You may probably have noticed too how the Internet is eroding mental capacities of the Gen-Z and the Gen-Alpha.
The content they have been binging on social media is turning them into zombie like dinosaurs behaving in a destructive manner that suggest they could be losing their mental faculties.
Could it be an addiction to sleazy and useless content impeding their memory and intellect capacities’ growth?
What is really happening? This discussion paper investigates a new trend of these two generations seeking and establishing a comfort zone with trivialities, overdependence, easy living and impromptu slurs as an exigent import to demonstrate elusive empowerment and growth.
Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha are generations born and groomed on the thick and thin of smartphone and social media blitz, and have become the largest genre of consumers of low value social media content.
It is now internalised as a way of identifying themselves of who they are! Under normal circumstances “brain rot” is supposed to come with a huge punch of stigma but to them it is a signature of unfounded maturity, vacuous independence and swashbuckling daredevil demeanour.
If you have been gorging Kenyan content, lately, in the Tiktok you may have seen the smartphone generation trolling their political leaders has become a national fascination and a source of skewed pride and satisfaction!
Any Kenyan politician they dislike, this unruly generation that is mostly unemployed or underemployed has found a way to puke its catharsis in a manner that belittles their leaders.
It is now a common feature to see one of their leaders depicted sleeping in a casket or dead with dirges accompanying the video as a way of wishing the ominous hoaxes bad karma.
That inimical trend has also shifted gears to include other East African leaders whom the smartphone generations disapprove of their conduct.
Understandably, that kind of false and demeaning portrayal of their leaders take concerted time to forge, risk reprisals and does not solve the perpetrators’ immediate problems which essentially are joblessness and the painful poverty it inflicts.
Kenyan politicians who on the campaign trail were marketing themselves and bragging as the digital generation have been caught napping.
The politicians have been breathing fire with abductions, torture and untimely murders allegations keeping stalking and haunting them like an armed man. Nobody in the political class has figured out what is the root cause of a problem and how to apprehend it
“Brain rot” defined.
Human brain like any other organ obeys this universal principle: “use it or lose it.” As a human brain is addicted to matters that could be seductive, humorous or nasty but manifests no monetary value to life, some parts of the brain begin to emasculate.
And, as the more the victim persists in a mental dysfunctional mode he switches to a comfort zone that refuses to challenge the unhealthy behaviour, and a defeatist code of conduct is stratified and predicated as a way of life.
Since social media has its own kings and queens then individual habits are molded by mentors there. Over time, the victims begin to behave as robots or like wildebeest.
In fact, they become like wild animals feasting on junkies and become enslaved by them.
Aping mentors who morph as celebrity worship sustain a prodigious escapology that is tough to shake off once assimilated into the mind and heart.
New set of values is adopted and envisions an extravagant dream to aspire and realize in concrete terms whether by hooks or by crooks.
Over time, serious matters are shunned as inconsequential and deception, lies, slurs and misinformation are widely embraced as the real thing and a way forward with almost no guardrails to counter a moral slide into oblivion and self destruction.
A sense of hopelessness and insecurities it afflicts pushes the affected person to pursue incalculable risks that pose life threatening circumstances to himself and those closer to him.
These two generations as they gobble on more content of low quality their own lives begin to mimic what dominates their thoughts on their hearts. They begin to think and behave in a compromising way that is perilous to their own survival.
One of the ingrained habit is to detest and eschew gainful employment.
The excuse turns out to be it is not well paying. Little considerable is taken to whatever lifestyle they are enjoying is an upshot of what they look down upon.
This group tend to sponge parents, relatives and wellwishers to stay afloat. Some have sink on criminality with devastating demise.
Some have hooked up with international criminal gangs to laundering ill-gotten cryptos a forlorn hope of getting it big.
Once the bootleg was placed into their accounts they were supposed to convert it into greenbacks and return it to falsified accounts of the senders but greed took the better part of them.
Before they knew it, they bought fancy cars, houses, hook up with their dream dates and spiel their newfound wealth online to impress on their social media followers that they have broken the yoke of poverty.
The international criminal rings once they knew they have been scammed waste no time to hire hitmen who corner the “bling-bling” generation into their blood curdling deaths.
Another class of this smartphone generations has turned into marketing their own flesh wares without knowing the Internet is inundated with criminals who may prey on them, guiding them to their untimely deaths.
Cases of hooking up with foreigners and getting an online groom or bridegroom are growing with horrific results.
Some end up dead with their internal body harvested.
Some just disappear without a trace while a few of them still survive their ordeals. Efforts to find quick big bucks is linked to eschewing hard work, patience and development of character.
Easier way out to filthy riches is preferred to evade the hassles of daily struggles.
Of more concern, the smartphone generation flounders to exploit opportunities the Internet is presenting to them.
When well used the Internet can be a source of reasonable money minting opportunities but it demands grit, consistency, discipline and hard work. Nothing good comes in a silver platter. Good stuff are earned, not spoon-fed or stolen from others.
With those in public liffe receiving the scissors my advice to them: grow up.
The information age can only get nastier once this smartphone generation has mastered the skills of deep fake. It is gonna get really demonic.
We should prepare ourselves with deep–fake hard-core pornographic content being displayed in the social media which looks real but it is not.
No legislative or enforcement effort will be able to thwart what is coming.
Learning to live with humility rather than seeking retribution is the best way to enervate the wickedness that is about to unleash.
Where we are going identities will be forged and what we think we recognize could also be an outright lie.
Voices and personality will be copied, pasted and breathed life into them in a manner that an average person will be convinced it is reality show while in fact it is all fake!
Such sad situations wipe out the victims’ social standing, reputation and character in a manner that os almost impossible to restore. It will take time before we are able to discern fake from real.
Have you met a smartphone junkie who is brain rot, and how are you planning to restore his sanity before hell can break lose?
One way of aiding them to free themselves from the addiction of junkie content is to ensure overdependence is not entertained under any circumstance or we may be the ones who are bankrolling this mental sickness.
We could also pay a price apart from the regular handouts we dish out knowing a number of family related murders is picking up steam.
Fomenting the criminality is the desire of the smartphone lost generation to own wealth belonging to their parents or peers since they cannot create it themselves but still want to keep up the appearance of “we have arrived “undeterred.
We could be part or solution but we can also choose to be part of a problem through our inaction and acting as wilful accomplices and perpetrators of these seemly white collar crimes.
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