This kinda plays into the age old younger generation being fucked that Plato talked about. My take is the general, I guess you'd call it the cultural zeitgeist of the youth, is usually fucked up and stupid. But the youth that follow the cultural zeitgeist wholeheartedly without bothering to forge their own lives and learn to think for themselves will find success to be fleeting and will in a very darwinian sense fail to continue, which is quite pronounced with the current Trans issue being a clear Darwinian dead end.

I think our society now is basically going throw a kind of "cultural revolution" that has come about due to the rise of mass communication technology. The internet and specifically social media breaking onto the mainstream with the advent of smartphones. I think this hasn't fundamentally changed the way that humans operate or even communicate with each other, but it does represent a clear disruption to the normal social dynamic, and I think our society simply hasn't yet figured out the proper etiquette and social expectations and rules to be followed when it comes to this new technology which is leading to the crazy we see now.

So I think you're right, teens that have now been totally immersed in "fantasy" will have difficulties adjusting to "real life" and the ones that don't will fail. There will be social unrest, but the ones that don't, or the ones that course correct, will be the successful people making the future decisions for society. You can't sit around living in your VR fantasy world if you don't have electricity after all, there's a limit to the ability of the crazies to live in utter fantasy. The people living in the real world will be the people who make the moves to push society in a new direction, and I suspect they'll be the ones that enforce the new social rules concerning how to properly use social media and the like.

I think it's somewhat complex when you think about it in the long term. Thirty years ago we had the rise of video games and violence there along with cultural outrage from the older generation towards the younger. There's some truth in their condemnation of the technology but they tend to miss the big picture. They'd make very similar arguments with the loss of a sense of "reality" as if the kid exists totally in a fantasy world with no bearing towards real life, and I suppose that can be true of overuse, but the argument towards that was made before towards DND, before that comic books, and go back far enough you'll see similar criticisms towards novels.

The world changes, technology changes, it's faster than it used to be but the basic realities of life aren't that much different. Parents that lamented the rise of the violent video game which was silly, but properly criticized very real issues of overuse to the detriment of real life. Of course they themselves would say such things while consuming large amounts of television, which used to be decried going so far as schools promoting "No TV week" and the like which you no longer see.

Their parents would have been reading comics they hid from their parents. There's probably some publications denouncing the radio if you wanna dig back far enough.

I think the smart and useful minority of the next generation will wake up from the follies of youth and answer the call of social responsibility to their families and life, as they always have. The idiots will die. The strong survive to pass on their genes. The others end. Life goes on, humanity continues in the same way it has but not exactly the same.

Me I think the current trans phenomenon will be viewed by historians as a social adjustment to the relatively new social media phenomenon. This stuff has been in the fringes of society for a very long time for those of us who are interested in seeing what those fringes are, but it's only with the smartphone that random teenagers who have such feelings are able to find each other and feed the Identity.

There's truth in the idea that "there's always been there people but they were scared to come out" I think. I think a lot of the offhand thoughts about not being comfortable with ones self were completely normal. But people didn't talk about them. Partly because people would think they are crazy, partly because there's lots of really, for lack of a better word "mean" people in the world that take great pride in attacking people's weaknesses mentally or otherwise. It's not an easy thing to really grasp. Most of it I see is puberty confusion, kids weren't exactly in the position to publish their inner thoughts to the entire world before the smartphone became mainstream about 10 years ago which allowed the tech illiterate to share everything.

Where do we go from here? I think it's going to snap back into face to face communication, but with the social media on the side, marketing, a public facing fake persona facing the world, maybe even a great place for event planning, it's not all bad, but the social etiquette concerning how exactly it's used is going to need to be what is hammered out by society. I think we will be looking at a resurgence of the old rule "don't discuss religion or politics" along with a new addendum "don't talk about sexuality or identity" when it comes to mixed company.

I frankly enjoy talking about all these topics with anyone whom is able to divorce the emotional response from the discussion. Essentially, debating ideas, not people. Things need to be kept very simple. A lot of people "especially" women, but also a lot of men, cannot do this, and I think it's little surprise that we see this total collapse of the discourse or even an attempt to engage with objective reality with the ubiquity of smartphones and social media bringing a Gutenberg level social change to the way humans communicate allowing literally anyone with an internet connection to publish to the whole world. This is a double edged sword of course. The very same social media that is allowing people to "discover their true selves" also allows you to tell everyone how the medical industries claims that puberty blockers are safe and effective are not founded in any scientific reality. And as this "medical experiment" progresses, that social media will be the way that people wronged by the doctors will be spreading their own stories.

So I guess I'm fairly optimistic for the future of humanity? Sort of. I think we'll be crawling out of the post nuclear wreckage at some point. But well, maybe in ten thousand years we'll do it all again, and in the interim people will live, people will die, nations will be raised, nations will fall. People will fall in love. People will betray each other. There will be great hardship. There will be great joy. New art will be made. Old art will be lost. Out lives will be distant memories as significant as we consider the lives of the ancient Romans, yet their lives were so significant they are still influencing our civilization today even if we are not aware of the individual contributions beyond the few standout people.

There is nothing new under the sun. We live, we strive, we die. Things don't ever happen exactly the same way, but the lessons of the past are forgotten, we live out our lives, our roles on the stage of life. Blissfully unaware of what was played on the same stage before us, yet the audience is bored watching the same sort of plot play out time and time again.

The teens will grow up. They always have. They are stupid. As they always have been. A bunch of them will destroy their lives. As has been done. They'll grow up and they'll fuck up their own parenting somehow, then complain about how their kids are going tradcath and abandoning the LGBT religion. Or maybe we'll actually do Nazi shit again as a totally lame and overdone plotline. Maybe we'll make some totally rad new drug that fucks up society. Whatever happens it's gonna be fucked up and engaging to watch. So much to look forward to. And we can enjoy those simple joys in life, like saying "I told you so".

"I'm going to chop my penis off so I'll not be suicidally depressed".

"Chopping your penis off is not the path to happiness".

30 years later.

"I regret chopping my penis off"

"No shit."