Why Young People Suck and Old People Rule

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GasBandit

Staff member
My own variant on a chain letter that's been sent around for a while.

People born before 1970 are awesome. Why?

Their mothers smoked and drank while pregnant. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for gestational diabetes. And then their mothers put them to sleep on their tummies in baby cribs absolutely covered by brightly colored lead-based paints. They rode bikes with no helmets or pads, rode in cars with no seat belts, carseats, airbags, ABS, or crumple zones. Riding in the back of a pick- up truck on a warm day was always a special treat. Water was drunk from a garden hose, not a bottle, and an ice cream cone could be shared with the dog. They ate cupcakes, white bread, real butter, and bacon. They drank Kool-Aid with real honest-to-god sugar. And they didn't get fat. Why? Because they played outside. They left home in the morning, stayed out all day with friends (completely out of contact of the adults) and it was all ok so long as they were back before the streetlights turned on.

They built go karts and tree forts out of scrap and rusty metal (hellooooo tetanus!). They crashed and fell down and smashed into things, earning cuts and bumps and bruises and abrasions and broken bones and knocked-out teeth, and when they skinned their knees there were band-aids, not lawsuits. They got beaten with sticks, paddles, belts or just bare hands and it was considered righteous discipline, not child abuse. Teams had tryouts, and not everybody made the cut. Those who didn't had to learn to live with the disappointment. Your self-esteem was not an issue - you were expected to be able to feel good about yourself once you'd done something to merit the feeling, not vice versa. When you got in trouble at school, you got double at home. And if you got arrested, Dad would let you stay the night just so you'd get the message not to screw up like that again.

Now a kid can't play in the padded-plastic playground unless his mother has direct line of sight contact with him at all times. I remember my playgrounds being rusty steel contraptions for climbing. It was considered an innovation when the seats on the swings started being rubber instead of wood. Schools bend over backwards to make sure a kid suffers no growth of character, and if by some accident he does, the parents are there to swoop in and shelter their precious snowflake and sue the school.

No wonder young people suck so much now. Compared with today, upbringings of the past must seem like homicidal rampages. How could anyone raised in the coddled comfort and sheltered safety of the post-70s be anything other than an emasculated, wussified sack of crap with a lack of character and a misplaced sense of entitlement?
 
J

Jiarn

I dunno about post 70s, I was raised in the 80s and did almost everything posted in that letter....
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Their mothers smoked and drank while pregnant. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for gestational diabetes. And then their mothers put them to sleep on their tummies in baby cribs absolutely covered by brightly colored lead-based paints.
That's not so awesome. Infant mortality rate
[/QUOTE]

Maybe you misunderstood me. It's why people who SURVIVED are awesome. Yes, we have lower infant mortality rates today... but I was not arguing that things were perfectly SAFE back then. I was arguing the conditions created better people in the survivors.
 
Their mothers smoked and drank while pregnant. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for gestational diabetes. And then their mothers put them to sleep on their tummies in baby cribs absolutely covered by brightly colored lead-based paints.
That's not so awesome. Infant mortality rate
[/QUOTE]

Maybe you misunderstood me. It's why people who SURVIVED are awesome. Yes, we have lower infant mortality rates today... but in my opinion, a great many of these people shouldn't have survived childhood.[/QUOTE]

Ah, I see. I'd think that all that drinking and smoking while pregnant would have negatively impacted your development, making you less awesome, even if you did survive.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I reworded my reply a little to make it sound less genocidal.

What I'm trying to say is that if you're thrown into a bear pit and make it out, it makes you awesome. It does not mean that it was awesome that you were thrown into a bear pit.
 
M

makare

They used to hitchhike back then too.... people don't do that so much any more.
 
Just because people survived doing stupid/dangerous things doesn't mean it is a wise thing to do.




(And just becuase it seemed relevant)

 

Dave

Staff member
Hard as it is to believe, during the early Twentieth Century, a whole school of mental health professionals decided that unconditional love was a terrible thing to give a child. The government printed pamphlets warning mothers against the dangers of holding their kids. The head of the American Psychological Association and even a mothers' organization endorsed the position that mothers were dangerous—until psychologist Harry Harlow set out to prove them wrong, through a series of experiments with monkeys.
A quote from This American Life. Link is to the program in question.

Unconditional Love | This American Life
 
I reworded my reply a little to make it sound less genocidal.

What I'm trying to say is that if you're thrown into a bear pit and make it out, it makes you awesome. It does not mean that it was awesome that you were thrown into a bear pit.
I still think all it means is that most of you were handicapped from the start, and therefore less awesome than those that weren't fed poisons from the start.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I reworded my reply a little to make it sound less genocidal.

What I'm trying to say is that if you're thrown into a bear pit and make it out, it makes you awesome. It does not mean that it was awesome that you were thrown into a bear pit.
I still think all it means is that most of you were handicapped from the start, and therefore less awesome than those that weren't fed poisons from the start.[/QUOTE]

Spoken like a true pantywaste. Shaddap and drink your poison.

Also - your avatar makes this discussion ironic.
 
Oh, and I was born in 79 and still ended up in the hospital with lead poisoning, was cut/stabbed with rusty metal objects multiple times, and was often given a hatchet and some twine to go build a fort out in the woods as a kid. Am I doubly awesome for having done that stuff and survived even though people supposedly knew better?
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Oh, and I was born in 79 and still ended up in the hospital with lead poisoning, was cut/stabbed with rusty metal objects multiple times, and was often given a hatchet and some twine to go build a fort out in the woods as a kid. Am I doubly awesome for having done that stuff and survived even though people supposedly knew better?
Was your lead poisoning in 79? Yeah, I guess you're ok then. But I think we better get you to hit yourself in the crotch with a crab mallet a few times just to make sure.
 
