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

i was talking w/a friend who has twins, both in kindergarten at our kid's school. one of them has ADHD and she tries so hard, she's a single mother, and she deals w/people all the time. she said someone said to her, point-blank recently about her son when he was having some issues, "what's WRONG with that kid?" idk, maybe some people just shouldn't talk about children or ever think about them except to not hit them in the crosswalk.

I'm with you, Lex, after my previously angelic toddler drew blood from my face today after a meltdown about going in the car
He shares your musical taste tho

(I don't like other kids much but my own is endlessly fascinating and amazing)

i'm a high school teacher and i love it! kids that age are inspiring and great fun to be around! but i would never have my own kids. too much work. i can barely keep up with the responsibility of my dog tbh.

i do think that there's something to be said for the fact that the younger the kids are, the more tolerable. li'l cherubs running around making mischief, eating cookies, making sloppy art, telling you facts they just learned w/wide eyes, make-believing my little pony games, vs dead-eyed teens running around stealing cars, taking oxy, writing terrible journals, reciting conspiracy theories back at you, make-believing my little pony games.

but, i dunno, ymmv but growing up in real scotland I'm too easily reminded of how psychotic and fucked so many of the boys i grew up with were, and the weird nihilistic stuff that would go on. e.g. a kid i knew threw a brick at a passing train from a bridge when he was like 11 or something, at high school people would take snowballs made from old frozen-over patches of snow that are more like rocks and threw them in a large arc down a flight of stairs that were about the height of a 3 story building with no intended target as long as it hit someone. there was a thing called the grog pit (a common thing in west central scotland as conversations with friends have confirmed) where an unliked member of the cohort would be thrown in and everyone would spit on them, etc. the effeminate boys who would later come out as gay were made fun of day in day out from the age of 8 or 9 and occasionally physically attacked. a lot of the boys doing this sort of stuff are now "normal" adults.

Yeah my junior high years were something like that. The girls would cut you socially and it devastated me, but the boys would tape whoever was the scapegoat that week to a tree and shoot fireworks at them, spit on each other, threaten to shoot your pets, shoot each other with bb guns.... Good times.

I'll never forget that one of my classmates insisted that he shot songbirds with his gun, then took the raw bird meat and hid it under the toppings of his babysitter's pizza and she ate it. Almost definitely fake but

Let's just cancel the years between 10 and 20 is what I'm saying. Possibly 30.

10-22 years, ranked:

21
20
19
22
10
11
12
18
16
17
15
13
14

I grew up with this mischievous little imp who is currently doing life in Dublin and is referred to as Ireland's most prolific serial killer. To me he was Nashy, who would always try and manipulate other kids to do the mischief for him. Never could predict how fucked up he ended up, and he is still linked to a couple of unsolved murders in my area.

two brothers who were about 10 or 11 at the time, from the neighborhood next to mine, doused a classmate in gasoline and set him on fire.

yes but like tbh anything over 10 isnt a kid its a shit adult

Nashy

There was always strong rumours that at the age of 8 this guy pushed a friend into the path of a car, into a collision that killed him. The driver was over the limit which became the main story.

Yeah some kids are definitely bad news. No argument from me

we need to talk about nashy

nashyvan

When he first arrived at my junior school I was always very friendly to him, at a point where he was getting bullied, so he will probably kill me first if he ever gets out.

He doesn't seem to target people who were actually shit towards him back then. So if he does ever get out I will have a lump hammer at the ready.

did this thread really devolve into "cartoon villains dislike children ergo disliking children makes you a cartoon villain"

i mean yes i am aware that we live in an aggressively pro-natal, pro-nuclear family society, this is exactly why i needed to vent for a few minutes

oh and another thing is that 99% of the time having children turns formerly interesting and fun adults into complete bores (the 1% mostly comprises naturally gifted raconteurs who can make any anecdote entertaining). this thread seems evidence of that. it's literally impossible to converse with a parent if their child is also there.

Also true that 99% of the time having kids makes you realise how irresponsible and thoughtless and blithely unable to comprehend life changes some people without lids can be

Kids, dammit

http://www.cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk/slang/saucepan_lid_1

Taking sides: People that talk reet vs (sub-human) languages

i think it was more like "disliking children is a classic sign of misanthropy" - i agree children's stories might be coercively normative but i still think, like any other form of misanthropy, it's better to try and step back from the impulse to dislike children, rather than double down on it. i also definitely agree that prejudice against children is actually quite important and bad - we have societies in which children's views are ignored more or they are more marginalised - generally in those societies bad things happened to children.

i mean yeah, i find children and couples can be insufferable, of course they can. but it strikes me as fairly normal that somebody would develop an attachment to their child, or treat it as special. the alternative would probably be some form of abuse.

