MINNEAPOLIS, Min. — Brian Howard, 40, spent upwards of an hour fruitlessly explaining to his nephew that brain rot videos did not exist when he…
  • Cyrus Draegur@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    4 days ago

    Yeah you see? You didn’t WATCH ytmnd - you had to READ your brainrot and assemble it from the combination of picture-sound-text yourself. And I didn’t say video–i said PICTURE. some of the pictures were animated, but it was usually only a loop of a couple seconds in length at most! Damn it you whippersnappers, in my day we had to walk uphill both ways barefoot in the snow because snow actually still existed back then!

    I’m joking. Generational warfare sucks. I love zoomers and I hope we can get through to gen-alpha and show them a better way than fascism…

  • millie@beehaw.orgEnglish
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    4 days ago

    Okay, but the difference here is pretty stark. YTMND pages were made from people’s individual creativity with no monetary incentive. Nobody was profiting from them, they weren’t being shown via some mysterious algorithm that creators spent all their time trying to appease. They weren’t presented in a format that encouraged constant joyless consumption. They weren’t advertisements or corporate messaging or coopted by fascists. There were no YTMND trad wives or manosphere influencers.

    It was literally just people making silly, often irreverent pages to make people laugh. It wasn’t something with the end goal of addicting people to scrolling their way to oblivion for countless hours as the world fell apart around them, and it didn’t literally diminish their cognitive capabilities.

    I’m not saying everything on TikTok or other short-form video platforms is bad, but they’re fundamentally different platforms. It isn’t a generational thing. Amazingly, I was alive for YTMND and am also alive for short form videos. It’s not something any generation has an exclusive claim to.

    I too find myself at times scrolling through YouTube shorts finding little of value. I too notice that I’m staring at an AI voice telling an engagement-bait story that probably didn’t happen while watching unrelated satisfaction-bait arts and crafts videos with no purpose because that’s what people have figured out will keep us staring long enough to get through their video.

    I try to ask myself if I’m actually enjoying this and disengage the moment I realize I’m not, but I also close the damn thing just to realize I have it back open again a couple hours later.

    That’s the difference. That’s why it’s sinister. It’s why social media in general is sinister, even Lemmy. Because even after you close the window half the time you just open it right back up again. That’s the loop.

    I don’t remember that being the case back in the days of YTMND and Newgrounds and all those old sites. I’d look at some stuff and then move on and look at some other stuff. Not close the window and then go right back to looking. And nobody was fighting to keep my eyes locked into their shit as long as possible. If anything, there was a ton of weird countercultural stuff that didn’t care at all if I looked at it, or even actively worked to make itself unpalatable.

    Not as engagement bait, but as anti-art. As crazy surrealist or dadaist nonsense. As experiment and unfettered expression.

    These two things are not the same.

    • coronach@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
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      3 days ago

      Beautifully articulated. I don’t think much of the old humor holds up but I can at least give it respect for being borne out of a desire to create for creation’s sake. I can’t give the same to much (most?) of all modern stuff for the sinister reasons detailed here.

    • ZeroCool@lemmy.caOPEnglish
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      4 days ago

      Dude, it’s just satire. Best not to over think it, lest you become the butt of the joke.

      • Lumidaub@feddit.orgEnglish
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        3 days ago

        Nothing is “just satire”. The point of satire is to be taken seriously to some degree and to be thought about. It has failed its purpose if it doesn’t criticise something, even the tiniest aspect of something.

      • TimewornTraveler@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        3 days ago

        So satire doesn’t mean anything, humor is always empty, comedy has never been a tool of power, and all meaning must be free of fun?

        or can you just let someone post a thoughtful reply without putting them down?

        • onechrisn@social.vivaldi.net
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          3 days ago

          @TimewornTraveler
          Ope! Too late. You became the butt of the joke. People without self introspection always making themselves the butt of the joke.
          Doubly so, because all the web sites you named from back in the day were as heavily monetized as they could have been at the time.

          @ZeroCool

          • TimewornTraveler@lemm.eeEnglish
            0·
            3 days ago

            Not sure who you think you’re replying to. I’m just jabbing at someone who thinks “Satire=No Thinking”, since that’s obviously such an absurd position that is ignorant of the history of satire in our cultures.

            Lacking introspection… you’re reading a lot into my post based on your own assumptions. I never mentioned any websites. There’s some introspection lacking on your part there too. I was wondering what joke you think you were making that I’m the butt of… then I got it. You’re only pretending to be an idiot, as a joke, right? You got me!

      • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.todayEnglish
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        4 days ago

        Two things can be true at once. Were our memes peak? No! We’re they at least not slightly veiled advertisement? Maybe the vast minority.

      • millie@beehaw.orgEnglish
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        4 days ago

        I literally could not care less if you disapprove of my response to literally anything.

    • Duamerthrax@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      3 days ago

      In my defense, I get pretty bored of repetitious memes/jokes very quickly. It’s really just a pavlov response after a certain point.

    • can@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
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      4 days ago

      I understand I was probably ahead of the curve with this, but I gotta ask, when did the term meme as we now know it enter your vernacular?

      • Sprinks@lemmy.worldEnglish
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        3 days ago

        I remember it coming into popularity right around when I started highschool; 2010ish.

        Smart phones, home computers, and laptops were slowly becoming more common, at least at my school at the time. It lead to this shift from texting constantly to being terminally online at home after school. I still remember having a difficult time keeping up with the most popular le meme at any given moment because they evolved so rapidly over the course of like a year or two.

  • Fenrir @lemmings.worldEnglish
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    4 days ago

    Can we stop this generational warfare bullshit and focus on the fact that Boomers ruined the world?

  • Rhoeri@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    4 days ago

    Okay, as a GenX, I had to google what YTMND was and still had no clue! Just when you think you’re connected to everything….

  • pimento64@sopuli.xyzEnglish
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    4 days ago

    Canceling people who pretend to be nice but have racist tweets from 2007 is all very fine, we have fun with that in our culture. However, the real action is in finding people who call Zoomer culture cringe, and then digging up their old forum posts where they called a lolcat “epic winrar for great justice”

  • ArxCyberwolf@lemmy.caEnglish
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    4 days ago

    Porkchop sandwiches! OH SHIT! Get the fuck out of here! What are you doing?! Go! Get the fuck out of here, you stupid idiot! Fuck, we’re all dead! Get the fuck out!

    …My god, did that smell good.