We seem to be breeding idiots

[davidc4430]

There is a type of Youtube video that ive just come across,

people, usually teenagers or ones in their 20's doing really dumb things and filming it.

i wonder just how many of these 'future of our kind' kids end up in hospital and worse in a wheelchair for the rest of their lives.

clips allways end before the aftermath.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f198dW3PX9s

i certainly would never condone these stupid stunts.

no matter how funny they look on the surface.

[chameleon54]

I,ll put my hand up. I did some pretty stupid things when I was a teenager, but probably not as mind numbingly dumb as the ones in the clip. One of our favorites was to go bonnet sliding.

Get one old car bonnet ( FJ holden was the best, due to shape ), attach length of rope to bonnet and tie it to tow bar of old farm bomb. Take it out to the padock where the grass was wet, climb onto bonnet and go, go , go.....   As the car would turn, the bonnet would slide out wildy on the wet grass and the slider would have to lean hard into the corner to stop the bonnet tipping over.

We didnt have a lake or river and no speedboat and blow up tubes, so this was our dryland improvised fun.

Another favorite was to try to catch a kangaroo by the tail. We would go spotlighting and at times the roo would be dazzled by the light. A bullet fired a metre above the roos head also seemed to help. Some of the braver members of the group would jump off the spotlighting buggy and try to grab the roos tail before it moved off. They where succesful at times, but then came the problem of how to release the agitated roo, without it turning on the tail holder. I must admit, I was never game to try that stunt, but saw it done a number of times.  Now that would get some looks in the dumb internet prank rankings.

OK, YES I KNOW  it was stupid, but we had to make our own fun in the bush and most of us turned out OK.

[davidc4430]

[ecar3483]

[this-one-time-at-bandcamp]

Famous last words from the Southern states, "Here, hold my beer and watch this".

[not_for_sale2025]

When I was a boy I jumped off the roof of our house with an umbrella after watching an episode of Batman with The Penguin. That didn't turn out too bad (but I was very lucky).

In hindsight I was an idiot. But I forgive myself because I was young and didn't really understand the risk. I felt invincible. But it would be absurd to judge my parents because of my idiocy. My parents raised me well and had nothing to do with it. I was young and was experimenting with life, that's it. But there were no videos around!

[davidc4430]

i'm sure i did things that in hindsight were stupid and possibly even dangerous.

but today we have young people intentionally thinking up really stupid things to do to film to put on scocial media. seems the more stupid and more likely to end in pain is the idea.

i dont think when us oldies were young intentionally hurting ourselves for fame ever entered our heads.

[not_for_sale2025]

I think it is unfair to judge the kids without taking into consideration the world they are living in today. Technology very much guides a lot of what they do. YouTube allows kids across the world to compete with each other. In some cases kids are competing to see who can take the greatest risk, pull the more dangerous stunt, or have the closest near death experience. To be blunt, they are showing off to get attention. And look at the attention they are getting! Some get thousands if not millions of responses. How rewarding!

I agree this is a big problem and am aware that kids are being seriously injured and killed on occasions. But this is a current phenomenon. I don't recall a chapter on 'managing your child in a technological world' in any of Dr Spock's parenting books. I don't know what the full explanation is, but I think it's more complex than kids today being idiots or their parents being failures. So goodness knows what the solution is.

BTW, I am not directing my comment at anybody here. I sometimes think about what the world is like in 2017 and have to shake my head to try and get rid of the bits that make no sense. Everything has moved so fast I haven't been able to keep up.

[this-one-time-at-bandcamp]

I once convinced my girlfriend to accompany me floating through Hellsgate Canyon on inner tubes..........at one point, her tube was vertical to the water...........I kept thinking how I was going to explain this to her parents..........but we got through OK.  Oh, and that was pre-technology.