children make too much noise, then they grow up and put music on in public places and cause yet more damage to the environment. Dogs don't clean up after themselves but then to see grown people chasing after them with a bag to pick up their excrement is embarrassing, the dog is an adult and has no excuse. children, dogs, children owners, dog owners, car drivers and people who put music on in public places, 2016 has been terrible but all of these have been entrenched for such a long time i wonder if serenity will be lost forever

and I really don't understand who's idea it was to put them on aeroplanes, an aeroplane is an anxiety inducing soul killing experience as it is but this is too much

parents:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CzjiHvNXgAUpxgA.jpg

Jesus wept

I knew, KNEW, you'd share that.

Yep, we're all like that. Fortunately, I was neither interesting nor fun before parenthood, so no great loss.

idk what's meant by "doubling down" on disliking children. i don't tell parents in person that they or their children are boring/annoying, and i can even muster up a smile for children of people i know for...i think 10 mins is my limit. i just hate the experience of being around them and occasionally need to vent this.

there is only so much respite in this world from people who insist on talking at you when you would rather be in the dreamstate, that then they must bring a smaller version of themselves and talk at you about that and then make you hold this thing and talk to it like its 2 years old. Every minute is a minute closer to death that could be spent at peace instead of this torture

and then the looking at you where you are supposed to do the in rapture face. and then the having these thoughts instead of being in a reverie, and the thoughts are so mundane as is putting them on the internet for people to think you are a bad person when you just have waves and waves of anxiety about being trapped by it all

So you don't care for unions either, lex?

it's literally impossible to converse with a parent if their child is also there

literally impossible

literally

impossible

So you don't care for unions either, lex?

They pissed off Zac's dickhead of a parent, so they're doing a fine job imo.

idk what's meant by "doubling down" on disliking children

i meant more analysing an impulse to see if it's fair or valid. but dunno if everyone is capable of this.

not sure where fairness or validity come into a preference regarding one's environment or how one wants to spend time. the moral implications imputed on this thread are very weird. like, can you imagine anyone being called a bad person for not enjoying the company of dogs or cats??? or for saying they'd rather not spend their time in places or around people that make them feel uncomfortable?

So you don't care for unions either, lex?

― how's life, Tuesday, December 13, 2016 12:58 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

to be clear i am pro-unions and anti-selfish parents who even in that situation think the world revolves around their bloody toddler's bloody bedtime story

don't really see it as a moral thing, just can't adopt a worldview that involves me hating strangers, or justifying hatred. children are not a marginal interest like "dogs" or "cats", we were all children - we would not exist if people did not reproduce. the behaviour of children does bother me, i don't consider myself amazingly good with them, but i know that i was probably like that as a child, to one extent or another, or most children are, because they are young and are learning how to behave. equally i guess lack of self-awareness or rude behaviour is not exclusive to children. it might be just catholic of me to talk about resisting base impulses but that also feels like one of the things that separates adults from children, or dogs.

not sure where fairness or validity come into a preference regarding one's environment or how one wants to spend time. the moral implications imputed on this thread are very weird. like, can you imagine anyone being called a bad person for not enjoying the company of dogs or cats??? or for saying they'd rather not spend their time in places or around people that make them feel uncomfortable?

― lex pretend, Tuesday, December 13, 2016 9:22 AM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

imo hating kids is fundamentally as weird as hating women or hating old people

to be clear i am pro-unions and anti-selfish parents who even in that situation think the world revolves around their bloody toddler's bloody bedtime story

― lex pretend, Tuesday, December 13, 2016 9:23 AM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and you're aware that you cherry-picked some dumb asshole and that there are also millions of parents who support unions and worker's rights? christ

im just getting personally annoyed bc i have young son w/ autism and we've been in some intense fucking meltdown episodes in public and have had whole rooms stare at us thinking "what the fuck is wrong with that kid and that family" and i can only imagine someone like lex in that room

you guys are the ones bringing the word "hate" into it

thorough disinterest in children, and active discomfort and dislike of being around them, is not "hatred"

The post had nothing to do with unions.

... the one about poor little Zac, that is.

it could be that some ppl hate children bc they realize that w/out them they themselves would not be forced to suffer the indignities of a world that consistently fails to appreciate them as the glorious height of human evolution such that their childhood state shares as much similarity to their current godhead status as an egg does to a chicken.

alas who will shed a tear for interlocutors great and mighty, minds engaged in critical questions of our philosophical era, only to be disturbed by a baby w/ a load in its pants. only the whiffs of thine own farts provide succor in these unenlightened times amirite bro