Michael Young: So imagine that we have some wild strawberries growing in an ancient city, say in Rome or something. And me and James, being ancient Romans, are walking around in our togas and we find the ancient strawberries, and we pick the strawberries, and there are some that are bigger than the others and there are some that are smaller than the others, but they're all ripe, and some of them are a little more juicy, but me and James are eating the strawberries. Those strawberries are real. Me and James just look at the strawberries, we just see the strawberries, we have knowledge of the strawberries from walking around, then we're eating strawberries.

We're gonna fast forward now to about -- oh, 1960. And now we have a strawberry factory which just grows strawberries all the time. And it selectively breeds the strawberries so that we only get the biggest, juiciest, reddest, loveliest strawberries, and then we pick them. And then only the biggest, reddest, juiciest strawberries imaginable get sent out. So the average person sitting in their home only knows the flavor and the taste of the biggest, reddest, juiciest strawberries. So we have what you might call a productive copy of the strawberries. Right? We're making the strawberries, but they're still, in a sense, they're real strawberries. It's just strawberries on evolutionary steroids.

But then, James and me, having our knowledge from ancient Rome, 'cause we're still alive, say, "Hey, we can make strawberry candies." So what we do is we distill out of the strawberries the flavor of the strawberries, and we double the strength of it so it's way stronger than any strawberry that you can ever have wanted. It's way stronger -- it's twice as strong, or ten times as strong -- and we're going to add sugar to it. And we're going to create a strawberry candy.  

Well, fast forward to the 1990s, and the Jolly Rancher company says, "Hey, look, what we're going to do is we're going to do that same thing, but you know what? The strawberries are really expensive, so we're going to design a thing that tastes like the strawberries, and we're going to replace that wonderful, natural cane sugar that you guys used -- we're going to replace that with high fructose corn syrup, and then we're going to make the Jolly Rancher. So now the Jolly Rancher is the strawberry Jolly Rancher that tastes like the strawberry candy that tastes like the wonderful 1960s selectively grown strawberries which taste like the original strawberries.

But whoah, wait, someone's going to come along and they're going to make a soda -- a Jolly Rancher soda, a Jolly Rancher strawberry soda --mmmm -- which tastes like the Jolly Rancher which tastes like the candy which tastes like the strawberry which tastes like the original wild strawberries. But hold on a second, we're going to make -- 7-11 comes along and says we're going to make, hey, you know what would be really good?   If we made a Slurpee of the Jolly Rancher strawberry soda! So eventually the Slurpee of the Jolly Rancher strawberry soda takes off. Man, everyone just loves it. And everyone's drinking it, and eventually -- you know what? I have a son, and my son loves the Jolly Rancher strawberry Slurpee from 7-11. And my son is out walking, drinking his strawberry Slurpee, and that's all he's ever had. I don't buy strawberries for my kid, because there's Covid, so all he ever has is the strawberry Jolly Rancher soda Slurpee from 7-11. And now as he's walking around one day, he looks over and he sees this odd bush of, like, green and red things that are growing, and they're kind of funny, and they're kind of misshapen, and he goes, "Oh, those look like -- that look kind of like the logo here of a strawberry!" And he goes and he picks it and he [tasting] goes, "Well, it kinda tastes like my Slurpee, but the Slurpee's way better. The Slurpee is cold and refreshing, and oh, it's so sweet and the flavor is so powerful. That's what a real strawberry tastes like."  

So now we've gotten to the point where we started with wild strawberries and we ended up with an ice-cold sugary corn syrupy thing which tastes like a cold soda carbonated water fructosey-syrupy thing which tastes like a candy fructosey-syrupy thing which tastes like a strawberry sugary candy thing which tastes like a selectively grown strawberry which tastes like a wild [strawberry]. And we are completely divorced from the original strawberry. And now the flavor of strawberry is associated with the Slurpee. Right? That's the thing. The Slurpee is the thing that we care about. It's more real than real. It is a hyperreal thing...

... The poet Philip Larkin declared that sexual intercourse wasn't invented until 1963 because prior to that we had something else. We have now birth control pills, we have recreational sex coming up in the '60s, but before that, we didn't have that. So sexual intercourse as a casual phenemon disconnected from family was not invented until 1963, right? This kind of -- that kind of analysis is going to be really useful because they're going to look at the trans movement that's currently happening, and they're going to say, look, back in ancient Rome when me and James were picking the strawberries, we see women, and they're just women. And then we fast forward -- zip! -- to the 1960s, and all of a sudden we have women, but they're wearing make-up. And their hair is done. And they're on birth control. Hang on, she has make-up on. Her skin is better than skin. It's more real than skin. Her hair is prettier than real hair. Then -- wait a second, she's on birth control. So now we're having a sexual act which is not a reproductive act. So is it really a sexual act? And then what we're going to do is we're going to keep pushing that 'til we get to breast implants and chin implants and more facial feminization... 

