I became a church goer this year (Anglican Catholic Church) and one thing that immediately struck me is that everyone talks like an adult, even the young twenty-somethings. Not only that, but these young twenty-somethings are the only people I know with children. In other words, actual adults, rejecting the perpetual childhood of the illiberal left culture.
Absolutely brilliant piece. However, I was born saying ya'll unironically and will always say it. I'm not hip. I'm old and very GenX. But, I was born and live in Mississippi. It's our love language. 😊 I will definitely be subscribing.
Yas kween! Dudley is a legend, glad you featured him. Dissident elder millennials are leading the charge into the new era - JD, Vivek, Dasha/Anna, Rufo, and many beloved X/Substack anons.
Great essay! It reminded me so strongly of P.J. O'Rourke that I looked up some of his quips about his fellow Baby Boomers. What defines a boomer, he says, is the lingo: "The tip-off is the blather, the jabber, the prattle, the natter, the gab, gas, yak, baloney, bunkum, the jaw-slinging, tongue-wagging gum-beating chin music that is the baby boomer's gift to the world." Far from being rebellious, it seems that Millenials are following in their parents' footsteps.
I agree with PJ--the Boomer contribution to the currency of popular speech is overwhelmingly vaporous. But the cattiness and meanness found in so many online and media conversations nowadays was never part of that game.
Boomer youth was a Mellow cohort. Granted, we had an unfortunate tendency to tip over into the inert realm of the couch potato, and low-rent sybaritism. Many of us were a little too accustomed to a smooth ride for our own good, nurturing a taste for indulgence that did not improve in the decades that followed. But by and large we were a tolerant bunch, in a lot of ways. (Also a lot more multiculturally conversant than succeeding generations are inclined to give us credit for, having been fed a false narrative in that regard at so many levels.) Judging was there. Intramural status competition was present. But it wasn't valorized to anything like the extent that it is nowadays. (And being perpetually po'faced was not something to show off or bond over, either.)
You still calling people names, DC? Or is slandering someone as a Racist with a capital R not catty and mean? Because you are "multiculturally conversant," whatever that means, and the bigot-haters need to be kept in line!
I really don't know to what or whom you are referring. If you care to be more specific, I'm all ears, as Ross Perot used to say.
But before this dialogue proceeds any further, I should say that just because some online people are inclined to drop accusations of racism--with a capital R--over a single inadvertent rhetorical gaffe, or draw unwarranted inferences from a specious pretext, that doesn't mean that there's no such thing as racism, or people who indulge racist attitudes or assumptions, in ways that run the gamut from what might be referred to as citations--ticket infractions--to capital crimes. And people who state opinions as sweeping generalizations about one population or another do open themselves to accusations of their personal racism. Racism is real, and nothing to swagger about. It's inherently divisive, no matter which population it's directed at.
Ross Perot also once said "We are all in this together. We ought to love one another because united teams win and divided teams lose. And if we can’t love one another, we ought to get along with one another. And if you can’t get there, just recognize we’re all stuck with one another because nobody’s going anywhere, right?"
A splendid insight. The beginning of wisdom. We're humans. Whether considered in terms of ethnicity or as individuals, none of us come by our goodness as natural entitlement, as some special level of inherited enlightenment. Can we at least stop being so bad to each other?
As for the phrase "multiculturally conversant", that's a generality that can refer to all sorts of exchanges. It's a positive quality--a skill, or skill set. For example, being fluently bilingual is a form of being multiculturally conversant..
“ And people who state opinions as sweeping generalizations about one population or another do open themselves to accusations of their personal racism. Racism is real, and nothing to swagger about.”
So, raving liberals, such as yourself, pay twice as much for the same house in your namesake, Upper Caucasia, Washington, DC, NW quadrant, compared to vibrant SE DC, and would be racist, according to your definition.
Concerning your term, multi culturally conversant, I assume that means watching Oprah.
I am not following that particular interpretation of my remarks. Can you add some explanatory detail? An outline of the chain of reasoning that underpins the content of that post, say.
