I also think you have another camp, which I'll admit to being a member of. I did everything I was supposed to do. I stayed at home, used masks everywhere, took no trips, and had very few social engagements for more than a year - and it sucked. Now that things are open all I want to do is go out. Even though I know that I should lower my expectations, I can't help emotionally but feel entitled to having a good time now.
The thought rolling around my head is: I did everything that was asked of me for a year and a half, I deserve to have fun now.
As I write that I know intellectually how self-centered, selfish, and delusion it is but I feel it intensely.
I can't remember the other term, but there is a related concept where we do things like separate our recycling, then fly private. Someone with a job helping other people becomes an abusive disaster at home. Or the classic relationship anti-pattern of partner who "does things for you, and now you owe them," (covert contract?) It's related to indulgences and self-licensing, and there is a calculation where we decide our past or even current good behaviour justifies poor behaviour now because we have an imaginary idea that we are somehow bargaining with the universe and it owes us something. (It doesn't care.) It's not the universe, it's your mother, and people are rude because they are caught in a psychological feedback loop of expectation, shame, and rage.
For years I thought it was economically broken that even restaurant and café jobs required a college degree, but now I don't understand how anyone without a psychology degree could be equipped to work with the public. We are hell.
And my friend replied “I don’t think theaters are a problem after the orgies”
From my experience over the last several months hosting parties in reopened areas, people are open to anything. Even people that would be considered squares are taking the opportunity to live it up alongside the wild vagabonds
I’ve never seen anything like it
Almost as if there was some kind of flaw in the initial premise...
I'm not certain why, but when I was younger, I feel like the tenor of stuff on our screens, message boards, TV, etc. was more positive than it is now. People celebrated stuff they liked more. That definitely still exists today, but more and more people are excited to celebrate a shared hate in something: sports stars (I can't watch shows like First Take on ESPN), reality tv (which seems to mostly revolve around petty conflict), politicians, I even used to use Facebook to find people to go to shows with, but I've since deactivated my account because it's not very social anymore, etc. When the people we look up are famous for being argumentative or being jerks, it makes us think that is what leads to success, or something along those lines.
After realizing this, I've definitely tried to base my relationships on stuff that I like (OK, I allow myself some bashing of the Dallas Cowboys :D ).
A good friend of mine is a doctor ... I’m trying to get him to retire before he gets shot by somebody who was told they’d have to wait 3 days for an appointment.
I'll be honest, the receptionists at my PCP have very poor, whatever the equivalent of bedside manner is for them. When I try to make an appointment, or get a referral, I get thrown around a lot of technical terms that I don't quite understand and they don't seem to have the patience to explain to me what such and such a number is, and who I have to give it to and when. Healthcare in the US is very confusing, and when you're sick or your kid is sick, it's not always easy to deal with all that red tape. I mean, I wish I only had to wait 3 days for an appointment, but it's like, I need to make an appointment weeks in advance, give someone a number, but not too far ahead of my appointment's date, then no one can tell what any of this is going to cost, etc. It is very stressful.
To that end, I saw an interesting statistic thrown around: "The Federal Aviation Administration said it had fielded 1,300 complaints of unruly passengers since February, the same number of enforcement actions it took against passengers in the past decade." (Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/10/travel/faa-unruly-airline...)
That lends statistical credence to what you're saying: customers/people have gotten more entitled and, I'll interject my own phrasing, crazy. A 10x increase in "unruly passengers" is ... just hard to wrap my head around.
Of course, that 10x spike could be primarily attributed to masks and not necessarily an increase in broader entitlement or "freakouts". That's really what we're concerned with, because the mask rules will go away eventually. So what we're all really worried about is, are people getting "crazier" in general? Or is just the mask rules rubbing a lot of the population the wrong way?
That's harder to say. But I thought it important to at least address the bias question. I know myself I figured things couldn't be getting as bad as the internet makes them seem. I thought it may have been the "video camera in everyone's pocket" bias or something. But the stats point towards this possibly being a real shift.
