What do you think of people who find a way to put "But kids today are so trashy / rude / uncaring / blah / blah / blah" into every conversation?

They forgot their own childhood and what their elders said of them.

I try to keep in mind that it’s very natural to feel this way.

I also try to point out that the youth are far better than anyone else alive, in every possible way.

In what way @hmmmmmm?

I bet every generation does it.
I had a CO once say “Every generation thinks the next generation is screwed up, and they probably are, and the sun will come up tomorrow.” I liked that thought.

Rumor has it there is a quote from Plato about it. Too lazy to look for it now, though. Judge Judy is callin’ my name!

It was Socrates (as quoted by Plato) who said:

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

However, the attribution is considered spurious.

These have always been the complaints of the old. Personally, I think it’s certainly bullshit. I came up at almost exactly the right time, I envy nothing about today’s kids and the grueling options confronting them.

@Dutchess_III: “In what way @hmmmmmm?”

Every possible way.

Specifics please @hmmmmmm.

It’s exasperating and so disappointingly typical. But it’s just human nature. I’ll be complaining about “kids these days” when I’m old too even though I criticize it now. No avoiding it. :)

Question: Is there some truth in that statement about kids? I have seen plenty of kids over the years and there are some aspects of disrespect, rudeness, etc. Tell me you haven’t seen a group of kids just buried in their phones, ignoring everyone including those they are walking into. The work ethic of the young is not as strong as with older folks. The sense of entitlement is far stronger. Remember, this isn’t an all encompassing statement…it is a generality. There are young folks that are not like this as well.
@Dutchess_lll is correct: These are the generations we raised, so we (the collective we) own some and probably most of the responsibility. Again…no all encompassing but a generality.
As for if kids have always been like this? I disagree. I remember growing up and being taught to show respect to others as well as for myself. I would not have thought about getting up in some adult’s face just because. And I was not alone….everyone I knew was raised that same way.

I worked in customer service for a few years and the rudest most entitled people were nearly always middle-aged or older (most of this demographic was just fine, but when I think back to some of the nastiest people that myself and co-workers dealt with, most of them were older). The young people were surprisingly mild-mannered and polite most of the time. It was the older people who felt the rules didn’t apply to them and would rant about how they shouldn’t have to do this and shouldn’t have to do that…

That’s just been my personal experience. Having seen plenty of entitlement in older people, I’m skeptical of the claim that it’s something pervasive in the young and not simply framed by one’s own experiences. I have certainly noticed how horrid young children become when you take away their iPad and their video games and I do wonder about how technology will affect the new generations for the worse. Human nature doesn’t change, but society and technology do and they can have an effect on people’s behavior.

The biggest difference I see today is kids refusing to move out of the way of a moving car.

@seawulf575, EVERYONE gets lost in their phones, not just the kids. I’ve seen grown ass adults walking down the street with a 2 year old trailing behind them, and the adult is on their phone, completely oblivious to the child. People my age get lost in their phones.
It’s horrible.

@seawulf575 “I remember growing up and being taught to show respect to others as well as for myself.”

Is that why your generation has handed ours a multi-trillion dollar debt? Is that why when there was a budget surplus, instead of using that money to pay down some of the debt we were going to inherit, your generation decided to fund tax breaks for yourselves that lead to a massive explosion in debt for our generation—all the while allowing our infrastructure to fall into disrepair and decay? That’s a funny way of “showing respect to others.”

Is that why your generation has trashed the planet and created a climate that’s going to produce devastating storms, droughts, floods, climate refuges and wars? So you could have cheap gas, SUV’s and crew cab pickup trucks? Or filled our oceans with microplastics so future generations can enjoy their tuna laced with particles from the shopping bag you used in 1995 that one time when you bought that one thing that you nor anyone else will remember because of how unimportant it was. Thanks for that.

Is that why your generation undid all of the hard work put in place by earlier generations to create financial safeguards on the banking and investment sectors to prevent abuses and collapses? Is that why your generation undid regulations designed to prevent the media from coalescing into what we have today: with just 6 companies (Comcast, Disney, AT&T, Fox, CBS and Viacom) owning over 90% of all media (down from 50 companies in 1983)? So now our generation gets to choose to have our news framed in either pro-corporate propaganda that’s socially liberal, or pro-corporate propaganda that’s socially conservative?

Is that why our generation inherited more incarcerated people per capita than any other nation on Earth? Is that why your generation has supported policies that have resulted in financial inequality greater than before the great depression? Is that why your generation has produced an economy where our generation is likely to earn less than yours?

And then for your generation to have the fucking gaul to label Millennials as not having a good work ethic and being disrespectful… I would say that on the whole, the Baby Boomer generation is like a psychopath that feels no empathy for others and is totally self-absorbed in short term joys at the expense of other generations.

Boom! And I’m a baby boomer.

@gorillapaws Isn’t it funny that you are blaming my generation for all your woes? Want me to tear apart your whiney diatribe one point at a time? Sure! Let’s!

I love your view of the multi-trillion dollar debt. You have all the liberal talking points down pat. But let’s actually review a bit and then go forward a bit. You blame tax cuts for the multi-trillion dollar debt. Yet you ignore QE 1, 2, & 3….printing money and giving it to cronies. That accounted for half the current debt all in itself. The tax cuts really did nothing…except put people to work and give them pay raises. With jobs and more money, gee….more taxes. But the root of all this is Congress. It’s called fiscal responsibility and they have none. They spend money faster than a drunken sailor on leave in the Philippines. But let’s not just focus on the past…let’s look forward to what some of your heroes are suggesting. The New Green Deal. A conservative estimate is that it will cost $93T…and that is at best a rough guess since they really don’t know what all the extra costs will be. Oh! and that was presented by…wait for it…A Millenial! Yeah…you got me there.
I understand all about pollution. I remember speaking out against it when I was young. Oh…wait…my generation speaking out against it? That doesn’t fit your narrative, does it? But let’s dig deeper. My generation fought to get better gas mileage on cars, to find ways to save energy, and alternate energies. We created and pushed recycling so we could reuse things instead of filling oceans and landfills. And as of today, the air in most of the US is among the best in the industrialized world. But don’t let facts get in your way.
And while we are on the subject, YOUR generation has been crying about climate change and how we need to use more solar and wind energy. Duke Energy just did a study and found that using more solar actually creates more pollution than running gas turbines or nuclear plants all the time. Why you ask? Because here’s a clue for your idealistic mind to wrap around….the sun isn’t a steady source of power. Clouds get in the way with annoying irregularity. And every time the output drops off on the solar farms, the power grid has to be supplemented by gas turbines. Firing up the gas turbines creates more carbon emissions than running them all the time. And don’t even try to say that it is my generation that uses all the electricity.
As for the entertainment industry, your generation has far more input into that than mine does. It is a consumer driven industry. Here’s a thought….turn against Hollywood. Don’t like what’s on? Turn it off. Stop watching. What? Can’t conceive of that either? Sounds like your generation has sold out.
As for the incarceration rate, just an idea….stop committing crimes. Here’s the age stats of prisoners
https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_age.jsp

Looks like Millennials are a big part of the problem. Maybe if you actually talk to your idealistic brethren and tell them to stop committing crimes, the prison population would go down. OR…is it your belief that the world would be better off if we just didn’t incarcerate criminals? If that is your idea, let me know…I can easily shoot that one in the ass as well.

So how’d I do? Did I show enough fucking gall? BTW…it isn’t Gaul…that’s a Frenchman. Are you going to blame others for your own lack of knowlege now?