What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right • Hacker News Board

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#471

Post by indemnity » Thu, May 09, 2019, 6:06 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #292

rayiner wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What drove me crazy about K-12 is that all the bullshit zero tolerance policies affected mainly the normal kids. The real problem kids didn’t care, and continued to wreak havoc. It’s the main reason I send my kids to private school, even though the public schools where I live are good.

A student whose situation I’m personally aware of was threatened with expulsion during middle school after a history of being an undistinguished but not particularly troublesome student for a) doodling a bobomb (character from Mario) in their notebook during class and b) filling in a speech bubble saying “Let’s blow up the school.” Zero tolerance policy; bomb threat. It took substantial efforts by a parent to keep th…

Obviously the environment is different now, but me and a few friends called in a bomb scare to our high school, got a day off while cops came and everyone was evacced to sports fields.

Got caught, suspended, and given a stern talking to by the cops, but no records or permanent consequences.

We’re all functional adults now, contributing to society, some in upper management roles, some heading up charities. A punitive approach would have made those stories impossible.

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#472

Post by mrguyorama » Thu, May 09, 2019, 6:12 PM UTC

berrynice wrote: post #347

mirimir wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've watched the so-called alt-right develop online over the past 2-3 decades. Usenet, Live Journal, Encyclopedia Dramatica, the chans, etc. At least at the start, it was mostly about trolling and lulz. The anger of TFWNG. But somehow it's been captured by the actual right wing. That's frightening. There's a lotta young male angst out there.

>But somehow it's been captured by the actual right wing. You can thank Stormfront forums raiding 4chan for that.

Raiding is underselling it. It's significantly coordinated and thoroughly planned, long running campaigns to further radicalize the younger people who thought they were just getting "Edgy memes" on 4chan and haven't learned/realized yet that maybe, just maybe, making jokes about hanging black people because they are black isn't cool.

/pol/ is a shitshow

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#473

Post by SkyBelow » Thu, May 09, 2019, 6:32 PM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #364

dragonsngoblins wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a lotta young male angst out there See this is exactly the problem the article talks about. A young man got so heavily invested in a community because they weren't dismissive of him. Maybe a lot of young men feel people are treating them dismissively and that a lot narratives other people espouse don't resonate with their personal experience. Maybe we should consider why this anger is so much more common in…

I'm not arguing that young men's anger is unjustified. But I am arguing that it's being dismissed by some, and exploited by others. And actually taken seriously by hardly anyone.

>There's a lotta young male angst out there.

It's kinda odd, because nothing you say in this line is dismissive at all. But because of the everyday association with 'young male angst' that many encounter, merely mentioning it like this is enough to lead some to conclude you are being dismissive. Almost as if the concept has been put down so much that merely mentioning it has become a form of dismissive slang.

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#474

Post by schemathings » Thu, May 09, 2019, 7:05 PM UTC

mrguyorama wrote: post #465

ricardobeat wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think I'd make it in the current age. Or any other country (besides Russia/USSR?). That doesn’t sound like an average childhood at all.

Welcome to the poorer rural areas of the united states

Curious where you got 'poorer' out of that. I'm a city boy all my life, but I've driven the country quite a few times - I could picture the Grizzly dip guy with guns and snowmobiles being in Wyoming .. https://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/wyoming/

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#475

Post by yellowapple » Thu, May 09, 2019, 7:24 PM UTC

mrguyorama wrote: post #470

yellowapple wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think "pay teachers more" is sufficient. It's one part of the solution, but the other part is "be at least a little bit hesitant to fire junior teachers". When I was in high school, pretty much all of my teachers under 40 were constantly on the verge of not having a job (due to constant budgetary inadequacies); they'd be repeatedly pink-slipped only to barely manage to keep their jobs another year. Naturally,…

As a teacher's son, you've made a bunch of fairly ageist generalizations that are not true. There are plenty of shitty old and young teachers, and plenty of amazing old and young teachers.

My only reference point is my own middle and high school experience (plus perhaps those of my classmates). From that reference point, on average, the younger teachers did a better job of actually engaging me and my classmates while simultaneously getting shafted by the school district. There were of course outliers (one or two older teachers were fantastic, and I recall at least one younger teacher who was sub-par), but "plenty" wouldn't be the quantization I'd use in either case.

It's a bit rich to accuse me of ageism when the exact problem I'm pointing out - of younger teachers getting the short end of the stick despite their skill - is literally ageism manifest.

