I definitely see this as “we can’t get away with the boys club anymore” rather than a problem with Gen Z. Gen Z won’t hide their unhappiness with any of the -isms and will call it out instead of just keeping their head down.
Right, it’s not the lack of skills to disagree. What it is, is the bravery to not tolerate intolerance, and they stand for what they believe the world should be. Making mr grouper proud out here.
I’m a millennial but this reminds me of when I first got into the work force and was stuck in an office full of boomers with me being the youngest. I remember the boss would take turns taking shots at different people during meetings, making insensitive racial jokes about people. I eventually got tired of doing the uncomfortable fake laugh so I just sat there stone faced during his jokes. He halted the entire meeting to a stop to ask me why I wasn’t laughing. This is the extent to which office culture must be obeyed and how insecure they get when you don’t go along with it. It’s so pathetic.
I’m also a millennial with a similar experience in my first job in 2004 or 2005, except instead of racial jokes, it was jokes about boobs, sexist rumors about another coworker moonlighting as a stripper, unwanted touching, etc, and when I reported it, I was told to “grow up” by my supervisor.
This is exactly it. I’ve seen this exact thing play out a bunch of times. It’s a real threat to them, because so many of these people got to where they are because they know how to work that frat boy culture to their advantage, and now they suddenly have to deal with people who don’t find their shit funny. The reality is that they don’t actually have any real skills besides the politics of being loud and borish.
The thing is, if you say “black lives matter” they’ll quietly run to HR and claim they don’t feel comfortable and they don’t want politics in the workplace. Then they’ll turn right around and go back to talking fondly about their date rape days at Cornell
Fair enough. But if you don’t tell someone why you are unhappy with them or the situation they control, then nothing improves for anyone.
I believe the impetus is on the bigot to figure their shit out. It is exhausting arguing with bigots, and it is not people’s job to teach them how not to be a bigot. There is enough information out there now that you should know not to be an intolerant asshole, and if someone chooses instead to be a piece of shit, I’m comfortable with them being ostracized while they sort themselves out. And if they can’t, I’m comfortable with them dying old, alone and confused wondering why nobody visits them.
This sounds like you are promoting an “I’m right, your wrong, and I have no responsibility to correct or educate.” mentality. I’m not sure if trusting the people with opposing views to change on their own is the best approach. I think only deepens divides and entrenches opposition.
People with opposing ideas do exist in a vacuum and will have no problem putting the time in to recruiting others to their way of thinking and promoting similar thinkers to positions of power and influence. Ostracizing those you disagree can just as easily put you in a bubble of isolation, or an echo chamber, as them.
Not to mention that discussing opposing ideas improves understanding both by defending your views and by better understanding the why and origins of their ideas.
I read this as Gen Z doesn’t tolerate the boomer/older Gen X intolerant/racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic bullshit that younger Gen X/Older Millennials had to, and a lot of folks receiving this deserved pushback don’t like it.
¯\(ツ)/¯
Nailed it, except that older Gen X and boomers who weren’t part of the intolerant majority ALSO had to put up with all that bullshit.
Thus…proving the point? “If a person thinks I can’t handle disagreement, I bet it’s because they’re some kind of asshole nazi or something! It would be wrong of me to tolerate a difference of opinion with them!”
If the only disagreement you can tolerate is irrelevant minutia, then you aren’t actually tolerant. “I’m totally tolerant, as long as our opinions don’t differ on race, culture, gender, sexual relations, work, religion, or politics” is pretty weak sauce.
Congrats you described the paradox of tolerance.
Yeah if someone thinks I and people I’m friends with shouldn’t exist than I’m not gonna want to work with them. American Republicans are actively trying to remove any legal protections or rights trans (and LGBT in general) people have, and anybody who shares their views is helping them along. Why on god’s green earth would I see that as anything less than an existential threat?
You guys literally couldn’t be leaning into Gen-Z stereotypes any harder.