M

makare

it's not really hardcore trolling.

What the hell else do we have to do all day?
 
People born before the 70's were awesome because they had sex with whoever they wanted whenever they wanted. You could be shopping and see some cute redhead and mount her right there in the middle of the store and nobody cared. They would just maneuver around you while the clerk stood by with a mop to clean up the mess. Yeah, 70's were awesome. Thanks AIDS for raining on our parade.
 
You know what's awesome? Getting a wood burning kit for your birthday and a chemistry set for Christmas! One Christmas, when money was tight I was lucky to get a bag of broken glass as a present so I could learn about refraction.
 

North_Ranger

Staff member
Gaseous Leslie Bandit! Whatchoo doin' in 'ere, boy? Git back to dem Political pages now, 'fore I whoop yer ass so red they gun' use dat as a street light!



Damn kids...
 
Old people suck. They sent our economy into the shitter, turned all regulation into a joke, nailed every single one of us onto a cross of Iron, turned the inner cities into ghettos, turned Africa into a shithole and spent our country damn near into oblivion.

If anybody remembers my statements of disgust about Europeans double it and apply it to old people.
 

North_Ranger

Staff member
Old people suck. They sent our economy into the shitter, turned all regulation into a joke, nailed every single one of us onto a cross of Iron, turned the inner cities into ghettos, turned Africa into a shithole and spent our country damn near into oblivion.

If anybody remembers my statements of disgust about Europeans double it and apply it to old people.
I don't.

But please, do tell. I'm all ears.

*taps a crowbar against his hand*
 
Old people suck. They sent our economy into the shitter, turned all regulation into a joke, nailed every single one of us onto a cross of Iron, turned the inner cities into ghettos, turned Africa into a shithole and spent our country damn near into oblivion.

If anybody remembers my statements of disgust about Europeans double it and apply it to old people.
I don't.

But please, do tell. I'm all ears.

*taps a crowbar against his hand*[/QUOTE]

In short everywhere Europeans touched in their exploitation of the world where they didn't slaughter the natives has turned into a horrible place in the name of spreading civilization. It got kinda heated last time and a thread was locked so I'll just take my beating and not go into any major detail.
 
Old people suck. They sent our economy into the shitter, turned all regulation into a joke, nailed every single one of us onto a cross of Iron, turned the inner cities into ghettos, turned Africa into a shithole and spent our country damn near into oblivion.
So what you are saying is that old people literally rule.
 
M

makare

Old people suck. They sent our economy into the shitter, turned all regulation into a joke, nailed every single one of us onto a cross of Iron, turned the inner cities into ghettos, turned Africa into a shithole and spent our country damn near into oblivion.

If anybody remembers my statements of disgust about Europeans double it and apply it to old people.
I don't.

But please, do tell. I'm all ears.

*taps a crowbar against his hand*[/QUOTE]

In short everywhere Europeans touched in their exploitation of the world where they didn't slaughter the natives has turned into a horrible place in the name of spreading civilization. It got kinda heated last time and a thread was locked so I'll just take my beating and not go into any major detail.[/QUOTE]

Wait is that Europeans today or Europeans in the past? I think most of them sit around watching Futbol now.
 
As a young person I have vigor, mobility, virility, potency, and passion. Any time an "senior" begins ranting about how superior he or she is, it's usually because they envy these qualities which they no longer have.

Looking at my comment and GB's I can see that ego does not diminish throughout one's life, it only changes.
 

North_Ranger

Staff member
Old people suck. They sent our economy into the shitter, turned all regulation into a joke, nailed every single one of us onto a cross of Iron, turned the inner cities into ghettos, turned Africa into a shithole and spent our country damn near into oblivion.

If anybody remembers my statements of disgust about Europeans double it and apply it to old people.
I don't.

But please, do tell. I'm all ears.

*taps a crowbar against his hand*[/QUOTE]

In short everywhere Europeans touched in their exploitation of the world where they didn't slaughter the natives has turned into a horrible place in the name of spreading civilization. It got kinda heated last time and a thread was locked so I'll just take my beating and not go into any major detail.[/QUOTE]

I'm not gonna beat you. All I'm going to say that you should really consider your terminology. Try "major powers" or "European empires" instead of "Europeans". There's a whole bunch of us here that were actually under someone else's boot, you know.
 
M

makare

Old people suck. They sent our economy into the shitter, turned all regulation into a joke, nailed every single one of us onto a cross of Iron, turned the inner cities into ghettos, turned Africa into a shithole and spent our country damn near into oblivion.

If anybody remembers my statements of disgust about Europeans double it and apply it to old people.
I don't.

But please, do tell. I'm all ears.

*taps a crowbar against his hand*[/QUOTE]

In short everywhere Europeans touched in their exploitation of the world where they didn't slaughter the natives has turned into a horrible place in the name of spreading civilization. It got kinda heated last time and a thread was locked so I'll just take my beating and not go into any major detail.[/QUOTE]

I'm not gonna beat you. All I'm going to say that you should really consider your terminology. Try "major powers" or "European empires" instead of "Europeans". There's a whole bunch of us here that were actually under someone else's boot, you know.[/QUOTE]

So basically they are all into some really kinky shit.
 
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