I visited a university recently and brought up IRC in a conversation. Some students did not know what it was and some said “that’s for old people”. So, that’s the genz perception. I wonder to what extent that’s true… what proportion of IRC users on the notable networks are genz.
I have doubts, because it seems there are still snot nose trolls demonstrating that children are still around. But it would be interesting to have some reliable stats.
I have no data to back it up, but I would be completely unsurprised to find this to be true. I’m a millenial, and I’ve never heard any of my peers talk about being part of IRC chats. Ever. They are on Slack or FB or Discord or Whatsapp. They want an easy sign up process and a functional, aesthetic user interface. Honestly, the idea that you are surprised that the chats are full of old timers is weird to me - obviously the chats will just be dominated by the same people who have been on them since the mid 90s and simply stick around out of habit. Childishness doesn’t imply they’re young.
Honestly, the idea that you are surprised
I am not ”surprised”. Nor am I pretentious enough to pretend to have certainty. If I had expressed certainty, then that might suggest surprise. But I did not.
What I have seen is that gen z resists anything with a up-front difficulty. They largely favor GUIs and web-based WYSIWYG editors (e.g. Google Docs) over tools like emacs, vi, and LaTeX (yes, even in a science and tech college). So in my relatively small sample population, there is no cause for surprise. But globally I might still expect some big-brained ppl among gen z to take the path of deferred gratification, and realise when a difficult tool requires an up-front investment but pays off in the long run. But from what I have seen so far, deferred gratification is becoming a lost concept. There is a widespread fixation on short-term easy progress.
Childishness doesn’t imply they’re young.
Hence the purpose of the thread. It would be useful to know, b/c I often can’t tell a manchild from a child when I can’t see them.
gen z resists anything with a up-front difficulty.
This is literally all humans. Why climb to the top of the tree to get an apple, when there are apples within reach from the ground? Even if the apples on top taste better, do they really taste that much better to justify the effort?
People tend to stay focused on the problem at hand, and keep doing what works to solve those problems as long as it keeps working. And if there is a better way that requires a bit more up front effort, they first have to know it exists at all, then they need to understand that it has benefits, then they need to be convinced that the benefits are worth the learning curve. Like, try explaining vim to someone who has never heard of it before: yeah, there are no colors or syntax highlighting or debugger built in - but you can move the cursor down any number of lines you want! You sound like a crazy person, lol.
Focusing on short term, easy progress is, in general, a winning strategy when the future is uncertain.
This is literally all humans.
Nonsense. It is not part of the human condition to be short-sighted and looking for a short-term accomplishment at the expense of long-term gains.
Why climb to the top of the tree to get an apple, when there are apples within reach from the ground? Even if the apples on top taste better, do they really taste that much better to justify the effort?
If a GUI tool enables you to accomplish a task today faster than learning a more powerful CLI tool, of course time savings diminishes the more frequent the task is needed. A hand-saw will fall a one-off tree faster than it takes you to learn how to use a chainsaw. But if you invest the time to learn the chainsaw your gains pay off after 2—4 trees.
People tend to stay focused on the problem at hand, and keep doing what works to solve those problems as long as it keeps working.
That’s gen z. It’s an aversion to learning and groking a deep understanding. Older people learn how to invest in building knowledge that solves a series of problems quicker over the long haul.
And if there is a better way that requires a bit more up front effort, they first have to know it exists at all, then they need to understand that it has benefits, then they need to be convinced that the benefits are worth the learning curve.
Indeed that’s the deficeit. A loss of experimentation. A loss of curiosity and intrinsic interest in the subject matter.
There are some ppl w/the gen z mindset in my generation, who just want to get their ticket punched and get paid. Who took the job for the money and have no passion for self-improvement. But the ratio is nowhere near equal across generations.
Surveys show that around 50 yrs ago around 80% students prioritized developing a meaningful philosophy of life above making money. College freshmen have been surveyed every year since then. Gradually, those numbers have completely inverted.
A hand-saw will fall a one-off tree faster than it takes you to learn how to use a chainsaw. But if you invest the time to learn the chainsaw your gains pay off after 2—4 trees.
