The Counter Slop Revolution
Yesterday I wrote about AI and social disconnection, and touched on how technology has been progressively driving loneliness, anger, and alienation in our culture. There’s a lot more to say about all that, but today I want to touch on the other side of that: I believe, purely by observation though not with hard data, that a counter movement against constant stimulation and toward greater authenticity, depth, and substance is underway, below and away from the braying social media bullhorns and the firehoses of emotional manipulation aimed at us all by mega tech corporations. I’m not the only one seeing this; I claim no undue vision. Ted Gioia has been talking about this for a while, and yesterday his Substack subscription newsletter sent out a list of videos that included this one to the eight and below.
The video creator comments on the trend and notes that it is coming not from old scolds ranting at these kids today (okay that’s my way of describing it), but instead from the fatigued and overloaded younger generations looking for something different as they’ve become numbed out, overloaded, and emotionally exhausted by the empty calories of faux life experience served up to them by our digital overlords (that’s also my own way intemperate way of describing it).
As a psychologist and even just as a sentient human, none of this surprises me. Nothing in the modern age has repealed human nature or development. While technology has changed much of the way we experience and even define ourselves and others, many of those changes do not serve us well, as individuals, families, or as a species.
I don’t love the language and habit of bucketing age cohorts groups into labels, like boomer, millennial, Gen X, Gen Y, Zoomers, etc. These labels in my experience become excuses for fomenting the perception of differences and conflict (which drives engagement and keep marketing consultants fed). They hide more truth than they explain or uncover. What I will say is that people roughly my age as “Gen Xers” have seen a lot of technological transformations in our lifetimes relative to human history, and as societies and as a species, these rapid changes are only beginning to show their effects. It heartens me that younger people are beginning to see through a lot of the bullshit and may be silently, quietly recalibrating how they relate to themselves, to others, and to (and through) technology.
Go for it, kids. You’re more than welcome around here. This place is not about slop. It’s about substance, authenticity, and supporting others as we all find and define our versions of “the good life.”
¡Viva la Counter Slop Revolución!