“Some guy says Gen-Z doesn’t have the ability to respectfully disagree.”
“Man FUCK that guy, I bet he’s an intolerant/racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic piece of shit, and that’s why he can’t get along with us, because it’s definitely not our problem!”
“Uhh, it sorta feels like you’re demonstrating that you really don’t have the ability to disagree.”
__ __ __ __ __ “Lol just cuz I reported a guy who said a thing that hurt my feelings, does that mean we can’t be friends?! Lol jk fuck you too buddy!”
No, sure, you’re totally right, you guys are a real delight to have in conversations and debates.
I mean those are pretty major things, especially if you’re part of one of the affected minorities. If I were trans I wouldn’t really want to work with a coworker who insists on misgendering me and makes a fuss out of me using the right bathroom.
If it doesn’t come up, it doesn’t come up. People can agree to disagree, also. But there are also cases where the disagreement is so fundamental that it makes it pretty hard to respect someone or even want to be in the same room as them.
Sure, it’s supposed to be major things.
There was a point where Europeans were massacring and torturing each other over religious differences, for centuries. Protestants and Catholics considered each other literal heretics, and mortal enemies.
Then they developed this idea of tolerance, and decided that your religious beliefs were your own business. And that worked amazingly well! We can all just get on getting on. This was a huge deal, protestants tolerating catholics and vice versa was every bit as hard as trans people tolerating transphobic people. But it worked, and eventually the differences faded into irrelevance.
And it turned out that the same attitude was great for progress in general: who you love and who you sleep with is your business, and after a decade or two: you know, we’ve all got pretty used to the idea of people being gay. They wanna get married? Sure, I don’t see why not. Tolerance was the basis of most progress in the past few centuries.
And now Gen-Z (or probably just terminally-online people, but as a ratio that’s more of Gen-Z than any earlier group) wants to flip the table. Tolerating ‘intolerance’ is practically a crime! Intolerance, BTW, is when you don’t have the correct set of opinions. People who don’t have the right opinions are monsters, and must be harassed, deplatformed, fired, etc. The wrong opinions are violence.
I’ve seen reactions to ‘bad’ opinions that I would call hysterical.
I hate these generation based things. Some little time ago there was odd stuff about millennials everywhere. Now Gen-Z. In a few years Gen Alpha. Then whatever comes next and so on.
People just like to label people. And generations are just another option.
I’m Gen X. They used to say this stuff about us too. Did you know we’re all slackers?
Agreed, but I see plenty of Millennials and Gen-Zers making plenty of criticisms and jokes about Boomers all the time. It’s no better when we do it.
Man, I’ve started to see it happening between just the Millennials and the Gen-Z. I assume a good chunk of it is for rage bait/views, at least that’s what I’m hoping for. It’s so much better when we’re working together to try to better the future.
Never seen this besides on algorithm driven social platforms tho…
I do see boomer hate every tho
This whole thread is like, “Fuck YOU! We don’t have communication problems! It’s all you old fuckers!”
Well. Would you look at that.
Yeah I agree and think dismissal of perspectives and even dehumanization of people you disagree with is definitely a big problem right now.
There are even folks that do this and try to prop themselves up as “intellectuals” by citing various “fallacies” – like the straw man fallacy – without knowing what they’re talking about. I’ve only bumped into it a couple of times but it’s annoying when it happens.
You don’t have to agree with a perspective but to refuse to humor a perspective… to even try and understand where that person is at so there’s any hope of building a bridge… that’s deeply problematic.
No, it’s more that the boomers/older Gen X treats any sign of even polite disagreement as attacks on their very character. Many of them simply cannot accept that their views are outdated, and any challenges to their view is a disrespectful slight.
It’s very telling that many of them still complain about millennials as children ruining everything to this day, when the oldest millennials are in their early 40s, and they are somehow shocked that Gen Z is even more progressive and vocal about their views than us millennials.
It’s rare for me to have this much free time, you’ll probably see a lot less of me here once work starts again.