Sure, but again, imagine you are a logger in Montana in the 1940s (or whenever practical handheld chainsaws were invented). You may spend all day sharpening your crosscut - but learning a chainsaw would require ordering one from the general store, waiting weeks or months for it to ship, learning to use it - all for a benefit that you only know of from the copy in the catalogue. If you’ve never seen anyone use a chainsaw before, or vouch for their effectiveness, it would be easy to dismiss as a fad.
That’s gen z. It’s an aversion to learning and groking a deep understanding. Older people learn how to invest in building knowledge that solves a series of problems quicker over the long haul.
Not my experience at all with Gen Z, nor with older people. In fact, it is often the opposite - younger people are more interested in learning new things, while the older ones are stuck in their ways and resistant to change.
Surveys show that around 50 yrs ago around 80% students prioritized developing a meaningful philosophy of life above making money. College freshmen have been surveyed every year since then. Gradually, those numbers have completely inverted.
Likely this has something to do with the increased cost of college and lack of economic security. It’s easy to be a hippie when you have a trust fund backing you up, and it is easy to talk about your “meaningful philosophy of life” when you graduate with little or no debt to a nearly guarenteed good paying job.
If you’ve never seen anyone use a chainsaw before, or vouch for their effectiveness, it would be easy to dismiss as a fad.
Easy to dismiss only if you don’t have a passion for the art to begin with.
younger people are more interested in learning new things
Emphasis mine. Indeed, gen Z are quickly biased to require a mechanism or paradigm to be “new”. The false mantra “latest and greatest” works wonders on people. Gen z resists taking on more knowledge in general. They look for shortcuts every step of the way. Using LaTeX to write a paper is a non-starter for them.
while the older ones are stuck in their ways and resistant to change.
There are shitty changes and there are good changes. Gen X and older do not inherently resist change. They resist BAD change. And there is a lot of it lately coupled with widespread enshitification of most of the world. Of course we resist downgrades. It’s a weak minded concession and detriment not to.
Discord is not a good change. It shifts power back to the corporates.
Likely this has something to do with the increased cost of college
No, because that’s not the context of the question. The survey is directed at those already in university to investigate their outlook.
University is inherently a tool to obtain a meaningful philosophy of life. If you are not confused about the means and the ends, obviously attending university is valued highly by those in pursuit of a meaningful philosophy of life, which includes the means to do so. But when you prioritise money /above/ that, then money is no longer just a means to get there. It’s something higher – the means has overtaken the ends in priority.
Seriously, dude, take a step back and realize what a “kids these days” take this is.
It is well established science that differences between the generations are largely overstated. Typically, “generational” differences are actually just differences between age groups. Comparing 20 year olds to 40 year olds in 2020 isn’t an apt comparison - we need to compare 20 year olds in 2020 vs in 2000. And when we do that, many differences disappear.
What differences remain tend to be driven by environmental factors, or are statistical artifacts. For example, it has been said that these days, the bachelors is the new high school diploma - you can barely get any job that is upwardly mobile without one. Which means a lot of average or below average people are pursuing them. So it may be more apt to compare bachelors students in the past to masters students in the present.
You, on the other hand, seem to be lumping whole generations together and ascribing the differences to some kind of moral decay. Which, oh my god, is the most “get off my lawn” take ever. Seriously, you are acting the cliche.
No, because that’s not the context of the question. The question is directed at those already in university to investigate their outlook.
tf are you talking about? Yes, students in university are more concerned about their economic future these days…? This seems like a straightforward fact.
University is inherently a tool to obtain a meaningful philosophy of life. If you are not confused about the means and the ends, obviously attending university is valued highly by those in pursuit of a meaningful philosophy of life, which includes the means to do so. But when you put money /above/ that, the money is no longer just a means to get there.
Yeah, and I sometimes use the battery on my cordless drill as a hammer to pound in drywall hangers. The usefulness of a tool is determined by how the user sees fit to use it. And modern young people see going to college very much as a means to an end - it has become the technical school for knowledge workers, a change which happened gradually over time, since before they were born. Really, due to economic concerns, most young people who want to pursue a meaningful philosophy of life would be better served by learning to swing a hammer and attending local intellectual discussion groups.
