11 ms·

When I visit my wifes family in (very) rural China, it kind of reminds me how we used to socially interact back when I was young 20 years ago. People would just

• rland 8y ago
  Here in the states, it starts very young. A parent must schedule a playdate beforehand, update it in the google calendar, drive the child 10-15 blocks to their friends house. Parents can then venmo the other family for the time-cost of the play-date. To ensure maximum progress, play date activities must be intellectually stimulating and structured based on how much they contribute to test scores and college admissions down the line—this is known from statistical methods of course. Video streaming smartphone applications enable parents to check in at any time during the activity to ensure maximum growth. As the children grow up, this does not stop of course. In fact, it becomes less playful and more efficient. Time wasted during youth is punished brutally in the holistic college admissions process. By the time we've grown into adults, such impulses—such as spending time at a friends' house for no reason at all—can be completely eliminated. This ensures that more time in adulthood is dedicated to what truly matters, which is.... gosh I'm not sure. I can ponder that after I finish this next 'to do' on my list!
  • adrianratnapala 8y ago
    I enjoy this joke because it tickles my pre-conceptions, that I grew from reading articles on the internet by Americans. But is it really accurate (not in the literal sense obviously)?
    • bmpafa 8y ago
      Maybe for a _very_ specific subset of people, but I think by & large we can count on Americans' distaste for organizing our schedules to preclude any kind of hyper-optimized child-rearing from becoming too popular. That is: the caricature's funny, but it sounds like _way_ too much damn work.
    • maxsilver 8y ago
      > But is it really accurate (not in the literal sense obviously)? It's basically accurate in the literal sense. Or at least, I'm a parent and I'm seeing this essentially word-for-word with all nearby parents/children in our area. The venmo part stands out as being a SF thing. In the midwest, even young families are mostly old school and just pay with a credit card or paper check (yes literal paper checks written from a checkbook). But the rest of it...yeah? It's essentially accurate. Playdates are always scheduled beforehand (in Google Calendar, or far more commonly via Facebook invites between the parents). You do have to drive the child 10-15 blocks to every event (children are so expensive and housing is even more expensive, no one can afford to live near each other, so kids of similar age groups are still all spread out across the metro region and not in any one area/neighborhood). You can check on your kids at via smartphone at any daycare, and any other activity requires at least one parent be present anyway. All activities are required to have some attempt at "education", no matter how silly or tenuous that is. And it's kind of tricky because it's a defacto part of society. I hate this hyper-scheduled hyper-data-driven stuff myself. But since the large majority of other parents do this, I can't avoid it -- we must contribute to this with our own kid too, otherwise we'd be depriving the child of social interaction with other children of matching ages.
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  • nikmobi 8y ago
    > Parents can then venmo the other family for the time-cost of the play-date. Wait, what? Parents are paying other parents for play dates these days?
    • StavrosK 8y ago
      Oh wow, that sounds insane to me.
    • jimktrains2 8y ago
      I think/hope GP is being sarcastic. I've never seen anyone reimburse anyone for a playdate. I also live in a neighborhood where you see everyone outside regularly so a lot of it is spontaneous. Even with my wife's moms group that has arranged playdates, though, no one pays anyone else.
      • Moru 8y ago
        That's just another way of paying. Next week it's your turn to host the playdate.
        • jimktrains2 8y ago
          That's significantly different than paying someone in cash. (Also, I didn't say they rotate, they do, but it's not among everyone. Some people have larger houses and are happier to host so they do it more often.)
    • lgessler 8y ago
      It was satire--the point is that that is a certain style of parenting taken to its conclusion.
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  • bitwize 8y ago
    Again, if this is the norm in America -- it only became so recently. Not early enough for the generation of kids raised under this norm to turn thirty. I just turned forty and for both me and my younger sister, hanging out with kids from the neighborhood spontaneously was routine for us.
    • maxerickson 8y ago
      The spring time activity for the kids in the neighborhood here has been hitting snow piles with sticks. Now that the snow is gone one of them switched to hitting pieces of wood with a croquet mallet. The kids are alright.
      • EADGBE 8y ago
        Agreed, all of this is overblown. Kids find fun things to do. That's what kids do; with or without "helicopter parents" and with or without technology. I'd bet most of these replies in this nature are written by child-less people giving their view of how things are so much worse now than when they were kids. They're still doing the same stuff they've always done (wasting time and having fun).
