transformative nature of the internet was misplaced. The hypothesis just didn’t pan out. You can give a human for their entire lives the ability to get the answer to any question, verify anything they’re told, and meet and talk to people with diverse viewpoints that may challenge what they’re exposed to based on proximity…
… And ultimately they’re just about as dumb as anyone else.
And I get the impression that, more than anything else, is what makes them sad.
I still think raising the pre-internet era at all, and pointing towards people who live offline as if they’re a big demographic, is weak excuse making. The internet is 30 years old and we’re all on it.
But yeah, it doesn’t just solve everything… And nor will AI.
You’re 100% right. I never said they don’t have an excuse now, all I said is that they once did. I carefully worded my sentence for a reason.
Meanwhile Gen-Z never had an excuse for ignorance. That’s my point.
First time inexperienced voters, the young not known for taking life seriously or for having ever seen the reprocussions of their votes… Have no excuses? Really?
You’re still not making sense. You’re saying young people aren’t politically vulnerable, niave, or able to be manipulated when OF COURSE THEY ARE!
Like I said the first time, the pretense is:
white women
https://truthout.org/articles/yes-55-percent-of-white-women-voted-for-trump-no-im-not-surprised/
I prefer my .edu source which uses exit polling. Says 45% of women, 55% men. 57% whites (as a group).
EDIT: Your source uses teen vogue as it’s source, who uses this NYT article (which is again, exit polling). It’s closer to what I’m saying, white men were Trump’s biggest voting block: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/exit-polls-president.html
Unpaywalled version: https://archive.is/GTeDy