Internet Brain Rot: Groupthink in the Gen Z community and subjects related to the consequence of being chronically online

Community is best interpreted as groups of people with a common interest, goal, or some other unifying factor. 

When I consider the communities I am a part of, I largely focus on people within my age group. Regardless of whatever labels I apply to myself.

    Being born in Generation Z during the age of the internet means that most of us relate with others who grew up with the same access to millions of sites filled with information, right at our fingertips. Aside from just accessing these sites, we can also instantly communicate with anyone in the world with a few clicks. Our ability to spread messages at a moment's notice is why the issue I'd like to focus on within my community, is GroupThink. 

Groupthink is a phenomenon in which a group of people desires harmony or conformity. This desire results in irrational or dysfunctional decision-making. A place I find groupthink to be more prevalent is on social media. Whether it be Facebook, Twitter, or TikTok, it has become extremely common for the youth to set aside personal beliefs in order to adopt the opinion of the majority. As for those left on the other side of the field, most can expect to be confronted with disapproval or rejection [cancel culture]. 

Furthermore, my reasoning for picking GroupThink as a conflict is because I've noticed it's present in all the other communities I feel I'm a member of ( social media user, woman, black, Hispanic, gamer, etc.). While there are separate issues within the communities like misogyny or racism, our responses to them qualify as groupthink just the same. For example, on the subject of racism, the perceived consensus online is that you're allowed to say a slur if it applies to yourself or your community, regardless of if saying a slur, in general, is right or wrong. If I were to write about this subject (or the following ones I suppose), I would mention something about how it's an effect of being chronically online.  

 

 

    Aside from groupthink as a subject, another topic I'm considering would follow in the direction of my last example. To give it a term, I'd refer to it as casual racism. I've noticed that it's fairly common for people to turn to racism either because to their group, its 'comedic' or they use it in retaliation towards a group they feel you 'can't be racist towards'. For example, I've seen a lot of people of color berate white people because they have the belief that 'you can't oppress the oppressor'. Or, they claim that you can only be prejudice towards white people, but not 'racist' (despite these words being synonyms).  I suppose this subject would also bleed into the idea of people changing definitions of words and the danger of that kind of rhetoric. Additionally, this can be expanded into the topic of white guilt, new-age segregation (POC communities wanting to create "POC only spaces"), or if there is such thing as a "racial preference" when dating.

    My last idea for a subject is toxicity towards women online and the "pick-me" phenomenon. Whenever I use my mic on a game online, 9/10 times someone will make a comment about me being a woman. On occasion, it's a "nice" comment ("omg a girl!!"- even though it's not very nice being objectified) or a rude one (girls can't play video games, go to the kitchen, etc.). Within this, there are also girls who will pander to these type of men and berate other girls they come across to gain favor or be viewed as 'cool' and 'different' ("The girl who can take a joke"). This subject would be easiest to write about as a woman who has experienced online harassment but there's only so much you can comment about.  By this I mean, the perspective is very one dimensional in comparison to the other subjects. Obviously, we know being sexist is bad.