Angry people: a new perspective?

[Beware of Doug]

No one can deny there's a lot of free-floating anger and rudeness in society today - even if most of it is needless, pointless, and encouraged by the isolation granted us on teh toobz, even as they widen communication.

I'm guilty of it. You probably are too, unless you're a paragon of serene self-discipline. The times we live in and all that call for us to hurt and be hurt in ways that are particularly gratuitous. Time to tie on the napkin and getting ready to eat our ever increasing RDA of shit from life, and maybe hand a doss of it back now and then so we don't go completely batty.

Anyway, someone posted something at this forum (http://www.hipforums.com/modules/Journal/viewentry.php?journalnoteid=11872) about rudeness and its causes. (Note: This forum appears to be woo in nature, and I don't apologize for the source.) That post, below, got me to thinking.

It's just overprotected, spoilt, immature people who really don't know how the world works and have never experienced real hardships or troubles.It strikes me that that statement could apply to both sides of the coin. Which prompts me to ask:

-By and large in society today, is it angry, rude people themselves who are overprotected, spoiled, immature, and sheltered from the world?
It seems obvious that those qualities can make a person want to piss on others without compunction or regard. But there's another possibility...

-Are most angry, rude people just bitching about other people who are overprotected, spoiled, immature, and sheltered from the world?
When you read angry rants, there's very often a figure of the "pussy," "snowflake," or similar weak-sauce individual who is cast as the villain. Is this just a case of transference (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transference), when we pin our bad points on others to feel superior? Or might it be, often, an honest and righteous reaction - just bringing the real world whoopass?

So what do you think? Do we actually need some of this high level of rudeness? Is there a sector of people today - NOT the morons, assholes, and malevolent fuckups we all hate, but well-meaning folks who might just be a bit woo, naïve, babied, or thoughtless - for whom a public beatdown might actually be constructive?

Or is it all basically a case of overprotected, spoiled, sheltered, immature people asserting their right to piss in the pool of public discourse and fart up the air inside all our heads - in every walk of life from kindergarten to Congress - who only think they have a clue about the workings of the world?

[Wesley Clark]

My impression is we have advanced enough as a society that a near perfect, stress/trouble free life seems on the horizon but is still out of reach. And I think some of the anger comes from people thinking we have achieved that goal when we haven't. Louis CK called them 'white people problems' since when you lack more serious things to worry about you obsess over trivialities.

In my experience the meanest, rudest people are the ones who on some level are desperate for the world to be perfect, then find out it isn't (full of crime, imperfection, dysfunction, etc) and have a conniption. So I lean more towards the rude people themselves being unrealistic.

[XT]

There is a lot of free-floating anger and rudeness about these days. And it's easier to blow off steam and vent today than it was in the past. A written letter just doesn't have the same effect of our near real time message boards that span the globe and allow people from all over not just a given country but from all over the world to interject their opinions and assert their pet theories. In the past you probably only interacted with someone face to face, and in face to face confrontations one must be a bit more circumspect, unless one likes getting into fist fights or worse all the time.

-By and large in society today, is it angry, rude people themselves who are overprotected, spoiled, immature, and sheltered from the world?
It seems obvious that those qualities can make a person want to piss on others without compunction or regard. But there's another possibility...

-Are most angry, rude people just bitching about other people who are overprotected, spoiled, immature, and sheltered from the world?
When you read angry rants, there's very often a figure of the "pussy," "snowflake," or similar weak-sauce individual who is cast as the villain. Is this just a case of transference, when we pin our bad points on others to feel superior? Or might it be, often, an honest and righteous reaction - just bringing the real world whoopass?

