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Old farts of Hexbear, is there something about younger people that you don't get? [no punching down!]
(hexbear.net)
OK this is my list. But first, I need to say that this isn't a condemnation of those into such thing. They just don't vibe with me.
- Cannot get into ASMR. I've tried. Often its women 20 years younger than me, rubbing their fingernails on hairbrushes. The intentional sounds they make with their lips and fingers are things that would make me want to change seats on a bus.
- Instagram. I was maybe the last person to get a smart phone. It was probably 2016. I'm just fully lazy to take photos of stuff. This is a real issue when I'm single and I need to start putting photos on dating sites, as all pics of me in my phone are me squeezing carrots in my nostrils and similarly goofy things.
- My students' taste in anime. I try to be all cool and show off my cool taste in anime, maybe drop a Azumanga Daioh clip. It's all ancient history for 17 year olds.
- Photo and videos done in portrait mode. I guess I don't watch videos on the go. See #2
Things that the kids these days do better:
- Usually better opinions on current events than people my age
- I wish that cosplay existed when I was a teen. The default when I was younger was drugs.
If anyone insults the kids, I will visit you at your home and do an 
I'm an older millenial and watching the evolution of social media, oof. When facebook first happened twenty years ago I was in college. It was so cool! Your friends could post about what they were doing, and you could post! It was like an AOL chatroom, but persistent. There were no ads, no stories, no algorithm. Just posts from people on your friends list, in the order they were posted. That's all. It was almost totally unprecedented to have this presence, this ability to communicate what you were thinking and doing, when you weren't face to face or on the phone with someone. Prior to FB your options were, like, what, putting an actual paper note on your dorm room door, or on a white board. If you weren't in a dorm? Good luck, no one knew anything about anyone unless they saw them regularly or called them regularly. I guess we had internet forums, too, but that was limited to whether your friends were on the same forums as you.
Now we've got the gram, and it's a completely utterly different thing. Or Tiktok. I genuinely like the idea of tiktok. I've always been excited about, I guess you could call it the democratization of television. Prior to the internet the only way to transmit cheap visual media was public access TV. In the early days of the internet sharing video required resources most people didn't have. youtube was a huge innovation in what was possible. And now Tiktok is just like, super accessible and easy. It's got issues because it's engineered to be an attention trap, but the concept, visual media that anyone can create and share, is very cool.
yeah, it just feels like social media now isn't merely posting, it's the experience of watching yourself posting. submitting yourself to the panopticon willingly. I think your early Facebook experience might actually kinda match what Hexbear is now, at least in the general megathreads, albeit with necessary anonymization.
I have a complicated relationship with the concept of creating a "brand" around oneself because of what I just said. on the one hand, it can feel nice to be this known quantity on the internet, even if it's in the most limited way possible. the phenomenon of recognizing others and yourself being recognized by others on different platforms might be a nightmare in terms of opsec but there's a certain euphoria there too. on the other hand, it feels like a total capitulation to capitalism and online surveillance and the most harmful forms of western individualism; treating merely having opinions as this revolutionary act but totally disconnected from changing anything. many personalities I see online have this desire for a social media brand, to be promoted from Screaming Into Void to Screaming Into Loyal Fanbase. it seems a big change from the early internet you describe, which seems more Screaming Into Friends (more accurately described as "a nexus of close, reliable friendships and/or romantic interests" I suppose)