10 ms·

When bills pile up, young people turn to strangers on Venmo

97 points by howard941 7y ago

ryanmercer 7y ago
Their title is... ehhhh, I initially thought "oh a bunch of kids with heavy student loan debt for their liberal arts degrees are finding out adulating is hard" but in reality it is: (paraphrasing) my step-father was arrested for a DUI, can't prove citizenship, and my mom needs money to drive to another state to visit him in custody (/) This isn't novel, I've been hit up dozens of times on the street outside of shows, at gas pumps, in parking lots etc. This is just people hoping to hit a larger audience by soliciting twitter. You used to find Jains (or at least similarly dressed individuals) outside of airports begging for money. And then this... >Fans of “The Bachelor” sent contestant Becca Kufrin wine money on Venmo after she was dumped on national television, and more than 3,000 people sent a 23-year-old college student beer money after he held up a sign with his Venmo handle on the “College GameDay” telecast. ... one is just fans blurring the lines of what is appropriate and the other is just a guy hoping to get lucky and presumably making at least 3000 dollars for holding up a sign. What?! Maybe I should walk around with a sign "Will likely have to work til I die, no one wants to give a GED holder a decent wage, only need 700k to retire, @ryancarlmercer", maybe I should stop maintaining an emergency fund and eating beans 10 meals a week to stretch funds.
- hosh 7y ago
  The larger themes are: 1. Community has always supported people in times of need, more so than government services. 2. The Internet had created distance amount community members 3. Use of the Internet for funds like this (or for Gofundme, etc.) is bringing that back, though with strangers 4. Shifting attitudes and values on whether this is acceptable 5. One Millennial is now setting aside funds for direct contributions. I would not be surprised if that trend continues. 6. Continued pressure on Millennials to make ends meet with access to new technology has been leading to this. 7. Disadvantaged groups and their economic struggles are becoming more visible, along with means for the community to help.
  - ryanmercer 7y ago
    The larger theme is "Technology makes it easier for individuals to beg strangers for money". I can't open social media without seeing kickstarter/indiegogo this, gofundme that, need money quick, can someone paypal/venmo me money for thing, etc. Then a day, week, month later you see pictures of their brand new cabinets or of their vacation or they are hitting people up for money again for something else because people gave last time so now they expect regular handouts. Instead of getting creative, people now just go "hey, stranger, you have it better than me, give me your hard earned money!"
    - komali2 7y ago
      I'm having trouble figuring what you're actually saying here. Do you not like that people can beg? Or that they have to at all?
      - ryanmercer 7y ago
        >I'm having trouble figuring what you're actually saying here. I'm saying the internet, specifically social media and payment apps/crowd funding sites, allow people to unabashedly give their (true or otherwise) sob story and beg complete strangers for money, I imagine the vast majority of people on sites like gofundme would hesitate to even phone family for financial assistance and I suspect nearly all of the people begging on social media simply wouldn't ask if they had to walk up to random strangers in person and ask. Keep in mind, I say this while my nephew currently has a gofundme trying to raise 260,000 USD (!!!) for his mother for some experimental, questionable (cryotherapy for her kidney cancer, when it's usually used for skin cancer for example), cancer treatment in China. I think these sites/methods serve a useful purpose, I think however trying to get gas money to give to your mother to go see your undocumented step-father in another state because he was drink driving and is likely to be deported or remain incarcerated... or hitting people up for beer money... is not a valid use of such sites/methods.
        viraptor 7y ago
        > gas money to give to your mother to go see your undocumented step-father in another state because he was drink driving and is likely to be deported or remain incarcerated... [...] is not a valid use of such sites/methods. Why not?
- komali2 7y ago
  Well, yea, this is why implementing social welfare and safety nets is far better done at the government level, where you have accountability and a justice system. An attractive person holding a clever, written-in-English sign, at a football game that cost them 100$ (or whatever) to attend, garners 3000$ for beer. The ugly, dirty, illiterate homeless person that stands outside of a train station gets 5$ for food. Unfairness can exist at the bureaucratic level (shit like judges being tired and being less lenient towards the evening, or just plain and simple sexism and racism in the justice system), but it's far better than "marketplace of begging for welfare."
