Nobody has a personality anymore

 

This recent article I just ran across, with the same title, seems a good starting point for adding some meandering thoughts here.  I think a lot about how social media and the now-changed forms of human experience shape people in different ways than were familiar in the past.  In general it all works.

So I'll summarize what I take this article to say, highlight what seems to not work, and then extend it a bit.  The general point is that people now overanalyze their personas, especially in relation to identifying disorders, so that instead of seeing themselves as a balanced, good person they identify as a series of gaps, as having anxiety, depression, OCD, ADHD, and so on.  I see this in younger people, but more in the US than in Thailand.

credit that article source

Let's let the article describe their take on that:

My generation is obsessed with treating every trait as a symptom of a disorder. You’re not shy, you’re autistic. You’re not forgetful, you’ve got ADHD.

Today, every personality trait is seen as a problem to be solved. Anything too human—every habit, every eccentricity, every feeling that’s too strong—has to be labeled and explained. Therapy-speak has taken over our language. It is ruining how we talk about romance and relationships, narrowing how we think about hurt and suffering, and now, we are losing the words for who we are. Nobody has a personality anymore.

Actually, it’s worse than that. Now, we are being taught that our personalities are a disorder. According to a 2024 survey, 72 percent of Gen-Z girls said that “mental health challenges are an important part of my identity.” Only 27 percent of boomer men said the same.

This is part of a deeper instinct in modern life to explain everything—psychologically, scientifically, evolutionarily. Everything about us is caused, categorized, and can be corrected. We talk in theories, frameworks, systems, structures, drives, motivations, and mechanisms. But in exchange for explanation, we lost mystery, romance, and lately, ourselves.

We have lost the sentimental ways we used to describe people.

It adds a lot of depth to that in another page or more of text, but this is their general point.  At a glance this is definitely one trend in self-definition and a general description of reality.  It goes further:

Every heartfelt, annoying, interesting piece of you, categorized. The fond ways your family describe you, medicalized. The pieces of us once written into wedding vows, read out in eulogies, remembered with a smile, now live on doctors’ notes and mental-health assessments and BetterHelp applications. We are not people anymore. We have been products for a long time, and these are our labels.

We can’t talk about character either. There are no generous people anymore, only people pleasers. There are no men or women who wear their hearts on their sleeves, only the anxiously attached or the codependent. There are no hard workers, only the traumatized, the insecure overachievers, the neurotically ambitious...

It's an odd word choice, describing people as products.  That seems to relate to the sense of how we are identified as outcomes of prior conditioning, of trauma, genetic flaws, and distinct cultural factors, but maybe mostly the first two.

An online interest related contact shifted over past several years from seeing himself as normal enough but also quirky, in terms of personality, and then "on the spectrum" related to autism, and most recently he's fully accepted that he is autistic.  Is he?  Who knows, really. 

All of this sounds more judgmental than I intend it.  We all struggle with working around our quirks, and defining what they really mean.  We all have very significant limitations; more of those than our strengths.  The range a person could possibly span is broad, and we can each only cover so much of that.  

This article is about papering over the limitations with labels, that put the blame on others, past events, or genetics, versus accepting that we are responsible for ourselves.  That other example, of someone wanting to be in one generation versus the one prior, is about identifying more with that stereotypical character.  They're different things, but of course they can overlap.

In my youth, and among my generation now, we didn't have an inclination towards so much acceptance of weaknesses, or so much doubt and insecurity.  We weren't self-aware enough to describe ourselves in terms of a long list of gaps, so we just set out to do whatever interested us, typically learning by failing.  If you define yourself as a set of limitations you end up switching the order around, and not trying things that aren't going to work, because you can see how the gaps in your capacity map together to ensure that failure.  But that cuts short the exposure and learning process.

More of the article explains how this basic premise extends further into our experience:

Now our clumsy mothers have always had undiagnosed ADHD; our quiet dads don’t realize they are autistic; our stoic grandfathers are emotionally stunted. We even—helpfully—diagnose the dead. And I think this is why people get so defensive of these diagnoses, so insistent that they explain everything. They are trying to hold onto themselves; every piece of their personality is contained within them.

And it’s not only personality traits we have lost. There are no experiences anymore, no phases or seasons of life, no wonders or mysteries, only clues about what could be wrong with us. Everything that happens can be explained away; nothing is exempt. We can’t accept that we love someone, madly and illogically; no, the enlightened way to think is to see through that, get down to what is really going on, find the hidden motives.

Therapy-speak has taken over our language. It is ruining how we talk about romance and relationships, narrowing how we think about hurt and suffering, and now, we are losing the words for who we are.

This never even seems seems to cross over to what seems to be one main drawback of this kind of perspective:  people end up reaching for drugs as a crutch, and relying on years of therapy to sort out internal issues, instead of working through actual instances of the problems, by experiencing personal relationships.

Of course this is a bit exaggerated.  And this kind of culture and perspective is quite advanced in some places, and lags in others.  I remember visiting an ex-girlfriend living in LA in the 90s, how I was surprised that she was being medicated to deal with social anxiety.  That whole paradigm was brand new to me, that such an issue could seem unusual, and could be treated by drugs.  Of course that treatment is problematic; there are significant side effects, and whenever you take drugs to adjust for any sort of condition over time the effectiveness of the drug wears off, and you need to take more to get the same effect.  Or change drugs later, which involves a new set of problems, new side effects.

