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All of the above, although I think millennials and Gen Z are demonstrably worse when it comes to vanity. My mother's a 2nd grade teacher and does the usual "wh

All of the above, although I think millennials and Gen Z are demonstrably worse when it comes to vanity. My mother's a 2nd grade teacher and does the usual "what do you want to be when you grow up?" bit each year. The last couple years she's had a very significant number of her students say "YouTube or Instagram star" instead of the usual firefighter/police officer/doctor/soldier/etc. (Also not the most disturbing trend to come from her recent batch(es) of kids.) I'm really glad our country is at place where being funny on a social media website is enough to make a good living, but I can't help but feel there's something missing—something keeping them grounded. I get that boomers and Gen Xers are vain—I love to rag on them, and, really, we all are vain to some extent—but millennials and Gen Z seem to be taking it to a different level.

mahyarm 9y ago
Vs. rapper, or sports player? An IG / youtube star is being a lower-middle class celebrity, which is actually a first in many ways.
- DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
  Is it the new "featured in the local newspaper once"?
  - ringaroundthetx 9y ago
    No, its "making six figures if you nail a niche" once. Like the grown men dressing up as Elsa from Frozen and Spiderman and recording two minutes of weird sounds, just because they figured out why the analytics said 35 year old women watched that, while the marketers couldn't figure out that it meant their kids were seeing it on internet connected toys that happened to play youtube videos. Anyone can do it, for now.
- nl 9y ago
  Vs. rapper, or sports player? An IG / youtube star is being a lower-middle class celebrity, which is actually a first in many ways What on earth does lower-middle class celebrity mean here? Where does the alleged class difference come from? There are many valid criticisms of YouTube/IG stars, but is Michelle Phan really lower-middle class compared to say Nicki Minaj?! Because lots of the private-school mums I know are more than happy to watch Michelle Phan with their daughters but ban Nicki Minaj.
  - mahyarm 9y ago
    By class I meant income level, not culture. In the past being a profitable artist meant superstardom or poverty, with a rare few in between with middle class incomes. Now with Youtube/patreon, there is a good chunk of 'middle class artists' that are developing today that didn't exist in the numbers that these platforms created.
arkitaip 9y ago
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers." -- Some Greek Guy, like really long time ago.
- point78 9y ago
  Too funny, literally since the beginning of time every generation has been complaining about "those damn kids"!!
- barsonme 9y ago
  I'm just relaying the perceptions of a teacher who's been teaching children since the '80s ;-)
- shpx 9y ago
  [This quote] was crafted by a student, Kenneth John Freeman, for his Cambridge dissertation published in 1907. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehaving-children-in-ancient-times/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehaving-childre...
  - ringaroundthetx 9y ago
    Still aging quite well to show the relativity (or constant) of people's perceptions
toast0 9y ago
> The last couple years she's had a very significant number of her students say "YouTube or Instagram star" When I was growing up, lots of people wanted to be Movie/TV stars. I think YouTube stardom has lowered the barrier to making being vapid a carrier choice.
derefr 9y ago
Is wanting to be a YouTube channel host really a marker of vanity? It's essentially saying that you want to be an actor, scriptwriter, director and entrepreneur for your own television series. It's the "solo app developer" equivalent for the entertainment industry. Like app developers, I would expect people to get into the business more out of a desire for freedom to set their own hours and not have a boss, than out of a desire to be seen. Except where programming is for introverts, screenwriting and acting comes more naturally to extroverts. Basically, I see the "YouTube biz" as being much like stand-up comedy, but without the travelling.
- barsonme 9y ago
  I can agree with the extrovert/autonomy part. To this, though > Is wanting to be a YouTube channel host really a marker of vanity? I'd say it's a good indicator. Not every channel will be like https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4mLlRa_dezwvytudo9s1sw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4mLlRa_dezwvytudo9s1sw or https://www.youtube.com/user/TheBackyardScientist https://www.youtube.com/user/TheBackyardScientist with funny or informative skits. Sometimes I'll open the 'search' part of Instagram and just scroll through the posts and wonder how so many people have their own brands when all the do is post selfies. I'd totally do it if I could. But it's definitely vanity.
  - irahul 9y ago
    > I'd totally do it if I could. This seems like the root of your issue. > But it's definitely vanity. The only people to use vanity as an insult are people who have nothing to be vain about. Do you cover your grays? Do you wear flattering clothes? Do you buy nice phones? Why bother? It's all vain shit.
    - derefr 9y ago
      There are two usages to the word "vanity." The one you're referring to has more to do with dignity (the desire to be respected by everybody.) The property under scrutiny by the parent poster, though, is (I think) more like "narcissism"—the desire to be perceived as the best person ever by as many people as possible. The desire for dignity is universal; whereas narcissism is a (rather uncommon) personality flaw.
remarkEon 9y ago
>I'm really glad our country is at place where being funny on a social media website is enough to make a good living, but I can't help but feel there's something missing—something keeping them grounded. I am the opposite of "glad" about this. It's highly concerning to me. My sister is also a school teacher and her students are just 4th graders and see this as legitimate life goals. Think of how that forms the development of a young child.
