Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men • Hacker News Board

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#41

Post by phobosanomaly » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 2:13 AM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #20

dx87 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're the exception, not the rule. I've never done anything like what the author wrote, but being involved in mischief is something every male I know did. You can even see it in animals, where the young males try to push boundries with authority figures.

My point was those examples weren’t mischief. Waking up their friend with firecrackers is mischief. Shooting people with airsoft guns and driving blackout drunk easily putting them in harms way is not mischief, at least not in the “kids will be kids” way.

What the author is describing are felonies. I don't think most kids around the country are out doing things this extreme, or it would have made the news.

Smoking pot and shooting out the occasional window in a house under construction with a BB gun, hell yes there are kids all over the place doing that.

I remember how 'jenkem' got thrown all over the news (which maybe like 3 people in the US tried, ever), and if kids were weaving around freeways blackout and shooting pedestrians with airsoft guns on any sort of an appreciable scale, I think we would have read about it in the news by now.

I think this kid just grew up in a poorly-supervised household around some really sketchy kids. Glad to see he's doing better, and I hope he finally apologized to Seth. Notice there isn't a shred of remorse in his description of locking his buddy in a room and giving him possibly severe burns.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#42

Post by nl » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 2:15 AM UTC

kp98 wrote: post #3

Everybody already knows this, so it has become a moot point. Nobody really cares, but they should. The deconstruction of the male's role in society will contribute to the downfall of the west, and that's coming from one of these mistrusting, nihilistic, 4chan contributing males

> The deconstruction of the male's role in society will contribute to the downfall of the west, and that's coming from one of these mistrusting, nihilistic, 4chan contributing males

You should get off 4chan if you actually think any part of what you stated here is real. You are stuck in an echo chamber but those beliefs are by no means universal.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#43

Post by non-entity » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 2:18 AM UTC

boomboomsubban wrote: post #37

This entire thing is based off the ridiculous premise that the "family life" used to be some universal great bedrock. Have you ever talked to your parents generation about their family life? It often seems pretty shitty too, even if the accident of their birth forced a marriage.

Heh. Growing up with a rough relationship to some of my family, I was always told that I would eventually not feel the way I did. I found it ironic at the time, as both my father and stepmother were estranged from at least one of their parents and siblings and generally did not talk well of them.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#44

Post by BLKNSLVR » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 2:18 AM UTC

ECA_stax wrote: post #15

lotsofpulp wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mix of suburban and rural. Suburban for high school.

Sorry, I don't know where I was going with this. You'll have to excuse me.

I understood your question to be around the potentially commonly held belief (read: what I've heard) that city folk are generally brought up with less responsibility bestowed upon them than rural folks (and the scale that exists between those two extremes).

Maybe not entirely "responsibility bestowed" but also the behavioural differences (distractions available, ability to deal with boredom) that come with the density difference of both things and people and space.

Edit: replaced the word "fact" for a more appropriate description of the truthiness of the situation.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#45

Post by phobosanomaly » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 2:21 AM UTC

courtf wrote: post #40

I expected some level of hand-wringing here in response to this article. Maybe it's something in the water in rural America, but none of this is unusual or extreme, and if this behavior is foreign to you, then you and I grew up in different circumstances. Getting together with the boys and breaking the law, pushing each other to go a little further each time, is a rite of passage all over the world. Maybe it's practi…

I grew up in a rural area around some sketchy people too, but this stuff seems a little extreme.

I grew up around kids who drank and did stupid stuff, but driving blackout drunk down a freeway blindfolded and shooting at pedestrians with airsoft guns?

I don't think that's a rite of passage. Growing up, even the kids whose brothers were on meth weren't doing stuff that extreme, usually they caught a charge on something way before they got to that point.

