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Yeah, I was in the 30 -35 range in 2014. I think age had something to do with it. But I think 2014 was when it started to become apparent that the idealist glo

Yeah, I was in the 30 -35 range in 2014. I think age had something to do with it. But I think 2014 was when it started to become apparent that the idealist global mixing and digital revolution it was tied to, something I had pinned my optimism on, might be going in a more evil direction. Paul Graham wrote about this, that we need to understand our current period in the context of a much longer historical timeline http://www.paulgraham.com/re.html http://www.paulgraham.com/re.html

Mezzie 4y ago
I'm a bit younger than you (I was in my mid 20s during this time) and I would agree that about then is when I started to be like 'wait a minute'. I'd had small crises of optimism in the 90s and 00s as a kid where things weren't adding up, but I dismissed them because surely the adults knew what they were doing. 2013 was the year I'd pinpoint where my optimism ended. I was in grad school studying filter bubbles and what we'd eventually start calling 'misinformation' and 'disinformation' and discovering Eli Pariser coined the concept and then used it to create a corporation using that to influence people into thinking certain ideas were important was a major black pill moment, as was Tristan Harris's Google memo. A lot of the rot was in evidence before then, but that was the year when I couldn't pretend not to see it anymore. I'd say age has a lot to do with it in that my renewed sense of optimism is very tied into being more comfortable in my own agency, and that comfort only came into being because I saw the generation behind me and that updated my brain. "Oh, I'm not the 7 year old in the room of adults anymore. I'm the adult now. Interesting."