- irahul 9y ago
  > Think of how that forms the development of a young child. It depends. Option 1: "Hey buddy. So you want to be a youtube star. Which ones you like? The funny ones? The lifters? The fashion vloggers? It's actually a lot of work. You will need a script, a cameraman, a director, actors etc. And all said and done, for every youtube star, there are tens of thousands who just toil in obscurity. But that's a risk which comes with a lot of life's decisions and you can decide later on if you really want to do it or if you want to do it part time. Back to the production process. It's not very different from what we do in our school's theater except that there is a massive potential increase in your reach. Why don't you try coming up with a concept and I can walk you through the iterations it takes for the final product. We can even try to schedule a screening for the class and put it on youtube." Option 2: "Youtube star? SMH. What has become of today's generation?"
- dingaling 9y ago
  > and see this as legitimate life goals. Well at least it is a goal. When I was in secondary school in the UK ( mid-1980s ) career guidance was just being introduced as a concept. I think it was a couple of half-hour sessions one year and then being left with a folder of job descriptions. So most of us in my year left school and picked a university course without having any career goal or aspiration. I am mid-40s now and still don't know what I want to do but unfortunately it is too late for many opportunities. I have a good friend who was the school sports champion and even she just fell into an unrelated career by accident. If kids today want to be YouTube stars then that's great, hopefully it will give them an objective and a reason to study particular subjects instead of "the teacher seems nice" or "I need to pick one subject from that category"
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> "YouTube or Instagram star" instead of the usual firefighter/police officer/doctor/soldier/etc...disturbing trend Does your mother moralise her second graders' choices like this? (I'd guess not.) The number of people helped or even saved by movement leaders or other cultural icons can easily exceed the contributions of the public sector roles you described. I don't see why "Instagram star" is that different from "movie star" or "astronaut" for that matter. (It certainly seems better than "football player.")
- barsonme 9y ago
  I don't think it's moralizing to acknowledge that certain career choices lend themselves to vanity. I mean, we can come up with other less-than-desirable traits for other careers like programming, can't we?
jedberg 9y ago
Just replace Youtube Star with Movie star. At least growing up in LA, lots of my friends wanted to be movie stars and rock stars. Some of them actually are now. They apparently provide value to someone, because they make millions of dollars.
- inimino 9y ago
  > They apparently provide value to someone, because they make millions of dollars. I would be careful with that kind of reasoning.
  - fooker 9y ago
    That is more or less the definition of providing value.
    - michaelt 9y ago
      Bernie Madoff made millions of dollars without producing any value. I don't think making millions of dollars is the definition of producing value.
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      That is the definition of providing monetary value to someone, not actual value to society. The two are correlated, but weakly.
urspx 9y ago
>he last couple years she's had a very significant number of her students say "YouTube or Instagram star" instead of the usual firefighter/police officer/doctor/soldier/etc. To be fair, I'd rather be a youtube star than a professional murderer, too.
- KGIII 9y ago
  Which one of those professions is a professional murderer?
  - arkadiytehgraet 9y ago
    At the very least - police officer and soldier.
    - KGIII 9y ago
      Murder is unlawful killing. Neither of those are professional murderers, by default. Some have murdered, but that's not usually why we hire them.
pmontra 9y ago
I guess it's hard to ascend to stardom. What's the ratio between stars and non stars? Stars have to stand among other people. If everybody is a star nobody is. Those kids are going to be as deluded as every past generation or are looking forward to a more difficult battle.
- interstitial 9y ago
  When dealing with social ratios, the safest bet is 20% of the stars get 80% of the views. If it were otherwise, someone should write a paper, it would be huge news.
pjc50 9y ago
> I can't help but feel there's something missing Expectations of livable pay from those jobs? Favourable media presentation of them? Is it vanity or just adapting to the new economy?
doldge 9y ago
This is tangential, but I believe vanity has been increasing with every generation for a while now. Each generation is more vain then the generation that came before it. I don't know if that statement holds beyond the last 100 years, but certainly it does till then. I would chalk it up to being the result of the communications expansion, with each year our audience increases (by virtue of our increasing ability to travel the world, and by the ever expanding internet), and with that expanding audience comes a desire for us to be liked by the greatest number of them, which involves out-competing everyone else.
- jrimbault 9y ago
  Or it's just an illusion. https://xkcd.com/1227/ https://xkcd.com/1227/ The only "valid" (imo) complaint in this comic is in 1905: >"The profession of letters is so little understood" I wish the humanities played a larger role in our engineered society. I see a lot of technical people who've never read Popper (which is relevant to technical fields) or any other philosopher (which are always good reading, or at least interesting).

mahyarm 9y ago

Vs. rapper, or sports player? An IG / youtube star is being a lower-middle class celebrity, which is actually a first in many ways.

DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
Is it the new "featured in the local newspaper once"?
- ringaroundthetx 9y ago
  No, its "making six figures if you nail a niche" once. Like the grown men dressing up as Elsa from Frozen and Spiderman and recording two minutes of weird sounds, just because they figured out why the analytics said 35 year old women watched that, while the marketers couldn't figure out that it meant their kids were seeing it on internet connected toys that happened to play youtube videos. Anyone can do it, for now.
nl 9y ago
Vs. rapper, or sports player? An IG / youtube star is being a lower-middle class celebrity, which is actually a first in many ways What on earth does lower-middle class celebrity mean here? Where does the alleged class difference come from? There are many valid criticisms of YouTube/IG stars, but is Michelle Phan really lower-middle class compared to say Nicki Minaj?! Because lots of the private-school mums I know are more than happy to watch Michelle Phan with their daughters but ban Nicki Minaj.
- mahyarm 9y ago
  By class I meant income level, not culture. In the past being a profitable artist meant superstardom or poverty, with a rare few in between with middle class incomes. Now with Youtube/patreon, there is a good chunk of 'middle class artists' that are developing today that didn't exist in the numbers that these platforms created.

arkitaip 9y ago

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers." -- Some Greek Guy, like really long time ago.

point78 9y ago
Too funny, literally since the beginning of time every generation has been complaining about "those damn kids"!!
barsonme 9y ago
I'm just relaying the perceptions of a teacher who's been teaching children since the '80s ;-)
shpx 9y ago
[This quote] was crafted by a student, Kenneth John Freeman, for his Cambridge dissertation published in 1907. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehaving-children-in-ancient-times/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehaving-childre...
- ringaroundthetx 9y ago
  Still aging quite well to show the relativity (or constant) of people's perceptions

toast0 9y ago

> The last couple years she's had a very significant number of her students say "YouTube or Instagram star" When I was growing up, lots of people wanted to be Movie/TV stars. I think YouTube stardom has lowered the barrier to making being vapid a carrier choice.

derefr 9y ago

Is wanting to be a YouTube channel host really a marker of vanity? It's essentially saying that you want to be an actor, scriptwriter, director and entrepreneur for your own television series. It's the "solo app developer" equivalent for the entertainment industry. Like app developers, I would expect people to get into the business more out of a desire for freedom to set their own hours and not have a boss, than out of a desire to be seen. Except where programming is for introverts, screenwriting and acting comes more naturally to extroverts. Basically, I see the "YouTube biz" as being much like stand-up comedy, but without the travelling.

barsonme 9y ago
I can agree with the extrovert/autonomy part. To this, though > Is wanting to be a YouTube channel host really a marker of vanity? I'd say it's a good indicator. Not every channel will be like https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4mLlRa_dezwvytudo9s1sw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4mLlRa_dezwvytudo9s1sw or https://www.youtube.com/user/TheBackyardScientist https://www.youtube.com/user/TheBackyardScientist with funny or informative skits. Sometimes I'll open the 'search' part of Instagram and just scroll through the posts and wonder how so many people have their own brands when all the do is post selfies. I'd totally do it if I could. But it's definitely vanity.
- irahul 9y ago
  > I'd totally do it if I could. This seems like the root of your issue. > But it's definitely vanity. The only people to use vanity as an insult are people who have nothing to be vain about. Do you cover your grays? Do you wear flattering clothes? Do you buy nice phones? Why bother? It's all vain shit.
  - derefr 9y ago
    There are two usages to the word "vanity." The one you're referring to has more to do with dignity (the desire to be respected by everybody.) The property under scrutiny by the parent poster, though, is (I think) more like "narcissism"—the desire to be perceived as the best person ever by as many people as possible. The desire for dignity is universal; whereas narcissism is a (rather uncommon) personality flaw.

remarkEon 9y ago

>I'm really glad our country is at place where being funny on a social media website is enough to make a good living, but I can't help but feel there's something missing—something keeping them grounded. I am the opposite of "glad" about this. It's highly concerning to me. My sister is also a school teacher and her students are just 4th graders and see this as legitimate life goals. Think of how that forms the development of a young child.