For that matter, I still have no idea what prompted the first comment you directed at me. It doesn't seem to have any connection with the page post. Are you confused about the topic at hand? Did you land in this comment section by mistake?
I’m trying to comprehend your definition of racism, and now, “culturally conversant.” If I understand you, racism is really bad. Some people are less bad than others, such as yourself. And I pointed out how raving, slandering liberals, like yourself seem to, paradoxically, act very racist in real life. And I’m saying this as someone very familiar with Washington, DC.
So, tell me, DC, what is racism? Don’t run away this time. Please tell us without the vague, slanderous innuendo.
Was almost like tl,dr but finally slogged it. Really my dude you had to spend wayyy too much time online to even write this. Do you like maybe have a useless laptop job? Emoji
Fine work. As a reader rather than social media scroller, some of it was opaque to me, but your identification of the Cool Kids Table as possibly our republic’s gravest illness is probably right. And I much appreciate the tacit recognition that underlies the piece. Language use is fundamental for diagnosis: a sign of either health or decrepitude.
Thus their idiom is a tell. Against them. Utopia not arriving, snark is destiny.
Wow!! Thanks for this essay. Your words express exactly what I think and believe. This essay is spot on and only if my liberal loved ones would take the time to read and reflect on it. Perhaps, if they ask what I want for Christmas I can tell them to read this. This essay really resonated with me and I’m grateful and more hopeful about tomorrow.
Side note: I bet a cup of coffee that Rod Dreher will love this piece and even share it on his Substack. Any takers?
It is infrequent, but memorable, when something I read stirs deep emotions saying "THIS IS THE WORD!". This is a well-written piece backed by a well-cast net of analysis combined with deep critical thinking insights sprinkled with just the right amount of humorous but well deserved cynicism and sarcasm.
Everything resonates perfectly with my observations after my self-awarded PHD developing my own thesis for WHAT IN THE HELL IS WRONG WITH OUR ELITES AND EVERYONE THAT THINKS THEY ARE, AND OFTER MISTAKENLY, A MEMBER OF THE ELITES?
Maybe the only bit missing here is my view of maybe the largest piece of the root-cause puzzle. I think decades of Wall Street powered corruption of capitalism to be a religion of profit and stock value over every other consideration (note... that is NOT capitalism)... where we exported most of our working class opportunity while also exploded immigration to import other country's poverty for the same reasons (cheap labor reduces expenses and thus maximizes profit and thus increases share value). And then we lied to the kids telling them that they needed that expensive high leaning degree to make it in this NEW DYNAMIC TECH ECONOMY (fake laptop jobs galore)... What we did is to create a pile up of high status, good-economic-life-expecting, people at the top of the societal Rube Goldberg machine without enough career paths for their little marble heads to roll down. Then here comes tech... social media... and these educated and otherwise bright nerds figured out that they could exploit the tech to break the machine and make up new virtual paths to gain their status and good economic life.
The problem is that there is still not enough paths to a good economic life for the over-educated. And they are growing old and more anxious and agitated and believing that they need to burn the entire system down to the ground as a last-ditch effort to make something that might be better.
One the one hand I want to burn THEM down. On the other hand I have empathy for what has been done to them. What pisses me off is that THEY seem to consistently to politically support the very Regime that has screwed them and keeps screwing them. I keep thinking they will wake up and get real... but they seem to be sleepwalking to their own increased misery.
This is just plain it. You covered it. It's a relief to find that someone else sees it.
It plays out weirdly in my case, because I've been known to get a bit informal with my own replies. But notwithstanding the fact that my typical tone is that of the law professor character played by John Houseman in The Paper Chase--or at least that's how my own comments often read back to me in review--I'll drop some slang now and then. But "y'all" and "mutha" and all the rest of it is material that's been part of my personal lexicon for >50 years. Before there was Brat, there was Army Brat, and that's me. I did high school in PG--that place out east of DC--and wouldn't know how to change my accent if I wanted to, which I don't. I'm not going to dial back my lingual tropisms over dread of being confused with some parvenu who came up posting on RawStory a dozen years ago. (Although that isn't likely anyway, because while 70s DMV-speak was always plenty off-white, the Yass Queen's Lexicon was not part of it, the way social mediaspeak is nowadaze. I could adopt it, I suppose, but Cinderella here simply can't get those platform slippers to fit. And I'd have to grow out my nails to claws, which gets in the way of properly fretting.)
