Let's Kill All the Teenagers, Shall We?

Neal Shusterman's Unwind and The Old Cannibalizing the Young

FADE IN:

INT. PRIVATE GENTLEMEN'S CLUB - NIGHT

Two elderly men in expensive suits sit in leather chairs by a fireplace. SENATOR WHITMORE (72) adjusts his oxygen tank while SECRETARY DAVIDSON (68) massages his arthritic hands. Both men radiate the entitled arrogance of those who've held power for decades.

SENATOR WHITMORE
(coughing, bitter)
You know what infuriates me most, Davidson? Youth is completely wasted on the young. Look at my grandson—twenty-two years old, perfect health, spends sixteen hours a day playing video games in my basement.

SECRETARY DAVIDSON
(nodding grimly)
At least your grandson isn't livestreaming himself crashing sports cars or threatening children for internet points. These young men today... they're destroying their bodies, their minds, their potential. Meanwhile, we're the ones with the wisdom to actually keep things running.

SENATOR WHITMORE
(leaning forward, eyes gleaming)
If only there were a way to... redistribute that youth. Put it to better use. Imagine what we could accomplish with their strong hearts, their clear minds, their decades of life ahead.

SECRETARY DAVIDSON
(smiling coldly)
Funny you should mention that.

Davidson reaches into his briefcase and pulls out a worn paperback copy of "Unwind" by Neal Shusterman. He places it on the table between them.

SECRETARY DAVIDSON (CONT'D)
The game plan already exists. We just have to follow it.

FADE TO BLACK.

I’m not sure there’s ever been a society with such pervasive animus between the old and their progeny. Traditionally, the goal of every generation has been to make a world better for their children, to teach, toil, and sacrifice to give the youth a leg up. But no more.

Scroll through social media and you'll find countless examples of older Americans – particularly Baby Boomers – expressing open disdain for younger generations while simultaneously hoarding the very resources that could help them succeed.

The statistics are staggering: many older Americans are sitting on millions in home equity while their adult children struggle to afford rent. They're refusing to retire from jobs that could provide career advancement for younger workers. They're spending lavishly on luxury cruises and expensive hobbies while their adult children ask for help with student loans or down payments, only to be told they need to "work harder" and "stop being entitled."

Most disturbing of all, surveys show that many older Americans are intentionally spending down their wealth to avoid leaving inheritances. “I earned my way in this world; they can do the same.”

This isn't universal, of course. Many boomers have always and continue to sacrifice for their kids and grandkids. But on the wider scale, boomers have created a system where young people can't afford homes, can't save for retirement, can't start families, and then they mock those same young people for failing to achieve traditional markers of success.

It all leads to yet another piece of dystopian fiction that is starting to look strangely prescient. 1984 and Brave New World get cited all the time as being true to life, but it wasn’t until the last few years I ever thought Neal Schusterman’s Unwind could ever become reality.

Society can’t agree on whether it’s okay to kill children in utero. How could they ever unite behind the idea that it’s okay to kill teenagers and scrape them for parts? Well, I’ll tell you.

Read it now

The Bill of Life: A Horrific Compromise

As the first book of the series begins, we’re told that The Heartland War erupted as an extreme escalation of the abortion debate. It was an actual armed conflict between pro-life and pro-choice factions that tore the country apart. The war's devastating toll created desperate pressure for any resolution that could end the bloodshed. The government's "solution" was the Bill of Life, which retroactively made both sides feel they had "won":

• For pro-life advocates: Life became 100% protected from conception to age 13. No termination of any kind was permitted during this period.

• For pro-choice advocates: Parents gained the right to "retroactively abort" their children between ages 13-18 through unwinding.

The twisted logic was that unwinding didn't technically "kill" anyone, since every part of the unwound teen would live on in different body part recipients.

Why Teenagers Specifically?

The funny thing about the Unwind accords is that the propaganda campaign to dehumanize teens began long before the bill was signed. The government weaponized public fear by creating a narrative about "feral" teens – displaced youth who had supposedly become wild and dangerous after a civil war. These teens, many of whom were simply trying to survive, were portrayed as inherently threatening. Their normal behaviors were reframed as pathological, their very existence presented as a danger to civilized society.

The government and media essentially weaponized public fear of these displaced youth by:

• Portraying groups of unsupervised teens as inherently dangerous

• Amplifying incidents of theft, vandalism, or other survival-driven behaviors

• Framing normal teenage rebellion as pathological when it occurred in "unwanted" kids

Then, after the cannibalizing began, when older people got new hearts, new hands, new eyes, just because they liked the color better, suddenly there was an expanding of the definition of “feral youth.” What started as concern about truly abandoned children gradually expanded to include any teen whose behavior parents found unmanageable:

• Learning disabilities, mental health issues, or simply strong-willed personalities became grounds for unwinding consideration.

