privilege as a meme

cmon guys this kid has a life full of opportunity ahead of him, you want to destroy that just cos he ran down some schmucks while hopped up and playing his own real life game of GTA IV?

Does sound as if he would have been better off being raised by wolves though. Hopefully the rehabilitation works out and the families of the victims find a way to ruin his parents through the civil courts.

it's like the Rake's Progress where the rake gets off at the end and lives happily ever after

or possibly more like if a quadruple murderer said "soz" and got off

"This kid has been in a system that’s sick," Miller said. "If he goes to jail, that’s just another sick system."

I think that's probably/possibly true. It's also true of most of the other kids ever convicted of crimes, who don't duck 20-year sentences but go on to have their lives ended or ruined by their punishment.

challops i know but i don't think this kid was ever gonna achieve 'great things'

nobody said great things i don't know why i scare-quoted it

possibly i just resent minors for their 'youth privilege' idk

... then again i knew dudes like this during my teenage years *thank u suburban privilege

and i feel like i woulda been totally sketched-out or outraged if one of them had gotten away with sum shit like this?

youth not so legally privileged in the us

Grow up poor- not an excuse or even mitigation go 2 prison 4eva
Grow up rich- oh noes someone think of the childrereren

gets it

I am generally not in favour of sending children to prison for nonviolent crimes unless it can't be avoided. From the sound of it, his parents let him drink and drive from the age of thirteen and raised him to have an almost sociopathic disregard for the consequences of his actions. Therapy seems essential. It should also be the punishment for kids from poor families who are put in the same situation. The fact it is denied to them is more outrageous than the fact it's given to him.

deathrow the parents imo

the kid too

sharivari otm

yeah ShariVari otm

that said

no way this kid isn't going to be a psychopath (if he isn't that already)

you don't kill four people, get away with it, and not end up mentally damaged in some profound way

obviously there's a high chance he'll have some kind of trauma, but there are plenty of ppl who kill ppl without suffering profound mental damage e.g. military

^ sarcasm? i can't tell

no one should ever have to go to jail for anything

I don't even know if this is the right thread for this (because I'm not sure I properly understand the meaning/purpose of this thread) or if it should be on the race thread, but really:

https://medium.com/get-bullish/a5e5f4e9132f

"Life Hacking" = brutal assertion of race, class, etc privilege.

"check ur privilege" lol

Great story about the post office. That guy sounds like a real pice of work. Actually feel a book or documentary on the incident would be worth making but I suppose an article will have to do for now.

How to tell when someone has not read beyond the first three paragraphs of a piece. *sees screen name* Never mind, what was I expecting.

That's so good, I like that article! My littlest brother is totally that guy and I know other ones too even without the wealth inequality of the author.

yeah i have friends like that who think (1) that they have unlocked the secret to day-to-day life and (2) when they do it it is scandalizingly charming in the same way a rude joke

The most polite phrasing of their worldview is "It can't hurt to ask."

i hate the degradation of the term 'lifehack' into 'oblivious dickhead behavior'

Yeah, reading the article, I just thought "this is my brother" (this is people I went to school with, people I've worked with - and therefore, probably in ways I'm not even aware of it, *myself*!) all over. That whole "Oh, but bending the rules, just this once, just for little me" (and the false humility often gets trotted out as often as the entitlement) followed in quick succession by "ha ha, I can't believe everyone doesn't do this! The FULES! I am so clever and smart and funny and this is why I have nice things."

So my reaction is totally a wince, but also a recognition.

I do however think you should use the heck out of what ppl are willing to do for you when it's punching up. Like most things.

punching up?

directing your taking-advantage-of upward, rather than downward

the powerful rather than etc

that was one of jesus's parables iirc

It's not always easy for people to work out when they're punching up which I think is where a lot of this stems from - people thinking they're gaming corporations or institutions when they're just making things harder for service staff and other customers (though I am sure this does not apply to in orbit).

yah it seems like an awful complicated equation
much easier not to use ppl at all

otm

this stuff's supposed to be abt bending the rules of technology to get what you want

not bending people

"It can't hurt to ask" is fine where "no" is an acceptable response.

yeah, disgusted lol at "social hacking"

I think anyone who has working in retail/service knows it's not just white men who do this kind of thing

but yeah, the businessman/suburban dude dropping into a city p.o. with the "Can't you people see that I can't stand in line with you all day. I have actual things to do!" attitude is something I've seen before.

Yeah, I don't know that "punching up" is applicable in this specific kind of behaviour as discussed in the linked article.

Because it's not actually the *asking* that is where the privilege is located. It's the sense of entitlement behind the asking, and also the knowledge that in cases of "rule-bending" there will be no serious *consequences* beyond just a "no". Bluffing his way into a private party and essentially stealing a game of ping-pong (which, presumably they would have had to pay for, had the party not been in process) did not result in arrest for trespassing or prosecution for theft, and he never felt any danger that it would, it was just "japes and a fun life-hack". That assumption of "can't hurt to ask" where many, many people do experience problems, for even asking, that's exactly what privilege is in this case.

i long for the days when "life hack" meant cutting a juice bottle in half and using it as a desk tidy.

"Handle so, dass du die Menschheit sowohl in deiner Person, als in der Person eines jeden anderen jederzeit zugleich als Zweck, niemals bloß als Mittel brauchst."

It's the kind of thing my brother used to do in NYC, and he used to rope me in as his companion in "put on a suit and see where we can bluff our way into" which was fun and games and a bit of a thrill. But then his behaviour started to cross some lines.

I remember one night he wanted to catch a taxi from his midtown workplace to his home uptown. He had tried to get cash out of a machine but I can't remember if his card was denied or the machine was broken - this was the 90s so there was no paying by card, and I had lived in NYC about a year, but even at that point I knew you could not pay for a taxi with a cheque. Still, he insisted on getting the cab even though neither of us had any cash, maintaining it would be fine. We got to our destination, my brother pulled out his chequebook, and the cab driver did not think this was fine, in fact he understandably freaked out and called the cops.

The cop came over, and my brother gave him this spiel carefully mentioning about how he had taken his sister to dinner at (expensive club) then gone back to his office at (investment bank) and couldn't get any more cash, oh, what a spot of bother. And I was shitting bricks, thinking we were both going to get arrested, when, to my surprise, the cop looked at the taxi meter, pulled out his own wallet and said "OK, tell ya what, I'll pay the cash fare, you write the cheque to me, everything will be fine."

And everything *was* fine. And, as I, frankly astonished, followed my brother back to his flat and asked him what he had just thought he was doing, he simply shrugged and said "I knew the minute the cop turned up, and the cop was white," (the taxi driver was not) "that there was nothing to worry about." That this was very specifically *not* a case of "can't hurt to ask" - this was his tacit understanding that the fact of being white, and the fact of being the class that worked in investment banks and went to posh Ivy League clubs for dinner meant that rules of not passing bad cheques and not getting into cabs you can't pay for and not arguing with cops just did not apply to him.

I always wanted a word for that attitude, that expectation, and "privilege" is a perfect fit. Expecting to jump the post office queue ~just because~ is a very minor step along that spectrum which also has crashing a ping-pong party on it, but this is the name for that thing.

Your brother understands cops' mentality very well.

yup. cops.

Cool bro story

arrest a poor person = very little chance of blowback
arrest a rich person = a good chance my ass is fucked, so why buy trouble?

great post branwell.

How to tell when someone has not read beyond the first three paragraphs of a piece. *sees screen name* Never mind, what was I expecting.

Keep fighting the good fight.