It's just the power of muddying the waters. Very effective when you largely control the narrative in your massive echo-chamber created by a right-wing media ecosystem. Any boomer/Gen x fox news viewer will now just think Donald did it and look no further.
LOL, nailed it. This notion that somehow one generation is in some way superior to another and/or dealing with things that no one else ever has, etc....is so tired. As a Gen Xer who had to live through years and years of boomers more or less repeating stuff about younger generations that was said about them...all the while, sucking all the air out of the room, simply because of their numbers.
The notion of a "generation" is largely a marketing fiction and another way to slice and dice the population up in order to divide and conquer. Don't fall for it. If anyone thinks about it for one minute they'll realize it's mostly a numbers game. Why do/did we hear so much about boomers for so many years? Numbers. Why do we mostly hear about millennials after that, almost always skipping Gen X, for the most part? Numbers.
There is evidence there is a generational shift that occurred with millennials that sets them apart from GenX and Boomers; the trend of millennials getting more conservative as they age is significantly reduced compared to Boomers and GenX of the same age. This according to PEW.
That said I'll say I didn't realize how many millennials make up Fox News (though I wonder how much that has to do sports or happenstance with their employment showing it in the break room).
I want to believe it. The cynic in me says....we'll see if it holds. However, I seem to remember the same sorts of things being said of Gen X and the boomers at some point. I really do wonder if it will be different in Gen Y/Z/alpha.
I think the trend of decreasing religion might be a good sign, too, but I'm not sure yet. Let's talk after this year's election to see which way the ship is turning, I guess.
Also: in addition to Gen Y, there is also Gen Z and Gen alpha...they are not any more likely to be resistant to manipulation than any other generation that came before or will come after. Not until/unless we start getting some kind of brain-computer interface or other augmentation as a species that will enable virtually everyone to flag all the constant barrage of logically fallacies, disinformation, and so on.
That should be the aim of education, but so little actual education goes on within our institutions to enable this capability, and I really do think the only way future/current generation would truly advance is if something truly game-changing (in human behaviors - think along transhumanist lines) comes down the pike...
Computer literacy alone makes younger generations more resistant to bullshit. Clickbait, viruses, ad clicks... If you've ever worked in tech you see it. Older folks are just going to believe bullshit as fact without a second thought while the vast majority of my peers would roll their eyes. If course Gen Alpha who is onlu 14 tops might still be at the early stage of the learning curve but will rapidly catch up.
I work in tech. Shrug. I am not convinced that computer literacy alone makes someone any more immunized against, say, logical fallacies and social engineering. Although, yes, someone seeing their peers constantly pitched the usual cons you mention, yeah, maybe against those specific, very narrow tactics. It's kind of like most everyone that joined the net in the early days would point and laugh about the MAKE.MONEY.FAST scam or Nigerian princes, while the people that had joined later (regardless of age) were sometimes falling for the same stuff...for most people, once they see these specific patterns, they will reject them later.
It is, Trump is literally a malignant narcissist, sociopath and psychopath and a pathological liar. Meaning he lies to put himself in a better light, and to hurt people on purpose.
Trump is a natural in gaslighting, it's not even an effort to him. It's the way he thinks all the time.
It's absolutely insane that about half of USA support him. It's a country where a large part of the population is collectively mentally ill.
Let's just say that mental health is not a high priority in the US. It is so bad we let our politicians gaslight and lie to us without any consequences.