Taking sides: Children vs. (non-human) animals

perhaps he's a farmer, and the extra farmhand would be useful.

"here chick chick chick, here chick chick chick"

sandwich-based debate is so rare nowadays in the public discourse.

WHY would anyone choose to have a child instead of a dog

i have spent altogether too much time in the company of under-sevens this weekend and neither twitter nor facebook feel like ~safe spaces to vent about how much i dislike them

neither is ILX, really

grumpy old man lex is gonna be fun

hates: kids, jokes, cooking

barrel of fun, that guy

i love dogs

also i hated children when i was a child, it's not a new development

they do tend to lack self-awareness.

So do dogs.

hating children is so bizarre to me

fuck dogs

I mean sure sometime I meet a cool dog and generally I like basset hounds but mostly blech keep these slobbering shitting pissing barking child-biting simpletons away from me

I feel the opposite of lex, dogs seem like such a pain compared to children, and they're guaranteed to die within like what 15 years? plus dogs shit all over the sidewalks and smell terrible. now partly it's that there are so many terrible dog owners but let's not let the filthy beasts themselves off the hook.

i don't think bad smells and too much shit is really an argument you can make against dogs vis-à-vis children

... and slobbering, pissing, puking etc. Don't like either much tbh. Used to like dogs. Children are probably better.

dog owners mostly do not expect everyone else to be equally enamoured of their pet, nor do they move through the world as if non-dog owners literally do not exist

lol that is not my experience of dog owners

children stop randomly shitting + pissing (and shedding and slobbering) everywhere around the age of 4 or so. Dogs do it their whole lives.

dogs shit in terrible places their whole miserable lives, for kids it's just for a couple of years, and even there, you don't have to pick the steamy pile off the ground wearing a plastic glove on your hand, feeling its runny warm wretchedness.

also right now my kids are making dinner for me, afterward they'll wash up. I suppose a dog will at least eat wasted scraps off the ground.

you don't have to pick the steamy pile off the ground wearing a plastic glove on your hand, feeling its runny warm wretchedness.

posts w striking imagery

Generally ok with either, in small doses and one at a time - there are a lot of animals I like more than dogs tho

WHY would anyone choose to have a child instead of a dog

― lex pretend, Monday, December 12, 2016 10:59 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Less horrifying for the doctors mostly

jfc all of you

dog owners mostly do not expect everyone else to be equally enamoured of their pet, nor do they move through the world as if non-dog owners literally do not exist

― lex pretend, Monday, December 12, 2016 12:39 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol that is not my experience of dog owners

― Οὖτις, Monday, December 12, 2016 12:40 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

loooooool outic otm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTZ5VpfzoW0

children stop randomly shitting + pissing (and shedding and slobbering) everywhere around the age of 4 or so. Dogs do it their whole lives.

They do not. You housebreak a dog, it's housebroken p. much forever unless a) very sick or b) very scared.

Anyway I echo imago's "jfc all of you." Kids are great, dogs are great, life is a fucking miracle in its diversity.

parents are e a s i l y the rudest people i encounter in public

it's not even close. cyclists, runners, dog walkers, couples, no one can touch parents for lack of pavement etiquette and refusal to acknowledge that there are other people in public spaces

every dog owner i've ever known is hyper-aware that others might not like dogs and very good at controlling them but the extent to which parents let their kids scream and run around and yell and generally bother other people is unbelievable

lex i think your perspective here is one of a dumb ageist

Do dogs find a good old folks home for you, or better yet put you up in their houses?

wait the only sort of "ageism" that actually matters is discrimination among adults, not someone disliking being around toddlers

http://www.rantchic.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/kids-on-leashes-4.jpg

i have the impulse that kids are annoying etc but i try to fight it away, it makes me feel like a misanthrope. similarly some parents do appear lax or like they are happy for their child to be everyone else's problem, in public, but again i assume they know more about being a parent than me.

sometimes i look at the behaviour of children, their neediness, their self-centred greed, and it's like they are concentrated embodiments of all the worst traits of humanity. then on the other hand sometimes they seem like concentrated embodiments of our best traits, their curiosity, their imaginations, their ability to show love without a second thought.

last xmas my three nephews started trolling me about being bald, which was mostly hilarious and sort of sweet but did kind of remind me of like quintessential playground bullying, apart from the fact that i am 33 and i can deal with their high-pitched little barbs, plus it only lasted about 45 minutes or so, consisting of a chant of "you have no hair".

my sister intervened to explain that this kind of thing might upset a person, at which point my youngest nephew said "but i like to call you the bald man".

the next day my oldest nephew, who is like 10 years old, came and sat on my knee while i was watching telly, and in a fully earnest tone after staring at my one-grade all over for a moment said "you actually have some hair. it's not true that you have no hair. and you have a beard too."

plenty of adults embody humanity's best traits and also you can have a conversation with them/they don't scream seemingly non-stop/they don't launch themselves at you physically

If it weren't for children, there wouldn't be any grownups. So, no art, music, science, porn, vodka, pizza, internet, or bicycles. No you.

