>>18660902
>“Chronically online” never had an entirely positive reputation, but it was once relatable. We’d refer to ourselves as “chronically online” the same way we’d call ourselves “chaotic” or “bad at texting.” There was a unity in being overly plugged in. We were cute little messes with heads full of memes.

>But in 2026, something shifted. The shift had been happening for some time, actually, but New Years gave the world a chance to formally verbalize it: Now, we’re all going offline. Whether it’s thanks to tools like Brick, analog hobbies, or simply because being online sucks now, our lack of screen time is a new social indicator.

>It wasn’t until my friend texted me this last week that I realized: If getting offline is now aspirational, then staying online is now…trashy.

>>18660902
I can't wait until being chronically online is considered to be similar to being a degenerate drug addict.

>>18660944
sounds like it's already starting

>>18660944
You realize you’re posting on a dead anime fashion board right?

>>18660902
>>>/soc/ retard

>>18661024
/soc/ doesn't cover what is fashionable and effay and practiced by the fashion elite trendsetters retard

>>18661065
/soc/ is also full of criminal activity spam now.

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>>18660902
I know someone who pretends to be offline but it's obviously bullshit it's very cringe. Almost everyone is terminally online, and those who aren't still know what's happening online because everyone else is online. It's just a cringe, uncool, sick, sad world and there is nothing we can do to counteract it. Your politicians make policy decisions based on internet trends, the richest man in the world spends 90% of his time tweeting, Olympic athletes watch anime, and Hollywood stars brag about being obsessed with World of Warcraft.
In 2026, everyone's a loser.

>>18661336
Anime can be good and is similar to any other form of video entertainment. WoW if fun for most, don’t pretend it hasn’t been. The world just wasn’t as connected so people weren’t aware it existed. Agree that the president tweeting is cringe, but that’s because him and Elon are cringe in general. All politicians are embarrassing pedos. No exceptions. I’m glad we’re entering the age of the mass loser nooticing. Everyone now gets to experience what us “weebs” did during gamergate in 2012. It’s real you normie favgots. Graphene Jewish pedo lazer surveillance system isn’t the future. YOU'RE LIVING IT.

>>18660902
>now

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>>18661336
>everyone is online
which makes being offline a high status niche luxury flex. you'd know this if you weren't late majority

>>18661336
>normie
>normie
>normie
>okay
>okay

>>18661007
Did I ever claim I'm sane??? I don't want the entire world to be insane with me. Normies should go back to being normies.

>>18660902
>woman mad a guy dumped her to shitpost

>>18661399
we are post-offline luxury flexing online 3.0 vanguards. it's gone full circle again and sadly you are actually an offline luxury laggard

>>18661847
nah cope harder gooy goy screencuck keep slurping the screenslop

>>18661336
My favourite anime is "Bride of Charlie" by Candace Owens.

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>>18660902
I will say that the way that smartphones have consolidated so much of our tech into one uniform device has definitely removed a lot of range in how those formerly individual devices could look, be customized, and add to ones outfit.
whats the point of carrying a bag if everything you need is practically contained within one device?
whats the point of lots of pockets if you only need one to contain your smartphone, and maybe another for a small wallet? and if a wallets pretty much optional, why wear a wallet-chain, like a biker or zoot suiter might do? why even wear a watch on your wrist, let alone chained to a waistcoat button?

once upon a time you could clip vinyl charms to a flip-phone, and that was fashion for teens at a time where teens actually went outside and didn't have to worry about perpetual decentralized surveillance by everyone else carrying a camera in their pocket, back when teenagers actually had places to go and be.
Now? the best you can do is decorate your room and desktop PC (if you even have that) with custom keyboards and stickers and shit like that, because thats where you spend all your time anyway, wearing fuck all but sweats and hoodies and rubber slides, so you might as well.

>>18660902
Hasn't it always been more or less?

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>>18663064
its also worth mentioning, that with the internet, formerly a "place" in itself, limited to the confines of a desktop screen, expanding to every corner of the world in which people exist, its collapsed and diluted the seperate, distinct "placeness" of every real life place, private homes, public streets, parties, venues, cafes, beachsides, everything which once had meaning in the limitations of what you could see and do there has been diluted by the internet as a placeless* parallel dimension that can be accessed at anytime from anywhere.

And with that, so to has the specialness and purpose of clothing and fashion in relation to those places been rendered ungrounded, hyperreal, and placeless. Not just in what is worn and where, but also in how its sort of homogenized how people dress. Because when everybody gets their inspiration from the same placeless ether, then fashion loses all sense of locale. and thats not even getting into online shopping and worldwide shipping.
of course, this isn't all bad, now anyone can find a style that feels truly theirs, but it will all too often be on account of an identity that is itself also more influenced by the internet and media than their surrounding material reality, lacking diagesis. I should know as much, it happened to me.

*the internet was always a bit placeless, but at least it could once be understood as a series of places, with their own people, own culture, own purpose. Now we all just use the same few social medias, where there are barely defined boundaries in which digital social spaces can cleanly exist, only emergent "simclusters" loosely held together by algorithmic personalization, which get thinner and thinner each year. Have you ever watched a cell die? the membrane is always the first to go, and then everything dissolves as a matter of course. thats where we are all headed, culturally, if things don't change.

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>>18663074
>>18663064
https://default.blog/p/gen-z-lives-in-the-archive

this article covers this in more detail:

>We think of time as being continuous, as involving one event following naturally, causally after a preceding event. But living within the digital archive disintegrates our basic, linear perception of time. Since every era is equally available, and all events are potentially happening at the same time, the chain of causality and influence breaks down completely. We think of musicians, artists, writers, and filmmakers as responding to those who came before them, generationally.

>But Gen Z doesn’t experience cultural time this way. They’re reacting to everything that has ever happened. Which is impossible to actually do. On the one hand, it might make you more cosmopolitan (though this is hard to do without a guide to help develop your critical intelligence). But, on the other, it ruins your ability to assimilate anything and reduces you to a quivering lump of uncertainties. It also reduces your own ability to create because your response to life becomes so indeterminate. You can’t figure out what to respond to.

>In Plato’s dialogue, “Ion,” he describes how inspiration works: the first poet was inspired directly by the muse, like an iron filling attached to a lodestone. The subsequent generations of poets are like iron fillings attached to that first filling. The force of inspiration is still present, but it is exerted indirectly and weakens with every generation. Thus, the influence of the original impetus wanes until, presumably, we culturally reset and reconnect to the magnetic source directly. Gen Z finds itself in a state in which the fillings have all been scattered on the ground, perhaps experiencing some ambient attraction from the lodestone, but unable to really connect with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwbE9-gW1Fg

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>>18663221
>>18663074
>>18663064
As someone who legitimately barely uses social media anymore and spends my weekends going out without my phone, I'm glad I picked my path the way I did. A lot of Gen Z's aimlessness is self-induced by way of their feed making various things seem bigger than they are, feeling more "worldly", but ironically never actually knowing what their immediate surroundings are like. Nearly fell over when I heard about fashion "microtrends", some sick shit, I tell you.

Online shopping never really clicked with me either, tangentially speaking. I just look up what I'm interested in, see if there's any store like that nearby, and go there to try stuff on.