I admit to recently adding some occasional 2tst century style touches, like dropping my periods at the end of short statements. Just to confuse the newbies, who for some reason require that absence to signal the requisite idc breeziness
It's Square Hip, really. As with the increasingly recondite resort to freshly coined acronyms that no doubt keeps the jenzies referring to their Urban Dictionary app, or whatev. I. can. play. along. It used to be you had to, like, dance or surf or play guitar or juggle a butterfly knife in order to partake of that exalted quintessence known as Cool. Now it seems one merely has to command the art of the Text Slam. A "talent" that can be picked up in a few hours.
But that isn't the part that rankles me. If bent-knee pushups are the new leet* skill, no importe nada. My real problem with Snide Youthiness is that it's all about Evasion. It's an engagement fail (as the New Syntax would have it.) The one-clause (choose between omitting subject or predicate) snark isn't meant to open up a discussion; the clear intent is to shut it down. Proudly, with a flourish. It's a wink to the rest of the lemming pack: This One shows signs of being upsetting; help to push them off the table. Keep the Purity of the Epistemic Bubble intact.
*1980s Silicon Valley. For "elite", as might be expected.
I find this encouraging… https://www.dw.com/en/why-are-young-german-voters-abandoning-the-greens/a-69354030 …this political direction in Germany is the tip of an iceberg of awakening in the little darlings that they have been hypnotized to politically support the Wall Street globalist corporatist Regime that screwed them over… that fucked up the global economy in 2008 and again in 2019… while exploiting it to both bail themselves out and execute a more massive wealth transfer from us to them. The German Green Party is or was the equivalent of our radical left that aligns with the globalist agenda… the globalist agenda is one that seeks to eliminate the western middle class.. or at least make one that is economically dependent on Bill Gate’s synthetic meat. But those German people tend to still clutch some of their cultural tendencies for pragmatism and real math while our American kids won’t put down their TikTok. Still, I remain hopeful.
Terrific analysis. You have gathered many/all of the threads of how ppl converse on social media as well as those who do it as a living and presented it to us as a delicious banquet on which to feast. Insightful, witty & spot on - from one who is not a millennial.
> had nothing to lose, and were thus free to critique power with weaponry it wasn’t yet equipped to handle.
and a terribly effective weapon it has been. not only attacked but also inverted many default social defensive mechanisms.
However while they've been nuking enemies and taking scalps, looks like been radiating their own team with the fallout[1]. Original actors were somewhat immune or had nothing to lose, but next generations lacked defenses. It's not looking pretty across several metrics.
You've got to be careful using thinkgs like nukes or chemical agents - check which way the wind's blowing. The snark broadcast button was given to people who don't care, downplay, or regularly justify radiating their own cities as long as they land a good jab on an enemy(or inter-party rival).
that demon is unlikely to be going back in it's box despite the many crocodile tears, and shooting of messengers(tech, screen time) but doubt going work out long term in their favor or be particularly reformable from their status position.
Cross-comment from NRP: Really enjoyed this. It reminded me of another article from some years ago - https://www.city-journal.org/article/escaping-only-so-far - and tags the same powerful theme, a breakdown in people’s relations with the idea of healthy authority, as both a subject and a potential wielder. See also Teen Spirit by Paul Howe. Moar please.
I became a church goer this year (Anglican Catholic Church) and one thing that immediately struck me is that everyone talks like an adult, even the young twenty-somethings. Not only that, but these young twenty-somethings are the only people I know with children. In other words, actual adults, rejecting the perpetual childhood of the illiberal left culture.
I too have noticed this contrast at church.
