Hasn't happened yet

Translation: you'll become more conservative when you have children and own a home
Millennials: 😆
Zoomers: 😂
Alpha: 🤣
Whateverthefuckcomesnext: 💀
- own a home
  Too bad boomers ruined my best chance at that.
- I have a child and own a home, and am a member of the lost generation. Fuck the Republican Party and any conservative who believes their selfish bullshit should outweigh the greater good of others.
  
  Republicans are fascists, not conservatives.
  Democrats are the conservative party.
  
  I agree with everything you said except, im confused about the use of the term lost generation. That’s a generation born in the 1880-1900s.
- I've been fortunate enough to have seen my material conditions improve as I've entered my mid-thirties which has let me start a family and buy a home. I've also watched my incredibly talented and hard working friends/acquaintances/neighbours be ground into dust under the cruel rule of capitalism. I got lucky, they didn't, this has radicalized me far more than any naive idealism ever could.
  
  Exactly this. I'm fortunate enough that the skills I'm good at have a lot of demand at the moment, but people I know that are more hard working than I am and very talented, struggle to get by just because their job for some reason is considered less worthy to pay for.
  Wanting to maintain this rotten system is the purest form of greed.
- Having to mow the lawn is the first step in the pipeline of fascism
  
  Everyone knows it's a gateway chore
  
  You joke, but if you ever talked to a homeowner about their lawn and heard them complain about their neighbor's lawn...
- Wait is Alpha the next generation's name after Zoomers?
  
  Yeah, for now. That might change. Millennial was originally Gen Y.
- Which is weird since conservative politics is all about cutting funds for schools, gutting the department of education completely, no pre k or free lunches for kids, and getting rid of a large portion of our law enforcement. Just doesn't make sense why any one who cares about education or safety would be conservative
  
  Then why conservative when they actively hate children and society in general? It seems insane to lean that way.
  
  Economic issues always come down to economic incentives. You care about property values because your home is an investment. You care about stocks because you have a retirement plan. You care about not being a burden on your children when you're old and having inheritance to leave behind when you die. You care about crime because you have things to steal and a life to lose.
  I don't have property. I will never retire. I will never have children. I am nothing and no one and that will never change.
  When I was younger I was a pretty typical liberal. By 30 I was a Marxist-Leninist and desired nothing but the complete destruction of the demon shithole country called Amerikkka. 😘
  
  I care about schools. I want them to be free and public.
  I care about crime. I want to abolish the police and use that money to on social safety net programs including healthcare, social workers, housing, and more which is proven to reduce crime.
  I care about children. I want paid parental leave for both parents, guaranteed job return, free childcare, free healthcare for children, and a monthly check for groceries.
  Conservatives want none of that, and actively work against every point. Centre/centre-left only want some of that performatively and will undermine any implementation of these programs. The only people working for this are the "hard left." And because of decades of anti-communist propaganda, no one will touch it.
  The only reason I can think of to be conservative and "socially liberal" is to protect your own capital at the expense of others while not wanting to feel bad about doing it.
  
  Not in my case. I grew up pretty conservative she moved right libertarian until learning economics in college which moved me left. I bought a home and have two kids and am squarely on the left. I care about schools and crime which is why I want more funding for education and programs that actually decrease crime.
  Healthcare is the big one for me. We should not be forking over 20% of our paychecks for healthcare. People on the right are fucking nuts to believe that the cost is because of too much regulation considering we have the least regulation and pay twice as much with now limited options. We need Medicare for All.

I have heard this my entire life and now that I recently have kids and a home, I find it to be an insane take. If anything, the greater my knowledge of the world becomes the MORE liberal I am. I'm significantly more aware of rigged systems and injustice as I age.
- Reality has a liberal bias.

In order to be conservative you have to be afraid, irrationally. Afraid your guns will be taken, afraid the gays are going to out-breed you (not even kidding, they really "think" that), afraid what you want won't be what everyone does, afraid other people are smarter or more capable, afraid that when you die you won't get magicked somewhere to live forever. Basically afraid of everything whether it makes any sense or not. And afraid someone else will find out how afraid you are all the time.
They're pathetic and not fit to walk a dog much less run anything.
- A lot of that specific brand of conservatism is very American. While everywhere has conservatives, and I totally agree they're build on a foundation of personal fear, they have very different presentations in different places!
  