I believe that people are more complex than this simple 'people are either overprotected, spoiled, immature, and sheltered from the world or reacting to people who are overprotected, spoiled, immature, and sheltered from the world'. To me, someone saying this is trying to pigeon hole their opponents in order to dehumanize them and take away their complexity...and thus, make their arguments less worthy because they are rude. Not to bust on your link, but I've noticed that a lot of the woo-minded are getting a bit gun shy because they are increasingly coming under fire for their assertions and world view, and are increasingly being asked to give some sort of proof that whatever woo they are into has some basis in reality. Asserting that it does by fiat or anecdote just doesn't cut it, at least on on boards like this one. And I think the rudeness comes from frustration that the person isn't providing what is requested, continues the same line of discussion that has already been discounted, and then the discussion continues over multiple threads as new posters just have to come in and talk about the same stuff that's already been beaten to death. Look at the 9/11 threads for example...they didn't start off at nuclear rude level red alpha. It was a progression as 'dopers who believe that stuff bring up the same old arguments, and new guys come in with a 'new' video to talk about the same stuff over and over again...and fail to understand the data presented them, while also failing to provide any themselves. And the frustration level ratchets up a notch higher (luckily we haven't have one of those in a while so it might be calmer now)....which, in turn makes people more rude.

There is also a bit of one-ups-manship going on around here, where people try to be clever and funny by being rude to people who espouse the woo, or espouse completely off the wall political, economic or religious philosophies. I think that everyone wants to be in the cool 'dopers club, and one of the ways to do that is to be witty, charming, and rude while not crossing over the line and getting Mod smacked. This seems more true in The Pit than in GD, but it happens here too.

That said, I still think that people are more complex and have more complex reasons they are seemingly more rude today than in the past. The technology enables us to let out our inner asshole a lot more, which acts as a steam vent for all the stuff we'd normally keep buried inside (only to come out catastrophically during some epic blowout).

Anyway, just my take.

-XT

[Simplicio]

I know several people with "real problems" that are, well, jerks. Any nurse will tell you stories about amazingly rude patients that have serious health issues, for example. Indeed, I think a lot of rudeness I see comes from people who are stressed out about big issues freaking out over some minor problem just to vent.

So no, I don't think being over-protected serves very well as a very good general explanation of anger and rudeness.

[WhyNot]

I think there's situational rudeness that stems from stress, no matter what your station in life, as Simplicio points out. And some people are just jerks.

I think there's another layer of rudeness, though, that does stem from privilege. I most notice that kind when it's absent: for example, with the recent snowstorm in Chicago, where neighbors I've never met suddenly helped me dig out, and vice-versa. Or after 9-11, when suddenly people on the bus where hugging each other, handing out Kleenex and just being there to listen to one another grieve. And yet next week, those same neighbors are likely to be back to ignoring me, or shouting at each other for dogs pooping on their lawn, or other petty stuff.

On the other hand, it's not like people who are starving or deprived are particularly peaceful. Look at Egypt right now, or Darfur or Ghana.

I think it's best articulated as a matter of extremes. When people are very poor off, or very wealthy (by world standards, not by US standards), then they're more likely to be mean. The poor because they're desperate, the rich because they're entitled and frustrated when they don't get their way.

Modest struggle in a prosperous society seems to bring out the best in people, though.

[Beware of Doug]

Here's a real-world instance: Do you feel older generations are teaching a life lesson, or just soothing their own resentment, when they bitch out younger ones for addressing issues others are resigned to?

A good example is all the shitfests by older generations about Gen Y's work ethic, or lack of it. The resentment - on one side, that the young might have it a little bit easier, or on the other, that it might actually be time to acknowledge they have it harder in some ways - is palpable. You can easily picture it playing out in naked aggression on the job.

There's a common saw (attributed wrongly to Churchill): "If you're not a liberal at 20 you have no heart; if you're not a conservative at 40 you have no brain." I think many people believe you're crazy not to be an idealist at 20 and a cynic by 40.

[Beware of Doug]

Another instance: Employed people ranking on unemployed people. (Not welfare layabouts, just everyday folks.) Can anyone identify with that? From either side?

[The Amazing Hanna]

I blame Hollywood. Since the eighties at least, practically every action movie hero has been a rude, crude dick, and we've come to accept insulting people as being the cool thing to do. In other words, the anti-hero has become the most default type of hero. Nearly every comedy lead on TV as well - Seinfeld just accelerated the trend. What could be funnier than making people around you feel like crap?

I see no reason why being cool or funny has to equate being a jerk. A real hero should be strong enough to be a gentleman and respect people's feelings.

