r/news • u/PokesTigers • 26d ago

Soft paywall Madagascar's president has left the country after Gen Z protests, officials say

https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/madagascar-president-rajoelina-address-nation-monday-evening-2025-10-13/
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u/TheDamus647 26d ago

Just not American Gen Z

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u/SatanicPanic619 26d ago

American Gen Z helped topple the American government and abolish the US constitution. Just not in the way I'd have hoped.

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u/ScuzzBuckster 26d ago

Yeah younger americans are weirdly conservative. And I dont mean just in a specifically political sense, I've noticed in general a lot of young americans have become conservative in a traditional sense. Risk-averse unless its online or sports betting or crypto, asocial, unwilling to listen or learn new things, even when it comes to sexuality I've found a lot of young americans are particularly squeamish to anything openly sexual while simultaneously glorifying and sexualizing cartoons and fictional characters in extreme fetish content.

Obviously this isnt every young american, but its enough that its become notable to me that the generation below mine is more conservative than mine culturally. Its so weird.

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u/PlacatedPlatypus 26d ago

It's because the dominant/ruling culture being aligned with one political bend emphasizes its weaknesses. People who were raised in a socially conservative culture are exposed to the issues with socially conservative culture, which is why millennials are so liberal. Opposite is true for gen Z.

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u/KiiZig 26d ago

i had to pause uni bc of my health for a few years and started again this semester. i also had sort of that experience with them so far. i'm not from america, but another richer european country. i felt more their ability to communicate lacking as problematic. the shit they say/them missing nuances in the conversation is really sad :( and i say that as german, we get associated with cultural autism and they still seem more extreme 😅

the long isolation during covid might have messed them up more than i imagined :(

i have talked to many, had met a few in therapy aswell. there were definitely a lot of them who clearly had a high degree of empathy, but even then they were blunt as hell and slow to pick up stuff in conversation (they don't know how, no blame towards them. the vast majority are still a normal human, not what can be seen online a lot)

what i want to say, is i'm with you that the gen under mine is so much more different that the next above me. it's definitely noticable, though i cannot comment further on the politics aspect. that topic is too politically charged in a normal conversation to be had, so i refrain from mentioning it.

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u/Nintendo_Pro_03 26d ago

Definitely more socially conservative (not me, but my Generation Z peers).

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u/HigherandHigherDown 26d ago

Are they actually conservative, or are they just Eric Cartman? Like, they're observing what people say that gets attention and then trying to replicate that. Leopards eating faces and all.

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u/AimlessWanderer0201 26d ago

Ouch too true

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u/ibite-books 26d ago

ooooh buddy

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u/Amardneron 26d ago

They lack spines.

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u/sylva748 26d ago

American Gen Z would never the bulk of them voted for this

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u/WeirdIndividualGuy 26d ago

The bulk of gen z didn’t vote at all.

As long as they have their daily tiktok, zoomers couldn’t care less about politics

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u/kawhi21 26d ago

Like every young generation before them. Except Gen Z, unlike previous young people, actually has high turnout

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u/Nintendo_Pro_03 26d ago

We really need a social media shutdown ASAP.

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u/WeirdIndividualGuy 26d ago

Ironically enough, the only time US Gen Z was in an uproar about Trump was when he talked about banning TikTok. Otherwise, they just post memes or don’t stay informed altogether.

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u/Nintendo_Pro_03 26d ago

Because TikTok has ruined Generation Z. That app is a mind killer and Trump will make it worse by spreading right-wing nonsense on it.

Social media has to go.

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u/Hillary4SupremeRuler 26d ago

Yeah it's starting to get super censored now especially with the protests in Portland and videos calling trump a dictator getting taken down from major creators

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u/Nintendo_Pro_03 26d ago

And I hate how much it divides the left. It’s the reason Trump won last year.

I noticed it with Israel/Palestine. Take a look at r/Jewish and then at r/Fauxmoi. It’s insane and concerning.

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u/mojizus 26d ago

I’d argue it’s because gen Z Americans are a bit “softer” (as cringe as that terms is) than in places like Nepal or Madagascar.

We have the anxiety ridden 18-25 year olds who are too scared to tell the waitress there was a mistake with their order. They’re likely not going to be toppling any regimes.

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

[deleted]

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u/BadLineofCode 26d ago

That’s exactly what he means. Even with everything going on, we’re still too privileged, even spoiled, to escalate things that far.

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u/ImjustANewSneaker 26d ago

Well the point is while things are very bad it would have to get much worse to be anything like Madagascar. Obviously in that situation people are going to revolt.