  Yet they are fools everywhere. I can confirm for Germany, bunch of anti-science idiots who make my blood boil.
- afraid the gays are going to out-breed you (not even kidding, they really “think” that)
  Do, uh, do they understand how reproduction works, or…?
  afraid what you want won’t be what everyone does, afraid other people are smarter or more capable
  Well, yeah, that's almost certainly true.
  afraid that when you die you won’t get magicked somewhere to live forever.
  Atheists would say that's true too.

My old man has told me this my whole life and I always tell him no, because I'm not a cunt. 42yo so far and still going strong.
- I'm more conservative than a lot of people here, but no, I'll never be a religious nut cheering on death. If that's conservative they can keep it.

I was actually more right wing as a kid. Now that I've learned some things about the world that's when I became a left leaning liberal.
- Went from voting far right in 2017 (fucking welfare abusers ) to far left in 2022 (fuckibg corporations costing three times more than welfare) kek
  
  greatest comeback
- liberal
  Don’t stop there… commit fully to the dark side
- I'm at a pretty low level of rightishness, but I fluctuate a bit. I've been socially left since my late teens and sort of homeless but libertarian economically. My personal ethics are definitely closer to some left-lib ideologies.
  I'm really uncomfortable with subjective categories. My brain wants objective lines. I'm also extra empathetic. Working out a personal philosophy that fits both is kind of time consuming, but worth it because my brain really likes objective lines.
- I feel that. I was raised in a religious household and had some weird beliefs, but time and education has made me a communist.
- If you make sure that you never ever stop learning and that there is never an end to the process you will eventually go further.
  Don't stop.
  
  I will never stop learning. This is actually something I admire my parents in. They never stop learning new things

Boomers got more conservative as they grew older because they've been eating shovels of propaganda since reagan and never learned how to fact check like younger generations
- Don’t forget the leaded gas fumes and rampant racism!
- Don't belive everything you read online, kids!
  Proceeds to freebase Facebook conspiracism like it's the 70's again

I remember a high school friend's father saying something to me like, "You'll get more conservative when you start paying taxes." This was around 1993-1994 or so.
I'm 45 now, modestly wealthy, and pay plenty of taxes. I can't envision ever voting for a Republican for any public office ever again...and the current circus of bullshit around TFG just seals that deal for me.
- Same (though not American). I did the opposite. I started off conservative cause that's what my family and community was. Then found out that was hateful bullshit and am now extremely progressive. I'm happy to pay my taxes (and I pay waaaay more than average). I do sometimes wish they went to better things and weren't squandered as often (especially on MPs paying for $16 glasses of orange juice), but overall Canada does a decent job at using its taxes. It's impossible for taxes to go to 100% agreeable things, since there's no satisfying everyone. They're ultimately a net benefit.
  I also don't have kids but am happy to see kids get the benefits of my taxes (and many other things taxes go to that don't directly benefit me). People who expect tax dollars to always benefit them are selfish and narrow-minded, which I think is the root reason some people don't like taxes.
- Even if conservatives go back to being about "small government", I can't see myself voting Republican. I don't think I'm anything. I can see "small government" working. But I can also see the democrats vision of "government should do things" working too. I can see either technique working. The problem is, back when Republicans used to promote "small government", I noticed after a while, they never made government smaller. When I confronted some of them on that, they used to say at least its not as big as what the democrats want. What the fuck does that even mean? Democrats, on the other hand, actually try to do stuff.
  
  They want small government for the rich and big government for anyone that's not a conservative pentecostal Christian. Simple. Lol

The older I get, the more liberal I get.
- Just turned 38 and from an ultra conservative household, every since I broke the indoctrination I've just gotten more and more liberal
  
  Literally the story of my life, without the ultra part. They were evangelicals, however.
- Same. I'm almost 42 and I've never been more liberal.
  