All of this pointed towards a new way of framing reality itself, not just self definition:

Every human experience we have is a data point, and the purpose of our lives is to piece it all perfectly together. This is the healthy way to think that people were so cruelly deprived of in the past.

I’m not sure I believe this anymore—that we are more enlightened now than previous generations, more emotionally intelligent. My grandma sees herself as a grandma, a mother, a wife; young people identify with our disorders. She is selfless and takes things to heart; we have rejection sensitive dysphoria and fawn as a trauma response. They are souls; we are symptoms.

Of course it does go on to accept that in some cases significant and pronounced mental disorders are defined, identified, and treated through a related therapy process.  It's not just about people using new ways to describe themselves and reality, changing the experience some through this redefinition.  But it points out an interesting example of such a broach change:

I think this is why my generation gets stuck on things like relationships and parenthood. The commitments we stumble over, the decisions we endlessly debate, the traditions we find hard to hold onto, are often the ones we can’t easily explain. We are trying to explain the inexplicable. It’s hard to defend romantic love against staying single, because it isn’t safe or controllable or particularly rational. The same with having children. Put these things in a pros-and-cons list and they stop making logical sense.

This reminds me of parts of younger people's experiences I hear of, maybe both in the US and in Thailand.  Almost no one where I work has children, or maybe even ever plans to, because it would be a costly endeavor, trading out both freedom and expense, and it doesn't make it as a goal through the evaluation process.  Just speculation on my part, of course; everyone has their own experiences and perspective.

That article's conclusion circles back to roughly the same place:

We taught a generation that the meaning of life is not found outside in the world but inside their own heads. We underestimate it, this miserable business of understanding ourselves. I feel for the girls forensically analyzing their childhoods while they are still in them, cramming their hope and pain and suffering into categories, reducing themselves down to trauma responses. It hurts to see this heartbreaking awareness we have inflicted on a generation, whose only understanding of the world is this militant searching, this reaching for reasons. God, the life they are missing.

Because we can’t ever explain everything. At some point we have to stop analyzing and seeing through things and accept the unknowable. All we can ever really achieve is faith. And a sense of humor about ourselves, perhaps. It’s impossible to heal from being human, and this is why the mental health industry has infinite demand. Explain anything long enough and you will find a pathology; dig deep enough, and you will disappear.

Maybe a little exaggerated and negative, but for sure plenty of this goes on, and some people must be debilitated by it.  

Younger people today couldn't imagine how far we were from that perspective in the 80s, as Gen X kids.  I had heard of a personality type test, at one point, but I didn't try to do much with it.  I didn't have a single self-description available in relation to a mental health condition or trauma response.  We didn't even have "trauma" then, in the same sense.  People who were severely abused as children were intuitively aware that some related cycle was playing out for them, but not in the same detailed and explicit sense as today, where they are defined by it in a list of distinct ways.

We took so much risk back then that it seemed as if we had a death wish.  I have no idea what all that was about, the drinking, drugs, and high risk behavior.  I only tell my son about it bit by bit, so as not to overwhelm him, or endorse that kind of ridiculous behavior.  He shouldn't be drinking a lot when he is in high school, as I did.  I shouldn't have been.  

The drugs that are around now could easily be deadly, versus us barely having access to weed back then.  Now weed is sold in a booth that looks like a garden shed in the alley we live in, in Honolulu, 15 steps or so from the front door of our apartment complex.  It's not illegal.  Kids can't buy it without ID, but then the drinking age was also 21 when I was 18.

one version of those booths (photo credit)

In one sense it's great that greater awareness of real risks narrow down kids' range of behavior today.  That's very appropriate.  In another sense they really might be averse to the potentially awkward parts of a normal life, like getting rejected when you ask someone out.  That was my first "romantic" experience, rejection, and I guess at the time it did seem rough.  I think that I was 13 then, and it probably delayed my participation in that scope by a few more years.

If social media had existed back then there might be an awkward photo trail of lots of it, or at least we would've had a chance to evaluate such patterns as experienced by others, before we blindly did foolish things.  We would've heard stories of lots of people dying doing them, and it was just dumb luck that none of my friends did.  Or maybe it's just that one in thousands would die, and I had less than 10 close friends; the odds were in our favor.

I've not really critiqued this article's content much.  To a large extent it seems to work.  It may be a little overstated, but I think that's in part because I can't fully relate to a young person's perspective today, even though I talk to people at different stages essentially every day.  If I were out there actually living it I'd be more familiar with a few dozen other examples, and the patterns would seem all the clearer, and more pervasive.  

Why the world seems to be changing for the worse

 

about a "dead mall" theme; related article and photo credit

A recent video brought up an interesting and promising line of consideration, why the world seems to be changing for the worse.  It's here, under the title "Does Anyone Else Feel Like Everything Has Changed?"

It would be simple enough to just blame the internet, wouldn't it?  The author cites three book references as a completely different range of answers, in relation to broad patterns in society playing out.  A main theme, or maybe the overall main theme, was that cycles occur in society in such a way that resets tend to occur, which typically aren't positive and low-impact forms of transition.  Societies collapse a bit, from time to time, with that even following regular patterns and time cycles.  Maybe this is about the cycle form he was discussing, or maybe a different version instead.

