Has the Internet resulted in people not outgrowing things?

[they don't love you like i love you]

When I was a teenager, it was pretty uncommon to find people my age now who were into things I was really into, like my "scene" music and video games. But now not only am I still into those things, there are plenty of other people my age who still are too...in fact at this point people I would consider olds back then probably outnumber teenagers now in being fans of said things. So why?

Now I know someone will make the smart alleck point that people my age also grew up with those things, but that was also true when I was a teenager. If we're talking about say 15 years ago, that means 30 years ago was 15 years ago at the time. Video games and scene music most certainly DID exist 30 years ago.

But yeah I'll attribute it to the Internet and new economic and social factors, such as people not buying houses anymore, staying in urban areas, and starting families much later.

[RFayette]

Yes.  Multiple high school science teachers of mine had major Pokemon fetishes.

[TNF]

It has created a generation of manchildren, yes

[Antonio the Sixth]

Speaking for myself, yes, I do feel it's helped me realize that there's nothing wrong with liking stuff I liked as a kid or teen, as long as I take them for what they are and don't obsess over them like some people.

[Oakvale]

It has created a generation of manchildren, yes

Yes. The toxic effect of the internet has created a generation of coddled adult babies who are content to watch their 90s animes within their Safe Spaces.

[Maxwell]

I do feel like I'm very immature and it's because of how easy it is to immerse myself in the internet.

[TNF]

It has created a generation of manchildren, yes

Yes. The toxic effect of the internet has created a generation of coddled adult babies who are content to watch their 90s animes within their Safe Spaces.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

It has created a generation of manchildren, yes

[Indy Texas]

You could argue that this is just a return to the way things have been for nearly all of human history.

The period from the late 19th century to 2000-ish where you had very distinct "youth culture" and "adult culture" was a blip. It was made possible because children/teens were spending the majority of their waking hours in school or work and away from their parents, and because participating in a market economy led to disposable income that needed to be spent on something - so young people spent it on clothing that their parents disapproved of, books that were scandalous and records of "subversive" music.

Compare that to the pre-19th century agrarian world where social events were communal in nature and not segregated by age. The villagers - from the children to the elders - gathered in a barn or public square to listen to music and engage in feasting and merrymaking and all that. An extreme example is Ancient Egypt, where popular culture (as far as the style of clothing, art and architecture) basically didn't change for thousands of years.

A lot of this is probably because popular culture has been kind of stagnant the past couple of decades. It's increasingly just derivative of earlier trends. When kids in the '50s were listening to Elvis, their parents were horrified - it was like nothing they'd heard and it seemed completely inappropriate. When a soccer mom is listening to a Top 40 hit on the radio that her tween daughter loves, she's probably realizing that it's just a ripoff of the music she listened to at her senior prom in 1987.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

I do feel like I'm very immature and it's because of how easy it is to immerse myself in the internet.

[they don't love you like i love you]

I find how the Internet has changed punk culture to be kind of amazing. Think of punk in the days of "California Uber Alles"...and consider that today "punks" are typically people with white collar jobs who are huge hacks for the Democratic Party and liberal causes who obsess over political correctness and Tumblr-style buzzwords, have non-negligible odds of being evangelical Christians and who go to shows where people on stage give sobbing and tear filled personal testimonies between songs with "positive and uplifting" lyrics with a "message of hope and anti-violence".

That is the direct descendant of this.

[Murica!]

I find how the Internet has changed punk culture to be kind of amazing. Think of what punk culture was like in the 70s and 80s...and consider that today "punks" are typically people with white collar jobs who are huge hacks for the Democratic Party and liberal causes who obsess over political correctness and Tumblr-style buzzwords, have non-negligible odds of being evangelical Christians and who go to shows where people on stage give sobbing and tear filled personal testimonies between songs with "positive and uplifting" lyrics with a "message of hope and anti-violence".

That is the direct descendant of this.

[they don't love you like i love you]

I wonder how Sid Vicious and Darby Crash would react if you created a time machine, went back in time, and brought them to the present day and they learned that 15 years after their deaths their musical successors were doing things like writing songs about feeling guilty about staring at a girl's ass or songs that concluded with a two minute outro where some guy sobs about how he feared his actions as a teenager would result in death by STDs.

[Murica!]

I wonder how Sid Vicious and Darby Crash would react if you created a time machine, went back in time, and brought them to the present day and they learned that 15 years after their deaths their musical successors were doing things like writing songs about feeling guilty about staring at a girl's ass or songs that concluded with a two minute outro where some guy sobs about how he feared his actions as a teenager would result in death by STDs.

Suicide.

[rejectamenta]

Continuing our transparent consumer culture while simultaneously cutting off avenues to financial independence for younger people is more to blame IMO

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

The sort of fixation on living up to and encouraging others to live up to conventional standards of maturity that some posters in this thread are exhibiting is itself ironically very common in certain types of self-involved adolescents.