irahul 9y ago
> Think of how that forms the development of a young child. It depends. Option 1: "Hey buddy. So you want to be a youtube star. Which ones you like? The funny ones? The lifters? The fashion vloggers? It's actually a lot of work. You will need a script, a cameraman, a director, actors etc. And all said and done, for every youtube star, there are tens of thousands who just toil in obscurity. But that's a risk which comes with a lot of life's decisions and you can decide later on if you really want to do it or if you want to do it part time. Back to the production process. It's not very different from what we do in our school's theater except that there is a massive potential increase in your reach. Why don't you try coming up with a concept and I can walk you through the iterations it takes for the final product. We can even try to schedule a screening for the class and put it on youtube." Option 2: "Youtube star? SMH. What has become of today's generation?"
dingaling 9y ago
> and see this as legitimate life goals. Well at least it is a goal. When I was in secondary school in the UK ( mid-1980s ) career guidance was just being introduced as a concept. I think it was a couple of half-hour sessions one year and then being left with a folder of job descriptions. So most of us in my year left school and picked a university course without having any career goal or aspiration. I am mid-40s now and still don't know what I want to do but unfortunately it is too late for many opportunities. I have a good friend who was the school sports champion and even she just fell into an unrelated career by accident. If kids today want to be YouTube stars then that's great, hopefully it will give them an objective and a reason to study particular subjects instead of "the teacher seems nice" or "I need to pick one subject from that category"

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

> "YouTube or Instagram star" instead of the usual firefighter/police officer/doctor/soldier/etc...disturbing trend Does your mother moralise her second graders' choices like this? (I'd guess not.) The number of people helped or even saved by movement leaders or other cultural icons can easily exceed the contributions of the public sector roles you described. I don't see why "Instagram star" is that different from "movie star" or "astronaut" for that matter. (It certainly seems better than "football player.")

barsonme 9y ago
I don't think it's moralizing to acknowledge that certain career choices lend themselves to vanity. I mean, we can come up with other less-than-desirable traits for other careers like programming, can't we?

jedberg 9y ago

Just replace Youtube Star with Movie star. At least growing up in LA, lots of my friends wanted to be movie stars and rock stars. Some of them actually are now. They apparently provide value to someone, because they make millions of dollars.

inimino 9y ago
> They apparently provide value to someone, because they make millions of dollars. I would be careful with that kind of reasoning.
- fooker 9y ago
  That is more or less the definition of providing value.
  - michaelt 9y ago
    Bernie Madoff made millions of dollars without producing any value. I don't think making millions of dollars is the definition of producing value.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    That is the definition of providing monetary value to someone, not actual value to society. The two are correlated, but weakly.

urspx 9y ago

>he last couple years she's had a very significant number of her students say "YouTube or Instagram star" instead of the usual firefighter/police officer/doctor/soldier/etc. To be fair, I'd rather be a youtube star than a professional murderer, too.

KGIII 9y ago
Which one of those professions is a professional murderer?
- arkadiytehgraet 9y ago
  At the very least - police officer and soldier.
  - KGIII 9y ago
    Murder is unlawful killing. Neither of those are professional murderers, by default. Some have murdered, but that's not usually why we hire them.

pmontra 9y ago

I guess it's hard to ascend to stardom. What's the ratio between stars and non stars? Stars have to stand among other people. If everybody is a star nobody is. Those kids are going to be as deluded as every past generation or are looking forward to a more difficult battle.

interstitial 9y ago
When dealing with social ratios, the safest bet is 20% of the stars get 80% of the views. If it were otherwise, someone should write a paper, it would be huge news.

pjc50 9y ago

> I can't help but feel there's something missing Expectations of livable pay from those jobs? Favourable media presentation of them? Is it vanity or just adapting to the new economy?

doldge 9y ago

This is tangential, but I believe vanity has been increasing with every generation for a while now. Each generation is more vain then the generation that came before it. I don't know if that statement holds beyond the last 100 years, but certainly it does till then. I would chalk it up to being the result of the communications expansion, with each year our audience increases (by virtue of our increasing ability to travel the world, and by the ever expanding internet), and with that expanding audience comes a desire for us to be liked by the greatest number of them, which involves out-competing everyone else.

jrimbault 9y ago
Or it's just an illusion. https://xkcd.com/1227/ https://xkcd.com/1227/ The only "valid" (imo) complaint in this comic is in 1905: >"The profession of letters is so little understood" I wish the humanities played a larger role in our engineered society. I see a lot of technical people who've never read Popper (which is relevant to technical fields) or any other philosopher (which are always good reading, or at least interesting).