[Beware of Doug]

I blame Hollywood and politics.

Not to make this a single-gender issue, but anger is by and large a male preserve. It has a deep place in our hearts, close to manly things like strength, effectiveness and righteous action.

However, sometime in the 70s or maybe the 80s, the Man won out over the Gentleman in the myth of heroism. Since then, being a gentleman no longer means being a man.

[suranyi]

For the most part, I don't feel all that angry. Life just goes along as usual. Am I isolated, or just lucky?

[msmith537]

I blame Hollywood. Since the eighties at least, practically every action movie hero has been a rude, crude dick, and we've come to accept insulting people as being the cool thing to do. In other words, the anti-hero has become the most default type of hero. Nearly every comedy lead on TV as well - Seinfeld just accelerated the trend. What could be funnier than making people around you feel like crap?

I see no reason why being cool or funny has to equate being a jerk. A real hero should be strong enough to be a gentleman and respect people's feelings.

Yeah, but it's still pretty freakin funny.:D

The reason is that the people the hero makes "feel like crap" are jerks most people hate anyway. The officious boss. A petty beurocrat. Some pompous maitre d in a restuarant. I don't have a problem with that sort of comedy.

What I have a problem with is the new "reality show" style of anger and rudeness we have been seeing for the past 10 years. Basically, it's just selfish, childish, entitled people who have somehow learned they can get what they want by making a big enough spectacle of themselves.



Here's a real-world instance: Do you feel older generations are teaching a life lesson, or just soothing their own resentment, when they bitch out younger ones for addressing issues others are resigned to?

A good example is all the shitfests by older generations about Gen Y's work ethic, or lack of it. The resentment - on one side, that the young might have it a little bit easier, or on the other, that it might actually be time to acknowledge they have it harder in some ways - is palpable. You can easily picture it playing out in naked aggression on the job.

I don't think Gen Y has a bad work ethic. But most people my age (late 30s) seem to feel that they are badly socialized. For example, crying about "having it harder" and "naked aggression on the job" comes to mind. Analysts out of school seem to think they should be treated like delicate geniuses when they are there to shut the fuck up and learn how to do the job.

It all comes down to a sense of entitlement. Everyone thinks everything should be handed to them - jobs, fame, money, relationships, whatever - and they shouldn't have to work at it. And of course the real world doesn't work like that so they get angry and lash out.

[Beware of Doug]

This won't surprise you, smitty, but I can't quite see it your way. Young b-school grads entering the financial industry are liable to be cocky - the cream of the crop as far as ambition goes. As such, they could easily bounce back from being taken down a peg or three.

What's going on in the current economy is more widespread and at the same time, more insidious. People in the middle and working classes are learning, while dragged kicking and screaming I imagine, not to put their trust in the American dream. And they don't always care to own up to it.

So it must enrages them to hear those slightly lower down or further up asking, "Is this the best we can do?" What saps, talking about community and caring when all there really is is big gov and big biz - and neither's worth your faith, but only one will feed you. Shut up for cry-yi, they think, and start focusing on your own survival.

[shiftless]

Or is it all basically a case of overprotected, spoiled, sheltered, immature people asserting their right to piss in the pool of public discourse and fart up the air inside all our heads - in every walk of life from kindergarten to Congress - who only think they have a clue about the workings of the world?

Isn't that what the internet is for?

Only the overprotected and sheltered have the luxury of spouting their (OK - OUR) anger and frustration where everyone can hear it. What could possibly be a greater sign of prosperity than loud public complaints about our fatness or some throw off comment about Micheal Jackson. One thing - loud public complaints about the the pettiness of other's complaints. Meta-complaining.

IMO, it is human nature to bitch about things. It's how we pass the time. Those of us who don't need to complain about the government taking our food and the army killing our families will find something else. It's why I come to the dope.

[suranyi]

Isn't that what the internet is for?

Only the overprotected and sheltered have the luxury of spouting their (OK - OUR) anger and frustration where everyone can hear it. What could possibly be a greater sign of prosperity than loud public complaints about our fatness or some throw off comment about Micheal Jackson. One thing - loud public complaints about the the pettiness of other's complaints. Meta-complaining.

