Why are Zoomers addicted to "lore"?

[Beautiful Border]

I think you're cobblers. These labels weren't pulled out of thin air. It's determined by a mix of factors historical events, attitudes, prevailing pop culture at the time, etc.

Want to know what one of the key defining features of Gen Zoomer? Being born into a world where you're always connected to the information super highway from anywhere (not to mention that the internet is way more controlled and curated now).

Labels can, in fact, be pulled out of thin air. In fact most labels people choose to identify with now were more or less pulled out of thin air. For one thing, no one can even clearly determine when these generations begin and end. Ask five different people what years you had to be born in to qualify as a "zoomer" and you'll get five different answers.

Secondly, and this is the most important point: Say we all sit down and agree to define Gen Z as those born between 1995 and 2015. Now, would a zoomer born in 1995 have more in common with a millennial born in 1994, or a fellow zoomer who was born in 2015? To me the answer is obvious. Someone born at the beginning of a generation will have far more in common with someone born at the end of the previous generation than someone born at the end of the same generation. With that in mind, what exactly is the commonality being observed here?

The generation someone belongs to tells you as much about that person as their Myers-Briggs personality test result. It's that level of nebulous bullshittery, only one level above from grouping people based on their astrological star signs. At best it gives you an extremely broad, general idea of what they may have been influenced by growing up, but nothing that would give credence to the levels at which some people identify with and classify others based on it.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

The lore of american superheroes was always very esoteric and the MCU handholded normies to hell and back, it's hilarious to watch them in despair as all their fake nerd cred crumbles while being subject to the same sort of antics comic book readers had been experiencing for decades.

the 'lore' of Star Wars was somewhat tenuous under George Lucas, because George had a happy-go-lucky approach with writers where they could do as much as they wanted provided that:

- They abided by certain general rules established by him, one of them being that they could not write anything set during the Clone Wars, the Late Republic Years or the Early Imperial period and, naturally following that
- They should be aware that any worldbuilding made that was dependent on these aforementioed periods and characters associated was likely to be made non-canonical.

So, precisely, most of the contradictions in the old EU had to do with differences in how the writers envisioned that gap and how it influenced their respective stories, but it never really got in the way of enjoying any of the works and they were overall fairly consistent, for all its flaws.

Disney 'Canon', in contrast, is a every-man-for-himself turf war where every writer pretty much trying to overrule and overturn each other's work with the EU (Comics, Books and Vidya) systematically getting cucked by the Movies/TV Shows warring cliques.

It's also funny how the powers that be have attacked the fans for not buying their progressive product (Kathleen Kennedy apparently bashed the fans for not wanting to see the sequels), DC/Marvel have had really shite creatives whinge about fans not liking their work. I swear I've seen some of these "creatives" whine about how people just say they're gonna buy the older shit from pre-woke eras.

I mean, if you don't like the Krakoa X-Men era and haven't read the older runs, then there's a fuckton to check out that happens to be decent. Or Spider-Man. Or Batman. etc.

 

[AWizard]

nebulous

You want it to be nebulous. The cutoffs can be a little bit fuzzy but the generation themselves, the progression of technology, economics, cultural attitudes and their effects on a generation aren't arbitrary. 9/11 isn't a random date, it's a generation defining event.

Secondly, and this is the most important point: Say we all sit down and agree to define Gen Z as those born between 1995 and 2015. Now, would a zoomer born in 1995 have more in common with a millennial born in 1994, or a fellow zoomer who was born in 2015? To me the answer is obvious.

People born after '91-'93 are basically proto-zoomers, facebook popped off around 2007 and broadband was becoming cheaper and widespread enough to give a taste of anywhere anytime internet and smartphones were just around the corner. Someone born '95 would be starting their teens when the iphone 3G came out

....tells you as much about that person as their Myer.......

If you want me to say "You're not like other zoomers", here you go: You're not like other zoomers.

 

[Beautiful Border]

You want it to be nebulous. The cutoffs can be a little bit fuzzy but the generation themselves, the progression of technology, economics, cultural attitudes and their effects on a generation aren't arbitrary. 9/11 isn't a random date, it's a generation defining event.

Okay, but how much does "being able to remember the world before 9/11" actually affect someone in their day-to-day life? Enough that you can form an in-group and out-group using it as a metric?