This idea is familiar.  I studied the philosophy of history in a philosophy class, even though my professor in that class wasn't introducing or presenting the subject, and dissuaded me from researching and writing about it.  Why?  It had been "debunked" as a meaningful pattern and trend.  People had wanted to apply a human lifespan sort of theme to societies evolving and eventually coming to an end, but in trying to apply filtering, looking for preset patterns, they extracted what they sought from what could easily have been random sets of circumstances (the confirmation bias idea).  Or so that "debunking" went; let's dig a little deeper into it all.

It all started with medieval Islamic philosophers, or at least that was my understanding.  Ibn Khaldun was quite influential, here presented as the Wikipedia level summary of main ideas:

Perhaps the most frequently cited observation drawn from Ibn Khaldūn's work is the notion that when a society becomes a great civilization, its high point is followed by a period of decay. This means that the next cohesive group that conquers the diminished civilization is, by comparison, a group of barbarians. Once the barbarians solidify their control over the conquered society, however, they become attracted to its more refined aspects, such as literacy and arts, and either assimilate into or appropriate such cultural practices. Then, eventually, the former barbarians will be conquered by a new set of barbarians, who will repeat the process.

I took it as less clear why this happened, that he was mostly identifying what he regarded as a common and repeating trend, which he offered some explanation for, but never really clearly resolved in terms of cause and effect, or even experienced forms.

It's interesting trying to find that reference that a Western citation about the philosophy of history doesn't mention anything outside of European contributions.  It's as if Ibn Khaldun hadn't developed the main starting points, observations based on clear cycles in regional history, as he presented it all.

My own guesses about why this would occur, surely of marginal value, kept changing over time.  I suppose a more natural starting point, from where I've left the ideas, is how and why it was "debunked."  Broad societies must begin and end, and there must be common patterns in forms in the middle?  The problem is that if you start with assumptions about the patterns you are looking for it's quite possible, even likely, that you will sweep complex inputs and effects together in ways that really make no sense.  Time-frame can shift quite a bit, and definitions of a society, or empire, and so on.  Philosophers can end up collecting together all sort of ideas, starting points, argument forms, transition patterns, end-points, and so on, and then eventually it can lose too much cohesiveness, and become meaningless.

I suppose all of this applies as a critique of what that Youtube content producer was summarizing, of what he was reading about, in terms of cycles of history.  One early and main point was that on about an 80 year cycle periods of disruptive war occur, which looking back really seemed to map well to experienced history, at a glance.  Only at a glance though; he was mapping out main periods of disruption backwards from WW 2 (or really forwards to get there, but it worked out the same), landing on mid to late 19th century events as the prior disruption point.  That only works by jumping over WW 1 as a significant event, which of course is absurd.  It was significant.

Since I'm not going to set all this aside as irrelevant, looking for clear and repeating patterns where none occur, I'll treat these patterns of history repeating itself in this way as real, and speculate as to whether they might occur, and why.  To be clear this step doesn't completely work; I can't support it.  But we also can't effectively set aside ideas that haven't really been fleshed out and considered, so let's go there next.

Cycles of history

The idea is that a society or civilization starts in a relatively chaotic state.  Maybe that's related to the downfall of a prior civilization, or maybe that input cause and conditions don't really matter.  In this state societal forms are not clearly defined and rigidly enforced, kind of like the romantic American "wild west" notion; things go as they happen to go.  We don't seem to have walked off the map just yet; this kind of status must be a real thing, if a bit rare, in comparison with ongoing replacement of more orderly, older, previously well defined societies, with clearly identified social roles, public institutions, central government, laws, infrastructure development, well organized trade, and so on.  All of that develops organically, for a set of relatively obvious reasons.  Those structures are effective, and as they serve purposes they become reinforced, with later decline and disruption a related separate subject.

In the Islamic model, the patterns Ibn Khaldun was observing, a literal overthrow of society by barbarians kept occurring.  It sounds like the end of the Roman Empire, doesn't it?  That just took a long time, and happened in stages, over very long periods of gradual decay and secondary transition.

Let's skip ahead.  If we assume this all makes sense, our focus now is going to be on why an organized society might stop working, not to what extent the consistent whole cycle occurs, or about the first two thirds of the transition.  And one might stop working for completely different reasons.  Maybe it's that eventually external barbarians get conditions right to successfully overthrow that organized society.  Maybe it's internal instead; this consideration seems more interesting.

The societal structures themselves tend to eventually evolve to be ineffective and unstable, it seems.  Maybe it doesn't matter why, and it's only a matter of time before internal and external causes and conditions change, really for complex reasons.  Ibn Khaldun's model proposed an external factor as a main cause, again that barbarians eventually took over, but the sense comes across that internal factors were also critical (maybe explicit in his detailed work; I didn't get too far with literature review).  It has been 16 years since I wrote that paper, to be clear, which I would've read a half dozen sources to support, so all of this isn't a claim that I'm remembering it well, or ever was a solid reference on that work myself.

Related to speculation about internal factors, why did the British Empire come to an end?  That's seems like a fairly clear and modern example.  At the beginning of the 20th century it was expansive and strong, and by the middle it was over.  The whole colonial era ended; it seemed that it was mostly just that, in that case.  If it's that simple "real historians" could probably identify that the writing was on the wall going into that century.

