Their recruiting offices were set up directly across the street from my daughter’s high school right next to the Burger King where all the seniors went to lunch.
Shady as fuck
They also exclusively target lower to middle class areas because rich people have options, and the capitalist oligarchy love that poverty to cannon fodder pipeline.
Which is conveniently the real reason they are trying to ban abortion. Because poor kids without options are easy to recruit as cannon fodder
I think you give pro choice and religious nuts too much credit.
I would imagine that behind closed doors, men in positions of power have had conversations about the potential recruits the military is losing with easy access to abortion, but I agree with you.
For the most part there is no grand conspiracy, just passionate nuts who believe they’re going to live forever who found a shortcut to what they imagine is God’s approval. Like that nut who climbs buildings to raise awareness or whatever it is he’s doing. They believe when they die, they’ll wake up on a cloud and hear “Jesus Loves the Little Children” playing in the background. Their lord will walk up to them and embrace them, tell them what a good job they did shouting about saving babies as he pets their hair.
I grew up in that world. So glad I don’t still live in it.
Sir this is a Wendy’s
no, this is patrick
Good to know. Explains a lot.
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If you’re still believing they’re religiously motivated you’re exactly where they want you.
The idiots who vote are religiously motivated. The ones with power want cheap labor.
Also a huge reason the GOP is so against student debt forgiveness. Can’t give poor people an option beyond joining the military if they want to go to college.
I remember one of the ® Congress critters saying as much a few years ago, but I can’t find the source. I think it was one of their complete imbeciles.
Interesting…
So is the alternative to kill people in the womb based on the possibility they might end up joining the army at some point in their lives?
The alternative is to not convince fools that fetuses are people just so that they’ll create more soldiers.
Fetuses aren’t people? When does that happen exactly then?
You’re just making a fool of yourself.
Oh ok. I noticed you didn’t answer. It’s not a trick question unless you’re a fool.
After you have committed to having the baby.
Yes, fertilization is indeed codifying this commitment to start a family. See, common ground!
If they truly cared about “all life” they would be pushing food programs for kids in schools, and persue free education.
But educated children don’t end up in the military… Quick cut those programs!
Republicans pull out a Bible and read whatever chapter slightly resembles the doctrine they want to push, and conveniently forget all the rest. And their voting base laps it up because they’ve never actually read a Bible themselves either.
You’re right. We’re better off killing them in the womb to prevent any suffering they may have.
They target a lot of wealthier neighborhoods as well. Lot of failsons that can’t get into a good college because of their shit grades, but a couple years in the army as an NCO means they can get into a decent school afterwards.
Yeah, there are special divisions for fortunate sons, who get fancier barracks and light duties away from harms way. We know because George W. Bush served his military career in one in the Coast Guard.
Why do they always send the poor?
You depend on our protection, yet you feed us lies from the tablecloth
Why don’t presidents fight in wars?
The one in my town is right next to GameStop.
Isn’t there a law against people who take advantage of kids being near schools?
I went to highschool and university in the US - I was lucky that I got a scholarship and that covered pretty much all my tuition costs.
But I had a friend, one year older than me, who joined and served in the US army for something like 2 years just so he could get his university costs covered and to save some money for living expenses.
It may not be intentional, but the high cost of higher education is an excellent recruiting tool for the US military.
The poverty draft is very real. Usually it’s for enlisted who have no other prospects. But I was in that same boat in college. 2 years in ROTC before something made me realize I was not going to enjoy military life and dropped it.
I went to school in a dirt poor place. Like half of my graduating class joined the military. Recruiters were in the halls like every week. Yeah, it’s absolutely intentional.
It may not be intentional
Nothing is unintentional.
Wasn’t there some tweet of a US general that said to not get rid of high college costs because they would get less soldiers signing up?
Totally not intentional, I’m sure.
Yes. It was. Now days most jobs offer to cover college. I want to know how they benefit because I don’t get it.
They get relatively cheap, more educated workers for at least a short time. And they’re often able to keep them at a cheaper salary than hiring someone with the same education. A (proactive) promotion that doubles your salary from $35 to $70k a year generates a lot of goodwill, even if that education and position would usually start at $90k.
Also people who “go to college” that work pays for don’t live on campus, so the company is only on the hook for tuition, and not room and board. And it’s often not full time. It’s worth $10k/year for all that.
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It’s creepy that they’re allowed to text children without their express consent. Assuming that this is a real text exchange and that OOP didn’t wilfully give the recruiter their number earlier.