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#476

Post by greedo » Thu, May 09, 2019, 8:08 PM UTC

natalyarostova wrote: post #106

greedo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The percentage of Jewish people in the US is around 1-2%. Large in the sense of a significant portion of total Jews, but compared to other ethnic groups in the US, fairly small.

That's true, but their representation in media/policy is extremely high. (and, I hate that I have to qualify this statement of fact, but I am not saying this is a good or bad thing -- or that I even particularly care).

I don't think you can say this is a statement of fact. How are you measuring this?

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#477

Post by garfieldnate » Thu, May 09, 2019, 8:21 PM UTC

mango7283 wrote: post #425

garfieldnate wrote: post #381

A few thoughts after reading this (very compelling) article: * It's strange to see a patriarchal over-protection of girls being called liberal. I think we've come full circle on this one. * Why does this thirteen-year-old have full, unfettered access to the entire internet? That seems like a recipe for disaster. My kids will have dumbphones and access to the desktop computer in the living room, with age-restricted fi…

I'd be curious to hear how you plan to teach your children to not be overly trusting/naive of adults/authority figures while simultaneously ensuring adhere to your oversight and regulation. It sounds like a fine line to thread.

I think I said the wrong thing when I said not to "trust" adults; what I really meant is that it's dangerous to teach kids that adults are infallible; otherwise they can be taken advantage of by those in positions of power. I think it's important to teach children proper behavior and to show by example that adults are beholden to the same rules as they are, including their parents.

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#478

Post by belorn » Thu, May 09, 2019, 8:34 PM UTC

claudiawerner wrote: post #455

woofie11 wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you don't believe me when it comes to what modern feminism actually believes I'd be happy to walk through a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article to make the point. Most modern feminists do not support the tender years doctrine. No need! Just point me to the testimony at any senate hearing where any major feminist group stood up for equality in family law or in domestic violence law. Or an endorsement of a…

As far as I know, most U.S. states (34 of them) reject the tender years presumption in the first place. Furthermore, there are different approaches to feminism; liberal feminism propounds formal equality, which is generally rejected by other approaches which favor more radical solutions. The issue becomes vanishingly small when it turns out that most men opt for joint custody when it comes to the choice, and this is…

You seems to have a strong opinion about what current Feminism movement stands for, so let me ask you a quick questions on their views. What is the majority opinion on who is more likely to initiate physical violence, men or women?

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#479

Post by garfieldnate » Thu, May 09, 2019, 8:48 PM UTC

garfieldnate wrote: post #381

A few thoughts after reading this (very compelling) article: * It's strange to see a patriarchal over-protection of girls being called liberal. I think we've come full circle on this one. * Why does this thirteen-year-old have full, unfettered access to the entire internet? That seems like a recipe for disaster. My kids will have dumbphones and access to the desktop computer in the living room, with age-restricted fi…

I spoke with my wife about the article and realized I missed a really important negative point about the parents. If the son had become a gung-ho "SJW", espousing extreme views and causing hurt to other people (whose word would of course be unheard as his was), would they have worried about him or would they have encouraged it? The son says he was happy to be out of the "cult" of the alt-right, but the culture at his school was also essentially a cult, which he was violently ejected from when it turned on him suddenly.

The parents weren't doing their son any favors by being so consistently biased; the mother could only barely except that her son was discriminated against for being a boy. The article seems to say that the mother realized how badly she had written off anything her son said, but doesn't really hint at any introspection or rethinking regarding her own world view. And at the end it sounds like they are going to go be protesters at the next rally, which fuels the them-or-me mentality that caused their troubles in the first place. The moral seems to be "my son was wrong for a year and I finally convinced him."

Wouldn't it be a better ending if they reconciled the experiences of their terrible year with the other wonderful things they believe about human rights and dignity in general? It's like they still think you have to choose between women's rights and men's rights.

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#480

Post by natalyarostova » Thu, May 09, 2019, 9:02 PM UTC

greedo wrote: post #476

natalyarostova wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, but their representation in media/policy is extremely high. (and, I hate that I have to qualify this statement of fact, but I am not saying this is a good or bad thing -- or that I even particularly care).

I don't think you can say this is a statement of fact. How are you measuring this?

I'm not measuring it, I just know that people of Jewish origin are dramatically over-represented among journalism, banking, and fields such as physics or CS. It's common knowledge, although I'm sure there are ways to confirm it if you're so interested. (nothing unreasonable about that).