Hallelujah. Good to hear. Everything old is new again.
Absolutely brilliant piece. However, I was born saying ya'll unironically and will always say it. I'm not hip. I'm old and very GenX. But, I was born and live in Mississippi. It's our love language. 😊 I will definitely be subscribing.
You get a pass
Her y’all is authentic.
Yas kween! Dudley is a legend, glad you featured him. Dissident elder millennials are leading the charge into the new era - JD, Vivek, Dasha/Anna, Rufo, and many beloved X/Substack anons.
If you’re looking for something a bit more spicy R-rated, here is a sex diary written from the perspective of a millennial snot PMC NPC: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-write-a-sex-diary
Great essay! It reminded me so strongly of P.J. O'Rourke that I looked up some of his quips about his fellow Baby Boomers. What defines a boomer, he says, is the lingo: "The tip-off is the blather, the jabber, the prattle, the natter, the gab, gas, yak, baloney, bunkum, the jaw-slinging, tongue-wagging gum-beating chin music that is the baby boomer's gift to the world." Far from being rebellious, it seems that Millenials are following in their parents' footsteps.
No, no.
I agree with PJ--the Boomer contribution to the currency of popular speech is overwhelmingly vaporous. But the cattiness and meanness found in so many online and media conversations nowadays was never part of that game.
Boomer youth was a Mellow cohort. Granted, we had an unfortunate tendency to tip over into the inert realm of the couch potato, and low-rent sybaritism. Many of us were a little too accustomed to a smooth ride for our own good, nurturing a taste for indulgence that did not improve in the decades that followed. But by and large we were a tolerant bunch, in a lot of ways. (Also a lot more multiculturally conversant than succeeding generations are inclined to give us credit for, having been fed a false narrative in that regard at so many levels.) Judging was there. Intramural status competition was present. But it wasn't valorized to anything like the extent that it is nowadays. (And being perpetually po'faced was not something to show off or bond over, either.)
You still calling people names, DC? Or is slandering someone as a Racist with a capital R not catty and mean? Because you are "multiculturally conversant," whatever that means, and the bigot-haters need to be kept in line!
I really don't know to what or whom you are referring. If you care to be more specific, I'm all ears, as Ross Perot used to say.
But before this dialogue proceeds any further, I should say that just because some online people are inclined to drop accusations of racism--with a capital R--over a single inadvertent rhetorical gaffe, or draw unwarranted inferences from a specious pretext, that doesn't mean that there's no such thing as racism, or people who indulge racist attitudes or assumptions, in ways that run the gamut from what might be referred to as citations--ticket infractions--to capital crimes. And people who state opinions as sweeping generalizations about one population or another do open themselves to accusations of their personal racism. Racism is real, and nothing to swagger about. It's inherently divisive, no matter which population it's directed at.
Ross Perot also once said "We are all in this together. We ought to love one another because united teams win and divided teams lose. And if we can’t love one another, we ought to get along with one another. And if you can’t get there, just recognize we’re all stuck with one another because nobody’s going anywhere, right?"
A splendid insight. The beginning of wisdom. We're humans. Whether considered in terms of ethnicity or as individuals, none of us come by our goodness as natural entitlement, as some special level of inherited enlightenment. Can we at least stop being so bad to each other?
As for the phrase "multiculturally conversant", that's a generality that can refer to all sorts of exchanges. It's a positive quality--a skill, or skill set. For example, being fluently bilingual is a form of being multiculturally conversant..
“ And people who state opinions as sweeping generalizations about one population or another do open themselves to accusations of their personal racism. Racism is real, and nothing to swagger about.”
So, raving liberals, such as yourself, pay twice as much for the same house in your namesake, Upper Caucasia, Washington, DC, NW quadrant, compared to vibrant SE DC, and would be racist, according to your definition.
Concerning your term, multi culturally conversant, I assume that means watching Oprah.
I am not following that particular interpretation of my remarks. Can you add some explanatory detail? An outline of the chain of reasoning that underpins the content of that post, say.