• The bar for what constituted a "problem child" kept lowering.

On a societal level, no one paid much mind. Why would they? The young had already been stripped of their humanity. Instead, they were only an entry on a balance sheet: are you a benefit to my (the parent’s) life? Or would you be more useful as spare parts?

They had been given their moral “get out of jail free” card. You’re not actually ending a life. You are allowing this person, who has wasted the life he or she was given, to continue living though someone else.

The kids themselves are told, “You want to be useful, don’t you? We gave you the opportunity to live well. But you didn’t. Those bits and bobs of usefulness you have will go to someone with more drive. It’s not fair to deprive them when they have the potential that you didn’t take advantage of.”

It’s communism times ten with a religious veneer. You have something I want. And I’m going to convince everyone that it is righteous for me to steal it by force.

Imagine wasting that metabolism on some stupid teenager…

The "Feral Youth" Propaganda Machine is Already Running

In Shusterman's dystopian world, the government weaponized public fear by creating a narrative about "feral" teens in the aftermath of war. But we don't need a civil war to create our feral youth narrative. We have algorithms.

Every platform is force-feeding you the most extreme examples of young male dysfunction. The algorithm doesn't show you the millions of young men working, studying, volunteering, or living normal lives. It shows you Jack Doherty, a 21-year-old sociopath who has built a multi-million dollar empire by livestreaming his complete disregard for human life. It shows you an endless parade of TikTok "pranksters" destroying property, harassing strangers, and terrorizing communities.

And just like in Shusterman's world, we're not examining the systemic failures that created these conditions. We're not asking why these young men are so desperate for attention that they'll risk their lives and freedom for viral moments. We're not addressing the economic hopelessness, the elimination of stable career paths, the housing crisis that makes independence impossible, or the complete absence of meaningful mentorship and community that has left an entire generation of young men rootless and angry. To say nothing of the way young men and women of child-bearing age have been pitted against each other as enemies.

Instead, we're pathologizing them, viewing them as a threat to the very civilization they’re supposed to be inheriting. We're calling them weak, entitled, dangerous. We're creating the exact same psychological conditions that made unwinding seem reasonable in Shusterman's fictional society.

The headlines are already writing themselves: "Young Men Are Falling Behind." "Male Violence on the Rise." "Generation Z Can't Handle Reality." Sound familiar? This is how societies prepare themselves to view certain groups as expendable.

The Cannibalization of Youth for the Benefit of Age

Here's where things get absolutely fucking disgusting. We don't need to wait for some future dystopian legislation to see older generations literally consuming younger ones. It's happening right now.

In the Unwind universe, unwinding was never just about getting rid of "problem" teens, but harvesting their healthy young bodies to benefit older, wealthier recipients.

The economic parallels to our current system are impossible to ignore. We live in a society where older generations have structured the economy to extract wealth from younger generations while offering them fewer opportunities for advancement. Young people work in the gig economy without benefits while their labor enriches older shareholders. They pay into Social Security systems that may not exist when they reach retirement age. They're charged exorbitant amounts for education and healthcare while older Americans benefited from subsidized college and employer-provided health insurance.

In essence, we already have a system where older Americans consume the economic vitality of younger Americans while justifying it as "how the system works" and "paying your dues." The leap to literally consuming their physical vitality while using the same justifications isn't as large as we'd like to believe.

You Are Being Programmed. Wake Up.

None of this is happening by accident. That constant stream of "young people behaving badly" content flooding your feeds? It's not random. It's algorithmic manipulation designed to manufacture your consent for viewing young people as problems to be solved rather than humans to be supported.

When you see video after video of young men acting destructively, ask yourself these questions:

• Why am I being shown this content?

• Who profits from my rage toward young people?

• What am I being conditioned to accept?

The answer should terrify you. A society that views its young people as inherently problematic is a society that's more likely to accept harsh measures to control them. Every viral video of Jack Doherty being a psychopath makes it easier to justify expanded surveillance on all young men. Every clip of Neon threatening children makes it easier to pass legislation restricting young people's rights. Every TikTok prank gone wrong makes it easier to blame individual young people for systemic failures rather than addressing the underlying causes.

You are being programmed to see young people as disposable.

The tech companies and media organizations profiting from this rage-inducing content aren't necessarily trying to create conditions for dystopian legislation. But they are creating the psychological conditions that make such legislation more palatable.

When we're constantly exposed to the worst examples of youth behavior, we become numb to their humanity. We start seeing them as statistics, threats to be managed, rather than people who need help. This is exactly the mindset necessary for a society to accept something as horrific as unwinding.

No one wants to die, but the fear of death and delusion that you can live forever by refusing to step aside is destroying the greatest civilization to ever exist.

It doesn’t work that way.

And if you wish it did… then I encourage to sit with that for a moment. And ask yourself if you’re really the good guy in this scenario.

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