  - adamredwoods 7y ago
    Falls in line with using GoFundMe for medical bills, the better the story/narrative the more viral the funding: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/01/the-perverse-logic-of-gofundme-health-care https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/01/the-perverse-l...
  - phil248 7y ago
    Similarly why a robust welfare state is preferable to charity. Charitable giving is free to discriminate and there's no mechanism to try and move it towards those who most need it.
    - jedmeyers 7y ago
      Do you think welfare state actually distributes funds to whoever needs them? They are giving funds away to everyone who can check x boxes on a form, no one in the government ever verifies if the person actually needs the money, like a charity would do.
      - ses1984 7y ago
        Like some charities would do. If you give charity to someone on gofundme, what charity ever verifies if the person actually needs the money?
        7y ago
- dgzl 7y ago
  There was a local pan-handling couple who was outted on local TV for "scamming people". They were seen shopping at expensive grocery stores and driving with their car. Apparently begging was just their job and made more than a few hundred dollars a day.
- JustARandomGuy 7y ago
  What you should take away from this article is "community members help each other out with money, the Internet makes communities bigger". For the Bachelorette, I would assume that most of the donaters were young women that have experienced being dumped - the focus being the "community" (or perhaps it would be better to say population) of young women. It's not just random strangers donating. This reminds me strongly of this YouTube video where an adjunct professor who's popular in the Magic TCG community asks for money for support, and gets quite a lot of it: https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/35pjuq/tolarian_community_college_talks_about_youtube/ https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/35pjuq/tolarian_c...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
neonate 7y ago
http://archive.is/dM4pI http://archive.is/dM4pI
daodedickinson 7y ago
Prostitution is certainly exploding. Anyone see appropriate reactions to this? How do we combat the loneliness epidemic that "social" media has caused? So many people raised on "social" media have no idea how to get to the kind of real, healthy relationship they want.
- supergauntlet 7y ago
  Don't really follow your logic here, you're conflating prostitution and a "loneliness epidemic"? Prostitution is as old as civilization itself. Older, probably. I don't see rising prostitution as indicative of anything other than 'poor people are low on options'
  - komali2 7y ago
    Almost certainly older than civilization itself - female chimpanzees will trade sex for food. Presumably proto-humans did the same.
  - randyrand 7y ago
    seems obvious to me. Lonely people are more likely to pay for prostitution. Loneliness is increasing. So if true, you expect prostitution to go up.
temp-dude-87844 7y ago
This is pretty common among the coming-of-age generation that has grown up on the Web. It's more likely to be tried in communities organized around shared attribute, circumstance, or interest, than just shouting into the ether. Typically, these are posted on sites where the person has followers in a similar situation, and are shared on that platform until it slowly propagates outward. Many people who share the same adverse circumstances can't donate, so they share the posting instead, spreading it further. Eventually, someone sees it who is in a position to donate. It's likely that those who donate the most are on the fringes of the original community, but feel a sense of solidarity or guilt. The article mentions a few communities in particular. The unifying dimension seems to be that some people's real-life safety net is outweighed by their online one, even if they don't always receive the donations they ask. It's worth a try.
- PopeDotNinja 7y ago
  Waiting for help to find you probably isn't much of a plan, and you won't know if you'll get help unless you ask for it. Finding help is hard, as is swallowing your pride when the help that is offered isn't exactly what you were hoping for.
sp332 7y ago
