askchapo

People fucking hate feeling like they're wrong on an issue. They'd rather be told that everything is OK and that they're a good person. Obviously making a settler white person uncomfortable is a noble act. I say they as someone well into his forties, any old person shitting on the young can get fucked.

Resentment of the young and their optimism, I guess. Envy of having the freedom to express principles - including freedom from entrenched poverty, debt, and responsibilities within that moment of their lives - and malleability of youth to adapt careers, overcome setbacks easily, and readjust their lives from the blowback of having principles.

It is not a coincidence that Reagan in California and the neoliberal project went on to undermine and strip higher education of government financial support and turn them into vocational centers and degree mills. Binding the future leaders of the country to debt makes for compliant workers and docile minds who will not upset the status quo.

I also suspect that since college students' lives have not been tempered or defeated by the demands of life, of working, of being berated and humiliated as such, their elders resent their courage as naïve or are bitter about their defeat and domestication at the hands of capital.

A mentality of "I've got mine" and "We could change things for the better, but there is too much to risk and too much to lose. And the state always wins. "

There's this weird expectation that as you get older you're supposed to get wiser, however for nearly everybody this is not true and the only archetype of "wise" they have access to is a sort of nihilistic resignation that nothing can fundamentally change and it's naive to hope otherwise. Sometimes I even feel myself be pressured to slide into this role. I don't even know where this pressure comes from. But yes people who have been out of college for a while want to think of themselves as capable of providing sage advice to younger people when really their brains have just been broken even more than they were at a younger age. They don't even have better social skills!

I think a big part of it is that older generations have a tendency to dunk on younger generations. Gen x and boomers liked to shit on the millennials. Now we're all shitting on the zoomers. It's really just another wedge to divide the working class lest we unify against the wealthy.

College students are doing some great work. I think a lot of these students were out on the streets for the BLM uprisings because it's clear to me the organizers are skilled and disciplined.

If you can afford to help, and are close to a college encampment, it might be a good idea to pop in and see if those young radicals need any supplies or food.

College kids are the only people out there rn who give a fuck about human rights.

while I agree there is a ton to critique about higher education and academia as a whole it just seems to dismissive and weird to dunk on students for being students

The hottest takes get the most attention, and dialing back the heat of your takes means not only do fewer people listen, but also that you face more pissy comments along "I have a hotter take than you and that means you're trash" lines.

americans don't need an excuse to hate other americans

It is very easy to be annoyed by college kids. After all, they are young and healthy and have their whole lives ahead of them and the rest of us have already chosen our dreary paths, which we regret.

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/college-is-an-education-in-bullshit

saturn_devouring_his_son.jpg

I imagine it's a survivorship bias combined with most american's being little Hitler's.

I know lots of weird communist degree holders who are cool, but they're weird and usually poor, usually queer leftists and outside the status quo.

Probably comes from a bunch of people who need to go touch grass but can't for one reason or another.

Because they remember how much it sucked and wasnt them to have it bad too