What’s a GDI?
God Damn Independent.
Wow, I don’t think anyone’s pointed this out.
Being synonymous with jocks, fratboys also have the distinction of being popular. So they naturally do well in politics and corporate america (at least the ones who went to good schools).
They’re douchy and loud too, but that’s just icing on the cake. The real point is the same as of saying “high school never ends.”
Yep. Well, not assholes entirely… they are my friends.
And I DID have to pay a whole dollar to drink funnels! 
They’re only “popular” within their own very insular and circular little subculture. I think that all their mutual backslapping and cronyistic networking deludes them into thinking that there’s anything special about their personalities or that people outside their isolated little clubs ever give them a second thought. They don’t do well in politics and business because they’re “popular,” but because they’re connected.
The only time I went to frat parties was when I was playing paid gigs at them. I never drank their beer. I didn’t want to get roofied.
Dang! Gigs for me too, dude! They were a gold mine.
Good money, three sets, and they loved any tune. Chicks too.
Fratboys, your parties rocked. I like to think I helped. 
This really doesn’t seem fair. What if the title of this thread was “Why is ‘dork’ such an insult?” Do you think we’d be at this point in the conversation, stooping to these lows? Painting with broad strokes, and attacking people who are trying to defend against generalizations?
For the record, I was about as nerdy as you could get in college. I studied physics and mathematics, was always up for a spontaneous LAN game of StarCraft, and would debate quantum mechanics in the physics lounge until five in the morning.
But we also held huge parties, had an affinity for beer, and liked to socialize with other people (and yes, listen to Jay-Z). What gives? If we were discussing the term “dork”, wouldn’t we not only discuss the broad generalizations, but also defend against making such generalizations? Why is it appropriate to reinforce stereotypes when “frat boys” are the subject matter?
They all love Animal House, so something we did when we played frat parties was we’d play “Louis Louis” and invite volunteers to come up to the mic and sing it. It didn’t matter if they knew the words or were drunk out of their minds, they’d come up, sometimes in groups of two or three and blare away into the mic. It’s an easy song to vamp on pretty much forever, and the crowd aways got into it. Letting the frat boys get some mic time always gave them a kick, and you could kill half a set vamping on that tune.
There’s a tip to any young college bands playing frat gigs. Work up “Louis Louis” (a three chord song that takes like ten seconds to learn) and invite the partiers to sing it. They go crazy for it.
Hell yeah. Don’t forget Low Rider. No harmonica needed. We were metal, so we used the somewhat cheesy “da da da da da da da da, duh da da da da…” with distorted guitars, separated by a fifth ( Maidenesque, I think we called it). Cheesy, but awesome at a drunk forum, man.
(sung) Memorieseeees…
There was one, ONE roofie incident at a fraternity-sponsored party in my fraternity in the course of the five years I was an undergrad, and the bouncer (yours truly) saw the guy drop it in the beer and made the would-be druggist drink it himself right before I tossed his ass out on the front lawn.
Frankly, a lot of the stereotypes of fraternity life I’m hearing about are familiar to me, given my old Kappa Sigma roommate, but I’ll be damned if the organization I was in was anything like that.
To be honest, the only thing I can compare it to was going to the occasional American Legion meeting (I was hired as the bugler for the local one in my hometown for a number of years for funerals etc.)–it was a bunch of guys in a relatively un-strict members-only organization who really were in it to drink reasonably while yapping about similar/shared experiences.
I would suggest that anyone making an argument might rely on data, as opposed to anecdote.
It’s absolutely unclear to me what this post means.
Quoted for approval.
Bricker, the original question isn’t of a nature that lends itself to data. You’d have to do a poll:
Why do YOU think ‘fratboy’ is an insult?
A) Because all fratboys everywhere suck.
B) Because the fratboys that stick in my mind suck.
C) Because I am an idiot and lazily subscribe to a stereotype I know is false.
D) I don’t think it’s an insult.
Seems like your question is not really so much a question as a complaint.
I think if you were discussing the term “geek” or “nerd” it would be the same thing. There are plenty of people who characterize themselves as some sort of geek or nerd - science fiction, IT, comic book, whatever. Used in a derogatory sense it has the same effect of calling someone a “fratboy” or even a racial slur. The intent is to dehumanize the target of the insult and reduce them to the embodiment of all the negative stereotypes of that particular group.
Fraternities incite so much hostility in people because they bring to a head certain class issues and conflicts. They are viewed as elitist clubs for spoiled rich jocks. An embodiment of the “old boys network” or the high school jockocracy. IOW, a lot of people already resent that the dumb jock, the popular Abercrombie drone, the good looking vacuous nimrod, the lawyers halfwit kid are going to coast through life and get everything handed to them. They don’t need club formalizing it and broadcasting to the world.
I don’t think that reputation is necessarily deserved, but I can see where it comes from.
OTOH, I can think of a fair number of times when we acted like raging assholes.
How do you think people become well connected? You make connections through the organizations you join. Fraternity guys often do well in business and politics because a lot of the characteristics of being a “frat guy” play well in the business and political world:
-superficial charm and popularity
-ability to form close-knit groups
-understanding of social politics (or did you actually think 40 guys are always in absolute agreement on everything and never have any conflicts?)
-desire to join groups and “fit in”
-leadership (ever try to motivate 40 frat guys to get something done?)
-ability to network and build connections
Five years, hmmm?
Good point. ISTM that in reality, out in the general culture, “fratboy” has acquired a meaning in itself to describe, usually pejoratively, a certain social/behavioral pattern regardless of the actual associations of the persons incurring such conduct. So, we may have a situation in which:
Fraternity Brother =/= necessarily “fratboy”
That is, not all Brothers in “Greek Letter Societies” are “fratboys” in the modern popular usage of the word (and not even all “fratboys” in the modern popular usage are actual Brothers in “Greek Letter Societies”) any more. Even though one term did evolve from the former. I wonder if one could say it’s similar to how “hacker” is understood by the general non-programmer culture in the negative sense of “computer criminal”? Try arguing that one with people who are outside the target readership of 2600 (or even some who ARE in the target readership… stereotypes indeed do not arise in a vaccuum).
Technically five and a half–two years of aerospace engineering, which I decided was taking all the fun out of actually flying, then three and a half to get a degree in operations and information systems management.
I’ll tell you one reason why the word “fratboy” has negative connotations for me. It’s because during my college days, I knew that the fraternities were keeping copies of old test answers and passing them down through the years. I also knew that there was rampant cheating going on behind the frathouse doors.
“Wait a minute!” one might object. “Frat boys aren’t the only ones who cheat, and you can’t say that all frat boys are dishonest.” True enough; however, the fraternities provided a means of rampant and institutionalized dishonesty. That was far more distasteful to me than mere individual cases of cheating.
“But you can’t say that all fraternities do that sort of thing. Heck, some of them are honors societies, right?” True; I can’t claim that every single fraternity engaged in such shenanigans. As others have already emphasized though, we’re talking about generalities and why the term “fratboy” has a negative connotation. I will heartily agree that not every fraternity member can be dismissed as a no-good cheater who skates by in life.
Er… yes, if you focus solely on the first question I asked. However, reading both questions in tandem allows them to become susceptible to a bit more rigorous analysis. “Fratboy is an insult because it implies ‘X’.”
OK. Now, “Is it justified?” When we add this, we can examine allegation ‘X’ and see if it’s supported by any particular data (you know: the stuff that anecdotes are not the plural of?)