![Old farts of Hexbear, is there something about younger people that you don't get? [no punching down!]](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/b045b71d-71dd-41db-a6c7-79676adbf90b.jpeg){kind=link}
OK this is my list. But first, I need to say that this isn’t a condemnation of those into such thing. They just don’t vibe with me.
- Cannot get into ASMR. I’ve tried. Often its women 20 years younger than me, rubbing their fingernails on hairbrushes. The intentional sounds they make with their lips and fingers are things that would make me want to change seats on a bus.
- Instagram. I was maybe the last person to get a smart phone. It was probably 2016. I’m just fully lazy to take photos of stuff. This is a real issue when I’m single and I need to start putting photos on dating sites, as all pics of me in my phone are me squeezing carrots in my nostrils and similarly goofy things.
- My students’ taste in anime. I try to be all cool and show off my cool taste in anime, maybe drop a Azumanga Daioh clip. It’s all ancient history for 17 year olds.
- Photo and videos done in portrait mode. I guess I don’t watch videos on the go. See #2
Things that the kids these days do better:
- Usually better opinions on current events than people my age
- I wish that cosplay existed when I was a teen. The default when I was younger was drugs.
If anyone insults the kids, I will visit you at your home and do an 
This isn’t new per se, but much more mainstream now: fandom
I love art and there’s tons that I’m passionate about but like, the whole “obsessing over a character and writing fanfic and getting into fights over ships, etc.” and stuff is a completely alien mindset to me. Don’t get it
It skipped our generations due to IP laws but that was how most the legends of old came to be I am pretty sure. " no, our hero was raised by wolves and built this city himself"
Imagine Aristotle or Plato making up stories about themselves debating other philosophers. Or imagine Greeks and Romans making up random stories that involved their gods and goddesses and then becoming popular to the point of being canon. Or imagine Christians holding councils to determine which biblical story is “real”
I’m not real sympathetic to the whole “Dante and Virgil were just writing fanfic” type arguments. There’s certainly a human tendency to reinterpret, but the material conditions that form the basis for the possibility of modern fandom are quite recent and projecting it backwards is something that I think is ahistorical
The earliest you can push this back as a phenomenon is probably something like the original Sherlock Holmes fandom
I’d assume the argument would be that Aristotle and Plato were trying to illustrate some philosophical argument, myths and religion were on some level about understanding the world around you and why it came to be the way it is. Fandom doesn’t really have that same importance. Maybe if you are moved by a character or story and want to use the characters and/or setting to illustrate some deeper point about the human experience, but that doesn’t really encapsulate the whole of modern fandom. Cosplaying at an anime convention does not make you Aristotle.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with fandom or cosplaying, but I assume this is what the main difference would be.
I mean people dressed up like their ancestors or heroes for ceremonies and celebrations. Not much different from cosplayers doing it to celebrate the characters they like
A cosplayer is not celebrating their favorite characters in the same way someone in the distant past would be honoring their heroes, ancestors, gods or the dead. It’s a completely different relationship.
Works that get fandoms are by definition things that resonate with people. It’s no surprise that they’d find the characters/setting compelling enough to inspire their own writing.
Fights and drama seem pointless. But if people want to create new media on a subject and share it, I guess it’s fine. Oh ya, tho, some teens really get into reading fan fiction.
I can’t blame Zoomers for that. That’s 100% post Harry Pottery turbo-marketing, where every IP has products in every conceivable category - kids toys, adult toys, books, comics, TV, cartoons, movies, games, everything. Harry Potter set off a marketing paradigm of utterly saturating people’s lives with shit in every category imaginable and it’s become the norm for many things. Like, back in the day? We had new star wars novels a few times a year, a comic, some games. There was lots of stuff, but it came at a steady trickle. It was nothing compared to the absolute tidal wave of “content” that’s happening right now.