IMO, it is human nature to bitch about things. It's how we pass the time. Those of us who don't need to complain about the government taking our food and the army killing our families will find something else. It's why I come to the dope.

One of the reasons I come to the dope is to find out what OTHER people are bitching about. Then I decide if it's something I care about too. Usually it isn't. But it's fun to read anyway.

[Beware of Doug]

You mean you don't find it at all poisonous to the world we live in?

It's human nature to bitch all right, but I maintain it's different today. It's like so many things where there's no us involved, no community. It's people like me vs people like you. And there's a lot less talk about what people like me might have done wrong or could do right - and a lot more about YOU.

It's a national blame game that people are actually starting to coalesce around and feel falsely, tribally empowered about. That's some scary shit, when you think about it. Can we afford not to? Then again, can we afford to think about it?

[shiftless]

Well, I can see that angry people on the internet soapbox can be poisonous to the world. They may attract more angry, disaffected people to them. Isn't that balanced out (I hope it is) by rational, non-angry people who can educate these angry groups? And isn't the ability to air all of our anger and frustrations, some of which are real, in public ultimately a good thing? Isolation is a better Petri dish than a public forum for the false, tribal empowerment you describe IMO.

I feel like I see more people complaining, and being rude, about more trivial stuff than years ago but it's the same amount of rudeness. It's rude people being rude.

[WhyNot]

You mean you don't find it at all poisonous to the world we live in?

It's human nature to bitch all right, but I maintain it's different today. It's like so many things where there's no us involved, no community. It's people like me vs people like you. And there's a lot less talk about what people like me might have done wrong or could do right - and a lot more about YOU.

It's a national blame game that people are actually starting to coalesce around and feel falsely, tribally empowered about. That's some scary shit, when you think about it. Can we afford not to? Then again, can we afford to think about it?
I agree with everything but "...it's different today." I think in the past, people were perhaps more dependent on their physical neighbors, but I don't know that it means they were any nicer, overall. Certainly tribalism is old as the hills, and while there was "us" to defend from "them", there was a whole lot more local community control over individual members of the tribe, as well. There was/is a lot of social pressure to conform, and little patience with those who were different. Born into a village of potters? You'd better like clay, son, because only those barbarians hunt for food, we make pots and trade for it, ya hear? Like civilized people. Harrumph. Someone beat some sense into the boy.

I mean, how far back was it different? Children have always been rude and disobedient. Society has always been going to hell in a handbasket.

Of course, there is an actual point of actual decline, or London would still be part of the Roman Empire. But I don't think that point is observable from within it, only with historical hindsight. People's natural tendency to "cry wolf" about societal decline and peoples' skewed view and nostalgia for their own childhoods make it impossible for the layperson to truly differentiate between true decline and grumpy old men grumping.

[msmith537]

However, sometime in the 70s or maybe the 80s, the Man won out over the Gentleman in the myth of heroism. Since then, being a gentleman no longer means being a man.

Really it probably started in the 60s with all the dirty hippies. In all seriousness, the 60s, with all the equal rights issues and Vietnam and whatnot were a turbulant time. People started to distrust many of the institutions they had taken for granted. There was a feeling that much of the idealic cornball 50s idealogy of what it meant to be a "gentleman" was often times thought to be a holdover from a system of institutionalized racism, classism and sexism.



This won't surprise you, smitty, but I can't quite see it your way. Young b-school grads entering the financial industry are liable to be cocky - the cream of the crop as far as ambition goes. As such, they could easily bounce back from being taken down a peg or three.

What's going on in the current economy is more widespread and at the same time, more insidious. People in the middle and working classes are learning, while dragged kicking and screaming I imagine, not to put their trust in the American dream. And they don't always care to own up to it.


Except that seems to be something I've heard since the 70s. Fule prices, income disparity, job layoffs and closings. I don't know that anything really changes that much.

[Stoneburg]

The culture of individualizing societys problems* and vast economical differences. That would be my guess at the major causes of "free-floating anger".



* Poor health and unemployment would be good examples.

