This is another example of the weird and harmful prudishness of the younger millennials and Gen Z. They believe that you shouldn’t do anything at all around a kid that the child cannot also partake of. Which is — and let me stress this as much as I can — FUCKING INSANE.
According to them, you should not consume alcohol around a child, should not have sex in a house that any child is in, should not wear anything at all even slightly revealing around a child of any age (and that definition of “revealing” gets stricter all the time), and should certainly not prepare them in any way for the adult world. I can’t believe people are so catastrophically, damagingly stupid about things like this.
What the fuck happened to younger millennials and Gen Z?
I don’t know either.
Is this prudishness is directly related to this overall context collapse? It’s an interesting juxtaposition knowing all these millennials who obviously had to separate contexts in order to cite children’s innocence with a straight face while explaining their vote.
There’s just this weird mixture of prurient prudishness that gained ascendancy running through the zeitgeist.
A lot of it is just pretext for controlling adults, but it’s darkly funny to hear this concern about the child innocence from internet shitlords dominating the evening news at dinner time.
I’m having real trouble making sense of this bizarre brand of prudishness, Shakti. Maybe part of it is context collapse. Maybe it’s also a way for those who have experienced economic precarity to take back what they see (subconsciously) as some measure of control? Combine that with helicopter parenting and ubiquitous surveillance and we have created a culture of self-surveillance that precludes doing anything fun or joyous.
It’s odd that Gen Z and younger millennials are simultaneously not allowing children to be kids and not allowing adults to be adults, via the same awkward strictures ineptly applied to both parties.
Ubiquitous surveillance correlating with the rise of smartphones seems to be unique to this historical moment.
Part of it is algorithmically mediated through social media (cutesy euphemisms, concerned messages with hotline numbers if you type in certain words). I just find it funny all this violent, sexual, non PG stuff is put in front of people in the guise of “what about the children.” Why is it that I’m more likely to know about the drag queen shows in shows from people angry about it via local news than actual drag queens? Or wink wink, you’re drinking wine in front of children?
I wouldn’t underestimate the effect of abstinence only education either on people’s psyches. That I’m sure has happened before.
I’ve also noticed this pervasive idea you can only be one self at all times and that being different versions of yourself over time or different things to different people is a falsity.
That feeds into this idea of a unified persona branding yourself. And that I think leads to trying to present yourself as the least common denominator G rated family friendly politically median person possible like a blockbuster popcorn movie that needs distribution in Saudi Arabia AND Iceland. I’m not of this era and I have a different personality, so all of that makes me want to vomit like a starfish.
Tangentially, but the best actors I’ve seen recently, the ones who just are chameleons and disappear into different types of roles, have little to no social media presence. They are also mostly not Americans or they’re boomers.