For that matter, I still have no idea what prompted the first comment you directed at me. It doesn't seem to have any connection with the page post. Are you confused about the topic at hand? Did you land in this comment section by mistake?
I’m trying to comprehend your definition of racism, and now, “culturally conversant.” If I understand you, racism is really bad. Some people are less bad than others, such as yourself. And I pointed out how raving, slandering liberals, like yourself seem to, paradoxically, act very racist in real life. And I’m saying this as someone very familiar with Washington, DC.
So, tell me, DC, what is racism? Don’t run away this time. Please tell us without the vague, slanderous innuendo.
love it
Was almost like tl,dr but finally slogged it. Really my dude you had to spend wayyy too much time online to even write this. Do you like maybe have a useless laptop job? Emoji
Fine work. As a reader rather than social media scroller, some of it was opaque to me, but your identification of the Cool Kids Table as possibly our republic’s gravest illness is probably right. And I much appreciate the tacit recognition that underlies the piece. Language use is fundamental for diagnosis: a sign of either health or decrepitude.
Thus their idiom is a tell. Against them. Utopia not arriving, snark is destiny.
guilty as charged :-/
Wow!! Thanks for this essay. Your words express exactly what I think and believe. This essay is spot on and only if my liberal loved ones would take the time to read and reflect on it. Perhaps, if they ask what I want for Christmas I can tell them to read this. This essay really resonated with me and I’m grateful and more hopeful about tomorrow.
Side note: I bet a cup of coffee that Rod Dreher will love this piece and even share it on his Substack. Any takers?
It is infrequent, but memorable, when something I read stirs deep emotions saying "THIS IS THE WORD!". This is a well-written piece backed by a well-cast net of analysis combined with deep critical thinking insights sprinkled with just the right amount of humorous but well deserved cynicism and sarcasm.
Everything resonates perfectly with my observations after my self-awarded PHD developing my own thesis for WHAT IN THE HELL IS WRONG WITH OUR ELITES AND EVERYONE THAT THINKS THEY ARE, AND OFTER MISTAKENLY, A MEMBER OF THE ELITES?
Maybe the only bit missing here is my view of maybe the largest piece of the root-cause puzzle. I think decades of Wall Street powered corruption of capitalism to be a religion of profit and stock value over every other consideration (note... that is NOT capitalism)... where we exported most of our working class opportunity while also exploded immigration to import other country's poverty for the same reasons (cheap labor reduces expenses and thus maximizes profit and thus increases share value). And then we lied to the kids telling them that they needed that expensive high leaning degree to make it in this NEW DYNAMIC TECH ECONOMY (fake laptop jobs galore)... What we did is to create a pile up of high status, good-economic-life-expecting, people at the top of the societal Rube Goldberg machine without enough career paths for their little marble heads to roll down. Then here comes tech... social media... and these educated and otherwise bright nerds figured out that they could exploit the tech to break the machine and make up new virtual paths to gain their status and good economic life.
The problem is that there is still not enough paths to a good economic life for the over-educated. And they are growing old and more anxious and agitated and believing that they need to burn the entire system down to the ground as a last-ditch effort to make something that might be better.
One the one hand I want to burn THEM down. On the other hand I have empathy for what has been done to them. What pisses me off is that THEY seem to consistently to politically support the very Regime that has screwed them and keeps screwing them. I keep thinking they will wake up and get real... but they seem to be sleepwalking to their own increased misery.
Well said. Plenty of room for follow-on essays.
This is just plain it. You covered it. It's a relief to find that someone else sees it.
It plays out weirdly in my case, because I've been known to get a bit informal with my own replies. But notwithstanding the fact that my typical tone is that of the law professor character played by John Houseman in The Paper Chase--or at least that's how my own comments often read back to me in review--I'll drop some slang now and then. But "y'all" and "mutha" and all the rest of it is material that's been part of my personal lexicon for >50 years. Before there was Brat, there was Army Brat, and that's me. I did high school in PG--that place out east of DC--and wouldn't know how to change my accent if I wanted to, which I don't. I'm not going to dial back my lingual tropisms over dread of being confused with some parvenu who came up posting on RawStory a dozen years ago. (Although that isn't likely anyway, because while 70s DMV-speak was always plenty off-white, the Yass Queen's Lexicon was not part of it, the way social mediaspeak is nowadaze. I could adopt it, I suppose, but Cinderella here simply can't get those platform slippers to fit. And I'd have to grow out my nails to claws, which gets in the way of properly fretting.)