[SecretaryofEvil]

I'm only posting to note that I don't think anger and rudeness in society are a new thing. Read some court transcripts from decades or even centuries in the past. Some percentage of society is always going to be angry or rude. It's also important to remember that people have different opinions as to what is rude. Seeing as violent crime has been decreasing for the past 20 years, to the lowest it's been in sixty years, and considerably lower than rates during say, the Great Depression or Medieval England, I'd say that people in our society either have less anger or are getting better at controlling it than people in the past.

[Kearsen]

This seems like a perfect place for SA to come in espousing liberal politics as the leading cause of this trend.

In some aspects he isn't far off (although I wouldn't limit it to just liberal policy)

[freemal2]

I think that people are becoming generally angrier for a number of reasons but a major one is self interest. I think anger has been used to motivate people for a long time. Remember the Maine was a headline used to mislead people into war. A major difference is that today media is saturating. We can turn on cable news channels and be inflamed all day and night if we want. So anger keeps people watching for the ratings of the news channels and those who fund the tea partiers got people angry to sweep in conservative legislators. But it is a two way street of using. People are being given excuses to be angry about all of those other people and what they are doing instead of looking at themselves. TV shows and movies are both creating and reflecting society. Its vicarious escapism that does make cruelty and anger more acceptable. Even funny and being a chump if you don't do it.

[Lemur866]

Really it probably started in the 60s with all the dirty hippies. In all seriousness, the 60s, with all the equal rights issues and Vietnam and whatnot were a turbulant time. People started to distrust many of the institutions they had taken for granted. There was a feeling that much of the idealic cornball 50s idealogy of what it meant to be a "gentleman" was often times thought to be a holdover from a system of institutionalized racism, classism and sexism.


I think the problem is that people look at the 50s as back when our country was "normal". You know, back when people trusted the government, they trusted institutions, they trusted their neighbors, they trusted their preachers, they trusted their teachers.

Except that wasn't normal. Just go back a few years, and people were dropping bombs on Berlin, or napalming bunkers full of Japanese. And a few years before that, and they were driving their Model T's to Californee, looking for work because their farm dried up and blew away. How much trust did people in the breadlines have for their institutions?

The 50s were a time when typical tensions were smoothed over and swept under the rug, because after 20 years of war and depression we finally had prosperity, because our country hadn't been bombed into a trashheap. The factories were running at full blast, and all the inventions that had been created in the decades of the 30s and 40s but no one could afford because of the war and the depression suddenly were available. We'd had cars before, but suddenly everyone could buy a car. TV was invented in the 20s, but now it was actually available. People were so rich that it suddenly became a cultural expectation that, get this, a wife wasn't expected to work outside the home.

We forget that all these expectations were CREATED in the 50s, due to the unique circumstances of the 50s. And yeah, you can still have the wife stay home, it's just that you have to adjust your expectations to what life was like in the 50s--one car, one phone, one TV, new shoes and clothes once a year, fresh fruits and vegetables only in summer, and so on.

And of course, all the "Back in the 50s things were normal!" whinging ignores the Negro problem. And the Soviets. And all the problems that were ignored in the 50s but exploded in the 60s. And the reason they were ignored in the 50s was because a guy who got back from the Pacific after starving on some crappy farm during the depression, took a good look at his permanent factory job and white picket fence and decided he'd entered paradise.

And then the kids who grew up in that paradise had the nerve to complain, much to the confusion of their parents.

[Hilarity N. Suze]

It's because we all had to quit smoking. Also, nobody has three-martini lunches anymore. Think how happy everybody was in the '60s.

[WhyNot]

And the reason they were ignored in the 50s was because a guy who got back from the Pacific after starving on some crappy farm during the depression, took a good look at his permanent factory job and white picket fence and decided he'd entered paradise.

And then the kids who grew up in that paradise had the nerve to complain, much to the confusion of their parents.
Woah.

I mean, seriously - woah. I've never heard it articulated exactly like that before, and my mind is kind of blown. Thank you.

