TikTok

I haven't posted on this subreddit in months, the last post I made was "The Foundations of Natural Game." I have since deleted it because I intend to make it into a youtube video. I feel like that format gets my points across a lot better than over text. I think that from now on my relevant uploads will start with a reddit post detailing my thoughts.

I rarely post because I feel that I waste all of your time by posting random tips and tricks when there are more important things to talk about. And I've had a lot on my mind recently because I installed an app called TikTok.

In short, TikTok is an app that is primarily based on high school kids lip-syncing to popular media. Because it doesn't require any talent like similar apps before it like vine and musically, it is an entirely visual means of entertainment. One theme keeps recurring however: All of the most popular users are conventionally attractive.

E-Boys

These popular users are young men who garner millions of followers, then have fan meetups where young girls line up to gain their validation. These events are not free of course, E-Boys, as they are named, make a lot of money off of their overnight stardom.

Keep in mind, high-school children fawning over celebrity love interests is nothing new. This has been a trend since "celebrity" has been a feature of consumer culture, but this is a slightly different beast and has different implications for young men today.

'96 Babies

I was born In December '96 and counting for a bit of error, I can tell when someone is born in 1996 because we typically act the same. The interesting thing about this year is that people born in it don't exactly fit into the millennial generation, or generation Z, the primary focus of this thread. Because of some weird circumstances that I have gotten myself into, I have a lot of friends and acquaintances from the ages of 18-30 or so.

I go through the effort of explaining all of this to say this: The reality that generation Z lives in is profoundly different than the reality that the millennial generation resides in. This does not mean that millennials did not experience the same self-esteem issues or validation seeking behavior in high-school that gen Z'ers do, it's a difference in scale.

Do you remember in your pre-RP days in high-school, when you would hear a passing comment by some girl about how cute the QB is, or how hot Leonardo Di-Caprio is? It may not have made you mad, but it may have irked you in some way; unsettled your self image. Remarks like these don't just evaporate into the air, young people do a simple calculus in their heads when they hear those comments.

"That girl likes the QB, I don't look like the QB. She likes Leo. I don't look like Leo."

Over time these comments pile up in your mind, and they don't quite leave. Humans have two ways of processing emotion: Understanding and Suppression. You either understand and accept your feelings, or you suppress them. Your mind will not allow you to simply let important information like comments about your appearance go, it can't allow itself to be divorced from other human's opinions of you.

So as a millennial or Gen X'er, life goes on. You hear these comments, they nip at your self esteem, but these are just occasional off-handed remarks, nothing too bad. Typical teenage anxiety.

The End

Gen Z'ers deal with this same teenage anxiety, but to a different degree. Here's how I will attempt to explain the difference, but keep in mind I cannot come up with words to accurately describe the situation.

Take the typical male-anxiousness/self esteem/self image issues that all young men and women experience. Then times that by about 700 trillion. That is about the difference that Gen Z'ers have to deal with on a daily basis in regards to their mental state as young people.

How did it get this bad? Well, let me go back to one half of my friends, the millennials. As millenials (and some Gen X'ers) We use social media and dating apps occasionally. Some more than others, but it is just another part of life to us. We understand that Instagram is just another person's highlights and through some turbulent use of Myspace and Facebook, we figured this out by at least the year 2014 or so.

gen Z has a tad worse predicament. These people are on social media (with amazing phones and high speed internet) by around age 8. They are on dating apps by 17 (lying about their age to match with fellow classmates). Older millenials didn't have any of this when they were in school, and younger millenials only got it for a bit, but then graduated high school. Z'ers have had this every day of their life from the moment they could learn to type and text.

So essentially what happens is a more exaggerated form of the celebrity infatuation that occurred when I was younger. Now you get on TikTok, follow a guy named @MaxDressler because you think he is funny, then girls in your class comment about how they like him because he is hot. So you think "Strange, I don't look like that." Then you go to instagram, and the same thing happens. Peers gush about how attractive some hip hop artist or model is, you have the same thought so you go to snapchat. But all of those paragons of peak human beauty also dominate the snapchat front page too. Twitter is the same story.

So you go to tinder to get at least a little validation. But you learn the first day that it's better just to swipe on everyone. Then you get 0 matches. So it must be true, you are actually an ugly human with no value to add to anything.

This cycle of mental-self harm is a daily process for young people now a days. Most of what I said above also applies to women as well, and as such suicide-rates and teen depression has risen dramatically, of course men are effected by these things at about triple the rate, but both genders have increased in suffering, this is largely due to social media.

Where Millennials differ from Z'ers, is that we see technology and social media as just one facet of life. Just a piece of the universe. Z'ers think that the online world is the actual reality we live in. Social climbing and social high school games have taken on a very different form now, they use each other to gain followers on social media and flaunt their popularity and money 24/7. The Shadows On The Wall Are All That Exists. Real life communication became replaced entirely by online non-communicative self harming.

?

I don't know what this section is to be called, because my thoughts at this point are thoroughly scrambled.

Young men and women seem to have their self image chipped away at a rate that is quite tremendous. The genders respond to this differently though. When women have lowered self image, they seek validation. As any of us should know, approaching a woman with low self esteem is very easy. She doesn't have any self-value, so she tries to gain it by giving you her number, her snapchat etc. when you ask for it. When women have low self esteem, things get bad, but at least the game continues, so to speak. Things continue progressing in spite of a few consequences.

When men have low self-esteem however, the game ends. We seek validation just like women do, with one catch. Women don't ask us for our number, or our snapchat, or approach us in general. So we learn quickly that we have to make the first move.

So when the hypothetical Gen Z'er approaches when in a validation-seeking state, the girl senses his desperation instantly, and even though she may want to give her number out, she doesn't want to give it to him because he isn't attractive. So this causes the guy to face rejection, this makes his self-image plummet, because meanwhile girls are still constantly gushing over the next E-boy or Instagram model. So the next time he approaches he will be in a worse position than the first approach. This cycle continues until he simply gives up.

He doesn't want to play anymore.

The game ends.

He takes his ball and goes home.

I don't know what else to say. I'm not content Jesus and I know when to stop when I've run out of ideas. I'll post again when I come up with something, but at that point I'll have some videos on the matter, and what we can do to bring the knowledge of self-improvement and social communication back to these kids.

These kids need to return to the basics. Approaching, dealing with rejection, leading, closing, lifting etc. The fundamentals will save this generation and those that internalize them will achieve happiness, regardless of the nonsense social game their peers are obsessed with playing. I'll post an update within the week.