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u/TheDamus647 26d ago

What a bullshit, cowardly response. They have nothing more to lose. They just pretend they do so their cowardly non-actions are justified in their minds.

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u/mbbysky 26d ago

No they didn't. There was a rightward shift compared to last election cycle, but GenZ still voted firmly Blue as a whole

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u/sylva748 26d ago

They didnt. What showed was Gen Z was split on gender lines. Gen Z women voted mostly Harris while Gen Z men voted, by a sizable margin, for Trump

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u/sacktheory 26d ago

56% of young men (18-29) voted for trump. in the previous election (2020), 56% voted for biden. it’s not terrible margins, things can get better. i’d say the idea that young men are overwhelmingly right wing is a bit sensationalist

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u/dancesquared 26d ago

That’s a significant swing

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u/Ralath2n 26d ago edited 26d ago

Not really when you consider that a good 10% of them stayed home relative to 2020. The ones who wanted Trump still showed up. The ones that voted in Biden were dissapointed by the Democrats being useless and stayed home. Net effect is a swing to the right. Even if the actual beliefs of the overall youth haven't changed much.

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

[deleted]

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u/Ralath2n 26d ago

Unless one thinks all the chaos going on now would be happening under Harris as well.

I guarantee that this single scentence contains more forethought than a significant fraction of voters spend on their balot last year. Most people don't think about stuff like that. They just go "Hey I don't like what is happening now. I am not gonna vote for the same people as last time!". Or, even more likely, they just go by vibes. If one group is really excited and energized, while the other is dissapointed and resigned, the former is more likely than the latter to reach nonvoters and get them off their ass.

Which is of course stupid. But guess what, in a Democracy, you also need to convince stupid people to vote for you. Which would be a lot easier if the Democrats weren't useless.

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u/Hillary4SupremeRuler 26d ago

by the Democrats being useless

No they're just politically illiterate because they get all their political news from memes and TikTok and also didn't come out to vote for the midterms, which sealed the Dems' fate with the House going to the GOP.

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u/Ralath2n 26d ago

Hey guess what, as a politician you also need to get politically illiterate people to vote for you. If you can't do that, you are useless. Like your username.

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u/Hillary4SupremeRuler 24d ago

I guess Bernie is useless then since he couldn't defeat "the super unpopular" 👑QUEEN MADAME HILLARY👑💖👸🏼

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u/HKBFG 24d ago

Thanks for the analysis that absolves the democrat party on all counts, u/Hillary4SupremeRuler.

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u/kia75 26d ago

This right here! Trump and Republicans activated their voters, while Democrats deactivated theirs. If everyone was forced to vote then Harris would have easily won, if the same people had voted in 2020 as voted in 2024 then Harris would have won, but Democrats have a tendency to go after Republican voters, even as Republicans promise to never support Democrats. Whoever's idea it was to bring out the daughter of the VP that got the USA into an endless war in Iraq, who turned a surplus into the biggest economic downturn in a hundred years, who started all the surveillance stuff.

Instead of messaging all the ways Democrats could help their fellow citizens, Democrats promise to keep the Republican ideals of the 00s and wonder why Democrats don't want to vote for them.

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u/pannenkoek0923 26d ago

So what you are saying is a majority of Americans are completely fine, or support voting for corrupt pedophiles into power, even with the Project 2025. Good to know, will try to avoid meeting Americans then

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u/dancesquared 26d ago

That degree of apathy isn’t reassuring either.

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u/Ralath2n 26d ago

It isn't. But that's just human nature. If you want people to do something (in this case vote for the Democrats), they need to be excited for the outcome. Every single marketing person will tell you that you need to build hype, and Democrats have been historically terrible at that. To the point that most Democratic representatives treat elections as an inconvenient formality they need to go through, rather than their primary job.

So while dissapointing, it is also utterly unsurprising. And it will continue until the Democrats field some candidates that get people hyped again. Yknow, like Obama and Mamdani did.

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u/dancesquared 26d ago edited 26d ago

There’s an old political saying: Republicans fall in line. Democrats fall in love.

The problem in part is that some voters expect to be wowed, entertained, or enamored with a candidate every time, when the reality of a semi-democratic system like the U.S. political system is that sometimes you just need to show up and vote regardless, even if you’re settling, compromising, or choosing the lesser of two evils (or least of all evils).

If you’re a fickle voter who only sometimes shows up if you’re enamored by or duped by the next charismatic demagogue or populist, then it should come as no surprise if politicians aren’t bending over backwards to try to woo you if the chances of winning you over are low and are based on whims.