When I was a senior in high school back in the 2000’s I got multiple cold calls from Army recruiters. I have no doubt that they’ve moved on to texting, and that this is legitimate.
Yep. Cold calls, emails, texts, whatever they could get their hands on all through my senior year in high school and at least my first two years of college. Not to mention their tables in the high school cafeteria, at robotics competitions, my engineering university’s job fairs. Don’t remember how I got them off my back, I might have just aged out of their main target cohort, but my mom likes to talk about how she told them she was pregnant (because she was lol) and they never contacted her again. Do with that information what you will.
So they’re old enough to decide to join the military but not old enough to handle receiving an unsolicited message on social media?
You can join the military before you can drink. This country doesn’t make sense.
At least you can’t get drafted before you’re old enough to vote anymore.
It makes perfect sense when you remember that the worth of human life and ethics aren’t factored in when people decide how the country works.
It’s not about “handling” anything. Not sure how you inferred that from my post.
Are you okay with army recruiters having your child’s cell phone number without their express consent?
When I was in high school our home phone number was published in the phone book and military recruiters called it a few times when I was getting close to finishing high school.
I’m not giving my kid a cell phone if I think them having it would endanger them. If unsolicited phone calls endanger them they shouldn’t have a cell phone. They should know what information shouldn’t be given out to strangers over the phone, on a call or via message. They should know how to block numbers and recognize calls that are best left to voicemail, &c.
Sounds like you support actual grooming.
This is Facebook messenger or instagram, either way public profiles
Not really any better. Soliciting (presumably) high school students via their phone or via social media is fucked up.
Point being the text exchange doesn’t require consent, as the profiles are publicly accessible. Nothing to do with whether it’s right/wrong.
The comment you responded to said it was “creepy”, not that it wasn’t allowed. That it’s allowed doesn’t make it any less messed up, and looking to argue semantics in this discussion and divert it onto trivialities just paints you as sympathetic to the practice or actively looking to aid it.
So, exactly what you’re doing right now?
Calling out your bs diversionary response. This one too. And at this point I will stop engaging you and recommend everyone else do so as well, as you have illustrated wonderfully that you’re not interested in actually discussing anything meaningful.
I’m going to college right now and I’ve been getting messages from recruiters lately. They literally text me from their work numbers now.
Not that it matters too much but it looks like Instagram or Facebook direct message
Back in the early 2000’s I had a recruiter call my house asking for me, creepy AF.
Seeing the army recruitment at comic Con always skeeves me out. I see them talking to 16-17 year old socially awkward kids who don’t know any better. Really predatory.
Really predatory.
It’s interesting that the US has not signed the international agreement against child (<18 yo) soldiers - solely so that the US armed forces can sign 17 yo recruits.
I just thought the Comic-Con would have been a terrible recruiting ground. The military want people that follow orders. They actively discourage intelligence.
Military brat here, half the soldiers I meet are massive nerds and the other half are goobers (meatheads, guys with no prospects, guys who always wanted to be in the army). Take that as you will.
They don’t though. Certain jobs don’t need you to be a genius, but the military really wants all the smart people they can get.
And yeah, when you’re in, it’s about 50:50. You’ll meet some of the smartest, generous, friendly people you’ll ever know. And you’ll meet some aggressive, angry, stupid knuckledraggers too.
The US military wants all the smart people that they can get because they don’t have any working for them.
Well, fuck me I just found out I’m stupid
Socrates would say that’s a good first step.
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I can almost guarantee you wouldn’t even score high enough on the Asvab to qualify for the most difficult jobs in the military.
Some of us are dumb enough to know that whatever IQ you have, joining the military industrial complex killing machine for our capitalists overlords is morally bankrupt and dumb.
And many of us grew up in such dire straits that despite our awareness of and disagreement with the military industrial complex, the system of desperate circumstances left us with few choices, and certainly none better. The military provides training and educational opportunities that will pull a person right out of hopeless poverty and give them half a chance in life. Everyone has their price.
For my part, I rationalized it by deciding that I would prefer people like me to join up rather than right-wing nutjobs, and if I did, then that was one slot that a nutjob wouldn’t fill.
I’m amazed at how humans are able to rationalize the evil that we do. The reason you were in such dire straits is a byproduct of militarism and capitalism. You were aware enough to recognize this, and still chose to be an accomplice. There is no ethical military. None . From the janitors to the Generals, if you contribute to the machine you are part of it.