People born after '91-'93 are basically proto-zoomers, facebook popped off around 2007 and broadband was becoming cheaper and widespread enough to give a taste of anywhere anytime internet and smartphones were just around the corner. Someone born '95 would be starting their teens when the iphone 3G came out

Again, you're stating these changes that have occurred in society, but you're not making a cogent point. We're all currently experiencing the same year, just at different stages of life. How much of the world you remember before the advent of Facebook isn't something you can define a person on, and have it define anything other than "this person remembers the world before the advent of Facebook".

These terms you're attaching great importance to were invented by marketing firms to peddle snake oil to companies who are desperate for any kind of magic formula that makes it easier to sell their products to people. "Oh, you want your product to reach young people? Well, here's how you reach "Gen Z" based on our research!". The most recent example of this that attracted a lot of attention was a study claiming that "Gen Z wants less sex in their TV shows", a conclusion they reached through the following methodology:

The new UCLA “Teens and Screens” study, conducted by the Center for Scholars & Storytellers, found that across 1,500 members of Gen Z ages 10 to 24, young people wanted more relatable stories that emphasized platonic relationships instead of sexual content. To note, only respondents age 13 to 24 were asked about intimate content.

Since when the fuck were ten year olds and twenty four year olds ever going to be interested in watching the same kind of content? Even with the qualification that only 13 years and above were asked about sexual content, the difference in taste and life experience between a thirteen and twenty four year old is still enormous. But this is the level of research that these notions of identifiable generational cohorts are founded on. This is the sort of twaddle you have to be willing to swallow to accept any of this has validity.

 

[AWizard]

Okay, but how much does "being able to remember the world before 9/11" actually affect someone in their day-to-day life?

It informs their decisions and opinions and how they react to future events, you know, what memories are for? Especially memories of a global event? Somebody who doesn't have that memory will make different decisions, have different opinions and reactions to future events.

Again, you're stating these changes that have occurred in society, but you're not making a cogent point. We're all currently experiencing the same year, just at different stages of life. How much of the world you remember before the advent of Facebook isn't something you can define a person on, and have it define anything other than "this person remembers the world before the advent of Facebook".

If you used your brain, you could infer the point.

Again, when something drastically changes the way you live, it will shape how you view the world. Being a zoom-zoom, I don't think you understand what facebook and it contemporaries did, before if you lost contact with someone after school, or if they moved to another country, or whatever caused you to lose contact, it would be a mission to find them again, if ever. Remember you only had the phone book to be able to look someone up and good luck if they moved to another country. With facebook and instant communication, this is nowhere near as hard to the point that it's changed the way we value friendships.

Example of some crappy study somehow proves that generations are completely arbitrary and not at all useful to analyse the past with.

Do you get mad when historians use historical eras to separate parts of history?

 

[Common Carp]

Yeah, it's like trying to act like every single little thing has (or needs to have) a full-fledged, Star Wars-tier fandom behind it complete with speculation, controversy, and fan theories.

I don't think it's purely the fault of things like comic books or LOTR, because those things have had huge convoluted back stories and autistic fan debates for ages. I think it's more the current media landscape as a whole, where the "franchise" format is the norm and every story is an endless sea of prequels, sequels, and spin-offs. The idea of a story being a single, limited, self-contained thing is kind of foreign to them.

I think the rise in nerd culture is most likely the factor why this obsession this with lore is a thing. The OP question isn't so much "why are zoomers addicted to lore?" and more "why are nerds addicted to lore?". Nerd shit became cool and along with that autistic lore stuff became cool. At this point I like more self contained stories.

 

[Beautiful Border]

It informs their decisions and opinions and how they react to future events, you know, what memories are for? Especially memories of a global event? Somebody who doesn't have that memory will make different decisions, have different opinions and reactions to future events.

Everyone who remembers 9/11 happening has the experience of living through 9/11 happening. That's the only substantial, concrete information you can glean from that knowledge. You can't make inferences on how that subsequently effects their decisions or their opinions other than through speculation and very broad generalizations. Zoomers are accused of not treating the subject with enough respect, yet it was the boomer Ward Churchill who came out with the infamous "chickens coming home to roost" quote.

Again, when something drastically changes the way you live, it will shape how you view the world. Being a zoom-zoom, I don't think you understand what facebook and it contemporaries did, before if you lost contact with someone after school, or if they moved to another country, or whatever caused you to lose contact, it would be a mission to find them again, if ever. Remember you only had the phone book to be able to look someone up and good luck if they moved to another country. With facebook and instant communication, this is nowhere near as hard to the point that it's changed the way we value friendships.

