So, after thinking about Yang's complaints about phones leading to radicalization and other potential social problems, I wanted to reflect a bit on how technology has affected my life.
Honestly, I consider myself an early adopter of what's going on with gen Z. I was a millennial who basically has always been "addicted" to tech, even before it was in style. back then, we called these people "nerds." Ya know, introverts who didnt like going out, and who when they did, always had some sort of tech with them to keep them occupied. But did this obsession of mine drive me to my current politics?
In a way. I've always been lost "in my own world." I never really liked interacting with the "real world." Even when I was a kid, I spent a lot of time playing video games, reading books, etc. We didnt have one device that could do it all back then, but I would cycle through such things. I never really was attracted to social stuff, especially as I got older. I used to be made fun of in middle school since I was more interested in playing sega dreamcast games than in dating. In high school, I withdrew into the internet, talking to girls my own age that way, while not being interested in many in the real world. While I felt physical attraction there, I just found most girls to be boring. Because most girls dont want you to be spending your time playing video games, but monopolizing your time, and making you do offline stuff. Like going, dare I say, "outside" with them. To do what? Boring stuff. The same stuff my parents did like shopping when I'd rather withdraw into my own world.
And as I got older, I never really desired the same thing many people did my age. Many started becoming interested in working and driving and I never got into that stuff. Why should I wanna spend my time working so I could pay for a car I'd only use to drive to work? And let's talk about this in terms of recent discussions on work, consumption, and capitalism. While my introverted approach is still based somewhat in consumerism. You gotta pay for the tech, the internet, and the media you consume, but it's relatively cheap. Meanwhile, "going outside" so to speak has always been expensive. Eating out costs several times what it costs to eat home. And honestly? I never got shopping for the sake of shopping. I just wanna buy what I do and go home. It's one of the reasons I ended up withdrawing. My parents always took me shopping as a kid and I hated it a lot of the time. We'd be out all day going from store to store, and most of them were boring. And I guess that's how life "outside" is in this capitalist society. No real "third places" that are worth engaging in, just places to consume, and for others to work. So that that others to consume. And as we get older, we force people to get jobs serving those who have more money and want to consume. And we call this "life." Idk, it never appealed to me.
You can see where my views are going with this. So, as I got older, I never really wanted to work, the recession hit, I couldnt get an actual useful job using my degree in my area, and I basically gave up. I spent most of my time online, either playing video games, or on social media, and a lot of time researching the problems with the economy, until I finally saw through it. We dont have to do this. Like, we act like we do. But we don't. We got way more resources than people need to survive. And in the recession, we had a problem with people finding jobs. And oh god, why would we want to create more work, so we can just go back to this cycle? I never got into "the cycle" so to speak. I never bought into it mostly. Again, autistic introvert. If anything, i view life in "the cycle" to be hellish. It's entirely UNstimulating to me. It's not intellectually stimulating. It's not emotionally stimulating. It doesn't spark joy. If anything, it does the opposite.
Maybe that's what tech is doing to capitalism for some. Although i dont think it's doing it for most. As we saw, back during COVID, when given the choice between a slower paced life with less work and consumption, many people rejected it. They WANT that loop. Even worse, they want everyone else to participate so THEY can consume more. They literally are okay with making people work just to produce goods and services that they wanna consume. And it sickens me to some extent. I guess if you took away my internet and electricity I'd feel similarly, but still, I resent that people are expected to get jobs doing crap like food service just so people can buy overpriced food and drinks. Or producing the endless mountains of junk that we dont really need and ends in a landfill some day. Again, if people wanna do that stuff, all the power to them, but I resent being forced to participate, especially on the work side.
But younger generations, they DO think more like me. They're drinking less, having sex less, and are angry and phone addicted. But in a way, it's capitalism that's driving this. As some say, why should I wanna go out and drink $15 draft beers I can't afford? Consumerism is kinda eating itself because it forgot that what made it possible in the first place was Fordism. You need to give workers a good enough life to want to go out and consume. But zoomers these days cant get good jobs, they can't live a traditional consumerist lifestyle, and maybe they seek cheap entertainment online instead. And as things become less affordable in the 2020s, they're getting angrier over that too. because it's like "great, you're making our last refuge unaffordable."
