Before going further, lemme warn you that this is a very old post I had drafted and totally forgot about!
Recently, a ship load of crap has been going on around the world and the internet, especially social media has been bringing said crap from a different perspective to us.
But then again, if you think about it, it has been going on long before our time. Social media just shows us the side that we won’t get from the local newspapers.
I remember when my sister had her first son. She lived close to a family in Dallas who had lost a child to the trending game that was killing kids stateside.
The game?
Tie a rope really tight around your neck and see how long you can hold your breath before releasing the rope.
Sounds like a stupid game that no sane kid would want to indulge in right?
Well lots of kids were doing it. Parents were tossing out any sort of rope that could be used and as we know how resourceful kids can be, most of them turned to the rope used to hang up swings in the playground/backyard.
So this neighbor’s kid (I think she must have been 11 at the time) had a toddler brother who was twice his size in age. She instructs said brother to pull the rope dangling from her neck real tight, which he did, with great pleasure according to the story because after all he is a kid with a new game. How was he to understand that it was a gefährliches Spiel? So, she realizes she didn’t want to be part of the game anymore and signals him to stop.
But try telling a four year old to end a game he was having fun with. Yup, she couldn’t even talk properly to relay her message to her brother until it was too late.
If I recall, Oprah even interviewed a few families that encountered trauma in regards to the rope trend. It was quite sad and very difficult to understand why kids would want to play such a dangerous game.
Then the planking trend began and I can’t even delve into that one biko.
Fast forward to this time and what’s the new trend? Hot water challenge.
It took me a nano second to assume that no normal person would want to take that challenge. But alas, the idiocy of some people just have you questioning your own sanity.
A 12 year old girl in the US was dared by her cousin to drink boiling hot water through a straw and the stupid girl actually attempted it.
According to the internet, she died a few days later from some complications. I don’t know and frankly I do not care that much.
What world do we live in that you think it is OK to let yourself be fooled by people who obviously do not care a bloody damn about you?
A teenager was attacked in the guise of a prank by her friends during a sleepover. Apparently, the girls gave her fair warning that if she joined the sleepover, they would douse her with hot water and she didn’t believe them(my sane self is assuming this just if you are wondering).
The truth is that she could have wanted so badly to attend the sleepover and didn’t care about their threats.
It’s quite sad that the future women we are grooming are not having each other’s backs. You would think that after movies like Wonder Woman and the revelation that The Doctor was going to regenerate into a woman would make girls look out more for each other.
But no. It’s crazy. No one is taking the time to get to know the people they plan to call friends.
You just join forces with girls who are the it generation to make you into something. No care whatsoever if they would look out for you.
Some folks are barely getting the bees and the birds story out and now we have to have the friendship talk too?
Shouldn’t your brain tell you who your true friends are?
Kids are killing themselves in order to prove to idiots that they can be something they aren’t.
A story broke out about a girl who was forced to do a split during cheerleading tryouts. The coach forced(and I use that word very mildly) her to do a split and she made an attempt to do something that she obviously isn’t trained to do. Just because she wanted to be part of the cheerleading team.
Why the bloody hell did the stupid coach force her to do something like that even after she let said coach know she didn’t know how. And why the hell did she even try when she knew she couldn’t do a split to save her life.
Kids and teenagers are so eager to please people who would stab them in the back without even thinking or asking if these people they are breaking down the gates of hell to please will actually do the same thing.
While in university, I had some friends who smoked and when we hung out, they would try forcing me to join them, saying I was too boring.
I could have quite easily given in but I always knew that smoking was something I was never going to try. I used to see a lot of smokers coughing and obviously having breathing problems and I told myself that that was never going to be me.
So to have people I made friends with try to convince me to smoke and because I want to not seem boring to them, I pick up a stick?
Oh hell no.
Now I should say they didn’t force me or badger me either. As long as I said no, they let it go. They would just make fun of how boring I was and that was it. I could just as easily given in because I wanted to seem cool to them but I really didn’t care if anyone thought me uncool.
I fear for the generation to come. No one is perfect. Oh lawd no. But we should be able to have a stand against anything we know to be wrong. I mean seriously, how hard can this be?
What are your thoughts? Do you believe there is a solution to teaching young children and teenagers about not succumbing to peer pressure? Do you have a memory about growing up around people who had the influence of making you do things you never thought of doing?