I admit to recently adding some occasional 2tst century style touches, like dropping my periods at the end of short statements. Just to confuse the newbies, who for some reason require that absence to signal the requisite idc breeziness
It's Square Hip, really. As with the increasingly recondite resort to freshly coined acronyms that no doubt keeps the jenzies referring to their Urban Dictionary app, or whatev. I. can. play. along. It used to be you had to, like, dance or surf or play guitar or juggle a butterfly knife in order to partake of that exalted quintessence known as Cool. Now it seems one merely has to command the art of the Text Slam. A "talent" that can be picked up in a few hours.
But that isn't the part that rankles me. If bent-knee pushups are the new leet* skill, no importe nada. My real problem with Snide Youthiness is that it's all about Evasion. It's an engagement fail (as the New Syntax would have it.) The one-clause (choose between omitting subject or predicate) snark isn't meant to open up a discussion; the clear intent is to shut it down. Proudly, with a flourish. It's a wink to the rest of the lemming pack: This One shows signs of being upsetting; help to push them off the table. Keep the Purity of the Epistemic Bubble intact.
*1980s Silicon Valley. For "elite", as might be expected.
Honestly, John Stewart Liberalism feels like it would have worked as an alt title, captures it excellently. Great piece you filthy poaster.
I find this encouraging… https://www.dw.com/en/why-are-young-german-voters-abandoning-the-greens/a-69354030 …this political direction in Germany is the tip of an iceberg of awakening in the little darlings that they have been hypnotized to politically support the Wall Street globalist corporatist Regime that screwed them over… that fucked up the global economy in 2008 and again in 2019… while exploiting it to both bail themselves out and execute a more massive wealth transfer from us to them. The German Green Party is or was the equivalent of our radical left that aligns with the globalist agenda… the globalist agenda is one that seeks to eliminate the western middle class.. or at least make one that is economically dependent on Bill Gate’s synthetic meat. But those German people tend to still clutch some of their cultural tendencies for pragmatism and real math while our American kids won’t put down their TikTok. Still, I remain hopeful.
Terrific analysis. You have gathered many/all of the threads of how ppl converse on social media as well as those who do it as a living and presented it to us as a delicious banquet on which to feast. Insightful, witty & spot on - from one who is not a millennial.
> had nothing to lose, and were thus free to critique power with weaponry it wasn’t yet equipped to handle.
and a terribly effective weapon it has been. not only attacked but also inverted many default social defensive mechanisms.
However while they've been nuking enemies and taking scalps, looks like been radiating their own team with the fallout[1]. Original actors were somewhat immune or had nothing to lose, but next generations lacked defenses. It's not looking pretty across several metrics.
You've got to be careful using thinkgs like nukes or chemical agents - check which way the wind's blowing. The snark broadcast button was given to people who don't care, downplay, or regularly justify radiating their own cities as long as they land a good jab on an enemy(or inter-party rival).
that demon is unlikely to be going back in it's box despite the many crocodile tears, and shooting of messengers(tech, screen time) but doubt going work out long term in their favor or be particularly reformable from their status position.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8713953/
Cross-comment from NRP: Really enjoyed this. It reminded me of another article from some years ago - https://www.city-journal.org/article/escaping-only-so-far - and tags the same powerful theme, a breakdown in people’s relations with the idea of healthy authority, as both a subject and a potential wielder. See also Teen Spirit by Paul Howe. Moar please.
Good insightful article. But it’s like, y’know, way too long
hysterical piece, and very educational ! now I doubt myself when I put in an '!'