hey, welcome! Congrats on de-lurking, I think? I fondly remember my own teenage years of lurking online—one certainly learns a lot about the human condition.
If I was sending my 14-year-old self a time capsule of LW, it’d start with the sequences, and beyond that I’d emphasize the writings of adults examining how their own cognition works. Two reasons—first, being aware that one is living in a brain as it finishes wiring itself together is super entertaining if you’re into that kind of thing, and even more fun when you have better data to guess how it’s going to end up. (I got the gist of that from having well-educated and openminded parents, who explained that it’s prudent to hold off on recreational drug use until one’s brain is entirely done with being a kid, because most recreational substances make one’s brain temporarily more childlike in some way and the real thing is better. Now I’m in my 30s and can confirm that’s how such things, including alcohol, have worked for me)
Second, my 20s would have been much better if someone had taken kid-me aside and explained some neurodiversity stuff to her: “here’s the range of normal, here’s the degree of suffering that’s not expected nor normal and is worth consulting a professional for even if you’re managing through great effort to keep it together”, etc.
If you’d like to capitalize on your age for some free internet karma, I would personally enjoy reading your thoughts on what your peers think of technology, how they get their information, and how you’re all updating the language at the moment.
I also wish that my 14-year-old self had paid more attention to the musical trends and attempted to guess which music that was popular while I was of highschool age would stand the test of time and remain on the radio over the subsequent decades. In retrospect, I’m pretty sure I could probably have taken some decent guesses, but I didn’t so now I’ll never know whether I would have guessed right :)
I really don’t know much about popular music, but I’m guessing that music from video games is getting more popular now, because when I ask people what they are humming they usually say it’s a song from a game. But maybe those songs are just more humm-able, and the songs that I hear people humming are not a representative sample of all the songs that they listen to.
About updating the language, if you mean the abbreviations and phrases that people use in texts, I think that people do it so that they don’t sound overly formal. Sometimes writing a complete sentence in a text would be like speaking to a friend in rhyming verses.
I think the kids I know get most of their information (and opinions) from their parents, and a few things from other places to make them feel grown up (I do this too). I think that because I often hear a friend saying something and then I find out later that that is what their parents think.
hey, welcome! Congrats on de-lurking, I think? I fondly remember my own teenage years of lurking online—one certainly learns a lot about the human condition.
If I was sending my 14-year-old self a time capsule of LW, it’d start with the sequences, and beyond that I’d emphasize the writings of adults examining how their own cognition works. Two reasons—first, being aware that one is living in a brain as it finishes wiring itself together is super entertaining if you’re into that kind of thing, and even more fun when you have better data to guess how it’s going to end up. (I got the gist of that from having well-educated and openminded parents, who explained that it’s prudent to hold off on recreational drug use until one’s brain is entirely done with being a kid, because most recreational substances make one’s brain temporarily more childlike in some way and the real thing is better. Now I’m in my 30s and can confirm that’s how such things, including alcohol, have worked for me)
Second, my 20s would have been much better if someone had taken kid-me aside and explained some neurodiversity stuff to her: “here’s the range of normal, here’s the degree of suffering that’s not expected nor normal and is worth consulting a professional for even if you’re managing through great effort to keep it together”, etc.
If you’d like to capitalize on your age for some free internet karma, I would personally enjoy reading your thoughts on what your peers think of technology, how they get their information, and how you’re all updating the language at the moment.
I also wish that my 14-year-old self had paid more attention to the musical trends and attempted to guess which music that was popular while I was of highschool age would stand the test of time and remain on the radio over the subsequent decades. In retrospect, I’m pretty sure I could probably have taken some decent guesses, but I didn’t so now I’ll never know whether I would have guessed right :)
I really don’t know much about popular music, but I’m guessing that music from video games is getting more popular now, because when I ask people what they are humming they usually say it’s a song from a game. But maybe those songs are just more humm-able, and the songs that I hear people humming are not a representative sample of all the songs that they listen to.
About updating the language, if you mean the abbreviations and phrases that people use in texts, I think that people do it so that they don’t sound overly formal. Sometimes writing a complete sentence in a text would be like speaking to a friend in rhyming verses.
I think the kids I know get most of their information (and opinions) from their parents, and a few things from other places to make them feel grown up (I do this too). I think that because I often hear a friend saying something and then I find out later that that is what their parents think.
(sorry it took me so long to respond)