"millennial culture is just passing around the same $20 to whoever needs it at the time forever." I see this a lot on my Twitter feed. Recently, a guy with metabolic issues and chronic pain (whose own GoFundMe was "trending" for a while) is setting up a charity livestream for someone else's surgery. https://twitter.com/docsquiddy/status/1148022827917938695 https://twitter.com/docsquiddy/status/1148022827917938695
- futureastronaut 7y ago
  I don't think there's such a thing as "millennial culture."
  - sp332 7y ago
    Yeah, that's part of the joke.
  - wayoutthere 7y ago
    Millennial culture is PTSD.
  - psychometry 7y ago
    Probably not, we're too inundated with student loans to have time for a culture.
  - komali2 7y ago
    I'm curious how you'd try to defend this statement given the denouncements.
  - benj111 7y ago
    I'm sure people who fought in WW2 said that about the boomers, who in turn said it about the gen Xers. In 20 years time we'll be reminiscing about emoji and snap chat and hipsters and whatever the kids are doing now.
    - futureastronaut 7y ago
      My point was about the usefulness of generational constructs as cultural boundaries, not "damn kids got no culture!". And according to sibling, I have "denouncements" to rebut. What a thread.
rangeofmotion 7y ago
What I don't understand is why people don't band together and simply refuse, collectively, to pay bills that are well known in the culture to be unreasonable. In particular, student loans. But also a few other things. My god, I know so many people who are struggling that it seems like everyone is struggling. I know people making six figures who are worried about losing their homes. In fact, I've known so many people who have either lost their home, almost lost their home, or are worried about losing their home that it makes up probably a majority of the people I know. Did we forget somewhere along the line that a home is just a patch of dirt with four walls and roof thrown on it? Should it really be that precarious of a thing? How many people do you think go to bed every night worrying about becoming a homeless person? We've turned into a culture that literally has a market that gambles on whether or not people will be able to keep their homes! For christ sake! What kind of sick shit is that? And the whole thing is predicated on people accepting the idea that they have to pay all their unreasonable bills and stressing themselves out willingly over the process of paying them. At what point do people throw their hands up and say "fuck it, this is unreasonable"?
- Smithalicious 7y ago
  Also known as, you know, theft.
- zaphirplane 7y ago
  First of all you are encouraging stealing, accept a loan and refuse to pay it back Second you don’t want to pay it to spend the money one what life essentials Third no one made you borrow no one made you enroll, you had a lot of other options accepting responsibility for your choice is a good thing Lastly whom would you like to pay for your pick of university and your pick of courses
  - rangeofmotion 7y ago
    I don't think you can say concretely that this would be stealing. That would be an extremely simplistic view. Remember, I'm talking about "bills that are well known in the culture to be unreasonable". For example, we can firmly say that the price of higher education has been inflated beyond reason and certainly beyond its actual value. Many have said it. Papers, articles, documentaries, and so on have been produced about it. The current popular theory is that the government guaranteeing the loans incentivized the colleges to hike up the fees drastically, screwing an entire generation by gouging them unreasonably. And if you want to say that students didn't have to make the choice to go to college, well, then you're ignoring the fact that people have been drilling it into young people for quite some time that they won't be able to make it in future America if they don't get a higher education degree. I know parents today who are extremely cash-strapped who nonetheless feel they need their kids to go to college so they won't become serfs in the future economy. I even know parents who have gotten divorced purely so that their kid could receive some form of financial aid (only one parent income shown) so they would be able to afford college. So a ton of students and parents felt like they had no choice but to accept these loans if they wanted to make it in America's future economy. And this idea continues today, though it's slowly starting to receive some pushback. On the whole, these people didn't go to college purely because it would be a fun way to study creative writing. Essentially, the colleges rode the wave of fear and hiked up the price, bolstered by the government guaranteeing they would get paid no matter what. One can ultimately argue that the colleges stole from the students who have historically felt like they had to go if they wanted to make it and be able