  Mid-40’s, same.
  
  49 here. Liberal AF.
- Same. Only getting more and more liberal as I get older.

The older I get the more injustice I see the angrier I get. The only difference between now and my twenties is I know who to direct my rage at and it burns hotter then ever.

GenXer. I've gotten more progressive. I used to consider myself a moderate dem back in the 90s. On the other hand, the 90s moderate dem is now considered a commie woke libtard, so shrug? Shocking that I want justice for all, fair wages, end systemic racism, end homophobia, etc. So librul! I'm destroying Western society! Oh wait, I'm a POC immigrant woman, course I'm destroying America!
- This is the woke agenda smh my head

Been forever since I've got to bust this one out
But also, obligatory Plane Picture
- It’s a famous example of survivorship bias. The idea is, adding armor to planes make them heavier, so you want to minimize where you put armor. After some flights, you take note of where the bullet holes are in the planes that come back.
  Where do you put more armor? Do you put it where there are the most bullet holes? That seems to be where the planes are being shot the most.
  The problem is, your sample isn’t representative of your underlying population. These are the planes that came back. If they get shot it the cockpit, they die.
  So, where should you put the armor? Well if they can get shot and come back, it’s not all that important, so put it everywhere else.
  
  During WW2, the Allies wanted to armor their planes better so more would survive missions. But armor is expensive and heavy so you'd have to prioritize where to put it.
  So they go out and collect data on the returning planes to see where they'd been hit. That picture is basically the data collected: where returning planes had sustained the most damage.
  So most of the engineers looked at that and went "Aha, the points with the most damage should be armored, since they get shredded up pretty good."
  And one engineer went "Um actually, if they got shot there and came back, armor doesn't matter. We need to armor the spots with no bullet holes, since a plane shot there wasn't able to return."
  And so it was, and they called it Survivor Bias.
  In this case, it's survivor bias about becoming more conservative as you age
  
  Survivorship bias.
  
  I think it's the most common places that the planes got hit when returning back to base during WW2, it's most commonly used when discussing survivorship bias. Which I believe is their intent with said picture.

I hate it when boomers, specifically, say this. My grandfather, who is Silent Generation, will tell you that he’s gotten more liberal as he’s gotten older. Whenever I hear a boomer say this, it’s used as a shaming, like “you don’t understand now but you will when you’re older”. Turns out I haven’t gotten more conservative. I listened to minority populations and then came out and it’s turned me more leftist.
- Boomers, in general, are a generation of spoiled children that, for the most part, have never seen the true hardships of any other generation. "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times." Boomers are the weak men that created hard times for the following generations, yet they keep living and consuming as if our world wasn't dying. "Fuck you, got mine" I guess.
- Yeah, same. It's also part of their mindset that "progressive = immature" which I've always found really confusing.
  Yes, the idea that my taxes should be spent for the benefit of all is immature. Gotcha.

I've gained empathy as I've gotten older. The literal opposite of conservatives

Young people tend to be more persuadable before 30, and tend to bake in their political views around that age. So big events in one's 20's tend to lead to lasting partisan affiliations for life after that.
FDR's presidency won over a lot of people to the Democrats in the 30's and 40's. Eisenhower's presidency shifted people over to Republicans in the 50's. Nixon pushed people away from Republicans. But by the 70's Democrats were losing a lot of voters, and then Reagan won a bunch of people over to the GOP. Then 9/11 won people over to Republicans, while the Iraq war pushed them away.
But each of these things had an outsized effect on those under 30. So Boomers who remember getting fed up with Democrats in the 70s and crossing over for Reagan (and then voting Republican in every election since) just thought it was the effect of age, rather than the effect of that particular political moment in 1980.
And even though this data and the analysis is mainly for Americans, it's probably reflective of how people shape their own political beliefs everywhere.
- That's probably true.. It would be nice if people would voluntarily read books at all ages and get educated so that they can have actual political beliefs instead of 'x party good, y party bad'

