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A New Breed of Animals?
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Post by
pioneers14
I
Post by
Magician22773
Link is busted (for me at least), but I did read an article about it yesterday.
And yes, society is deteriorating, mostly because of the parents. When pond scum reproduces, it does not make roses grow...it makes more pond scum.
Every now and then, a child will overcome their environment, and will make something much more of themselves than from where they came. But more often than not, they become just as bad as their parents, and they too produce more low-life children.
Its not that these types of kids, and parents didn't exist 20, 30, or 50 years ago, its just there were fewer of them. But the numbers have grown exponentially, and they have also started to rub off on what would otherwise be "normal" kids.
So whats the answer? I have no clue. You can't take away a parents kids because they are &*!@s. And you can't sterilize adults because they are %^&*s. Personally, I say look the other way, and let the old woman slap the living @#$% out of the kids, and maybe the next batch will think before they open their mouths.
EDIT**** At least one good thing came of this. The amazing amout of attention that this video has generated, coupled with an online campaign to raise some money for the elderly lady to "take a vacation" has now raised almost $250,000 for her! Vacation hell....thats retirement!
Post by
Lavafrost
And yes, society is deteriorating, mostly because of the parents. When pond scum reproduces, it does not make roses grow...it makes more pond scum.
It's a vicious cycle, and as you said before, even the perfectly fine kids can (and most often do) get corrupted. It really makes me not want to have a child in today's society.
Post by
Orranis
There's no evidence that it's worse this generation than it ever was before. It's only more noticeable because of social media. The same is true of the 'stupidity of kids these days,' and basically anything you can say about 'back in my day.'
Post by
Atik
Back in my day if we wanted to call someone a fat ugly pig and bring her to tears we had to walk three miles in the snow barefoot uphill both ways.
And we liked it! She would let us in and give us milk and cookies and then we would be on our way,
Kids today don't know how good they have it.
Post by
asakawa
There's no evidence that it's worse this generation than it ever was before. It's only more noticeable because of social media. The same is true of the 'stupidity of kids these days,' and basically anything you can say about 'back in my day.'
This.
As soon as you're old enough that "kids" become something other than oneself the tendency is to see any example of those kids doing something awful as an indication that the generation to which they belong is lesser than one's own (since you never saw such behaviour when you were that age). This is an unsupported assumption to which there's no truth.
This is exemplified by music. Take Elvis. Parents at the time thought that the mere swinging of his hips was, if not a cause then an indication that the generation that understood and appreciated the music was corrupted. My parents' parents thought that Mick Jagger was the devil incarnate and my mother wasn't allowed rock and roll records (like the Beatles) in the house (except Procal Harem - randomly).
My own parents were pretty cool about stuff but I had long dyed purple hair and listened to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers who often performed wearing only socks (not on their feet) and Faith No More. To a generation who had thought Paul McCartney was pretty edgy this might seem to be shocking stuff.
The point is that society has problems but it always has. Today's problems are often quite different to those of yesteryear and will require different solutions but always looking back and wishing we'd stood still at some imagined point where everything was good doesn't help at all. That point is an illusion.
Post by
Realirony
I would have to agree that its all about the presence of social media that brings these stories to light. I'm sure stuff like this has been happening for years and no one heard about it anywhere outside of the local area that it happened.
Its sort of like all of the earthquakes that got a lot of News play the last few years. It wasn't that there was more of them. Its just what the News channels were covering more than they used to in the past.
What I was most amazed about is that this woman has $500k+ (and counting as of last edit from her Vacation website). She has half a million dollars because she got her feelings hurt and the video went viral? I think this outpouring of charity is a product of the increased awareness of Bullying in the past few years from the News and movies. And the recent strings of school shootings over the past decade or so. I'm not jealous of her monetary gain (maybe I am a little), but she gets a half mil for getting her feelings hurt and one of the dudes I went to college with gets his limbs blown off in another country and he comes home to nothing? I don't want to turn my comment into one of THOSE comments. But I'm just amazed that the internet community is rewarding this woman for something that happens to thousands of people a day. Her problem is nothing new, it just got more internet and news play than anything else.
I know bullying is a horrible thing and these kids should be punished and/or taught a lesson, but she wasn't murdered. I don't understand the magnitude of the country's outcry over this small incident.
Post by
Magician22773
There's no evidence that it's worse this generation than it ever was before. It's only more noticeable because of social media. The same is true of the 'stupidity of kids these days,' and basically anything you can say about 'back in my day.'
I disagree. Based on the fact that I was there "back in the day" and you were not. You cannot tell me that the overall mentality of the younger generation is not different today than it was even just 25 years ago, when I was your age.