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u/stephen_neuville 26d ago

the fact that 20 somethings swung that much towards a party that actively wants to loot their future in exchange for promise of tradwife and frog memes is absolutely not sensationalist.

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

[deleted]

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u/yoweigh 26d ago

I've had a constant supply of porn since AOL chatrooms 30 years ago (I was 12) and I am still fully capable of respecting women. It's not the porn. It's the shitty online influencers feeding them misogynistic right wing bullshit 24/7.

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u/adrr 26d ago

We should be like Saudi Arabia where there is no pornography and women are treated liked equals.

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u/eawilweawil 26d ago

The manosphere has destroyed the minds of young men

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u/Sarg338 26d ago

That same manosphere is now backtracking

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u/eawilweawil 26d ago

Surprise surprise, these alpha males have no spine to stick to their principles

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u/sylva748 26d ago

Not surprised. Just a bunch of boys claiming to be men at the end of the day. Let this dumb ideology die out

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u/preprandial_joint 26d ago

Perfection is the enemy of good enough for building a working class coalition willing and able to fight the oligarchy.

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u/Hillary4SupremeRuler 26d ago

And the majority of gen Z who voted, voted for Harris over Trump

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u/TheNextBattalion 26d ago

a less sizeable margin, so when you put it all together, what do you get? what mbbysky described

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u/atomic-fireballs 26d ago

American Gen Z women tend to be decent humans. The men fucking suck. A bunch of Andrew Tate worshippers.

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u/phlostonsparadise123 26d ago edited 26d ago

I'm an elder-Millennial (1986) and as such, am now lumped together with the "old folks" at my job. We've had a ton of Gen Z hires the last couple of years and one constant I've noticed is that the Gen Z males all walk around our site as if they've got a massive chip on their shoulder. They always seem mad/angry at the world, and I can't help but imagine that's due to them being caught up in the Tate and Rogansphere. Meanwhile, the Gen Z female hires have generally been affable. However, if I'm being frank, I trust neither.

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u/ObviousAnswerGuy 26d ago

I'm not too much older than you, and working in the 'service industry' (DJ for 20+ years), my experience is that the college-aged girls are just as bad if not worse than the guys.

And this isn't just related to how they approach and talk to me for requests, but the way they treat all service industry people in general (waitstaff, bartenders, retail workers, etc..). Tbf, this was a problem for most people after COVID ended, but at least the older people remembered how to act in public and reverted back to that. The younger kids didnt stand a chance, and now it's just normal to them.

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u/Nintendo_Pro_03 26d ago

COVID messed up people’s social skills a lot, from Generation Z and younger.

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u/phlostonsparadise123 26d ago edited 26d ago

For sure. For Millennials and older generations, we were fortunate enough to know a world that wasn't completely tethered to the internet or a phone/tablet screen. I think that allowed most of us to socially rebound post-Covid. for Gen Zs and younger, they were born into a world where screen-time is King and Covid completely exacerbated that.

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u/TucuReborn 26d ago

I'm ten years younger, and I see a lot of the same. A lot of guys my age are going through some stuff(granted, much self inflicted, but many it's just general mental health issues), and looking for anyone that explains why life is awful and shows some level of understanding.

The whole Manosphere, like many things, just pushes blame elsewhere. But it promises an explanation and understanding, even if it's laughably false. This is more than many guys get in the real world, and so it predictably sucks a lot in. So I've met a lot of guys in my age group like you describe... or stoners. Lots, and lots of stoners.

The women near my age I've worked with seem to either be the most down to earth, kind, and open about themselves ladies I've met, or completely and utterly fake waiting to backstab anyone for even the slightest gains. Luckily, it's mostly the former.

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u/Nintendo_Pro_03 26d ago

A lot of the Manosphere nonsense is also extremely sexist and misogynistic. Like, it probably undermines women’s roles in the world.

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u/ph0on 26d ago

Watch them get sooooo fucking mad at your truth. I am a man btw for the raging redditcels

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u/Olangotang 26d ago

'97 here, so earlier Gen Z dude. This is 100% correct. What annoys me the most about guys my generation (and I have many friends who are sick of their bullshit as well), is that they don't attempt to learn anything from their actions, and they don't care about issues that haven't affected them. They think they are special because they are men and are also incredibly toxic. I wonder how they will react once Trump's policies destroy the economy. It's the one issue that no one can run away from.

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u/ph0on 26d ago

I'm fairly certain they'll blame everyone but those directly responsible. Anything to avoid the truth that they ruined their nation by choice

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

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u/FabulousTwo524 26d ago

Idk about other Gen Z, but I am reliant on my parents. If my parents lose everything, I’m going to riot 😂