Because here’s the problem all the Gen Z kids are solving - if pursuing a meaningful philosophy of life, if delving deeply into problems and looking for the best solutions, was actually the path to a comfortable material life and could be taught by the university, then we woud expect philosophy majors to graduate to comfortable jobs and be satisfied with their lives. But we see the opposite - philosophy majors have some of the highest rates of regretting their choice of major post-graduation. Why? Because it turns out that “learning how to think” - at least how the university teaches it - isn’t worth jack shit in today’s job market. They end up baristas, saddled with a mountain of debt and no way to pay it off.
Most likely what is really happening is:
- You’re an old curmudgeon.
- You are comparing yourself and your current or former peer group (who were likely overachievers) to a random sampling of today’s young people.
- You are not accounting for the different environment young people are navigating today, and the solutions they are finding, while discounting the various advantages and security you had at that same age.
It is well established science that differences between the generations are largely overstated.
This is hand waving. It’s useless for countering science to the contrary which pinpoints a specific difference. Science does not work like you think it does. Abstract social science does not defeat actual survey results.
What differences remain tend to be driven by environmental factors
Yes, and? This is just assigning blame. It’s fair enough to blame the adults for cultivating the money-centrism in the young. It’s interesting, yet still irrelevant to the thesis.
You, on the other hand, seem to be lumping whole generations together and ascribing the differences to some kind of moral decay. Which, oh my god, is the most “get off my lawn” take ever. Seriously, you are acting the cliche.
The science speaks for itself. This emotional plea against survey results is just a show of desperation. It’s not compelling.
tf are you talking about? Yes, students in university are more concerned about their economic future these days…? This seems like a straightforward fact.
You’ve lost track of your own claim, which was to say that the cost of university is /why/ the survey results are what they are. Now you are talking about economic future, which is more what the survey was getting at – the prioritisation of money post-grad and thereafter.
It is absolutely human nature to look at the short term easy route over the long term. Hell, I can’t figure out how toneasily copy and paste the line to quote post on mobile so I am just replying to ome bit because its easy.
Seealso, literally every corporation and shareholder currently obliterating the planet with tomorrow’s problems for today’s profits.
Humans come with various degrees of intelligence. The short-sighted ones do not have a monopoly on “human nature”. The trait to forecast and make very long-term decisions is very much human. But again, to varying degrees of capability depending on the individual.
Corporations cannot in the slightest be reguarded as “human”. Corps are not natural. They are an artificial construct. They are not a good source for learning about human nature. You have misunderstood the purpose of the corporation. Profitting is literally the job of the corporate machine. They do not destroy the planet due to any sort of human condition. They do so because the corporate constitution is written to profit, not protect the environment.
Anyone want to visit my gopher server?
Well, I’ve seen it first-hand. The irc server cluster I’ve been uninterrupted on since the early 00’s has dwindled from 25-ish to 2. I think the userbase has shrunk from tens of thousands to a couple hundred. We might as well pretend IRC no longer exists. Do wish that it would.
most people (and not just young) nowadays are too used to the convenience features provided by services like discord. persistent/saved chat history, media upload and inline previews, etc.
i believe i’m younger than many here, and i honestly find irc hard to use in some cases despite being tech savvy enough.
Lack of FOSS server software should be a red flag. But the gen Zers largely have a distaste for FOSS – could not be convinced of the wisdom of using Gnu Octave in school rather than MATLAB.
Official Debian repos only have a Bitlbee plugin for Discord. But that’s only useful to those willing to make the boot-licking compromise of corporate centralisation.
But yes, you are likely spot on. The Tyranny of Convenience is in force and convenience is being prioritised above principles.
The core issue with a lot of FOSS software is the GUI is often created by dev types who have no idea how to design a functional UI. If anything they are often the types who actuvely push against good UI in favor of :q! Bull shit no one can ever figure out.
But the gen Zers largely have a distaste for FOSS
this is not a generational thing at all. we foss people are the minority, and a very small one. unfortunate but that’s the reality we’re in.
As someone who’s used IRC for probably a decade, I mean… kinda?
Realistically a bunch of stuff happens on Discord and whatnot instead now, which sucks because centralizing things on proprietary platforms is a bad idea anyway, and then it’s Discord.