So finally we come up in the...1960s with the make-up, the hair and everything else, and then you're going to move forward to the 1980s where you're going to have breast implants. Now you have the make-up, and the hair, and the breast implants, and then you're going to move into the '90s, where you have the make-up, the hair, the breast implants, and the Photoshop. And then you're going to move forward 'til they have the make-up, the hair, the breast implants, the butt implants, everything is shaved perfectly, you're going to have labioplasty, and then you're also going to, on top of that, have Photosop, and then you're going to, on top of that, have a feminization filter via Twitter and Instagram which is going to give you a nice glow which is filmed from every concievably perfect angle. And they're going to say, "Look, it's a simulacrum of feminity," and then you're going to have the trans movement, and what are they doing when they're trying to transition from male to female? The target they're aiming for is the Instagram version of the simulacrum of femininity. And then around that, they're going to form an identity. So its a hyperreal identity that's not even based on anything that really exists. They took all the stuff that was added -- they took the hyperreal picture of what feminity is, abstracted that out, and then said that's the new thing we're aiming for, which creates itself a new effect.

Benjamin Boyce: It's more woman than woman...

Michael Young: ...The typical porn star actress is the strawberry Slurpee of women...

The older generations living today—digital immigrants—developed their basic physical skills before the Internet. Millennials, on the other hand, became the first digital natives: they were socialized in an environment that rewards not effort but mere presence expressed by clicks. Since clicks are so easy to make, the exposition of people’s presence to one another becomes enormous. The reward of recognition, promised by a click, sinks in an incredible noise. In the old physical world, people competed through the intensity of effort; in the new digital world, they compete by the intensity of presence. Hence the movement toward extreme opinions, rage on social media, and political polarization, only natural in a society that rewards the intensity of self-identification more readily than it rewards effort.

This development affects the entire society across generations. But older people remember when physical restrictions and face-to-face communication imposed both positive and negative incentives not to exaggerate personal differences. Mitigating differences and compromising were a winning, or at least more or less safe, strategy in the physical world. In the digital realm, the active signaling of an identity is the condition of successful socialization. Studies show that digitalization of social networking not only intensified peer pressure but also confused social and physical reality for younger people.

If digital immigrants firmly distinguish the old physical world from the new digital world, for digital natives it’s all a single hybrid reality where offline activities and old-fashioned face-to-face communications are the somewhat disturbing, but so far unavoidable, continuations of a more comfortable digital existence. Compared with the digital world, which confers instant rewards for a mere click, the physical world requires too much effort. Since more and more activities migrate into digital, digital natives increasingly withdraw from the physical, the most unpleasant part of their hybrid reality. The hybrid reality contributes to the so-called delayed adulthood: millennials and Generation Zers have less or later sex, start fewer families, drive fewer cars, leave parental homes later (if at all), and so on.

Interestingly, instead of the terms “digital natives” and “digital immigrants” that Marc Prensky introduced in 2001, David S. White and Alison Le Cornu suggested in 2011 the terms “visitors” and “residents” as better descriptions of different people’s (and generations’) engagement with new technologies. Indeed, younger generations reside in the digital, while predigital generations just visit it, though increasingly often. However, the opposite is also true: digital residents just visit the real world for some residual needs, but they always hurry to return to the digital environment.

The old world is still putting up a fight. Legacy systems of family upbringing and education still require sizable effort in exchange for delayed rewards. But such a balance is unnatural for digital natives. Parents bribe their children with tablets to keep them entertained and buy themselves some time. The touchscreen devices stimulate children’s curiosity with the click’s irresistible instant reward and thus shape their sensorium and their moral evolution.

Digital natives are fit for their new environment but not for the old one. Coaches complain that teenagers are unable to hold a hockey stick or do pull-ups. Digital natives’ peripheral vision—required for safety in physical space—is deteriorating. With these deficits come advantages in the digital realm. The eye is adjusting to tunnel vision—a digital native can see on-screen details that a digital immigrant can’t see. When playing video games, digital immigrants still instinctively dodge bullets or blows, but digital natives do not. Their bodies don’t perceive an imaginary digital threat as a real one, which is only logical. Their sensorium has readjusted to ignore fake digital threats that simulate physical ones. No need for an instinctive fear of heights or trauma: in the digital world, even death can be overcome by re-spawning. Yet what will happen when millions of young people with poor grip strength, peripheral blindness, and no instinctive fear of collision start, say, driving cars? ⁴

1. No phones
2. No internet
3. Participate