I guess that is WIS vs INT
The military isn’t all bad. Our role in WW2 was pretty righteous. What we do with Ukraine is helping to fight evil.
As much as we’ve screwed up Iraq, it’s hard to say if they’d have been better off staying under Saddam.
Helping South Korea and defending NATO is pretty good.
I see some National Guard in here. Helping Ruby Bridges get to school was good work. The National Guard often swoops in to help in natural disasters.
Half our Navy is made up of giant, floating hospitals.
Serial killers aren’t all bad either. They keep the homeless population in check and Ted Bundy was a leader in his community. /s
The military is like the “orphan crushing machine.” No one asks why it exists. We’re just supposed to accept that it’s necessary. And in some ways it is. But shouldn’t we strive for a world without a need for military.
Some might say, “well, that’s what America is doing. It’s the strongest military to maintain peace.” But this logic is flawed. When your military becomes so big, it’s never going to dissolve itself when necessary for peace. It becomes a power unto itself.
Eisenhower warned us about the military industrial complex but we didn’t listen.
LoL mkay
Right, cause fucking weebs are known for their superior intelligence and independence in the face of authority.
I knew two people with mechanical engineering degrees who couldn’t even make it through nuclear engineering school to work on submarine and carrier reactors, the military isn’t made up of 100% dumbass infantrymen.
Throw 'em into boot, they either get ground down to follow orders or beat/shamed out. They’re terribly good at psychological manipulation.
As far as intelligence, they know how to play the room now. They’ll put you wherever you’re best. They have a hell of a lot of tech now and aren’t as keen on putting contractors in harms way. If you’re better off as a grunt, you’re a grunt. If you’re skilled labor, they’ll find a way to make you useful.
Not to say you should or shouldn’t join. Skilled labor makes a hell of a lot more money other places.
I still fondly remember my friend Bob Niederider from high school in the '80s. One day an Army recruiter came to talk to our history class, and at the end he asked if anybody had any questions. Bob raised his hand and said “yeah I have a question: does napalm still stick to kids?” I didn’t really appreciate this at the time - and the recruiter certainly didn’t, either.
What was the response?
It was basically the scene in Full Metal Jacket where the Marine commander grills Joker about the peace sign and “Born to Kill” on his helmet.
I wasn’t going to join anyway, but the military recruiter who came to my school in the 90s ensured I wouldn’t enlist.
He ended literally ended every phrase or clause with “'n stuff.” And I do mean literally. Every phrase or clause.
It went like this:
“If you wanna join the army 'n stuff, you gotta get fit 'n stuff because basic training ain’t easy 'n stuff but if you start getting fit now, you’ll do fine 'n stuff.”
For 45 fucking minutes.
I’ll go against the grain here.
I joined not long after high school because I wasn’t gonna be able to pay for college, not that I was a good student anyway.
Spent most of my 4 year Air Force enlistment in the UK doing what I wanted - sysad, basically. Never deployed.
Got out and worked for increasingly higher pay and now I make $250k+ without a college degree.
I remember when the Xbox 360 came out, I was in high school.
The army brought a Ford Excursion that looked fresh off the Pimp my Ride show, with a huge flat screen that flipped down out of the back, 4 huge subs, and the current football game playing.
You could only play the Xbox if you signed up.
School recruiters are basically practicing pedophiles. They disgust me. They:
- hunt for vulnerable children, who might be more prone to complying due to trauma or disability or even just recent social happenings or baseline teenage angst
- try to talk to them one on one so adults won’t interfere
- entice them with treats or games or other such things
- try to convince the kids to agree to do something they don’t yet understand
The SOP of a school recruiter and that of a practicing pedophile are so similar that I wonder how many of the latter are created after someone has been the prior simply due to how the job demands you to operate and consider the kids as just resources… or how often the prior becomes a career path for the latter simply to justifiably increase their access to children.
Back in the late 2000s, I got pulled in to the office in high school because I told the recruiter visiting the school that he was a massive piece of shit and needed to stay away from me and my friends if he knew what was good for him. I said this after he sat down near me and, idk, tried to bond? By calling my female friend that left “a real hottie” and tried poorly to insinuate I could probably seal the deal if I was a hot army boy. Baseline revolting statement from an adult to a child for one, I’m gay for two, she was lesbian for three… so I said what I said and apparently my words were sufficiently hurtful that he ran to the admin to cry about it and I got told off because that kind of language and sentiment is unacceptable towards someone “just doing their job” at the school. They found no issue at the time with his ingratiation technique, though I never saw him again.