As for why people might be getting out of hand? Well I don't have specific sources for this, but I've seen a few articles and quotes that suggest that isolation can cause permanent psychological damage. I know many people expected lock downs to have negative effects on our psychologies, but I think few are aware of just how damaging it's been. And it likely had a disproportionate effect on people with existing mental illness or mental "fault lines" as I like to call them. Combined with many society's lack of support structures for mental health and, well, it's perhaps no wonder that we're seeing a lot of public "freakouts". And as you've said, customer service workers bare the brunt of that.
But, she has an out fast food workers don’t. She tells the worst offenders, “If you’re not happy with the care you’re receiving, we’d be happy to give you Fido’s records so you can take him somewhere else.”
They shut up when you remind them you don’t have to fix their sick dog.
When people feel up against the wall, all social protocol and laws go out the window.
In the US, a faction of politicians are pushing apocalyptic thinking so hard, that everyone is getting the fear: not just the doomsayers and their followers.
But it actually is getting worse. We're in a new pandemic due to to ignorance, half of the US is on fire, cost of living there is through the roof, there are armed militia rising with a political bent, and their supporting politicians are encouraging violence.... Basically, the Karens of the US are being told it is their patriotic duty to be entitled. This all comes out as panic and "me first" behavior in everyone, not just Karens, but the people that have to deal with them, it accumulates.
It hides - and so persists - deep beneath people's therefore ever-increasing unwillingness to face the reality of the consequences of what they've consented to.
Such self-absorbed puffery is the hallmark of any similar regime, and those "toeing the line", which at the moment - is a large number - are of course puffed-up along with the "upper brass" they've aligned themselves with and dutifully follow, and so reap the benefits reserved for and bestowed upon only those who conform, do what they're told, and further dispense those orders to others they themselves see as subordinate.
It's pathetic to watch, will come crashing down eventually, and as the dust settles, those who were ostracised and persecuted for questioning it, will lead us back. As always.
I'm trying to be charitable in my interpretation, but even leaving aside the style, it's extremely vague. What I've taken from your comment is:
- this bad thing is like other well-known bad socio-political things (which ones?)
- people are just going along with it without openly acknowledging it
- there are a lot of those people, and there's a hierarchy of them
- it's sad and bad, but will end eventually, and as usual, some outsiders who questioned it will come back in and form the new hierarchy
Now to be less than charitable for a moment, I think "It was a dark and stormy night" now has competition with:
> It hides - and so persists - deep beneath people's therefore ever-increasing unwillingness to face the reality of the consequences of what they've consented to.
Specifically, stating it directly leads to wild denials, ostracisation, persecution and generally overwrought and unjustifiable discombobulation from many - as they puff about unwilling to accept it.
From a less-reticent perspective:
"On 12 July the British Government announced that it will be strongly encouraging vaccine passports for venues and events to exclude the unvaccinated from public life. Although they say this is a voluntary act of discrimination, they have explicitly stated that they retain the option to make this mandatory in the future, as they also retain the option to resume police state measures as and when they please. The French government co-incidentally announced the same measure on the same day, only going much further, barring the unvaccinated from cafes, metro etc, and mandating vaccination of health workers – which is to say, putting the unvaccinated out of work. They follow the Irish and Greek governments which have brought in similar measures, along with other countries and states worldwide.
The long-term effects of these measures will be disastrous. It will normalise the discrimination, exclusion and persecution of a section of the population.
[...]
Never underestimate how powerful the motive to retain one’s self image is. The longer this goes on and the more brutal the measures enforced the more powerful this motivation becomes. The difficulty of admitting you have been fooled is directly proportional to how much and for how long you have been fooled. Perhaps my labelling of the new regime as fascist will make it even more difficult for people to break from it, as the immediate instinct is self defence – ‘I’m not a fascist. This guy’s a lunatic, he’s calling me a fascist!’"
https://leftlockdownsceptics.com/2021/07/collaboration-or-re...
There are a lot of semantic gymnastics going on in that blog post, specifically around identity groups:
- how lockdown/virus/vaccine skeptics _are_ an identity group,
- how lockdown rules and vaccine requirements are repression against those identity groups,
- how fascism is repression of identity groups,
- therefore a lot of people and governments are fascist now.