[Nadir]

Isn't that what the internet is for?
Yes, yes - it's the Internet, stupid! (not you, shiftless :D)

It's always been out there, they just used to write it on paper:

http://www.snopes.com/business/consumer/browns.asp

The Internet is like a big funnel into your consciousness through the computer screen. Interact with people on boards like this and you get a megadose of it in concentrated form in a short period of time - a rudeness warp. I've been on dozens of these forums over the years and they are all the same. It takes all kinds. Don't sweat it.

[monstro]

In our society, I can't imagine that we are angrier than we've ever been. Like, when was the last riot that did not involve college football or drunkeness? Bitching on the internet is no different than bitching at the barber shop or at the water cooler. It's just now more public (and less articulate).

If anything, I think we should be angrier. And not angry over stupid stuff (ooh, Christina messed up the national anthem. Outrage!), but angry over things that actually affect our quality of life and the life of others. We have evidence that we are living in a carcinogenic environment...toxins spewed from every pipe you can find. But we don't get angry about that. We don't get angry about how the country is contributing to the denegration of other nations and peoples through geopolitical motivations and pure capitalism. We don't get angry about the unfairness built into our justice system, where people with money are allowed to turn themselves into court at their own convenience, only to get a wrist-slap, while people with no money are shown being arrested on prime-time TV, with no hope for parole. It's not that we get angry that is bad. It's that we are self-absorbed with our anger.

Anger is good. Without anger, things would never change in this society. I hate violence and rioting, but I have to give it to the Europeans. When they get pissed off, they take to the streets and make their demands known. That's what I'd like us to do when shit goes down. Not mumble like effetes on the internets, but actually do something that scares the bejeesus the powers that be. I'd love for my generation to be brave like the people who fought during the Civil Rights movement, or the young people in Egypt. But as long as we continue to indulge ourselves with the trappings of a wealthy, comfortable lifestyle, we will never feel angry enough to actually move beyond complaining and sulking. In our minds, we have too much to lose.

[Starving Artist]

This seems like a perfect place for SA to come in espousing liberal politics as the leading cause of this trend.It most certainly is the leading cause of this trend. America pre-1968 was not an angry place. Forget the 50's. Lots of things were better in pre-1968 America, no matter what the decade.

And don't forget three things:

1) The 50's didn't invent racism.

2) Racism was not ended (to the degree that it has been ended) by hippies or other counter-culture types. Much progress on racism had already been made by 1968 - thanks largely to demonstrations conducted by well-mannered, well-dressed and dignified black people demanding their rights.

What was ended by hippies and other counter-culture types were adult styles of dress, behavior and music; almost nobody on drugs; and the family unit.

3) The trade-off hasn't been close to worth it. Whereas in pre-1968 America black people had to ride in the back of the bus, they now have to deal with an environment rife with drugs and crime and the glamorization of almost every type of negative attitudes, whether they be misogyny, thug life, and anti-education peer pressure. And they have to worry every day of their lives that their kids are going to be drawn into drugs, criminal activity, or be shot in the crossfire. I would absolutely hate being a black parent in American society today.

And where once people were expected to "legitimize their love with a piece of paper" before starting a family - a practice scorned by the counter-culture - now they are free to hop unconcernedly from bed to bed, creating millions of kids who are forced to grow up without adult supervision and
doomed to live their lives spent either in prison or flipping burgers.

Drug-related crime has infested every school and every part of town, and millions of lives have been ruined and/or lost because of it.

Our schools are impotent and fail utterly to educate our kids properly. This is due in part because kids are growing up without discipline at home, without discipline at school, and the federal government has essentially taken over our school systems.

And everybody is pissed off about everything and everybody else, and it gets worse with each passing year. In pre-1968 America most people accepted that - to put it into today's parlance - "shit happens." There will always be bad things in life. If you're going to get into a snit every time you spot one of them (or think you do) and start calling people names because they don't agree with you about what to do about them, then you're going to have constant anger flowing from both sides.

I'll take pre-1968 America over the one we have now any day, and I'd solve the problems of that time in the same way they were dealt with up to that time. Blacks were emancipated and civil rights legislation was passed, and women got the vote, all without fucking up everything that was good about American life at that time. And I have no doubt that civil rights and women's rights would have continued to progress just like they had up to that time.

