Amazingly, Buzzfeed readers don’t realize they’ve done this to themselves – Are you enjoying it?
Note from Jane Menton: MC OG (Francis Menton) is currently recovering from Covid and will be back later this week.
One of my roles at the Manhattan Contrarian is to act as a cultural reporter and interpreter, offering some insight into the views and beliefs of millennials and younger. Unfortunately, it is increasingly difficult to present such views as rational when they are often based on magical thinking. For example, the very same people who have threatened us for years for not doing enough to end our dependence on fossil fuels – the same people who cheered for the closure of the Keystone Pipeline – now can’t believe the price they pay for gas. The same people who think stimulus testing is the bare minimum the government can do for those struggling with COVID., currently shocked by rising inflation. “Buy less alcohol so when I sell my kidneys they get a better price,” reads a quote in the inflation article.
All articles linked above are from Buzzfeed. For members of the older generation who may not *know* (aka my dad’s Manhattan Contrast) Buzzfeed is the main cultural hub for millennials. It’s a one-stop shop, covering everything from pop culture to news. Sometimes I doubt my generation reads anything else (forget the Wall Street Journal). I also follow it, sometimes because it’s entertaining, and mostly because I have to follow it to know what my friends are thinking and feeling.
One of the most useful things Buzzfeed does is collect audio recordings of current events from young “influencers”. Several times a week, Buzzfeed aggregates twitter discussions on various topics – gas prices, climate change, for example, dating like a 20-year-old gay – that can be neatly summarized as ““ What interesting young people are saying.”
I read these summaries at the end of each week, and each week it becomes increasingly difficult to ignore the glaring contradictions in the younger generation’s thinking about policy. Just last week I have read a bunch of complaints about our current economy and inflation that is amazing in its utter lack of awareness. A few excerpts:
We must all cheer with the outrage of those who posted these tweets, as if there were any surprises in terms of rising gasoline prices when, within his first few months in office in 2021, Biden pledges to stop oil companies from drilling on federal landpledge to ban cracking, prevent the construction of oil and gas pipelines, etc. Or as if inflation were not a natural consequence of dumping 4.6 trillion dollars New money printed into a stagnant economy.
Meanwhile, here’s an excerpt from a series of other tweets on Buzzfeed, this is from 2017, complaining that we’re not doing enough on climate change. Of course, this was back when gas was affordable:
It’s worth noting that Buzzfeed is able to fuel these twitter exchanges without ever realizing that halting fossil fuel production in an attempt to tackle climate change will ultimately drive gas prices up. . How could the editors of these lists fail to see that rising gasoline prices force people to use less gasoline is not a policy accident. That is part of the plan. In fact, it is the most important feature of the plan. A plan they’ve spent years supporting.
And how could they fail to realize that the ramifications from rising oil and gas prices will fade across the economy, affecting all of our everyday expenses: the cost of growing food (using modern technology, using fossil fuels), to heat a house, to drive a car, to buy a plane ticket? How can they not see that they are the source of their own problems?
We can only hope that lingering inflation and record-high fuel prices are the wake-up calls this generation needs.
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