I've considered lots of other guesses, over time (not so much about the British Empire, but in general).  It seems possible that societal structures become rigid over time, and their failure to be able to change can't enable them to be relevant in changing external conditions.  Or maybe it's as simple as something like the unequal distribution of wealth being reinforced over time, that eventually the other 99% of the population aren't going to have it.  Infrastructure burden could add up; as societies develop better and better central supports, roads, institutions, social protections, complex tax structures, laws, etc., eventually these could add more and more burden to be supported by the whole of society, and would be difficult to maintain over time.  In the "wild west" example there barely were any laws, the opposite untenable status, but if you add too many laws and protections, and keep on adding them, eventually some sort of unsustainable tipping point would probably arise.  It's this theme that I'm going to develop most.

There's lots more I could add across levels of this range, but let's move on to pursue that one direction, assuming that society gaining order and structure can be problematic.  That isn't a claim that this would have to be a main cause, but I'm going to discuss it as if this were so, it will seem implied.  I don't mean it that way, but developing the ideas is going to require setting aside continual framing discussion.  Here I'm going to take this in an unusual direction, not looking for aspects that I see as decay later on (eg. infrastructure burden, rigid social practices, economic transitions), but instead consider how developing societies seem to be different from more developed examples, to start from what changes earlier on in the process, especially related to general feel and perspective.

Evolution of developed societies

We don't need to go back to the wild west or dark ages to examine first hand how chaotic, undeveloped, less structured, less economically developed societies differ from the opposite extreme.  I was in Cambodia the day before yesterday, at time of this initial draft writing, and I live in Thailand, and as I see it those two examples populate the less developed spectrum that we can examine now, as two distinct stages.  Then the US and Europe span the opposite side of the spectrum.  Obviously this is going to overweight my own interpretation; that's how speculative, extended, first-hand observations would have to go.

Cambodia is chaotic; no doubt about that.  I've been to Siem Reap twice (where the ancient temples are, Angkor Wat and such), and Phnom Penh once (the capital), but this was my first visit to Poi Pet, a border town set up mainly as a gambling resort.  It was amazing how development is happening so partially; individual roads, houses, and shops seemed half-finished, most of them.  Cleared out vacant lots are interspersed with developed areas.  Factors like municipal water quality and sewage system support tend to improve over time, along with roads and rail systems.

Thailand already doesn't follow zoning restrictions, not forcing business, residential, industrial, and agricultural areas to be zoned in isolated sections, but Poi Pet was that much more chaotic, just absolutely random.  Which seemed fine, interesting and not unpleasant, after the initial shock of the differences wore off.  They don't use traffic lights, stop signs, or roundabout style intersections, they just sort it all out on the fly.  That was different.  Traffic is chaotic in Bangkok too, with road designs and intersections a bit of a mess, but not like that, there are traffic lights and roundabouts. 

Poi Pet actually looks like rural Thailand, like Sa Kaeo or Lop Buri

Backing up a bit, I was considering all of this from a different perspective in relation to Thailand very recently.  My wife and I visited a somewhat chaotic local market built in an open space under an elevated highway in Bangkok, along a railroad.  It was just set-up stalls in an open space, with a food court area across the tracks that was just another blank area filled in with booths / stalls for vendors (including makeshift kitchens), and flimsy tables and plastic chairs as the seating area.  I loved it; I won't make a secret of that tone.  If such a place seems dirty or rough edged it can be off-putting, but I found this place to be well organized, clean, and inviting.  Of course Americans would be divided on that; it would have to be completely unfamiliar to most.

that outdoor food court; the market section is across a set of railroad tracks

The one part that really stood out to me is hard to describe, the feel.  It was positive, loud and vibrant, but also relaxed and open.  Literally loud; music was playing a bit too loudly, which comes up a lot in different contexts in Bangkok, even out in the country here sometimes.  Chaos can have a rough feel, but this included enough order.  The food was good too, but I guess that could've went either way.  Was it safe; was there higher foodborne illness risk than in a US restaurant?  Probably, but I've lived in Thailand for 15 years, eating in food courts regularly, in different forms, surely at least 1000 times, and I've never became sick from one.  I've only had full-blown food poisoning twice, both times in Korea instead; probably just bad luck, that.  I've experienced less minor stomach distress here than in the US, but not much in either place, less than once a year; maybe I've been lucky.

Such a place could not exist in the US.  The closest one would come might be the stalls selling food in a public fair environment, or food trucks are closing in on somewhat related forms.  Let's pause there a second; doesn't the recent existence of food trucks offset the broad pattern I described earlier, how controlled, limited, restricted conditions evolve over time, not new forms that limit prior restrictions on social controls and protections?  Maybe, but it could be that the exception proves the rule, somehow.  Or maybe it's about cracks forming in the rigid social structures in the US, compensating for the one-way development of oppressive levels of order.  Or maybe food trucks are too good an idea to oppress, and they were naturally going to move from industrial site lunch support to become mainstream.

a predecessor to the mall form, a Chinatown style market area, here in Ayuthayah

It's not just that one example, related to disorder and more chaotic forms being common in Thailand.  Street food is a main theme everywhere, and you can't cook and sell food from a steel table welded to the side of a motorcycle in the US, or from a cart that you push around.  Old style markets are often just large empty buildings, or just open spaces, as in that highway / rail line example.  Taxation burden is lower, infrastructure development and spending is lower, and social protections are far more limited.  The government provides moderate quality health care for low cost, maybe with "moderate" a generous assessment for quality range, but beyond that people are mostly on their own.  Cohesive family structures fill in the rest, and in general it works out, just not in every case.