The problem I have with liberalism and the reason I blame so many things on it is that it's essentially an adolescent mindset, and therefore faulty to begin with. Who thinks the "sex, drugs and rock n' roll" attitude is cool? Who is rebellious and has a problem with authority? Who thinks manners and the need for civil behavior is bullshit? Who favors the blatant expression of sex and vulgarity in the media and in public and ridicules people who disapprove of it? Who wants to have all its needs provided for but not be told what to do? And who is prone to endless fault-finding and thinks they have all the answers?

Each one of these characteristics is typical of adolescence, and each one is typical of liberalism. Certainly you don't find them much in conservative circles. And just like you'd expect from turning the rudder of society over to a bunch of willful, hedonistic, fault-finding, idealistic, know-it-all adolescents, some things will get marginally better but most will get fucked up beyond all repair. And in my opinion that is exactly what has happened to this country since the days of the counter-culture revolution, and it's the reason I blame liberals and liberalism for everything that has gone wrong since.

[Nadir]

I still say it's a non-issue. People just notice it more via the Internet. 2010 elections amplified SA's perception of the liberal angle. I pretty much agree with everything he said, but more as a viewpoint as opposed to a fundamental cause of any societal sea change. Generalized angst will always be stoked by politics in the U.S. They are a factor from a pendulum swing standpoint, but I doubt it to be a leading cause of any long term trends.

Shit has been happening same as always. We're just more attuned to it because it's in our face all the time thanks to the media and Internet.

[msmith537]

Who thinks the "sex, drugs and rock n' roll" attitude is cool?

Um...people who don't suck, dude?

[AlmostPerfect]

Tbh, I didn't read the entire thread but I think that if you guys think that anger and rudeness is the casual norm nowadays you're biased towards the more noticeable attitudes. Like... Maybe you're not noticing the niceness that you're taking for granted every day and only noticing the negative.

For example, me being a student at an extremely large university I probably have more person to person interactions than the aver age person on a daily basis. I don't think I've ever not held the door open for someone when they walked in behind me, and I've never had the door left to shut in my face, these people would rather wait for4-6 seconds for me to reach the door than to seem rude. If i drop my pencil out of reach I think any given person (male or female) would go out of their way to grab it for me, idk maybe I'm just cute. Ever in line at the grocery store with one or two items and someone lets you go first cuz they have enough food to be stocking up for a hurricane or something? I think you're taking advantage of how much the average person goes out of their way for you. It could be A LOT worse.

[shiftless]

It's always been out there, they just used to write it on paper:

http://www.snopes.com/business/consumer/browns.asp


That is cool. Depends on your prespective who is beng angry or rude in that exchange.

I'm a pretty old guy and I've been hearing the "the world is going to the dogs" story for my whole life. Those of you who feel this way, can you tell me why it is worse for you personally because of rock and roll, or whatever? I don't mean why you think the world got worse, the world has change considerable in the last 50 years, but why the changes affect you so much.

When my dad would bitch about MLK screwing up the country or about rock and roll ruining young people, I never understood it as anything other than general bitching, like we all do. His stomach was full and his feet were warm so he bitched about hippies on the other side of the country dragging the country down. Really? I don't think any hippies ever came over the the house but he did have to hear me playing rock and roll on the old phonograph.

I have a friend who bitches about the rudeness of kids these days. He is retired military, no kids, so I can see how he finds civilian kids he sees on the streets to be less disciplined than he is used too. But he is so wrong and vocal in his generalizations about the average kid as to be offensive. That is willful ignorance.

[Shodan]

The Internet allows you to hear from assholes all over the world. Thirty years ago, it was just on TV, and only the ones the network bosses wanted you to hear from. Thirty years before that, you read about it in the paper. Thirty years before that, it was just the people in your town.

There are more of us, and we are crammed more closely together, because we live in cities. Therefore we interact with, and observe, more strangers. We notice the assholery of strangers more than people we have known all our lives, particularly when said assholery is partly or wholly a set of behavioral norms that are different from ours.

More recently, the rise of the 24-hour news cycle feeds the generation of outrage as a way of boosting ratings. Don't have a good story? Gotcha journalism to the rescue!

Regards,
Shodan