stinkychops said:
Matt King said:
i'm in year 10 (in uk) and me and my friends are actually pretty sane, but i think we're just are calm year as the years below and occasionally above are massive TWATS (yes i know they prob think we are to but just trust me on this one)
What? You're not making a great case for yourself here mate. If you're making a case at all (I can;t tell).
Ah well, I'll make a case for him, then. I have a friend in the UK who's generally quite nice, and almost at least as smart and mature as someone twice his age, at age 12. Granted, I know this is the exception, but it can happen.
Now, as for the actual topic, rant time. Sort of. Hope this doesn't offend anyone.
First of all, I get that I'm hardly a shining example of virtue in "today's youth" or anything like that, so to avoid burying myself, I won't use myself as an example.
But before I get to anything else, the video. Yes, those are weapons. Yes, they can cause harm. Were they intended to? By the look of things, no, it was made on a "because I can" basis. He had free time, and felt like being creative, so he made some things. Good for him, I've made plenty of crafts myself, his are just potentially harmful rather than, say, pottery.
All the same, no, possession does not imply intent to cause harm. Some people might have guns, swords or knives in their house, often on display. Does this mean they're about to go on a shooting/stabbing spree? Hardly, much like being a lumberjack does not make you a psychotic axe murderer (well, except where trees are concerned). So no, there is nothing here to be disturbed by. I actually hear plenty of complaints that "kids these days"
don't know how to make things any more, so this is a bit of an odd one.
Anyway, on to my second and last point, which probably won't go down all that well with anyone who reads this. Lucky for me that no one's about to read this much text anyway, really. The "kids these days"/"today's youth" demographic that people seem to enjoy pointing fingers at and accusing of whatever it is this week? It doesn't exist.
It's a generalisation, a stereotype, whatever term you prefer. It's as justified as the rest of its kind, maybe very slightly more. In the end, it holds as much water as any "all of x are y" statements based on, say, age group, gender, ethnicity, religion or whatever you care to name.
It's really a conversational panic button - mention it if you want to scare people. Now, discounting some of the obvious nitpicks (at age five, for example, there are going to be limits on your mental capacity at least to some extent), it simply isn't true. Granted, yes, there are kids who are obnoxious idiots; there's one typing this right now, for example. And yet, this is true for every other age group as well. Yes, you can find bad examples if you look, and often even if you don't. Good examples often stand out less, and are therefore harder to find.
The real reason for the panic is a combination of finding actual bad examples, I think, and being worried by change, which happens each generation. I'm hesitant to call it cultural evolution, since it's not universally good or bad, it just
is. I understand how that feels, seeing as a few of the ways in which the world is changing right now scares me, and has for a few years.
I would still like to think it's no excuse for judging a sizable part of the population by default for no reason beyond their age. As you can see, the many flaws of my age group include senseless optimism.