to secure a middle class position in society. Unreasonable price inflation combined with a sense of necessity or even physical necessity (health care) exists elsewhere in our economy as well. You can argue that our current political situation is due largely to people who are mad as hell over their life being impacted negatively by these things. As for what life essentials they'll spend the money on, well, we can ask the burgeoning van dwellers movement (people who live in their cars) as well as those people who are running GoFundMe campaigns so they can afford medicine or a medical procedure. You can ask people who are moving out of the country because they can afford a better life in places like India (I just read about this the other day). You can ask the people who just marched to Canada to buy insulin at a reasonable price.
rayiner 7y ago
The way to engender sympathy for millennials is not to mention that they major in “comparative politics” in the opening sentence.
redis_mlc 7y ago
From what I've read, they turn to their parents first.
- pessimizer 7y ago
  Not everybody has parents with money. Plenty of people have parents who ask for money.
slang800 7y ago
This is hardly unique to young people. People have been panhandling on the internet for decades. Here's an example from 10 years ago mentioning some of the sites that people used: https://web.archive.org/web/20091101005717/http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/10/26/homeless_ex_cook_lets_his_fingers_do_the_panhandling_online/ https://web.archive.org/web/20091101005717/http://www.boston...
sandworm101 7y ago
>>> "Children grow up aspiring to be Youtubers. Teenagers rake in thousands of dollars selling slime," No. They are not selling slime. They are selling themselves. Just like any hollywood starlet, they are marketing their youth and sex appeal. Customers buy a fantasy, a perceived connection with the attractive or famous person. If that makes the customer happy then that's great, but don't pretend that just anyone can start a youtube channel and start getting paid. Being young and attractive is 99% of the game.
- Phillipharryt 7y ago
  You are aware there are many slime instagram accounts and channels that involve nothing but footage of their hands manipulating slime? I'm not sure what part of that involves being young and attractive.
  - krageon 7y ago
    Presumably they have attractive and youthful looking hands.
kbos87 7y ago
There’s a less palatable side of this. It’s now very common to see people openly offering to exchange money for sex, at least in the LGBT community. On Grindr, it’s an everyday occurrence to see people seeking Venmo “donations” with the implication or overt offer of a meeting in exchange. I doubt if you asked many of the people who do it they would equate it with prostitution in the same way I’m guessing the legal system might. It’s often younger people who are probably exposed to “Venmo culture” elsewhere and decide to apply it here.
- krageon 7y ago
  Why is that less palatable? It's people deciding to sell something which they own.
  - kbos87 7y ago
    I actually agree and don’t have a problem with it, just speaking from the perspective of what is probably popular opinion.
  - kjsbfkjbf 7y ago
    Being _forced_ to sell sex for survival is less palatable. Not the same as flipping an unnecessary TV or lamp.
randyrand 7y ago
“There’s no shame in having to do it. Women of color, trans folks, queer folks — these institutions aren’t built to love us and support us. These institutions don’t care about our well-being,” Does anyone else think that stereotyping is getting out of hand? There are so so many reasons you might need or not need money outside of your race or sexual orientation and vic-versa. Maybe you have cancer. Maybe your house burned down. etc. Assuming that a person of a certain identity group needs financial support seems like a ridiculous assumption. The amount of focus we put on identity groups these today seems unhealthy. I understand their point, but it’s just not even close to the first we should bring up when encouraging people to ask for help.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  Why don't you address the second half of the text you quoted? Do you think they are wrong about the institutions they are talking about?
  - axaxs 7y ago
    No. But those institutions don't care about -anyone-. Prefacing it with <insert identity of the day here> only weakens their case in my eyes. If you want my support for a cause, don't exclude me specifically.
- orcdork 7y ago
  Yeah, highly marginalized people have historicaly been well accepted in excisting support groups, particularly religious and local political ones.
- stevekemp 7y ago
  It isn't stereotyping, it is identity-politics.

