• Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    6 months ago

    Why the fuck do american children set up lemonade stands it’s fucking weird grooming kids into grifter “entrepreneurial spirit” culture just give them pocket money ffs. Don’t you teach kids not to speak to strangers?

    We don’t do this shit in the uk. Thank fucking god.

    Girl scouts selling cookies too. Weird as fuck. Does not happen here. MLM/Pyramid schemes for children ffs.

    The OP might be joking about the kid but I’m not, it’s not the kid’s fault though it’s the parents allowing and encouraging petite-bourgeois behaviour at a young age because nobody counters this negative element of american cultural grooming and it factors into normalisation of the “pursuit of happiness” bullshit inherent to the “american dream”. It’s a component of early cultural brainwashing.

    • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      6 months ago

      Don’t you teach kids not to speak to strangers?

      I hope not. Socializing with strangers is a good skill which is more helpful to instill in a child than a blanket fear of strangers. Not having a go at you or anything, but I feel like this is a really common contributor to the atomization of modern Westoid societies. Of course teach kids boundaries, but it is kinda messed up imo to teach them not to speak to strangers.

    • uSSRI [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      6 months ago

      Oh in the 90s we had Junior Achievement speakers come in all the time. It was volunteers of like bank managers and lawyers and other petite bourg interests pushing free market superiority propaganda on kids. I think they even tied it into “American civic ideals”. Like the usual propaganda but cranked up to 11.

    • metaltoilet@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      We did it because: A) it was nice for 10 year old me to have some money to spend on candy or whatever dumb things my parents didn’t want to pay for. B) Learning to prep, prepare, and sell it really did give me an appreciation for the workers who have to do it every day. C) It was just fun.

      • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        5 months ago

        Kids should not be getting into any of this shit until they’re 16. Before that the only shit they should be doing is like an hour on a paper round and only when they’re 13+.

        It’s absolutely culturally damaging to a society to groom kids into this as totally normal at a young age and the message it sends to adults across society as well is that if kids can be doing it then why aren’t you. That it’s your own fault for not having the hustle to earn - even kids can do it. It reinforces some of the worst aspects of capitalism.

        You may have enjoyed it and you may want to defend those memories you have of it and may even get a twinge about me saying negative things about something that is fundamentally american in culture (a little nationalist defensiveness perhaps) but all of that does not change the fact its impact is fundamentally reinforcing capitalism. It should be dismantled but attacking something children do is inherently difficult because people will stand up and argue the kids enjoy doing it in defence of it to set you as the bad guy.

          • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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            5 months ago

            Sexual grooming and the act of grooming children for a specific social outcome are different things and that should be inherently obvious from the context.

            I will not use another word. It is an act of grooming intended to achieve a specific social and cultural outcome beneficial to corporate america.