Certifications of all sorts, for companies and individuals, are limited as requirements.  I think this example holds more meaning and runs a lot deeper than it might seem at first.  To be a masseuse in Hawaii my wife would need to take a one year training course, and here in Thailand whatever background you have is enough, down to almost none.  Engineers aren't really registered here; maybe some function gets lost along the way for not having those restrictions, beyond just adding clutter of extra paperwork and fees.  I don't see restrictive levels of training and certification in the US as a mostly positive context though; to me it often evolves to be just as wasteful as it is functional.

The feel is something else, to keep returning to that.  I found that market and food court area to have a dynamic but relaxed feel, in a sense that doesn't map to other places very well in the US.  To be clear I'm from the East Coast, rural Pennsylvania, and I've only lived back in Honolulu for two months this year, two months ago now, so I'm more familiar with Thailand and local culture than my own native version.  It really does work to map the absolute chaos we experienced in Cambodia as the next step in the same direction.  And per one visit to Europe--very long ago, so again very limited input--it also works to map a higher level of order, restriction, narrower social expectations, and general quiet to European cultures, in comparison to the feel of the US. 

It might seem like I'm heading towards a claim that European cultures really should become unstable, if a pattern of normal chaos to order and then downfall typically occurs.  I'm not saying that.  Obviously somehow most European cultures have evolved to very stable forms, and a range of positive outcomes.  A European from any given place might vehemently argue against that, experiencing what they interpret as broad social changes over the past 20 years, seeing it all as unstable and inclined towards further and faster change, but that would probably depend on individual perspective and degree of optimism.

I don't have enough experience to really map out such range of ideas, but here I'm using stability and order in narrow, limited senses.  You can act out in unconventional ways in the US and it's fine, a normal part of that culture.  You can even pitch a tent and live on the street, and that's a main social trend right now, along with "van life," living in a car or larger vehicle, not only due to restrictive financial necessity.  In Thailand there are much narrower and more developed social expectations, related to roles and forms of expression, but in terms of what society restricts, across other levels and scopes, things are much more open.  Even the laws are a bit optional in many cases.  I could develop that theme quite a bit, but it's as well not to, to leave that as an unsupported assertion.

All this isn't really "hanging together" as much as it might, is it?  The general thesis here is that order increases as societies develop, with restrictions bringing positive change and also limitations, offsetting personal options, and impacting the free and open feel experienced by individuals.  It's largely about what I've experienced and felt, more than examples that highlight how it's all necessarily so.  Honolulu is a much cleaner, more organized, structured place than Bangkok, and Poi Pet is further towards noise and chaos.  Along with the benefits of adding to order something gets lost.  This later "collapse of society" theme seems to be something else, about negative patterns in pushing on and on, so that in some limited senses too much could get lost along the way.  I think the two themes do connect.

One might automatically assume that the structuring increases safety, that it's not just illness from eating bad grilled pork satay that's a risk, but that factors like crime should gradually decrease.  Oddly it doesn't work out that way.  Crime seems to relate to social forms and patterns that absolutely do not map to development level or average income level.  Bangkok is much safer than Honolulu, which is much safer than the average mainland US city.  Level of corruption also seems to be an unrelated secondary factor, loosely pairing with general decline as societies become more organized and developed, but it also seems possible that the corruption could also just become more organized and developed.

A long term pattern of decline

That context mapping seemed like it might never end, didn't it?  Let's jump ahead again, back to this idea of whether or not the US really is shifting in form now, perhaps in a way tied to general decline.  I could write this out as a carefully developed, supported, step-by-step explanation of patterns I think might be occurring, but that would take 10,000 words instead of a few hundred.  I'll need to just say what I think, without explaining it in such a careful way.

I think a few main causes are occurring that end up shifting the form and feel of US culture, with real negative impact for people on the wrong end of these patterns:

-economic shift:  the late-stage capitalism theme, a form change combining with other transitions, a shift from manufacturing to service based economy, and so on.  Cost of living increases undermine the practicality of sustaining manufacturing and labor intensive agriculture, and then service based work conducted with more employee protections works out to not be so much more ideal.  I think housing and real estate being used as an investment base is a main cause of many problems now, but that's too much of a tangent to develop here.

-economic decline:  a natural development of lower prosperity as economic development changes form and in a sense also stops, really one part of the first pattern.  Standard of living is still much higher in the US than in Thailand, and certainly than in Cambodia, but for many that's declining, while those other countries still experience generally positive changes.  I'm from the "Rust Belt," and my own industrial engineering career ended essentially when it started, so I get it how local economy and job-sector impacts play out.

-increased wealth inequality:  this part is complicated.  It seems as if a middle class develops as countries develop, and then later that trend can reverse, shifting back to most people being rich or poor.  Some European countries seem to have intentionally countered that, setting up institutions and processes to even it all back out.

-internet influence:  social forms moving online, and changing as a result.  This is not the same kind of thing as the rest, since it has only came into being over the past 20 or so years.  I'll add a lot more about forms of this factoring in, because it seems like some interesting changes are occurring.  A lot of the underlying patterns may stay the same without that input, with it just speeding up some transitions.