97 points by howard941 7y ago

Their title is... ehhhh, I initially thought "oh a bunch of kids with heavy student loan debt for their liberal arts degrees are finding out adulating is hard" but in reality it is: (paraphrasing) my step-father was arrested for a DUI, can't prove citizenship, and my mom needs money to drive to another state to visit him in custody (/) This isn't novel, I've been hit up dozens of times on the street outside of shows, at gas pumps, in parking lots etc. This is just people hoping to hit a larger audience by soliciting twitter. You used to find Jains (or at least similarly dressed individuals) outside of airports begging for money. And then this... >Fans of “The Bachelor” sent contestant Becca Kufrin wine money on Venmo after she was dumped on national television, and more than 3,000 people sent a 23-year-old college student beer money after he held up a sign with his Venmo handle on the “College GameDay” telecast. ... one is just fans blurring the lines of what is appropriate and the other is just a guy hoping to get lucky and presumably making at least 3000 dollars for holding up a sign. What?! Maybe I should walk around with a sign "Will likely have to work til I die, no one wants to give a GED holder a decent wage, only need 700k to retire, @ryancarlmercer", maybe I should stop maintaining an emergency fund and eating beans 10 meals a week to stretch funds.

hosh 7y ago
The larger themes are: 1. Community has always supported people in times of need, more so than government services. 2. The Internet had created distance amount community members 3. Use of the Internet for funds like this (or for Gofundme, etc.) is bringing that back, though with strangers 4. Shifting attitudes and values on whether this is acceptable 5. One Millennial is now setting aside funds for direct contributions. I would not be surprised if that trend continues. 6. Continued pressure on Millennials to make ends meet with access to new technology has been leading to this. 7. Disadvantaged groups and their economic struggles are becoming more visible, along with means for the community to help.
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  The larger theme is "Technology makes it easier for individuals to beg strangers for money". I can't open social media without seeing kickstarter/indiegogo this, gofundme that, need money quick, can someone paypal/venmo me money for thing, etc. Then a day, week, month later you see pictures of their brand new cabinets or of their vacation or they are hitting people up for money again for something else because people gave last time so now they expect regular handouts. Instead of getting creative, people now just go "hey, stranger, you have it better than me, give me your hard earned money!"
  - komali2 7y ago
    I'm having trouble figuring what you're actually saying here. Do you not like that people can beg? Or that they have to at all?
    - ryanmercer 7y ago
      >I'm having trouble figuring what you're actually saying here. I'm saying the internet, specifically social media and payment apps/crowd funding sites, allow people to unabashedly give their (true or otherwise) sob story and beg complete strangers for money, I imagine the vast majority of people on sites like gofundme would hesitate to even phone family for financial assistance and I suspect nearly all of the people begging on social media simply wouldn't ask if they had to walk up to random strangers in person and ask. Keep in mind, I say this while my nephew currently has a gofundme trying to raise 260,000 USD (!!!) for his mother for some experimental, questionable (cryotherapy for her kidney cancer, when it's usually used for skin cancer for example), cancer treatment in China. I think these sites/methods serve a useful purpose, I think however trying to get gas money to give to your mother to go see your undocumented step-father in another state because he was drink driving and is likely to be deported or remain incarcerated... or hitting people up for beer money... is not a valid use of such sites/methods.
      - viraptor 7y ago
        > gas money to give to your mother to go see your undocumented step-father in another state because he was drink driving and is likely to be deported or remain incarcerated... [...] is not a valid use of such sites/methods. Why not?
komali2 7y ago
Well, yea, this is why implementing social welfare and safety nets is far better done at the government level, where you have accountability and a justice system. An attractive person holding a clever, written-in-English sign, at a football game that cost them 100$ (or whatever) to attend, garners 3000$ for beer. The ugly, dirty, illiterate homeless person that stands outside of a train station gets 5$ for food. Unfairness can exist at the bureaucratic level (shit like judges being tired and being less lenient towards the evening, or just plain and simple sexism and racism in the justice system), but it's far better than "marketplace of begging for welfare."
- adamredwoods 7y ago
  Falls in line with using GoFundMe for medical bills, the better the story/narrative the more viral the funding: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/01/the-perverse-logic-of-gofundme-health-care https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/01/the-perverse-l...
- phil248 7y ago
  Similarly why a robust welfare state is preferable to charity. Charitable giving is free to discriminate and there's no mechanism to try and move it towards those who most need it.
  - jedmeyers 7y ago
    Do you think welfare state actually distributes funds to whoever needs them? They are giving funds away to everyone who can check x boxes on a form, no one in the government ever verifies if the person actually needs the money, like a charity would do.
    - ses1984 7y ago
      Like some charities would do. If you give charity to someone on gofundme, what charity ever verifies if the person actually needs the money?
      - 7y ago
dgzl 7y ago
There was a local pan-handling couple who was outted on local TV for "scamming people". They were seen shopping at expensive grocery stores and driving with their car. Apparently begging was just their job and made more than a few hundred dollars a day.
JustARandomGuy 7y ago
What you should take away from this article is "community members help each other out with money, the Internet makes communities bigger". For the Bachelorette, I would assume that most of the donaters were young women that have experienced being dumped - the focus being the "community" (or perhaps it would be better to say population) of young women. It's not just random strangers donating. This reminds me strongly of this YouTube video where an adjunct professor who's popular in the Magic TCG community asks for money for support, and gets quite a lot of it: https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/35pjuq/tolarian_community_college_talks_about_youtube/ https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/35pjuq/tolarian_c...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

neonate 7y ago

http://archive.is/dM4pI http://archive.is/dM4pI

daodedickinson 7y ago

Prostitution is certainly exploding. Anyone see appropriate reactions to this? How do we combat the loneliness epidemic that "social" media has caused? So many people raised on "social" media have no idea how to get to the kind of real, healthy relationship they want.

supergauntlet 7y ago
Don't really follow your logic here, you're conflating prostitution and a "loneliness epidemic"? Prostitution is as old as civilization itself. Older, probably. I don't see rising prostitution as indicative of anything other than 'poor people are low on options'
- komali2 7y ago
  Almost certainly older than civilization itself - female chimpanzees will trade sex for food. Presumably proto-humans did the same.
- randyrand 7y ago
  seems obvious to me. Lonely people are more likely to pay for prostitution. Loneliness is increasing. So if true, you expect prostitution to go up.