So this is kind of like saying "humans: classic or dud." Which is certainly a debatable question! But if you think there's something worthwhile about the species continuing, then somebody has to have some kids. Doesn't have to be you, of course. De gustibus and all that.

plenty of adults embody humanity's best traits and also you can have a conversation with them/they don't scream seemingly non-stop/they don't launch themselves at you physically

― lex pretend, Monday, December 12, 2016 1:24 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is a sad post

i prefer dogs to children. i prefer dogs to adults tbh.

i was at a friend's house on saturday night and there were lots of dogs. one of them, an 11 year old pitbull called Findlay who've only met two or three times, came over for a pet from me and leaned against me for a hug. A little chihuahua sat on my lap for about half an hour. my idea of a good time

If it weren't for children, there wouldn't be any grownups.

Feeble imo.

lex seems p miserable - no laffs, no kids, only horrible club music to listen to, reliant on others for food

jim that sounds like a wonderful party :))))

I dont understand why people feel the need to disparage children. To me this feels like a kind of prejudice. Kids are mistreated all around the world and they are not equipped to advocate for themselves. What kind of monster would think it's important to express their "dislike" of a group like that?

This has nothing to do with whether people should want to have children. It would probably be better for the world to adopt some version of an antinatalist position tbh. All I'm saying is that children are people.

lex seems p miserable - no laffs, no kids, only horrible club music to listen to, reliant on others for food

you sound like my republican uncle

Sounds like the voiceover to an advert for some (weird) charity.

This has nothing to do with whether people should want to have children.

otm.

but actively hating kids is def misanthropic

ty treesh

antidog ppl itt maybe even worse tho

sometimes i look at the behaviour of children, their neediness, their self-centred greed, and it's like they are concentrated embodiments of all the worst traits of humanity. then on the other hand sometimes they seem like concentrated embodiments of our best traits, their curiosity, their imaginations, their ability to show love without a second thought.

this is very OTM

their ability to show love without a second thought.

Positively doglike.

I wld never give ne money to u commie fux0rs

Wanna c all o u workin hard fer yr paycheck

How would I even go about leaving money to ilx? And what would ilx do with it?

ilx would just spend it all on hen fap

pay the server bill without a pledge drive i guess

I could endow an old folks home for indigent ilxors but who would i appoint trustee? Treeship young but no. Ned too old.

ilx would never agree on how much to give the server

Ha!

I have kids, I love them, I don't particularly love anyone else's kids, but man it is hard in these early years. I fully recognise I've got some sort of Stockholm Syndrome where my experience of what 'a nice time' is has been drastically downgraded

― kinder, Tuesday, October 9, 2018 3:54 PM (two hours ago)

feeling this wheeeeeewww

i suppose so many people having children despite the fact that they've seen how crappy it looks to be the parent of young children shows that humans are not generally motivated by hedonism above all

masochism

eh

I am literally at this exact moment feeling very worn down & exhausted by children, but the peaks of today, while mundane and more or less impossible to convey to other, were still of the punch-the-parental-joy-centers, would still make me do it again, and I think there is a large amount of hedonism in there. I felt really amazing today watching my three-year-old spell out words. It's a feeling I am more than willing to suffer for, if suffer I must, which I must

3 is pretty young to be spelling words!

i feel that the thread ought not to take the turn of ilx parents defending their children

let them stand up for themselves, toughen the lil bastards up i say

Taking Sides: Moana OST Mono 2016 vs. Moana OST remasters 2018

3 is pretty young to be spelling words!

it's completely insane and we were not really ready for this. dude has so far done everything extremely early, from opening his eyes when he was super tiny to crawling to walking to forming sentences, we are baffled

Ha kinda like yrs truly

That kid has a future

Congrats Joan

You must be a proud momma

I am though the other side of this is my dude was done with his baby days VERY early and this is our last kid and I am in heavy mourning that my baby raising days are over and people talk about grandpa renting but I'm an older mom and there won't be a whole lot of grandparenting for me, most likely. still, this kid began a sentence with "in my case" about half an hour ago and I fuckin died it was so hilarious and great

lol "grandpa renting"

it worked tbh

Nice

shooting the shit with a 3 year old near or past bedtime can be terrifying or magical

Mr potty mouth

Breeze, if you please

still, this kid began a sentence with "in my case" about half an hour ago and I fuckin died it was so hilarious and great

― she carries a torch. two torches, actually (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Tuesday, October 9, 2018 8:24 PM (forty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

god I would just die

mine told me he was gonna take the skeleton out of my body

hahahaha excellent

i enjoy talking to kids now and then, and they don't bite

my niece is almost 12 now, i like getting laughs as stupidly as possible from her, but obv she's a teen-rebel-in-training

mine told me he was gonna take the skeleton out of my body

― kinder, Tuesday, October 9, 2018 6:26 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

listen

can I get this service from your child, I desire it frequently