-reduced general health in the US:  the result of a number of factors.  Again, it's something else, probably not closely related to the rest.  Or maybe it is tightly linked, and eating mass-produced processed foods instead of local, natural foods pairs with these other trends.  Either way I'll set this part aside.  Mental health issues are even trickier; those causes and effects must mix, but I won't treat those here much either, beyond limited and not overly meaningful overlap with one internet experience example.

The third part about wealth inequality ties back to part of what I attributed Ibn Khaldun as saying, right, a progressive, natural change that becomes untenable?  Perhaps unfairly connected, since that part was my interpretation or even extension of his points, more than I remember it being directly received ideas.  There is a lot to unpack related to all of these, but I want to focus on the internet form change instead of the rest.  I don't think it's more primary than the rest, but some really interesting social changes are occurring.

Internet context changing social forms and experiences

On the one hand I think this is as much a factor as all the rest related to a general impression that "things are changing, and not for the better."  Then on the other I also suspect that the forms of changes, the specific patterns, were already happening to some extent, and the online forms are just speeding up other transitions, or helping separate and problematic conditions combine together.  

dead mall interest (related Youtube channel, Reddit discussion group):  this subject combines interest in culture changes, economic shifts, and a change in media consumption and online discussion.  People interested in this topic must embrace experience of nostalgia, to some extent, with the content producers describing their own interest as documenting recent history, what malls were like in the 80s and 90s, since many are now closing.  This isn't included as an example of "things are getting worse;" shopping form changes are more complicated than that.  It could be interpreted that way, but a more common take is that online shopping and popularity of smaller retail centers were the main causes.

Again in popular interpretation malls ending is an aspect of "late stage capitalism," a broad category subject which would mean completely different things to different people.  The dystopia theme is interesting too though, referenced in Reddit groups like Dystopian Future, and Idiocracy.  I don't love all the main aspects of general Reddit subculture, but right now it does seem more interesting and effective for following these subject interests than most Facebook groups, which seem to age out of active and focused topic participation faster.

more novel and impactful changes:  I recently saw a video about Tik Tok viewers mimicking Tourette's syndrome behavior, picking up verbal expression "tics."  I've been exploring how other mental health conditions have also become popular, especially how people are copying the form of Dissociative Identity Disorder in intentionally  developing "tulpas," secondary internal personalities.  What's all that about?  I'm really not even going to address it here, except to guess that this is all a very extreme example of what is already unusual and potentially impactful enough, that online group identification has shifted to take on more and more extreme forms over the last half dozen years.  

Real life experiences are becoming marginalized, with online associations taking on greater and greater importance.  You can't really "catch" mental illness though online social exposure, I don't think, but social experience and general mental health can change.  This seems like a symptom that is probably hard to fully place.

that tulpa group I had mentioned:  this group is about people imagining secondary internal personalities into existence, essentially mimicking dissociative identity disorder.  In this case it's more odd that the practice itself exists than the group; of course if people take up such an uncommon interest association with others might be seen as positive.  I don't see it as different than participation in a group about running, for example, except maybe that online group association itself is being carried to extremes. 

Given other focus here on societal level decline and groups identifying with dislike of some common theme one might look for some related pattern of meaning in this example.  It's not about that.  It definitely seems to represent an unconventional take on reality, and a new form of adjusting internal experience, but it's not really negative, just quite unconventional, as some of these other examples are.

Let's go further, onto other examples.  I'll add links to these, since my own exploration of these themes has largely occurred online, and these examples help show what I mean in relation to form and context.

Theo Von comedian podcast:  it's normal for people to watch podcasts or comedy content, but this Reddit group is for self-identification as a fan of Theo Von.  The Youtube channel has 1.2 million followers, and discussion group 40k, so that many take self-association the next step.  I'm not saying that this is bizarre behavior, or negative in any way, but a decade ago people identifying through being a fan of a comedy related podcast would've been relatively unthinkable.  15 years ago podcasts hadn't happened yet, in this modern form.  

Taken alone this has nothing to do with the general decline of society, or individual lives having less meaning, but some related patterns could add up in negative ways.  The existence of media or performing arts stars is definitely not new, but this form is, and somehow personal identification patterns also seem to be.  That part is going to connect more in an unusual form later on.

Joe Rogan Reddit sub:  this group has nearly 800,000 members that generally discuss Joe Rogan's podcast (the main such channel), towards the main end goal of tearing Joe Rogan apart, ridiculing him.  They could still be fans, but the group purpose is not support, or shared positive interest.  I'm not even sure that makes sense now, never mind however many years ago, before recent cultural changes that embrace new forms of negativity became common.  

they love to photoshop Joe to make him look tiny, which is funny

Some background from foreigner / expat experiences in Thailand might help inform what is going on.  Initially, visiting as tourists or new to living in Thailand, people experience a "honeymoon period," very positive about how different the culture is, the food, general look, ways people smile a lot and interact positively, and follow different customs.  Then later negative experiences accumulate, and at some point they feel compelled to changing over to disliking Thai culture.  In the middle it can be awkward, trying to balance perspective on some aspects being positive and others negative.  Positive things can have a negative side, or the opposite, but things need to break cleanly in one main direction or the other; people are wired to like or dislike things, to see them as essentially good or bad.