temp-dude-87844 7y ago

This is pretty common among the coming-of-age generation that has grown up on the Web. It's more likely to be tried in communities organized around shared attribute, circumstance, or interest, than just shouting into the ether. Typically, these are posted on sites where the person has followers in a similar situation, and are shared on that platform until it slowly propagates outward. Many people who share the same adverse circumstances can't donate, so they share the posting instead, spreading it further. Eventually, someone sees it who is in a position to donate. It's likely that those who donate the most are on the fringes of the original community, but feel a sense of solidarity or guilt. The article mentions a few communities in particular. The unifying dimension seems to be that some people's real-life safety net is outweighed by their online one, even if they don't always receive the donations they ask. It's worth a try.

PopeDotNinja 7y ago
Waiting for help to find you probably isn't much of a plan, and you won't know if you'll get help unless you ask for it. Finding help is hard, as is swallowing your pride when the help that is offered isn't exactly what you were hoping for.

sp332 7y ago

"millennial culture is just passing around the same $20 to whoever needs it at the time forever." I see this a lot on my Twitter feed. Recently, a guy with metabolic issues and chronic pain (whose own GoFundMe was "trending" for a while) is setting up a charity livestream for someone else's surgery. https://twitter.com/docsquiddy/status/1148022827917938695 https://twitter.com/docsquiddy/status/1148022827917938695

futureastronaut 7y ago
I don't think there's such a thing as "millennial culture."
- sp332 7y ago
  Yeah, that's part of the joke.
- wayoutthere 7y ago
  Millennial culture is PTSD.
- psychometry 7y ago
  Probably not, we're too inundated with student loans to have time for a culture.
- komali2 7y ago
  I'm curious how you'd try to defend this statement given the denouncements.
- benj111 7y ago
  I'm sure people who fought in WW2 said that about the boomers, who in turn said it about the gen Xers. In 20 years time we'll be reminiscing about emoji and snap chat and hipsters and whatever the kids are doing now.
  - futureastronaut 7y ago
    My point was about the usefulness of generational constructs as cultural boundaries, not "damn kids got no culture!". And according to sibling, I have "denouncements" to rebut. What a thread.

rangeofmotion 7y ago

What I don't understand is why people don't band together and simply refuse, collectively, to pay bills that are well known in the culture to be unreasonable. In particular, student loans. But also a few other things. My god, I know so many people who are struggling that it seems like everyone is struggling. I know people making six figures who are worried about losing their homes. In fact, I've known so many people who have either lost their home, almost lost their home, or are worried about losing their home that it makes up probably a majority of the people I know. Did we forget somewhere along the line that a home is just a patch of dirt with four walls and roof thrown on it? Should it really be that precarious of a thing? How many people do you think go to bed every night worrying about becoming a homeless person? We've turned into a culture that literally has a market that gambles on whether or not people will be able to keep their homes! For christ sake! What kind of sick shit is that? And the whole thing is predicated on people accepting the idea that they have to pay all their unreasonable bills and stressing themselves out willingly over the process of paying them. At what point do people throw their hands up and say "fuck it, this is unreasonable"?

Smithalicious 7y ago
Also known as, you know, theft.
zaphirplane 7y ago
First of all you are encouraging stealing, accept a loan and refuse to pay it back Second you don’t want to pay it to spend the money one what life essentials Third no one made you borrow no one made you enroll, you had a lot of other options accepting responsibility for your choice is a good thing Lastly whom would you like to pay for your pick of university and your pick of courses
- rangeofmotion 7y ago
  I don't think you can say concretely that this would be stealing. That would be an extremely simplistic view. Remember, I'm talking about "bills that are well known in the culture to be unreasonable". For example, we can firmly say that the price of higher education has been inflated beyond reason and certainly beyond its actual value. Many have said it. Papers, articles, documentaries, and so on have been produced about it. The current popular theory is that the government guaranteeing the loans incentivized the colleges to hike up the fees drastically, screwing an entire generation by gouging them unreasonably. And if you want to say that students didn't have to make the choice to go to college, well, then you're ignoring the fact that people have been drilling it into young people for quite some time that they won't be able to make it in future America if they don't get a higher education degree. I know parents today who are extremely cash-strapped who nonetheless feel they need their kids to go to college so they won't become serfs in the future economy. I even know parents who have gotten divorced purely so that their kid could receive some form of financial aid (only one parent income shown) so they would be able to afford college. So a ton of students and parents felt like they had no choice but to accept these loans if they wanted to make it in America's future economy. And this idea continues today, though it's slowly starting to receive some pushback. On the whole, these people didn't go to college purely because it would be a fun way to study creative writing. Essentially, the colleges rode the wave of fear and hiked up the price, bolstered by the government guaranteeing they would get paid no matter what. One can ultimately argue that the colleges stole from the students who have historically felt like they had to go if they wanted to make it and be able to secure a middle class position in society. Unreasonable price inflation combined with a sense of necessity or even physical necessity (health care) exists elsewhere in our economy as well. You can argue that our current political situation is due largely to people who are mad as hell over their life being impacted negatively by these things. As for what life essentials they'll spend the money on, well, we can ask the burgeoning van dwellers movement (people who live in their cars) as well as those people who are running GoFundMe campaigns so they can afford medicine or a medical procedure. You can ask people who are moving out of the country because they can afford a better life in places like India (I just read about this the other day). You can ask the people who just marched to Canada to buy insulin at a reasonable price.