That might have been true decades ago, but now people have:
Greater access to knowledge, and are forced to think more critically about what they consume.
More extreme views, which picks off the weak.
Most importantly, older people had stuff. They owned houses, had stable, life-long careers, and had settled down before they hit their thirties.
People in their mid to late thirties nowadays might have a fancier job title, but many of them are still struggling like they were before. It's hard to be protectionist when you have nothing but your life to protect...
- Add Less Lead Exposure. Empathy is a function of the brain and lead damages it.
- I think it's your third point, mostly. Maybe even as sharply stated as: boomers became more conservative as the system and status quo brought them wealth, comfort, and security, so naturally they wanted to keep that going. For the generations that have followed, the system and status quo have only continued to bring those benefits to the boomers, not to them, so they're less likely to trend conservative to perpetuate a system that has failed them.
  Additionally, in the years since the boomers came of age, the political right has moved away from a traditional conservative platform to a very extreme and hateful version of itself. Even if many millennials had shifted slightly to the right as they aged, the party typically associated with conservatism has moved so much farther to the right that even with their gradual shift, these millennials are still far closer to the left, or at least to "not whatever the right is saying".
- More people become conservative when they have something to lose. Why would you want to conserve a status quo where you don't own anything of substance and probably never will?
- while the last point is perhaps the main determinant theory behind why many older people are not being owing more right wing, I'm a little confused by your first two points.
  especially the fact that people have greater access to knowledge and are forced to think more critically. if anything, with the advent of the internet, echo chambers have never been easier, preventing critical thinking. this leads to a growing of extreme positions which further reinforces such views due to tribalistic fallacies in our thinking and the need for these tribal identities to distinguish themselves.
  
  I think it also depends on whether or not they were provided the education to use the internet well. If all people get is a vague "have at 'er!", of course we would have more echo chambers. Ever hear the saying "don't believe everything you read online?"
  Properly teaching people how to verify their information sources and how to reflect on things would probably result in fewer echo chambers. "Huh. I don't want to keep looking like a fool who spreads obviously false things around."
  There's also internal bias to think about here. If someone is already dead-set in believing only their current mindset, they're likely not going to be open to other sources. Instead, they're probably going to search for whatever will back up their claim. People don't usually try to prove themselves wrong in an argument.
  This means that part of getting rid of echo chambers will also be teaching people to accept and acknowledge their own errors. We should be teaching people to go for the best answer, not to just prove themselves right. In this way, this problem also preceeds the internet. That mindset has hindered science for literal centuries. It even goes back to the first days of science in Greece. (Thanks for that attempted halt of progress, religion.)
  It's easier to blame the internet than the people doing these things. Sadly though, it's in human nature.
- I also think having kids has an impact, which we're not doing as much.
  
  My kids made me more liberal....our conservative government cut property taxes to starve our public education system, I donated most of the rebate to my kids school, some of it went into their education fund.
  People who aren't as fortunate as we are, deserve the same opportunities we have when it comes to public services.
- That's very true. could you explain your statement about "picks off the weak"?

Eat the rich at any age

The older phrase used to be "You become more right wing when you get older", whereas it's quite likely it was missing the specific cause, which was "You become more right wing when you stop learning". [Edit] Typo
- That's an interesting thought actually. Makes sense

My afternoons at 18: sips tea reading Noam Chomsky’s Failed State
My afternoons at 30: sips vodka reading Unabomber’s Manifesto
- Ted started off as a smart guy, but the MKULTRA abuse he experienced left him with a broken ideology.
  Many parts of his manifesto are problematic, and I hope people don't think it's good theory.
  Some excerpts:
  The leftist is antagonistic to the concept of competition because, deep inside, he feels like a loser.
  The leftist seeks to satisfy his feeling of inferiority by cultivating attitudes of superiority. He is not the only one to do this, but he is the one who goes furthest in this direction.
  Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong, good, and successful.
  The leftist is not typically the kind of person whose feelings of inferiority make him a braggart, an egotist, a bully, a self-promoter, a ruthless competitor. This kind of person is too eager to seize the initiative and too insensitive to feel guilty for his aggression. The leftist is as prone to manipulating others as the more right-wing person, but his main goal is to avoid straining his own conscience.
  Ted also has some jabs at reactionaries, but he's not a leftist for sure. There's better literature out there, from an actual leftist perspective that people could be reading instead.
  