Do you think people who were born after the invention of Facebook aren't able to understand the basic concept of "this thing you use didn't exist at one point"? Most people are intelligent enough to realize that the world changes and evolves over time, and take that into consideration when they think about the past in relation to the present. This is what I mean when I say that the basis of generational labels is essentializing people based on the year they happened to be born in, as if a zoomer is simply incapable of imagining a world without smartphones just because the person attempting to analyze them can.

Also, using Facebook as your example actually helps my case that the time frames we use to define generations are completely arbitrary. Facebook was technically founded in 2004 but it wasn't properly open to the public until 2006. And since 1995-2015 is the rough timeframe for when zoomers were born, this places the proliferation of Facebook and Web 2.0 generally as smack-dab in the middle of that timeframe. The oldest zoomers could theoretically be ten years old and already using the Internet when Facebook first comes along, the youngest would be ten years old when Facebook is already "the old people's home" of the Internet and the big thing is TikTok. Why isn't that a distinction worth making?

Do you get mad when historians use historical eras to separate parts of history?

Apples and oranges. Historians will define eras spanning centuries, and their goal is typically to describe cultures, not people. I even anticipated you making this point, hence why I brought up Pompeii in my original post.

 

[Secret Messages]

"LOOORE GUYS WHY DO THEY LIKE LOOREEE??" it's because I have a general interest in the background of the fictions instead of just consuming.

"Lore" is interesting if it's genuine history behind the making of something/fun facts about production/deleted scenes, etc.

The zoomer idea of "Lore" is a sort of collaborative fiction, like SCP, X floor of the backrooms, or "Superman can survive being shot in the eye because (insert pseudoscientific sperging loosely based on the official intentionally vague explanation of his powers)" where individuals simply make up bullshit in-universe explanations for things in their favorite fandom properties.

This results in it just being some zoomer's fanfiction, which is an entirely different thing, and magnitudes less interesting than a genuine behind the scenes.

 

[Drain Todger]

It's not hard, guys. They're just retarded.

Spoiler: Quandale Dingle Lore (NSFW)

Spoiler: Skibidi Toilet Lore

 

[retartedconspiratard]

Because alot of them a deracinated with no sense of identity. It has become a way of talking about history and civilisation as well stuff considered forbidden such as race withoout touching the real thing.

Matt Pat and Marvel has damaged the brains of Gen Z. Everything to zoomers has secret lore even when it clearly doesn't. Even my brain has an autistic fascination with lore.

Matt Patt wiill make like 50 videos analyzing five knights at freddys that careefully looks into the gamees themselves while also making poorly researched videos that involve scientiifdically deconstructing everything like with hiis One Piece video.

 

[74164978231]

Do you think people who were born after the invention of Facebook aren't able to understand the basic concept of "this thing you use didn't exist at one point"? Most people are intelligent enough to realize that the world changes and evolves over time, and take that into consideration when they think about the past in relation to the present. This is what I mean when I say that the basis of generational labels is essentializing people based on the year they happened to be born in, as if a zoomer is simply incapable of imagining a world without smartphones just because the person attempting to analyze them can.

Considering the paradigm shift(being able to instantaneously contact anyone nearly anywhere on the planet at anytime or access nearly any piece of information at anytime) cellphones and in particular smart phones caused, you really think someone born post 2000 can imagine what its like to not have such abilities?

 

[Bionicle of War]

Once I got my bike stolen by a Dark Person. Idk how but it's probably the Hat Men's fault.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

They're spiritually dead, emotionally stunted, living in a nihilistic culture springing up from a collapsing civilization. They've replaced God with all manner of idols and seek meaning, but unfortunately they're looking in the wrong places.

The FNAF guy is actually a Christian, he should sprinkle that into his lore and covertly Bible pill his fanbase.

 

[Kiwisee]

The need to know lore goes waaaaaaaay back to the ancient Greeks, let's be real. Just look at the type of stories that they told back then, many of which have character backstories told in other tales. If you're not aware of how Heracules came to be, then you're going to be lost when you listen to the story of Troy.

I think with Zoomers, they need to know everything in autistic detail about the most background of characters because of theory YouTube channels who'd entertain such curiosities.