The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Have any of you noticed the "Lookism" trend gaining in prominence? Motte is likely mid 20s at youngest, but apparently an insane emphasis on looks for both men and women is now standard among Late Gen-Z. Terms like "canthal tilt" and maxillo-squillo-I-don't-fucking-know have flown out of 19th century physiognomy handbooks and into TikTok feeds. High schoolers apparently use words like mogging and looksmaxxing now on a regular basis. The youth are approaching S. Korea-levels of fixation on bone placement, skin quality, eye-squintiness and height.
Two thoughts:
(1) Getting older is weird. Seeing tiny little currents that flowed beneath the surface in your own adolescence blow up to become tidal waves years later. It's like how the beatniks presaged the hippies, or like how the late-80s Seattle scene probably felt when grunge blew up. Another current example is the increased popularity of specific anime like Nichijou, Lucky Star, and S.E. Lain among late Gen-Z. These shows always had an audience, but the fact they're so popular now seems to mean something. Baton-passing is guaranteed with any popular-enough media, but increased popularity for an old thing tells you something about the new generation. Maybe it's trite and mundane, but it will always tells you something.
(2) This is awful. Morality aside, you could pick any trait of yours from a hat, and it would be more open to modification than your looks. By that same token, even attractive people aren't happy with their looks. It's all fun and games up until around 25, then it's a real fight to preserve what you have -- new exercise routines, new clothing, new cosmetics. You spend years cultivating your outward self and neglecting your inward self, so when you "hit the wall" it's a double tragedy because you have little else to offer the world. Many beautiful women struggle through this process and have their ego shattered, but come out the other side as excellent people as Ben Franklin points out. If guys are getting in on this too, I honestly see it as a generation-wide tragedy. This is a giant arrow pointing away from what actually matters in life, it only benefits 20% of people, it's long-term untenable for 100% of people, and it's happened before. Perhaps genetic engineering should take us in the other direction instead -- so that no one is too attractive, and instead of mewing and bone-smashing we'd be cultivating virtue and writing proofs. Or we can stop acting like jackasses and realize looks are a small part of life. That works too.
I take everything from Gen Z with a grain of salt. I'm sure there are some people that believe these things but I really think it's all just irony and post-irony all the way down. Just replace sarcastic with ironic here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=udJw-CzX7sA
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link