  I think he committed the error of giving a political attribute to a certain cathegory of people.
  In those excerpt, if you switch "leftist" with "twitter social justice warrior" you can feel who really he is mad at.
- Um, ok. Please don't murder a lot of innocent people?
  
  Ok, just a couple of guilty ones then
  Edit: oh I almost forgot
  /s
  I don't want Secret Services rifling through my stuff because some of you don't have the ingenuity to tell this was a joke
  
  He was preaching in his manifesto, it's unbelievably based.
  It'd be Walden 2 Das kapital returns if it weren't for him trying to blow up random people.
- That escalated quickly!!!
  
  I don't know if 12 years qualifies as "quickly", but it escalated for sure

social democrat me in my early 20s

communist me in my early 40s
- I was worried my scrolling thumb was going to atrophy. This comment prevented that, thanks!
  
  Also WTF does this mean? First image "evil looking asshole male" second image: "also evil asshole but female this time"

Subtext here is that white boomers became more conservative because the civil rights movement made them miss Jim Crow

41, stable finances, kid, decent job, and still BETTER DEAD THAN RED!
And just to be 100% clear, since I know that phrase meant something completely different 50 years ago, Republicans can get ass-fucked with a spoon

You become conservative when you lose ability to adapt and learn, thereby yearning for the days when you were you were younger and, as you mostly falsely remember, "times were simpler", which is a delusion caused by the different lifestyle and world perception you used to have. Now you're just older and scared because you forgot to keep up with the times.

The older I get, the more socialist I become.

51, still not a conservative

That's only if your wealth increases with age. If you had nothing in your 20s and still have nothing in your 30s and 40s, you'd stay mad
- I'm 44 and my wealth has increased a lot with age, but I still understand I'm financially closer to a homeless crackhead than I am to someone like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. I'm more mad than ever because I see how badly most people are getting fucked. And the whole destroying the planet for profit thing.
- Fury is my only policy.

Again, this is not a boomer issue. I was told the same thing by Silents. I've only moved left-er.
- The difference between you and others your age that didn't move left is likely material conditions. Those that got it reasonably good likely feel like capitalism worked for them so it should work for everyone. Property inheritance also plays a significant role.

"people get more selfish and small minded as they age, that's just a fact!"

My friends who have kids now did become more conservative. But most of them are very religious and grew up going to church every Sunday. So... I think they might have had a certain influence.
- After I had kids I found Satanism and became a communist. I have no idea what your friends are doing but they're doing it wrong.
- I'd guess those friends were always that conservative, it's just that now they have less energy and incentive to tone it down around friends...combined with having more to lose now.

First there would need to be something worth conserving.

People become more conservative once they actually accumulate wealth that they can use, and don't want policies passed that will reduce that wealth.
Millennials and younger generations have not the opportunity to generate the same amount of wealth by their 30's or even their 40's as Boomers had.
Therefore leftism and liberalism will be more predominant in these younger generations.
- Anecdotal, but me (millennial), my boomer parents, and a number of my friends have been fortunate enough to collect varying levels of wealth. Almost all of us are relatively more progressive than 10-20 years ago.
  Doesn't help that the conservative party in my country has gone batshit crazy.

I'm 43. I keep moving further left.

If YoU aRe NoT a LiBeRaL wHeN yOu ArE 30 yOu HaVe No HeArT, aNd If YoU aRe NoT a CoNsErVaTiVe WhEn YoU aRe 40 YoU hAvE nO bRaIn
- Ironically, then they turn around and call us condescending.....despite our beliefs boiling down to "you're not special. No one is."
- Both of those are liberals
- Oh god, my parents' piece of shit neighbor said this to me once. He also hit on me while I was underage, cheated on his wife, and finally died of COVID.

They still think people become more conservative due to age and not socio-economic conditions.

If you're not an Anarchist in your 20's you have no heart.
If you're not a Tankie in your 30's you have no brain.
- based. People usually become more conservative as they gain wealth. But anyone born after like 1970 has never had that happen because neoliberalism has concentrated all the wealth

And in my 40s I've started organizing.