So...yeah, the more I think about this, the more it's capitalism, stupid. Now, we can get a situation, if no one works and people wanna consume, where inflation happens. We kinda saw a little of that in 2021, right after COVID reopened. of course, the excess consumption came from all the extraverts and normies wanting to go out and CONSOOM by going to restaurants and hotels and stuff, those places not being able to get enough workers. And then every corporation ever just used it as an excuse to jack up prices. And now we're in round 2 as tariff mcorangeface puts insane tariffs on all foreign goods and then the companies are like "WELL, TIME TO RAISE PRICES AGAIN!"
idk, the more I think about this, the more I think about it within the realm of capitalism. I've never been someone who really bought fully into the consumption loop. Deep down, I've ALWAYS sought freedom. I've always kinda been the type who wanted to work less and live more modestly. And in the internet era it's cheaper than ever until corporations ruin that too. I never really bought into "the loop" so to speak. The loop bored me. it didnt bring me joy. I didnt want to work hard so i could make tons of money and never have time to enjoy any of it. I've always wanted more work life balance, work as little as possible so I could have the most time to live as I wanted. Ya know?
If anything, isnt the internet, cheap gadgets, and tons of software and other media just kind of evidence of us...peaking in society? I mean, even consumerism is getting to a point of being so efficient that people have access to virtually all human knowledge, tons of media, books, video games, etc., all at once, where even that is hitting the point basic necessities were getting to 100 years ago the last time we talked about working less? It's only crap related to the service economy that remains expensive. And while, admittedly, a lot of people love consuming that stuff, the way I see it, Id rather just....use phone and live in the online world consuming knowledge, memes, and tons of media.
I mean, we're at a point where once again, capitalism is just reaching a crisis point where it's just so efficient that we need to create new ways to keep the system going as it always did.
And this is where I come back to me vs Yang. While me and Yang have similar solutions to this problem, we have opposing perspectives. He still kinda lives in that analog world due to his age and background where he wants to live in the real world, consuming in that world, working in that world, and kinda freaking out when younger generations or the "drop outs" so to speak dont want to. Like he talked about that in the war on normal people too. Young men who spend most of their time on the computer and playing video games and giving up on the outside world.
And to go back to all of this, Yang points out that a lot of us become unhappy. But why do we become unhappy? Yang blames the tech, he blames the dropping out. He thinks that the answer is to get people onto "the cycle" or the life script. Ya know, work, consume, work, consume.
Me, I kinda have the opposite perspective. I embrace this world. And when I think about my own sadness in relation to this, it's mostly due to a world that doesnt let me live as I want. Again, it's capitalism itself trying to force me into this cycle I dont wanna be in. It's capitalism telling me that this is the way you SHOULD live my life, having a hard incentive structure centered around it, and punishing those who don't conform. When people isolate themselves, they lose romantic opportunities, because those opportunities are largely tied to that work/consume cycle. They lose a lot of social status and are treated as pariahs and weird loses. They lose economically, not having the experience to get a job, needing a job to get experience, and the jobs that exist not paying. And then because the cycle tends to value your self worth on how much you work and can then consume, yeah, people who dont buy into that tend to suffer. Because our entire society is centered around working and consuming.
So...when Yang points out how phones are our little "sad rectangles" or whatever, are they really? Or are we just coping with a really unhealthy society? I view it as anomie within sociology. A mismatch of our values and where we are in society. When people fail to live up to society's values, they start being depressed and crap and develop all kinds of mental and emotional issues. There are two possible answers to this. Either, we can force people to live according to the values in hopes that it makes them happy. Sometimes it does, although sometimes it just makes us deeply depressed as well as we can't live an authentic life. When I think about older generations and their unhealthy relationship with alcohol and cigarettes, I see coping mechanisms for a life that wasn't really worth living. Or, maybe we should change our norms to actually center around us. And THAT, is the human centered capitalist way. Maybe we should normalize excessive phone usage, and not wanting to consume and work all the time. Maybe we should have a cultural revolution where we actually question whether our current society sparks joy or not. I dont expect everyone to see eye to eye with me or agree with me, but given our society is supposed to value freedom and pluralism, it should allow us to pursue both. if anything, that's what UBI and human centered capitalism deliver. It allows everyone to get what they want. You wanna work and consume, work and consume, and live that traditional lifestyle, go right ahead, we're not stopping you. Maybe things will be more expensive since you cant boss the rest of us around any more and make us serve you, subsidizing your lifestyles through our poverty and exploitation, but if that's the price of freedom, so be it. We just wanna be allowed to live as we want too. And if that included doomscrolling tiktok for like 12 hours a day, so be it (not that I would use tiktok, but you get the idea).
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