How Long Until We All Go Mad?

Do The Children of The (Mis)Information Age Stand a Fighting Chance?

By Jay Walker

With highway robbery being the law of the land in the land of stripes and stars, is there a glimmer of hope for Generation Z? Or has our future been stolen before they could even grasp it, bought and sold to the highest bidder? As the world melts away, is the ground we tread upon even safe? The slow but cruel erosion of freedom is but an afterthought when facing the blight of starvation and eviction. Who cares about voting when they are living off ramen packets and tap water?

Something’s got to give. Can the storm truly be weathered? Other swathes of American reprobates, young, spry, and ready to take on the world have come and gone. What separates the “Good Vibes” generation, with its penchant for social media showboating, to the hippies of the “Free Love” generation, who spent ample time making love rather than war and wearing flowers in their hair?

Like the socially conscious hippie, will we too die out, grow apathetic, or become complacent when the baton of authority is passed to us? With the ongoing fossil-ocracy, can we even be certain we will assume power before the world becomes one big nuclear warhead wonderland? Like the previous batches of cretaceous period podium pushers before us, it remains to be seen if the can will be kicked further down the road. Who's to say the “anti-woke” club-wielding brutes pounding at the city gates, shaking the rafters, will not beat us in the vie for power?

Then, there’s always the chance that the post-millenials have all turned into mind-melted zombies, stupefied by the endless march of twitter scrolling, craniums rocked too hard by fidget spinner freak accidents and too many attempts to pass tide pods off as a meal. I raise these concerns as one of these 21st century social pariahs, born in the aftermath of the Y2K delusions at the turn of the century, seemingly molded into a “screen-ager” without my own consent.

Have “kids these days” become stupefied by an onslaught of streaming service subservience? Sadly, there are plenty of us who blindly swear an oath to women-bashing charlatans on the internet. Not to mention, those of us who went all in on the NFT craze, only to watch it go up in flames.

Truly, whirlwinds of danger race all around us. However, it would be a foolish mistake to count the youth of America out just yet, for a rabid dog is most crafty and capable when backed into a corner, standing in a pool of its own frothy saliva. And despite the laundry list of societal atrocities we are exposed to on a daily basis, we endure it nonetheless. That fact alone speaks to the character of Generation Z.

We have thus far taken the post-9/11 hellscape in stride, in spite of our freedoms dying a little more with every TSA agent fondling. If the “iGeneration” can withstand the demotion of pluto as a planet, the end of Blockbuster video rental stores, and the pains of not being able to get your grubby hands on that goddamned bendy pencil at the scholastic book fair that one time in the third grade, then surely they can take on just about anything. Another thing people seem to either forget entirely or ignore is the blight of COVID-19, and our persistence to push through it in spite of the countless who were, for one reason or another, unable to see it through to the end. Truly this is a generation of prize fighters, already punched their way through one financial crisis, and swingin’ for the fences with the next currently underway.

I’m fairly sure the world will keep turning, as it has for millenia, and as long as we can prevent the death of our world, either by way of fossil fuel or atomic annihilation. The dilemma of supposedly corrupted youth is a tale repeated throughout our history, a debate rearing its head every time the youth of a society begin to approach autonomy and authority. However, this time it feels like a legitimate threat as penguins begin moving into apartment blocks everywhere and ice cubes become a greater luxury than gold leaf. What a racket!