Breaking your wrist on a dirtbike? Sure. Catching a juvenile possession charge? Sure. Shooting out windows with a BB gun? Sure. Ghostriding in a parking lot? Sure. Yelling obscenities at people out of a passing car window? Sure.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#46

Post by BLKNSLVR » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 2:26 AM UTC

noozirul wrote: post #19

lotsofpulp wrote: post #6

> This is how my friends and I treated one another, and others. There were other examples of stupidity. Taking baseball bats to taillights in parking lots. Driving around town shooting pedestrians and bicyclists with airsoft guns. Getting blackout drunk and racing down the freeway wearing a blindfold. At no point in my life have I ever wanted to damage someone else or their property for the fun of it, and I wouldn’t…

in a society where parenting is letting your children do whatever they want or be accused of being violent guess what they end up doing?

I think that's a fair comment. The unfortunate thing is the majority of shouty over-sensitive parent-types have been given media attention to their "holier than thou" and generally in-theory-only opinions about what makes good and bad parenting.

It's actually interesting the effect this has had in society shows how lacking in confidence many parents are, such that they will actually change their parenting behaviours based on such media-guilt-shame fluff. This highlights to me a woefully under-served market in "parenting instruction".

I've smacked my kids when they deserved it, when verbal doesn't work. It was a rare occurrence, but undeniably effective. My kids are great. Flipside: They're still a long way from adulthood and "proving me right", and they're also a single data point in both parenting choices and genetics.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#47

Post by lopmotr » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 2:29 AM UTC

dguaraglia wrote: post #39

ideals wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's a difference in location, that quote was all stuff myself and my shitty friends did growing up, and most other people I went to school with. Also in a large midwest city. It's interesting to read these bad hot takes on why while plugging your ears

That's not the 'why' though. Plenty of people across the world grow up in similar situations as kids in the Midwest and they don't go around destroying other people's property. I honestly think there's something really messed up about American culture. I believe you can draw a direct correlation between what I think it is - people being indoctrinated into selfishness from an early age - and behavior like that. For co…

But did their parents consistently love them and have a stable relationship with each other? It's well known that lack of those factors causes lifelong psychological problems in children which manifests as criminal behavior, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, and suicide, as well as perpetuating the problem to the next generation.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#48

Post by phobosanomaly » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 2:29 AM UTC

RickJWagner wrote: post #24

I saw in the news today where 8 kids were arrested for breaking windows in the Flatiron district in New York. All are white, apparently from families that had a substantial amount of wealth. I totally agree with the author, broken families lead to broken lives. Broken families aren't necessarily broke.

I would say that plenty of kids break windows, even good kids from good homes.

Kids just have a thing for breaking windows. Sounds like somebody needs to give these kids some dirtbikes to burn off that energy.

Driving blackout on the freeway with a blindfold, shooting airsoft guns at pedestrians, a 17 year-old with a handgun in his room? That is some broken home stuff.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#49

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 2:30 AM UTC

avs733 wrote: post #16

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #7

Having two parents greatly reduces the change of a young adult committing a crime.

No, having two parents Living at home reduces the probability that you will be Arrested for a crime. You are implying causality, when much of that correlation is because single parent homes are affected by the same policies of over policing of vulnerable communities twice. Once with a parent and once with a child.

[deleted]

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#50

Post by tyrust » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 2:34 AM UTC

hindsightbias wrote: post #31

tyrust wrote: post #8

A lackluster opinion piece that is attempting to disguise as an essay. The thesis of the article [0] is unsupported by any of its content. Statistics for the number of friends people have are adjacent to statistics about suicides, implying a causal connection, but no statistics about the number of friends that suicide victims have are presented. [0] - >The lack of stable families has contributed to the widespread mis…

Same author waxes how his adoptive parents made him conservative: https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/Column-Why-being-a-... I guess this was in-between the baseball bat wielding wildings...

At least that one is obviously just an opinion piece. I donno how they arrived at the conclusion that having a stable family made him conservative, but that's his business and that's fine. I'm pretty sure both sides of the aisle are aware of the value of a stable family.