u/FambilyMalues

One of the mysteries of Michael Jackson’s enduring legacy is how much he is being embraced by people who were not even alive or barely sentient when he was alive.

When I think of myself at a similar age, I wasn’t listening to music from 40 years ago so it’s actually quite interesting to see Gen Z and Gen Alpha adopt him and emotionally attach to him so readily.

I think there’s a multivariant reasons for this I want to unpack and discuss.

First let’s talk about MJ himself:

MJ was obviously phenomenally talented so that translates across generations. 4 octave vocal range, multimedia, multi genre artistic mastery, etc.

MJ understood visual media and stage performance far better than his peer group. He knew that he only had a few seconds to capture the audience’s attention It meant everything had to be perfect, dynamic, and attention grabbing... that’s perfect for social media algorithms.

MJ embraced humanity on a global scale free of prejudice. Man in the mirror, Black or White, They don’t care about us, and Earth Song. His messages still ring true for generations looking for meaning in a global world economy. He was woke before woke was a thing.

Secondly, let’s talk about the environment that Shaped Gen Z and Gen Alpha and how that is similar to Michael Jackson.

Gen Z /Alpha grew up under constant surveillance like him and crave privacy. We’re now seeing children of reality stars or family Vlogs or Instagram stars etc. display a lot of the same mentality Michael Jackson had. They understand what it means to have to claw their privacy back after being over exposed to the public as children.

A lot of Genz/Alpha have developed body dysmorphia from the expectation that every photograph look perfect for social media. It has exploded plastic surgery, as well as tools like filters, etc. MJ struggled with this because of criticism of his appearance during his awkward teen years and his father’s abuse.

Gen Z /Alpha know what it’s like to be hyper criticized publicly for everything. Social media has made everyone bold behind a keyboard, so they know what it’s like to be constantly criticized for absolutely everything no matter how small by absolute strangers.

Gen Z / Alpha have embraced niche hobbies and aesthetics. Social media has exposed and embraced a lot of people with interesting hobbies of varying kinds so now nobody would bat an eyelash at a man with a theme park or a massive arcade. They’d probably be trying to get into Neverland to film content.

Gen Z/Alpha know what it’s like to be isolated from other children and how that affects development.
For a couple of years, they were legitimately forced to stay indoors and couldn’t play with other kids due to Covid just like Michael was isolated. They lost a lot of of their childhood and social development..

Gen Z /Alpha were exposed to sex too young and became Puritanical. The Internet is full of disgusting sexual perversions and it’s almost impossible to avoid as a child and for parents to fully protect their children from. As a result of this over exposure, a lot of them are trying to claw back their innocence and are adverse to seeing gratuitous sex on screen, or hook up culture. This is very similar to how Michael Jackson describes his upbringing when he was performing in strip clubs and watching his older brothers and father banging women at five and six years old. He was completely disgusted with all of it and became obsessed with reclaiming his innocence and hated the idea of womanizing.

Gen Z/Alpha know that entertainment families can curate things for the camera but behind the scenes could be horrific abuse. Many have been part of families that pressured them to lie and put on a performance but behind the scenes, they were being abused by their parents. Cases like Ruby Franke and others have trained them to see the signs of abuse beyond the curated image.

Gen Z / Alpha knows the media lies and is prejudiced. The media during Michael Jackson’s life is rightfully being reexamined and criticized for racism, sexism, misogyny, ableism, homophobia, and transphobia. Gen Z/Alpha sees 80s and 90s media culture the same way we would look at freak show circus ads from the early 20th century. Just clearly dehumanizing to the subjects involved and more a statement on society than the person being displayed.

TL;DR I think Michael Jackson’s particular psychology is now more widespread because an entire generation of kids has now experienced it personally.

I think if all three of them were Michael’s biological kids, the children would have clarified that by now, but the fact that they’re all keeping it purposely ambiguous, even though the oldest is pushing 30 now is proof enough for me that they know who is Michael’s biological kid, but will never clarify it to the public because all three of them aren’t and they don’t want one person to be singled out and bullied. I think it’s a matter of sibling solidarity.

My theory right now is that Prince Michael and Bigi are Michael’s biological children and Paris is not. I’m thinking she figured that out at some point, which is why she’s sort of been the most troubled out of the three. She also seems much more attached to Debbie Rowe than Prince is, which makes me feel like she’s felt a need to connect with a biological parent or perhaps female energy.

Bigi has Michael’s eyes, nose, hands, and smile and looks the most like he could be his child and prince looks like Michael’s paternal grandfather, and allegedly has vitiligo, which is extremely extremely rare and almost assuredly would not come from a donor.

What makes me pause is that Paris has said that Michael taught all three of them about black history and was very adamant about telling them they were biracial. I’m not convinced Michael lied to her so much as Debbie probably cheated or something which is partially why their relationship seems to have been strained.

Michael has maintained the children were conceived the old-fashioned way through sex.

There’s a bunch of rumors going around that Debbie was artificially inseminated but she’s never actually confirmed that it was just a rumor made up by the tabloids that neither of them have validated.

From the description of everyone who has visited Neverland Ranch - It seems he had Olive Garden rules where “if you’re here you’re family”.

He did not differentiate between access he would normally give his cousins or nieces or nephews from these non-related surrogate families like the Arvisos, the Chandler’s, the Robson’s, etc. They took advantage of that.

I also don’t necessarily think he was mentally a child so much as he saw himself as an older brother insert doing all the things he wished his brothers had done with him as a child like play twister, watch movies, have sleepovers and eat popcorn.

His brothers were teenagers and were mostly interested in chasing women and would not do all the fun childhood stuff he wanted. A lot of his diaries reveal how hurt he was His brothers would not hang out with him. Some of that was portrayed in the Michael biopic.

So then he found families with kids he could be a surrogate older brother to.

Unfortunately, some of these people were scammers and took advantage of his lack of boundaries to extort him for money by claiming molestation. And the public had very different perceptions of appropriate boundaries between children related to you and children that are not related to you so the allegations stuck in people’s mind, even though some of these people were obvious scammers.

This is why his nephews stressed that basically everyone was treated the same way at Neverland Ranch and that Michael never differentiated between the kids that were actually related to him and which ones weren’t.