I think we'd both agree that it's wildly unjust that actual human beings have far fewer freedoms (a major one being freedom of movement) compared to corporations or their capital, so I can sympathize with the notion that more restrictions on biological beings is unfortunate, to say the least. But like in chess, we must play the board as it is, not as we wish it to be, and we're responsible for the predictable (especially policy) consequences of our actions.
The author is also a lockdown skeptic:
> Leading up to a (ritualised) date that announces a review of restrictions, the government generates terror on a mass scale – through its new gargantuan propaganda machine.
> The evidence mainly consisted of Sweden, Florida and other places that actually exist in the real world, and also the fact that the lockdowns haven’t worked
AND a virus skeptic:
> Imaginary variants, case numbers, double mutants (the possibilities are endless)"
And hence presumably a vaccine skeptic. These are further critical failures of analysis to add to that of "what constitutes an identity group and fascism".
Honestly, the _blog post_ itself almost reads like a psyop, but probably it's just the kind of nonsense that people like George Galloway and Aimee Terese are known for. Maybe if these failures weren't so central and didn't compound on each other, there'd be something else useful to say having read it.
[0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/red-deer-clinic-doct...
The truth of the matter is that America has become a much angrier society since the pandemic started.
For instance, be willing to fire your fucking customers. If someone is being a jackass in your establishment, make them leave. If they persist, involve LEO and trespass them.
There is no reason this cannot extend to the software realm. Make sure your customer contracts have some sort of language regarding circumstances for termination. Apple, Google, et. al., have certainly applied this thinking to their customers via EULAs and the like.
There is no customer so valuable that you should endure abuse for their patronage.
It's not just customer entitlement. It's been a steadily rising thing throughout society for my whole life.
People are less and less willing to accept responsibility for their choices, and more and more it's always someone else's fault.
For example, a person who chose to go $300,000 into debt to go to Columbia film school, where the starting salary upon graduating is $30,000, claims to be a victim of the school.
> Many of the students in my class who didn’t turn their degrees into industry success were insanely talented, but Columbia traded on its reputation to sell them big dreams that it could never deliver.
> During my 2nd year I suspected that the school wasn’t providing a launching pad to a career — most of the instructors were struggling to establish a career themselves & many weren’t even much more experienced than their students. A 4th yr student taught our cinematography class.
> The brass ring the program dangled was that your film could be chosen for the annual festival where, in theory, big-time agents would see it and maybe sign you. But it was cutthroat to even be selected for the festival. And tuition didn’t cover the cost to make those films.
…
> I slowly begin to realize this IS the deal. He made it pretty clear if I wanted my degree, I needed to help him sell his tv pilot. Yep, the Chair of Columbia’s prestigious graduate film program tried to shake me down in order to jump-start his own stalled out career.
The full thread is here: https://twitter.com/jstoteraux/status/1413326562821246978?s=....
Students definitely deserve some blame for signing onto these expensive programs without doing any meaningful research. But university admins can be corrupt, too, and it’s likely that they used their reputation as “Columbia” to sell students something they knew was fake.
Anyway, in response to the original point — I don’t think that’s a good example of entitlement since “scam” is a more appropriate word. I think they had stuff like “people being mean to waiters and flight attendants” in mind, which is a different sort of entitlement.
There is a legal concept called "due diligence" where a party to a contract is expected to take reasonable steps to know what they're doing.
Googling "starting salaries for [my major]" is a very, very low bar for due diligence.
The posts in this thread absolving the student from making any effort whatsoever at due diligence is illustrative of the point I was making.
At what point do you consider the person a functional adult and assign some responsibility?
> It’s why we send 18 year olds to war.
18 year olds are most likely to survive the rigors of combat. Survival rates drop steadily from 18 on.
> No one else would take those odds.
Plenty do. The US, for example, has had an all-volunteer army since the 1970's. The Navy and Air Force have always been all-volunteer. My dad volunteered at 23. A lot of volunteers were rejected for being too old.