Everything about your story is just wow. It’s the exact sort of story you hear in gay bars in the city the rural folk flee to
And yeah I can’t disagree with your points. Recruiters are actively seeking kids out to get them traumatized or killed. Good on you for telling one off
Wow what the fuck
Man that is creepy. Some “I have candy in my van” vibes.
Literally an idiot trap
What in the actual fuck
I’m surprised they didn’t have America’s Army running there. That used to be a great game.
The recruiting office near me has a huge portable climbing wall.
I remember mowing the lawn at home in the early 2000s when an Army recruiter pulled up and tried to get me to sign up. We lived in a cul-de-sac, so he was clearly there for me. I was 17 at the time.
The older I get, the more creeped out I am that they showed up unsolicited and talked to me without one of my parents present.
I remember a recruiter coming up to me, trying to shame me.
“Don’t you love your country?!” He shouted. This was after 9/11 too, and being brown, I didn’t say what I wanted to say because i was 17 and was absolutely sure this guy would beat me up.
After 9/11 I had people telling me to look less Muslim so I wouldn’t be targeted by crazy people. At the time, being brown and having a beard made you Muslim, which in turn made you a terrorist.
Sadly all the branches have one at the schools. I made the mistake of taking the ASVAB test in high school to get out of class, scored well and was hounded by all of these guys. The marine recruiter showed up at my house carrying a CRT TV/VHS combo to try and convince me to join lol
Marine got a workout that day
This was in FL too, this guy walked the walk I guess.
It was required in my school to take the ASVAB. If we missed we’d face repercussions. I purposely answered questions wrong-- not all of them because it would look too obvious, but I apparently still scored high enough that they still considered me. I got my results in class, we had someone from the military come speak with us and try to get us to sign up, and even text messages.
Shit was so fucking annoying.
I asked a friend of mine from where I used to live if she had to take it and she asked me what the fuck I was talking about.
I mean, shit, I guess when you live in a state that is known for having awful levels of education they figure they can shove you in the military instead.
…Or football.
What score do you think is the cutoff to not be called?
My guess is they call you regardless of score and use the score to decide how to make the sell. They need all levels of people to stand in front of bullets and maintain a base/outpost.
My highschool had the same thing, they made it sound mandatory but a handful of us found out they couldn’t force you to take it. So yea while 99% of my classmates took it the 5 of us got to sit in a empty classroom and wait it out
This sounds worse than sitting through a time share presentation.
But better than a friend trying to get me to join their downline.
Joke is on you; they left all the kids that made perfect scores alone. They knew they couldn’t convince them to join.
How else are they going to help you leave the state? Teaching you math?
When I was in school we had to take it but the recruiters also passed back the results. So even if you didn’t want to join it was supposed to be useful information about what you’re good at doing.
Ironically they may have tried harder because you scored low. The phrase “Asvab Waiver” exists for a reason. And there’s very few people who couldn’t drive a truck or something useful.
Texas?
Close. Alabama
Yeah, we had to take it in school as well. Since I had no interest in dying in Iraq, I just filled in bubbles at random. Still got phone calls and mailings aplenty begging me to join the military. They even mailed me a video game that the Army made, though I never played it so I don’t know how bad it was.
Was it Americas Army? I played that when it released. Not bad. I’m not a fan of shooters, but it was at least interesting to see a game that had an honest attempt at making it as “real” as possible.
The sniper mission was the only thing I didn’t complete. It had one mission where you had to sit and wait for up to 48 hours real time before you could take a shot at your target. Neat concept, but totally impractical for a game.
Americas Army stunk bad on release, but was pretty solid by the time that it got to 3.0.
Recruits are trained on the engine used in ARMA by Bohemia Interactive. I played some of the scenarios on Operation: Flashpoint (which featured cold-war operations in the late 1980s).
Eventually, when I got hit, I assumed I was dead, and occasionally be surprised that I’m not, in fact, falling over, and am still alive and still have functional parts.
But yes, the most effective way to play seemed to be to hide in a bush and wait for minutes (hours if necessary) for the enemy to cross your firing line.
I guarantee you recruits are trained in the nearest forest. There’s edge cases where using a video game can be useful for testing new tactics with veterans. But recruits are looking for the basics. Like what does a platoon wedge look like in a forest versus the grass.
War games are really useful for officers trying to plan things. That way they don’t need to pay for thousands of people to deploy to special training areas to figure stuff out. But even then it’s open to misuse, like when Rumsfield decided light infantry was a dead concept.