I think with Joe Rogan there had always been an everyman appeal, as an actor who was relatable, a comedian with a normal outlook on things, and a fight fan.  Then as Joe Rogan became wealthy and drifted further into conservative ideology it all came apart, and disliking him for being wildly successful acted as a cause.  Covid and the political divide have become two main points of separation in society, and it seemed like those alone were also primary causes.  Joe emphasized risks in vaccination, echoing conservative talking points, and then when he contracted covid he underwent tens of thousands of dollars worth of advanced treatments steps, which few followers could afford.

Better Bachelor, men's "not dating" themed group:  I guess this is a moderate derivative of MGTOW, men going their own way, a movement for men to self-identify as not dating.  This is particularly interesting to me, again for being a sort of backwards or reversed interest form, a group shared interest in not doing some particular thing.  Again I don't see this as problematic or extremist, it's just an odd social identification, to identify as not dating.  You can just not date.  I see this as a follow-up to extreme forms of feminism rejecting a lot of what can be associated with masculinity, or the patriarchy, so perhaps this is in part a negative reaction to a separate negative reaction.

Then there is also a rejection theme or broad dislike here in these topics I can't completely place in terms of common ground.  The culture war is one thing, but this is about men and women rejecting dating, sex, and any pair bonding (including an opposite feminist variation), previously fundamental practices and forms of self-identification.  It's unusual.

fasting; another atypical interest:  I've become a bit active in a fasting group recently; it's odd that social identification could occur around the idea of taking breaks from eating.  It's not so much a social activity.  Taken alone that's not at all negative, but the cumulative effect of splintering personal interests replacing "real life" social contact could become problematic, especially if shared dislike becomes a main theme, as in these other cases.  

In recent discussion it was brought up how odd it seems that some people react so negatively to other people not eating, as if it's a critique of their own lifestyle choices, more specifically that of eating every single day, which is quite natural.  These interests immediately move on to self-definition and in-group issues, even when that doesn't seem to be a necessary step.

anti-woke entertainment media commentary:  Nerdrotic, this example, or this more mainstream Critical Drinker channel is probably better.  This is really unusual, that a sizable set of media commentary channels has gained significant following by criticizing mainstream movie and television content for being "woke," liberal and progressive in forms seen as negative.  Most of these channels were conventional critic or commentary themed, but the opportunity to gain a much broader following for zeroing in on this one culture war based theme caused them to isolate that one topic, and essentially exclude all others.  Here again it's a case of people self-identifying not in terms of how they define themselves, but as associated with others who dislike the same things, which is odd to me.

The idea of "hate-watching" television shows and movies comes up, not just this critique, for a large following to actively pursue and express dislike for media content, but that many people who self-identify as disliking some entertainment media forms do continue to watch it.  Why?  I suppose it ties to the political divide / culture war in the US, to both liberals and conservatives making it a personal interest and pass-time to critique the other extreme.  People who hated Trump ended up hearing a lot more about Trump than people who were more neutral about him, surely.

That last example went through an odd inversion in my own case.  Like anyone else I was concerned about how Trump leadership would go, and for being more liberally inclined dislike for some range of factors entered in quickly.  But within the first year it was clear that following the story-line sides wasn't going to help, what he said day to day, so I avoided that news, which was easier to do for living in Thailand.  A Canadian co-worker found it all very entertaining and compelling, even for being less involved as an interested party, so he kept on filling me in on it all.

Mr. Ballen story channel, and associated Reddit group:  this channel is pretty good, so again the point here isn't passing negative judgment.  "Mr. Ballen" tells spooky stories, about ghosts, accidental deaths, or crimes and such.  He has nearly 7 million subscribers, which I think is up from about a million a year ago; it's a subject that draws considerable interest.  People self-identify as fans of the channel and stories, which is fine.  Then for essentially all of these Youtube channels they would now offer Patreon options to contribute, and merchandise to wear related clothing.

Think back to how people really loved, and to an extent self-identified, with mainstream comedy shows in the past, at the end of the last century, with Cheers, then Seinfeld, then Friends.  It's not completely different, but because such a large proportion of the country was on that same page even if the online channels had supported discussion and self-identification then it wouldn't have worked in the same way.  I think there is a lot more there to consider and explore.  It's almost as if a vacuum in personal meaning or identification is playing out, more than these directions are drawing people in.  Or maybe it's only that three main network television channels have been replaced by literally countless other media selections, and somehow embracing that media consumption interest leads to self-identification of a different form.

I'm not claiming that I'm separate from that, that I don't experience it too.  I tend to explore media types and themes, interested in the ideas and formats, but it's not so different than sticking to a few for longer.  I attribute that to being slightly socially isolated related to living as a foreigner in another country, and to parenting demands limiting my real-life social development, tied to being coupled with that other factor.  Maybe to some extent it's just generally how things go now, that parts of most lives are lived online, and it's not all going to map back to what one might see as previous conventional life practices (dating, exercise, cooking, etc.).

What is different from earlier mainstream media following related to this trend?

This I seemed to pass over quickly in that earlier mention; maybe more is going on here to consider.  I think a few key differences come up related to finding a comedy show experience very important and meaningful and instead identifying as a fan through these extra formal channels.  To be clear I think that this earlier trend laid the groundwork for what we now experience, that association as a tv show fan isn't a completely unrelated and inconsistent experience.  Liking a comedian or K-pop star isn't so different than following a sports team or musician in the past.