Of course, you _can_ find information and protect yourself from even these scams _most_ of the time, but I don't think the "just do your due diligence" argument holds enough of the time to dismiss the general argument being made, even if it applies to specific cases.
Besides, it seems weird that the senior class would never notice that the class that graduated just ahead of them is working at the car wash?
If you imagine the uncertainty and justifiable inertia involved in a realistic scenario, I don’t see how you can dismiss arguments that it’s not necessarily just the fault of kids for not doing due diligence.
Choices are:
1. continue, rack up $300,000 debt with no way to pay it off
2. change majors to something that pays
Which do you think is the sensible decision?
> just the fault of kids
You're infantilizing them. They are adults. They can vote. They can drive cars. They can sign contracts. They can join the military and command others. They go to the big boy prison if they commit crimes. They can consult with their parents or anyone they respect. They can marry. They can have gender reassignment surgery.
They can use google. Just like you and I can.
They're not victims.
Do you really believe they spent 6 years studying a major and had no clue what the career prospects were? I don't.
Then the onus would be on the banks to only lend to people who they thought could repay.
It's also weird to present such a wild off the wall example at the end. I don't think such people are common.
Talk with some folks from the new generation and build a connection beyond what someone else wants you to feel / think about them, you might be surprised what you have in common.
We created a society where we tell people they should chase their dreams and anything is possible in America. Then, when they chase their dreams and fail we tell them how stupid they are that they did that and they should have done something more practical. I don’t think teenagers should be blamed for doing exactly what they were told to do and they’re right to be angry at the system.
> teenagers
Masters degree students are not teenagers.
Sorry, I have to laugh at the idea that taking the GRE, writing an essay, and getting recommendations is so onerous one feels compelled to take on $300,000 in debt due to the sunk cost fallacy.
It's still their choice, and therefore their responsibility. It's not society's responsibility to make up for their sunk cost fallacy.
Besides, one can always change majors or transfer to another school with better prospects. Lots of students do that.
P.S. Studying for the GREs is what one did the previous 4 years getting a Bachelor's. Nobody I knew studied for the GRE. You should know that stuff by then. The GREs I took didn't go past sophomore material.
America is still designed for when a college degree was payable with a minimum wage job. We either need to fix our schools or acknowledge the American dream is dead and we tricked a generation into giving us money for something they could never have.
Starting salary for film degree
There isn't a lot of room at the top in film (at least until the creator economy table flips Hollywood). Likewise, there aren't many paid positions for historians, philosophy professors, etc.
Kids need to understand that their top priority should be to understand the shape of the economy and how to make themselves a valuable, indispensable part of it. Doing this early affords much greater freedom and leisure later in life.
Basically, kids need to understand supply and demand for careers. If they don't, it greatly impacts their future stability and happiness.
This was long before Google.
The starting salaries for each major were common knowledge, too.
I don't buy that film students did not know this until after graduation.
Just think about it. A degree doesn't have to cost $300000 but the bank financed it anyway, with the clear intention of working that person down to their bones. Why would a bank let someone take a debt that takes 10 years of work to repay? Because they want to force that person to work for 10 years. If the law were sane the debtor would default as soon as possible.
This is what I am talking about with the entitlement society - zero responsibility assigned to the person for their poor decisions.
Also, service generally blows. Even at your doctor friend’s place. I bet he has an 8 page HIPAA form that’s only fillable on paper and has duplicate entry requirements. How does this reduce frustration?
Companies, regardless of size, have started assuming consumers will keep paying for shitty service. Want my cash? Provide something I want. Going to be a rude prick? Quit and go on the dole, then. Save us all the trouble. I’ll happily take my business elsewhere. It’s not like there aren’t other options available for services.
What are we going to do about it? End the program? How about in september?
A good friend of mine is a doctor and he has a hair-raising story for me nearly every day, often indistinguishable from fast food customers’ behavior. I’m trying to get him to retire before he gets shot by somebody who was told they’d have to wait 3 days for an appointment.
What’s going on? I have my own theories but I want HN’s take.