rayiner 7y ago

The way to engender sympathy for millennials is not to mention that they major in “comparative politics” in the opening sentence.

redis_mlc 7y ago

From what I've read, they turn to their parents first.

pessimizer 7y ago
Not everybody has parents with money. Plenty of people have parents who ask for money.

slang800 7y ago

This is hardly unique to young people. People have been panhandling on the internet for decades. Here's an example from 10 years ago mentioning some of the sites that people used: https://web.archive.org/web/20091101005717/http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/10/26/homeless_ex_cook_lets_his_fingers_do_the_panhandling_online/ https://web.archive.org/web/20091101005717/http://www.boston...

sandworm101 7y ago

>>> "Children grow up aspiring to be Youtubers. Teenagers rake in thousands of dollars selling slime," No. They are not selling slime. They are selling themselves. Just like any hollywood starlet, they are marketing their youth and sex appeal. Customers buy a fantasy, a perceived connection with the attractive or famous person. If that makes the customer happy then that's great, but don't pretend that just anyone can start a youtube channel and start getting paid. Being young and attractive is 99% of the game.

Phillipharryt 7y ago
You are aware there are many slime instagram accounts and channels that involve nothing but footage of their hands manipulating slime? I'm not sure what part of that involves being young and attractive.
- krageon 7y ago
  Presumably they have attractive and youthful looking hands.

kbos87 7y ago

There’s a less palatable side of this. It’s now very common to see people openly offering to exchange money for sex, at least in the LGBT community. On Grindr, it’s an everyday occurrence to see people seeking Venmo “donations” with the implication or overt offer of a meeting in exchange. I doubt if you asked many of the people who do it they would equate it with prostitution in the same way I’m guessing the legal system might. It’s often younger people who are probably exposed to “Venmo culture” elsewhere and decide to apply it here.

krageon 7y ago
Why is that less palatable? It's people deciding to sell something which they own.
- kbos87 7y ago
  I actually agree and don’t have a problem with it, just speaking from the perspective of what is probably popular opinion.
- kjsbfkjbf 7y ago
  Being _forced_ to sell sex for survival is less palatable. Not the same as flipping an unnecessary TV or lamp.

randyrand 7y ago

“There’s no shame in having to do it. Women of color, trans folks, queer folks — these institutions aren’t built to love us and support us. These institutions don’t care about our well-being,” Does anyone else think that stereotyping is getting out of hand? There are so so many reasons you might need or not need money outside of your race or sexual orientation and vic-versa. Maybe you have cancer. Maybe your house burned down. etc. Assuming that a person of a certain identity group needs financial support seems like a ridiculous assumption. The amount of focus we put on identity groups these today seems unhealthy. I understand their point, but it’s just not even close to the first we should bring up when encouraging people to ask for help.

maxerickson 7y ago
Why don't you address the second half of the text you quoted? Do you think they are wrong about the institutions they are talking about?
- axaxs 7y ago
  No. But those institutions don't care about -anyone-. Prefacing it with <insert identity of the day here> only weakens their case in my eyes. If you want my support for a cause, don't exclude me specifically.
orcdork 7y ago
Yeah, highly marginalized people have historicaly been well accepted in excisting support groups, particularly religious and local political ones.
stevekemp 7y ago
It isn't stereotyping, it is identity-politics.