    • sykh 8y ago
      It started in the 80s with the Jacob Wetterling [1] kidnapping and things like the McMartin preschool trial [2]. Stranger danger, fear of crime (it was much higher in the 80s than now) and whatnot has lead parents being overly afraid to let their kids roam. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Wetterling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Wetterling [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool_trial
      • scarface74 8y ago
        In the 80s, the danger was very real in Atlanta.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_murders_of_1979%E2%80%9381 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_murders_of_1979%E2%80%...
  • kfrzcode 8y ago
    > what truly matters Paying off the debts owed to society of course
  • atomi 8y ago
    > The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around. - Kurt Vonnegut
  • gravity_123 8y ago
    Reading this and replies to it saying how this is slowly becoming(or already is) the reality, I now get why stranger things is a highly acclaimed show. Not to take away anything from the storyline, direction, acting but one large appeal of the show was that it brought back memories. Parents of today lived the life portrayed by the kids in the show(cycling, staying overnight at friends house, etc) and yearn for a comeback of those days, long gone by for the most part.
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    • Kuiper 8y ago
      I've seen some online commenters (that I can only assume are younger millennials or Gen-Z'ers) call the show "unrealistic" due to the amount of autonomy the kids have, apparently not realizing that this is how many people grew up in the 1980's. It's hard not to feel wistful when you see that things have changed so much that people growing up today will watch a show where kids bicycle around town in the afternoon before going home for dinner and can't identify with it. I was born in 1990 and I feel like my childhood sort of straddled the line between these two realities. When my family moved to California in the early 90's, I made friends with the neighbor kids simply because they were the neighbor kids, and we many afternoons finding wandering around looking for ways to entertain ourselves. Kids would frequently play in the middle of the street. Nowadays, the streets of that neighborhood are empty. I'll go to the small nearby park, and maybe see kids if there's a youth sports league game or someone having a birthday party there. Having spent some time in Australia recently, one of the things that struck me is how often you see kids (often in their school uniforms) walking around town by themselves, going to get fast food with friends or hang out at the library. In the US, I've also noticed it in several ethnic neighborhoods (Jewish and Chinese neighborhoods, specifically). Part of me wonders how much of this is born out of affluence. On occasion, I'll find myself passing through a lower-income part of town, and the dynamic changes. You see kids walking to the store alone, maybe to buy things, maybe just to hang around and wait for their friends to stop by. Often, groups of kids consist of an older kid (maybe 10 years old) acting as a "caretaker" for a younger group of siblings. You'll be pumping gas, and someone at the opposite pump randomly strike up a conversation with you. If you're not used to it, it actually kind of catches you off guard. I know some people flee to suburbs specifically to avoid these kinds of interactions, but once you get past the initial surprise of, "huh, someone I don't know started talking to me just to talk to me, that doesn't happen every day," I actually find certain parts of it to be quite pleasant. It reminds me of how I used to live, and how I suspect my parents (and their parents) lived.
  • gumby 8y ago
    That’s a pretty funny exaggeration but not an exaggeration by much. That is, I’ve seen examples of it all. But I brought up a (now) 20 year old in Palo Alto without the scheduling, tutoring, driving around and other nonsense, and he did get into a “top” school (whatever “top” really means). But it did show a clear partition in which kids he could in practice be friends with. OTOH he was able to pocket quite a bit of cash tutoring some pampered kids!
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  • andrepd 8y ago
    >Parents can then venmo the other family for the time-cost of the play-date. Wow. Surely this is hyperbole?
    • EADGBE 8y ago
      None of that isn't.
  • jazzyk 8y ago
    >This ensures that more time in adulthood is dedicated to what truly matters, which is.... ...mindless consumption
• sykh 8y ago
  Growing up I used to go to friends' houses all the time unannounced. Thought nothing of it. When I came to the U.S. (grew up in Panama) and stopped by a friend's house unannounced he was upset and didn't let me in. It seems like all encounters with friends have to be planned. There's little spontaneity. My friend's kids all have planned activities too. No one plays in the streets. Kids can't go out without adult supervision or even ride a bike to a friend's house. It's weird. It's like people have forgotten that relationships are what make us human.
  • bmpafa 8y ago
    I think this is a class-driven norm. I grew up in a poor neighborhood and dropping by unannounced was the norm. If you called beforehand, it was likely just to make sure your pal was even home. Overall, I think most trappings of etiquette fade away as you climb down the socioeconomic ladder (I think rich folk have a lot to learn from poor here, fwiw).
    • sykh 8y ago
      That’s a good point. I’m in the white middle class socio economic class in the Midwest and my experience definitely is clouded by this fact.