That tracks. I knew the Arma engine was used for training in the US Army and USMC but I didn’t know where it fit in.
So you just made something up?
An equivocative question. Are you law enforcement?
America’s Army was actually really good because of how realistic it was with respect to tactics
if you still have that game it might be a good fit for the internet archive
If it was an fps it was probably decent, they have access to the top Secret specs of war machines.
Which then was leaked on the War Thunder forums.
I’m from Kentucky and never had that, so idk.
My dad had to sign up for service in the military in Britain in the late 1940s when he turned 18. He never told me exactly how he got out of it (I suspect he pretended to be gay), but he did tell me about the “intelligence test” he had to take which sounded very similar to the cognitive diagnostic test Trump brags about. He said it was stuff like-
Which of these doesn’t belong: Square, circle, triangle, elephant.
He finished it in about five minutes, asked if he could leave, and was told he had to wait until everyone finished or an hour had gone by. Apparently, by the end of the hour, there were people around him really struggling to finish.
Whats ASVAB
I don’t know what it stands for, but it’s basically a test for recruits to ensure they meet the basic levels of intelligence required to serve. ASVAB
Thank you!
Yup. Although it’s not generally 1 per school. More like 1 per 10 schools. No different than job recruiters for any other field.
well there’s one difference at least
“How do you feel about killing innocent children in foreign countries?”
“Eh… I’m fine with that.”
“Great! Welcome to Nestle!”
“How do you feel about funding groups of killers to fight proxy wars only to have them turn against us years later in a very long-con kind of scam to steal the natural resources of 9 different countries?”
…
“Great! Your first mission is to protect that one warlord who set up a bed in an all-girls school to have sex with them.”
Whoa there. That’s the college job fair. The High School one is, “poverty tears collection specialist”.
This made me cackle
No different form any other organization that prey upon our children
Huh, we had 7 for our school district (one for each branch, and I think the army and navy had two), but my high school alone did have just under 3000 kids.
We had all 7 of these guys (and one woman) going from class to class every day for a month giving four 90-minute presentations per day to pander and force-feed each individual classroom of ~30-50 students a glorified recruitment ad. They even set up one of the portable classrooms as a recruitment office for that month.
I’m curious, did the recruiters hand out forms to kids under 18 that required parent/guardian signatures?
I’m asking because ours did, and I could swear that these forms were a sort of pre-enlistment contract that needed parent/guardian signature in order to waive the 18+ requirement for agreeing to enlist. So although we wouldn’t actually be enlisted until we turned 18, we could agree to enlist beforehand with a parent’s signature. But, as strong as that memory is, I still can’t help but doubt myself because of how insane and illegal that all sounds.
Do American schools have a lot of job recruiters who have access to the kids private data?
It’s pretty fucked, honestly. They regularly posted up in the lunchroom at my school, recruiting students with promises of scholarships.
We didn’t get text messages like this, but I’m not surprised to see it. I do wonder how they get the numbers though. Is it just data broker bullshit or is the school system selling out their own students’ information?
My college definitely gave out student contact info to the ROTC/National Guard recruiters. I got more than one unsolicited text exactly like the one in the OP throughout college.
this is Instagram I think, so maybe just be name
So stalking highschoolers via social media. That’s somehow worse. Yeesh.
I’d argue that its not as bad. socials are public, phone numbers are not. don’t mean to defend them, they shouldn’t be messaging minors in any capacity without explicit consent
Socials being “public” doesn’t mean every single thing about the person is publicized (though, I admit, it could be depending on the person). If this is Instagram, afaik there’s no “I go to X HS” bio-line option, so unless the user explicitly lists it themselves, that suggests recruiters are analyzing their posts to connect them to a school, and/or linking them to other users they already know. That is explicitly worse, imo.
I mean school could have given them a list
idk there’s no point arguing what’s worse, they’re both bad and should not happen
For one, you literally started this argument. Second, schools giving them a list doesn’t make it better either.
I will agree it’s all bad, though. The sheer impudence to do anything like this is just awful. “Hey child! I know you never asked for this discussion, but do you wanna fight and die for a military system that will use shady af data acquisition just to pose this shitty question to you? We can give you an education that should be affordable to anyone but absolutely isn’t. You’re probably poor right?”
Hi I’m SSG Douchenozzle, ever had a nightmare that you can’t wake up from? With PTSD we can make that your reality.
We had a recruiter 20 years ago. The kids are smarter these days tho it seems.