I may be 40 years old, but I am extremely "young at heart". I still enjoy things that are usually associated with high school kids alot more than I do what a normal 40 year old does. I still go to concerts....and I am talking about shows like Warped Tour and OzzFest, not a symphony. I still skateboard and ride freestyle BMX. I have a JDM Honda CRX, and I have a better sound system in it than any other teenager in town. I am
anything
but what you would call a "typical" 40 year old.
But I still see a huge difference between the way things were in the late 80's and now. Look at drugs for example. In my high school, we had a group of maybe 20-30 kids that we all knew smoked pot, and they all "looked the part". They all hung out together. And you could find them every day before and after school at the park across the street passing a joint. Now, you would have a hard time finding 20-30 kids in school that
aren't
smoking something. Either pot, or the synthetic crap that is for sale at every gas station. Kids are stealing their parents and grandparents pain medications, and its easy to find cocaine, extasy, and meth in any high school. I never even
saw
drugs like that when I was in school. Literally, I never laid eyes on anything other than pot until I was in college.
"Gangs" are another huge difference. When I was in school gang members were (a) minority, and (b) all but non-existant here in middle-of-nowhere Missouri. Gangs were something you only saw on TV in LosAngeles or New York....maybe St. Louis or Kansas City. Now, I see gangs of white kids, black kids, brown kids....you name it. I grew up in a town of 200,000, and went to a school with over 2000 students, and we did not have a single gang member in our school, and I can't remember ever seeing a "gang related" crime. Now, I live in a town with a population of less then 1000, and we have 3 "gangs" here that I know of.
And, more on topic, the overall disrespect for adults and authority. You rarely ever saw a kid disrespect their parents, a teacher, or a police officer when I was in school. We had 1 security guard when I was there. Getting sent to the office was a huge deal, and usually, the punishment was a couple days of In School Suspension. God help you if you did something bad enough to get suspended, and your parents got called to the school. Now, the same school I went to has 3, full time, armed "School Resource Officers" on duty. These are full-blown cops. Kids get arrested on a daily basis. Teachers get assaulted, physically. Guns and knives are a common thing to find in a locker.
So, yes, social media may draw additional attention to the problem, but just because there wasn't a YouTube video of it, doesn't mean it happened just as much "back in the day", because it didn't....I was there.
Post by
Adamsm
And I disagree with your view Magician; I'm almost 29, but I remember all the same crap you see now a days back then.
Post by
Magician22773
And I disagree with your view Magician; I'm almost 29, but I remember all the same crap you see now a days back then.
Any chance that the 12 years difference between us, and the fact that we are from different countries may alter our views?
Things may very well be the same in some areas, but its pretty obvious to me, that here in Middle America, that things have changed, and changed drasticly.
Post by
Adamsm
And I disagree with your view Magician; I'm almost 29, but I remember all the same crap you see now a days back then.
Any chance that the 12 years difference between us, and the fact that we are from different countries may alter our views?
Things may very well be the same in some areas, but its pretty obvious to me, that here in Middle America, that things have changed, and changed drasticly.
I'm in South Western Ontario, about a half hour to 2 hours at the most from the Michigan border; don't go there.
And of course things have changed; that's the nature of time, but all of these 'problems' we see all over the place, on the news, on social media etc etc etc existed back then too.
Post by
Magician22773
And of course things have changed; that's the nature of time, but all of these 'problems' we see all over the place, on the news, on social media etc etc etc existed back then too.
Than explain why I did not witness them from 1986-1990? You seem to be implying that either I did, and I am not saying so, or that I was somehow shielded from it, or that I grew up in some alternate universe, because the $%^& didn't happen back then that does now.
And how does living 2 hours from the Michigan border make you any less Canadian? And it damn sure doesn't give you some special insight as to what southern Missouri was like when you were still in diapers. Things may be the same now in Ontario as they were in 2001, but SW Missouri is pretty damn different than it was in 1986. I could waste 2 hours Googling you up some crime statistics, and maybe some high school drug surveys from 25 years ago, but Im not going to waste my time, because you would still probably want to argue about their validity even if I did.
I mean, honestly, this has got to be the most trollish arguement I have seen you participate in since I have joined this board. You are seriously trying to "tell" me how things were in a place and time that you know
nothing
about, when I
was there
. You may as well be arguing with me about what the view out my window looks like.
Post by
Adamsm
Didn't realize your area of the world counted for all of creation Magician, I'm quite sorry for giving any suggestion at all that people don't look back at their childhood with tinted rose coloured glasses.
Seriously; chill the hell out and stop with the rage all the time.