One difference has been the degree of shared experience dropping out.  With three main television channels in the US in the late 20th century, and a lot of focus on sports events, people were experiencing a lot of the same things that many others were.  Now that's not nearly as true.

I think "real life" still playing a main role in life experience at the end of the 20th century was also completely different.  It's all too easy to put online content consumption the center of one's life now, with "water cooler" discussions replaced by online commenting.  It doesn't even need to center on one show or theme; combining interest in sports, television show media, movies, and informative content could make watching shows--consuming content--seem like a diverse activity, when in a deeper sense it's really not.  Or the same applies to social media participation, in a different sense.

A lot gets made of how social media participation is now designed to reinforce further participation, how alerts and activity steps trigger some internal brain reward chemical release (popular interpretations of brain chemistry processes aren't a personal interest).  Of course that's probably at least partly real.  In simpler terms social media participation and media consumption can be very habit forming, and these previously unheard of types of self-identification connections can be one result.  I'm not sure to what extent it's important that self-identification with personal dislikes has increased so much.

I agree with common assessments concluding that self-definition and locating self-value in social media experience and "success" could be problematic.  It's artificial, and unlikely to generally carry over directly to real life experience.  If it's a direct means to an end, eg. product marketing, then that may not be accurate, but related to packaging and re-locating conventional life experience into these forms is something else.  Then of course a grey area comes up; "influencers" see themselves and their reach as the marketed product.  For someone working in the modeling profession the connection is just as direct; they are clearly marketing themselves.

The theme of liking to hate things seems new.  It seems a secondary effect from how narrow and somewhat artificial social group self-definition occurs, tying back to themes like the US political divide.  As I explore some of these themes I've mentioned online I tend to often be rejected by groups for not being central enough to their shared interest form.  For example, I run, for four years now, but I don't approach running in the right way to have a valid and shared opinion in many online groups.  I'm not wearing a watch that tracks distance, pace, and heart rate.  I do explore and adjust training parameters (distance, pace, use of rest breaks, etc.), but not in the right forms, not according to common trends.  People in the groups don't necessarily hate me for that (the starting point here), but I'm not one of them.

Things can get a little strange related to social identification around these following themes.  To be seen as a true fan of Theo Von, for example, you might be expected to feel a certain way about Brendan Schaub or Bobby Lee, fellow comedians he is friends with, or to share perspective on their life events.  It maps back to how people always experienced real life very locally, but now it's not that, in this form.

Conclusions

I've followed a few threads here that don't necessarily tie together, really letting the conventional social trend patterns beyond online group exposure and self-identification largely drop towards the end.  I didn't explore economic patterns nearly as much as I see those as primary causes.  As an industrial engineer the decline of manufacturing in the US took on a unique level of personal importance, also as a resident of the US "rust belt."  My original home area, Western PA, is economically decimated by this transition pattern, and I'm separated from my family now because it's not practical for me to live and work there. 

I think decline is occurring in the US, and elsewhere, for many reasons, and sweeping the causes together as mostly connected probably doesn't work.  It's not happening in Thailand in the same sense; the economy is generally ok, personal life experiences seem generally positive, real-life social ties are persisting, crime isn't increasing, there is no drug epidemic or homeless problem, poorer urban area decline and gang participation never took on the same forms, and so on.  The wealth divide isn't really resolving here, but it's also not getting worse.  There have been exactly two public shootings in Thailand, the second this year, and the first in early 2020; some of these negative trends seem to be able to spread.  Or maybe it's that the causes are just running behind in timing, but also occurring.  I suspect that the "retail apocalypse" will occur here too.

Politics are just as problematic as in the US, just in a different form, which hasn't generated a related culture war.  Some would contest that, based on clear examples of why exactly that type of opposition is happening, but to me it hasn't entered everyday consciousness to the same extent, or transitioned to two opposing story lines.  It's more just that the country isn't ran well, and that democracy isn't working.

One might naturally wonder if Thais will experience most of those same patterns as in the US over the next 20 years, if they aren't just behind in some unavoidable societal and social transitions.  Maybe.  To be clear they have their own separate problems to deal with; it's not some sort of utopia.  The onset of dystopia just seems a lot more limited, so far.  To me--and this is just my own speculation, to be clear--the culture war in the US seems partly artificially maintained, by a divide in media reinforcement, which is surely complicated.

It would be interesting if someone as familiar with European cultures as I am Asian societies would break down how the range of related themes have impact there, or aren't relevant.  I've not really filled in my credentials as an Asian culture specialist, have I?  I live in Thailand, and we travel a lot, and I have friends in and from other countries; that's about it.  It's interesting having kids who are half Thai, because they absolutely and completely "get" local culture, on a level I probably never can.  It seems awkward for them to explain it to me, but they do try, if I ask specific enough questions.  As of right now they are in Honolulu, attending school there, so we've switched it back to me explaining their other cultural experiences.

with local family and a friend there

All of this is quite speculative, open to refutation.  It's the kind of thinking out loud in writing that will probably become clearer as I continue to consider these ideas for a few more years.  Or maybe I'm making next to no sense, and will continue to not.  Thoughts, feedback?  Generally informal writing like this doesn't turn into a discussion; just asking.

as a parent I have to be optimistic, and prepare them for a world that will keep changing