Hello fellow 38yo non-conservative person!

Some do and some can see the issues of the current economic systems.

Thats actually opposite for me. I remember being more conservative in my 20. I remember watching people like Amazing atheist, armored sceptic, shoe on head and some others that I dont remember. Now in my 30, I have actually softened up a lot and got more liberal views now.

If anything, that “oh this is an inevitability” line of thinking just made me want to submit less.

Photo is replaceable by mine, hunched over the laptop when the Internet is down. Text in the Photo the same.

I don't think I have seen this but the reason we see this effect is murder. The richer you are the older you you manage to live. Either you are too poor and misadventures get your. Or the things that you have progressive beliefs about will get you oppressed and maybe murdered by society. I don't think it is intended. It could easily be so however, it is just a slow oppression and crushing of everyone in society.
- Yeah there is hardcore survivor's bias.
  Also the statement is at best only partially true for the older bougie and middle class fucks who lived through the 80s-90s as neoliberalism did it's best to delegitimize socialism, and who dominate todays discourse about that period, due to wealth and survivor bias.

It's all nice and all, but where does the picture comes from?

40 and still not anywhere close.

There are more than enough conservatives with bizzare esoteric tendencies.

Anyway what's the image from?
It looks like a music video I want to see!

Long form discussion of the issue by people on the field https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/politics-podcast-are-millennials-getting-more-conservative/

I guess I became a less radical socialist... I guess they were kind of right?

Mmmm, really? Now explain trap music to me... 😇

Bohemian Grove it is, then.

I don't believe this is going to be the case currently... the trend towards conservative was a fiscal phenomenon, as young kids who didn't have a lot of money and wanted a welfare state grew up and became financially independent, they wanted to keep what they were working to get. This would cause a self centric migration from trending democrat to trending republican.
That isn't how the partisan tribes currently work... They've become more of a "morality" enterprise, on both sides.
The choice is now if you think it's appropriate to ban huck finn and Tom Sawyer for the n word, or ban homosexual references. It's a question of do we spend taxes on blacks and the poor, or do we spend it on cluster bombs for Ukraine.
I don't think people will evolve from one side to the other the way boomers did. I think they're evolving farther from center, on both sides.
I don't like book bans period. I don't like the budget growing exponentially period. I don't like that 99% of the population increasingly wants the other half to be completely discounted... I'm essentially evolving towards not liking anybody at all.
I don't think "liberals" are going to become more "conservative" as they age, because that scale is divorced from party politics. Liberal is no longer a democrat trait, and conservative isn't purely republican. Both have adopted the entire con/lib scale in their own way. Democrats have conservative values, republicans have liberal values (the latter to a far greater degree, but I don't think it matters tbh). Just depends on what issue you're talking about.
- Yes... but I'm probably not going to last long, as there's already a pretty huge bias here...
  I have not received a wonderful welcome here with my lack of political affiliation, and your comment speaks directly to it.
  I'm much less inclined to forums with a Republican bias though, so I'm here, and hopeful. If you want the wishy washy motherfuckers that flip flop their votes and basically decide elections these days to hear your side and not theirs, maybe you could be slightly less intolerant...
- Book bans are mostly a Republican policy https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/map-book-bans-rise-rcna25898
  
  Mostly? Where is there a Democrat proposing book bans??
- It's a question of do we spend taxes on blacks and the poor, or do we spend it on cluster bombs for Ukraine.
  I want someone to enlighten me on this, because my impression was that the democrats were the ones on board with bombing for Ukraine and republicans wanted to cut that spending (publicly, cause both parties love that war spending for their buddies to make money from).
  
  This was also my impression, especially after the republican primary debate where they were scarily almost all anti-helping ukraine.
  
  Ya know... that's not a bad point actually :)
  Ill ponder that one. Definitely going to alter my perspective on Ukraine a little, but I'm not entirely sure how just off the cuff.

OK, teenager.

Kinda true though, I'm conservative on my terms.

/s