Post by
Magician22773
Didn't realize your area of the world counted for all of creation Magician
I am the one that tried to concede that things may have been different in Ontario, Canada in 2001 that they were in Missouri in 1986. I also recognized that things like gangs existed then in places like LA, New York, and other major cities. I would say that by you insisting that "I remember all the same crap you see now a days back then" shows that you think your place and time in history is the norm here.
don't look back at their childhood with tinted rose coloured glasses.
And this is what pisses me off. You want to argue your point by assuming that I am looking at things through rose colored glasses. I showed 3 very distinct, and very factual ways that things had deteriorated in the 25 years since I started high school. Drug use, Gang Activity, and the fact that kids have so little respect for authority, that the school has to have 3 armed police officers on duty, where one unarmed security guard used to be able to keep the peace.
There are no rose colored memories here. If there would have been drugs being used, I would have known, as most of my friends were the ones smoking pot in the park. I think I would have remebered if there had been a gang in my school, and I recall pretty clearly that there were no cops stationed in the school when I was there.
So tell me again how your view from Canada at 5 years old trumps mine?
Post by
FatalHeaven
I'm with Magician on this one. And if you have seen our correspondence on the forums, we rarely if ever agree. Did gangs exist 'back in the day'? Yes. Did kids disrespect their parents 'back in the day?' Sure. Were drugs around 'back in the day'? Of course. But it is drastically different today. I can't speak for Canada or Europe. But as for the United States, things have changed.
I wasn't there to witness it but my parents were. My grandparents were. There were still news broadcasts and newspapers. Telephones and snail-mail. Is it easier today to find out about things five minutes after they happen? Yes. But does that mean knowledge didn't get around back in the day? No.
Today's social media can not negate actual experience.
Post by
Patty
My mum's older than both Fatal and Magician and has said that whilst more of what kids do now is publicised, it's not hugely different to what happened in the 70s or early 80s where she lived. The only difference she said, really, was that less kids now were afraid of their parents finding out about their behaviour, rather than a massive change in youth behaviour. If anything was keeping kids "in line", so to speak when she was younger, it was fear, which she no longer thinks is a very positive relationship between parent and child.
Of course, personal experiences don't tell the story of society as a whole, and that goes for what everyone has been through.
Personally, whilst I am nineteen, I get irritated by younger kids if I'm on a bus or in town or.. whatever. But then I remember how bad everyone in my year was at that age and so don't rant and rave about "kids these days" and how "back in my day" everything was perfect.
Post by
asakawa
The trouble is that everyone stating that things have changed are quoting only their personal experiences.
eg.There's no evidence that it's worse this generation than it ever was before.
I disagree. Based on the fact that I was there "back in the day" and you were not.
You see? This is anecdote, not data and it's affected by all the things by which human minds and memories are affected like the power of reminiscence or simply the unspeakably narrow range of one's own experience. You live in a tiny pocket of existence, unaware of anything larger. It's folly to extrapolate too much and assume that what you see counts for anything on a larger scale. It's also folly to trust your own memories so much especially in comparison to more recent experiences since you're a different person now to when you were younger and this has a big effect on how you judge the things you see.
Maybe things have degraded but the things being offered as evidence of that in this thread do not amount to anything.
Post by
Magician22773
Asakawa,
First off, what we are really examining here is our perception of how things are, or were, in the past. So one the best forms of "data" would be, in this case, memories of the way things were percieved. You can't discount eye-witness testimony as "nothing". Especially if you offer no counter evidence to the contrary besides an opinion.
That is what this has been. An eye-witness testimony stating that things were different back then, and someone that wasn't there saying "no, it was the same".
Lets pretend this is a court case of robbery. I saw you rob the bank. I gave an accurate description of the events of the robbery, and an accurate description of your appearance. All you have as a defense is someone 2000 miles away that says you would never do something like that. They don't know where you were when the robbery occured. In fact, they didn't even know you when it happened, but they insist that you didn't do it.
What do you think the jury would rule?
Post by
204878
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
asakawa
Magician, I'm merely promoting a sceptical view of things. Not only am I sceptical of a single anecdotal view of things but one should be sceptical of one's own memories.
There's two very likely possibilities. One that the differences in your experience are exactly as you suggest but that your experience only tells a one in several billion slice of the whole that makes up "society". Secondly that your perception of differences is coloured by the differences in the person you were and now are or perhaps just the fog of fading memories and reminiscence.
Without accounting for possibilities (I'd go as far as to say probabilities) like these then it seems like folly to me to extrapolate too much and make sweeping judgements of society.
As I said, I'm not saying that society has not declined - perhaps it has - but I see no reason to think that based on the evidence provided.
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