The Boomer Guide to Gen Z Politics

When it comes to politics, there’s three types of young people I’ve encountered online or in person. The first type does not care about politics at all. In fact, they actively avoid it. If you’re reading this and waiting for me to say that’s fine, you’ll be waiting forever. The second type is the most common, the ones who can articulate their basic beliefs or identify their preferred party. They probably posted a black screen on their Instagram for Black Lives Matter and signed a petition. The last group is the political voice of GenZ. They are the Kpop stans and Tiktok activists who embarrassed fully grown political operatives and their not-so-fully-grown boss. Social media presence is an understatement. They dominate the Twittersphere with fancams, depression/anxiety jokes, and passionate takes on national politics.

I’ve complained about my peers quite a lot. I’ve been frustrated with the surface-level outrage, the one-sided “spreading awareness”, the inability to entertain complexity or different perspectives within a 240-character limit, and these frustrations haven’t subsided. But I can’t deny the massive impact that third group has. No one can. I’ve yet to decide if this is scary or exciting to me. It’s clear the left has an upper hand in the social media game; most of the third group I so fear and revere are staunch liberals. Good for them, but bad for the Republican Party, buoyed by nothing but big business money and a quickly disappearing moral foundation in America. If I had to pick the modern GOP’s greatest failure, it’d be a tough fight between lack of control over the Trump administration and lack of a strong social media presence palatable for young people.

The first group has existed in every generation. I’m not ambivalent towards their ambivalence, but it’s really to be expected. Unless we make voting mandatory, they won’t be deciding many elections. I can’t say the same of the second group, easily swayed by what their more outspoken friends are advocating on Tiktok, by the third group. The third group is the third rail of modern politics, and as my hero Toby Ziegler once said, the third rail is where all the power is. Don’t mess with the third rail; you’ll be electrocuted.

The kids don’t call it that, though. They call it “cancelled”. Conservative is a bad word these days, and if anyone discovers your dark little secret, you’ll automatically be labelled racist, sexist, homophobic. Arguing might not be the best idea. Chances are, someone will try to find old Tweets or screenshots of questionable jokes with the caption “this you?”. It’s the new trend to report these screenshots to college admissions offices and potential employers. Celebrities such as Skai Jackson have encouraged and participated in these mass exposés of people who disagree online.

I have no problem with active racists being reported to institutions that may not want their names associated with that type of person. I’m glad to let the free market decide for or against continuous disgusting behavior. On the other hand, it’s not at all productive to dig up things said years ago and use an online mob to try to ruin someone’s life. It’s crazy how brave people are behind their phones, how quick they are to make judgements on the lives of strangers worlds away. I think it takes a certain amount of arrogance to assume anyone with a dissenting opinion is immediately a bad person and search for evidence to destroy their lives without knowing them personally.

If I’m being honest, I don’t think social media should play into employment at all. Our society has evolved into a place where racists are rightfully called out for their behavior towards specific groups of people, and in those cases, they should be fired. I think if an employee does their job well and respects all customers or co-workers, employers have no business investigating further into their private lives or ideologies. Sure, racists should be punished. I trust the natures of racists, sexists, and homophobes to eventually reveal themselves as so, and the free market of society will handle them. Otherwise, it’s a slippery slope when regulating what people can or cannot think. And honestly, I doubt the vast majority of people who shop at big chain stores for their basic necessities would stop because one of its employees made a racist joke online. Consumers are smart enough to recognize whether there are a few misguided employees or if there is a larger problem.

Social media makes it so easy to find an appealing perspective, become surrounded by users with the same perspective, and attack anyone who challenges it without consequence. It’s instant: a quick reply, a couple likes to others replying to the antagonist, and the ultimate block effectively ending any discussion. Like, sarcastic reply, maybe quote-tweet to show your own followers how dumb this person is and encourage them to attack, and finally, block. Rinse and repeat until we live in an echo chamber of the same ideas over and over. It’s not over, though. Even within these enclaves, there will be conflict. People crave drama, especially without the risk of in-person confrontation. Users always find something to have a problem with, and slowly, slowly, the language allowed online will be restricted to a specific agenda with specific vocabulary.

Democrats used to campaign on the issue of censorship, but it doesn’t surprise me that they’ve changed sides and rebranded it as a necessary pillar of a new tolerant society. Political correctness is the new black. If you’d like to be accommodating online, that’s your prerogative, but I think it’s unfair to expect it from everyone you interact with. It’s unrealistic and unfair to cancel anyone who doesn’t live up to your specific standards of speech. I personally think some of them are a little excessive — I’ve been attacked for being anti-feminist because I typed “folks” instead of “folx” and used the term “guys” to address a general population. But even if users were undeniably racist, their posts should stay up, barring criminal activity, if on nothing but principle alone. Extremists and crazies and plain bad people are constants in any society. They’re also an unavoidable symptom of democracy.

What disgusts me about some political correctness is its one-sided hypocrisy. The movement seems to only protect a certain subset of the Internet, and the more categories you can check on the minority list, the more regulations the movement places on your applicable vocabulary. That would be annoying, but ultimately not a big deal if the same level of voracious defense existed for every single person on the Internet. However, hashtags like “kill all men” and jokes about the stupidity of white people as a group are extremely popular on the Gen Z side of Twitter. I’ve seen disgusting tweets saying “I’m pregnant! Time to find out if I’m having a girl or an abortion!” with an alarming amount of unrelated emojis and likes. Imagine if the race and gender roles had been reversed. There’d undoubtedly have been an uproar.

There are some parallels to draw here between my attitude and the All Lives Matter movement, but it really isn’t the same. The reason Black Lives “trumped” All Lives was because Black Lives specifically were in danger. (There’s some data I’ve read that stated otherwise. Please refer to “Am I Racist?”) However, most in the movement acknowledged destroying property and committing violence upon the other races was not the right way to solve the issue. That isn’t so in the world of social media. A lot of people believe reverse racism or reverse sexism or reverse homophobia don’t exist, but trying to bring whole groups down for an attitude some members may have sounds like prejudice to me. No matter what you think on the subject, there’s no denying it absolutely won’t help race relations. Neither will cancel culture. What’s been accomplished when someone is cancelled? They simply become more antagonistic, angry at his or her attackers and more likely to lash out. They’ll likely be turned off to any discussion or movement. Instead of having genuine discussion and growth, we’ve further polarized two groups and thwarted in opportunity for progress.

Capitalist Michelle knows apps like Twitter, Instagram, and Tiktok are owned by private companies who can do basically whatever they want with their platforms. Twitter has admitted to censoring conservative opinions, but I can’t always blame the Gen Zers or the company itself for its perception of conservatives. Our own President had his Tweets censored for their impulsive and violent nature. Our own President dominates my timeline with targeted attacks on political enemies, blatant advertisement, and temper tantrums. Can I blame anyone for associating a Republican President, the de facto leader of the party, with conservatives? Maybe the GOP has tried to build up a common-sense, appealing social media platform to expand into a young base like the left has, but it obviously hasn’t worked. The Republicans are well-aware that the President’s approval among the youth has always been low, and the sentiment is spreading. If we don’t have a severe strategy shift, the Republican party will be censored into oblivion.

- MW