    • icanhackit 8y ago
      > I grew up in a poor neighborhood and dropping by unannounced was the norm. Same and I think you're onto something, but my childhood predated mobile phones. I've watched my nephew, who's from a fairly affluent family, call out to his friend who lives next door to come play. They'll chat to each other over the fence and then negotiate with their parents on where they can go play. Neither have mobile phones and I doubt either have used a landline (or have one) so yelling over the fence or knocking on the door seems like the most straightforward approach. I think phones were the tipping point which changed behaviours - from most people being fairly OK with unannounced or very loosely planned visits (I'll see you Wednesday! == 7:30pm, Wednesday) to requiring a heads up in the form of a call or instant message.
    • astura 8y ago
• profalseidol 8y ago
  Alienation from one's social life.
• camdenreslink 8y ago
  Human kind will be gone in 1000 years? That’s a pessimistic view. I hope not!
  • sanlyx 8y ago
    Maybe not humans but instead what we deem as the only thing that's inherent to all of us (humanity?) will be long gone by then.
  • isostatic 8y ago
    It's interesting. It's either an optimistic view or a pessimistic view. remember the concept of innocent childhood only really took off in the west in Victorian times - think of how much changes in the last generation, the last century, the last 300 years But then compare the previous 2000 years. Would someone from Plato's era be that unrecognisable to someone from renaissance Florence? (or vice Versa) What will the next 200 years bring? What about the next 500?
  • tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    It seems quite likely to me, maybe not every trace of human kind but I find it quite difficult to believe we are going to survive climate change in any significant way.
    • Cthulhu_ 8y ago
      Ah, we've survived a few ice ages, should be fine. Well, some of us anyway; I'm sure a lot of places will be abandoned / evacuated due to it being crushed by a few hundred meters of ice, and a lot of people will die from starvation and the inevitable war for resources and hospitable areas.
  • EADGBE 8y ago
    Yes, but apparently will send birthday cards to each other, too. (?)
• almostApatriot1 8y ago
  Stopping by unannounced just to chit chat is much more common outside of the States. I think here there is much more a expectation of hosting.
• isoskeles 8y ago
  > I bet that in 1000 years long after human kind has disappeared, there will be friends sending each other automated birthday greetings in one of those solar powered data centers somewhere in Finland. Beautiful. It gives a special meaning to "best friends forever."
  • baby 8y ago
    With the facebook trend of telling everyone happy birthday I am now in a position where I don't wish anyone happy birthday.
• agumonkey 8y ago
  I think it's a byproduct of "development" (which might be not positive after all). In my mother's country it was the same.. people came by all the time, it wasn't all perfect, some times people would complain that someone was too often coming to drink your drinks; but it was a very relaxing friendly social structure.
• Steeeve 8y ago
  When I grew up I would just show up at peoples houses. I'd be running around town doing this or that and "oh yeah... so and so lives over here" and I'd knock on the door and hang out or better yet come up with an adventure to go on and grab some other people. I don't think I've knocked on someone's door without them expecting me to be there in at least 10 years.
  • orbitur 8y ago
    Yeah, I really miss this. It doesn't help that I moved across the country in my early 20s and never developed any decent friendships since then.
• 5555624 8y ago
  I see some of this "just pop by" approach in my new neighborhood. Less than a year ago, I moved to an older neighborhood, where most of the houses are old. Most of the houses on my street are about 80 years old or older. All of the older ones, have front porches that extend the width of the house. People hang out on their porches and people walking by stop, sit down, and talk. There are a few houses that were built about 20 years ago and they have a front porch barely wider than the front door.
• jclardy 8y ago
  When I was a kid in the 90's I had the same experience. My family had friends that would just stop by and they would entertain them for an hour or two just to catch up. I think our "connectedness" killed this off - now we see a status update and that fills us in on the things that we would have learned from that conversation, with zero effort. The problem is that the status update doesn't build an actual human relationship. But it isn't just social networks, even things like SMS have killed off more meaningful connections, over the phone. Most people have chosen quantity over quality.
• julianilson 8y ago
  Yeah, I miss those days of just popping in without calling. In Mexico, this is still largely the norm, but now that I live in Canada, that's just a no-no. This is why I ended up creating an algorithm to connect the most compatible people together in a city. Would be great if this community connected in meat-space more often. For those curious: https://www.we3app.com/ https://www.we3app.com/
• baby 8y ago
  True, I remind just popping by at my friends, and also just calling them out of the blue. I don't call friends anymore.