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I don’t know how deep people’s memory goes, but when I talk to older generations about this stuff, they tell me all these stories about how kids at college in t

I don’t know how deep people’s memory goes, but when I talk to older generations about this stuff, they tell me all these stories about how kids at college in the 1960s were competing to be the wokest kid on the block. That’s not to say all kids at college were doing it then, and the word “woke” didn’t mean then what it means now, but the behavior of kids at college in the 1960s would not seem out of place in more recent decades, from the stories I heard. Colleges were hotbeds of posturing and hypocrisy then as they are now. College kids are typically in the most radical years of their life, when they have the most freedom and desire to redefine who they are. They largely don’t have any money or accomplishments, so the big way up the social ladder is posturing and value signaling. If you’re more spiritual, more woke, more radical, then you get attention from your peers. I don’t know what else to say, except people should spend more time hanging out across age groups, and people in college will eventually burn out of it. More people should take gap years, it lets it really sink in the reason why you’re in college in the first place, and it gives you more of a sense of how worthless posturing can be. For these reasons and others, the college circuit is a real beast.

throwawaysea 5y ago
I feel colleges today are at an extreme beyond those in the past. For example consider that UC Berkeley once had a movement to uphold free speech (https://www.dailycal.org/2020/01/26/free-speech-movement-cafe-celebrates-20-years-at-uc-berkeley/ https://www.dailycal.org/2020/01/26/free-speech-movement-caf...). Today supporting free speech would have you labeled as a far right fringe reactionary, and it’s not a position students can take freely. And of course there have been numerous events that were cancelled or disrupted by rioting mobs of students that do not want their adversaries to be heard. At a very fundamental level, colleges today are illiberal compared to the decades past.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  Nah, they were pretty crazy in the 1960s and 1970s too. Some students went as far as promising to take up NVA arms in protest of the Vietnam war, an obvious farce. These things come and go in waves, and people have short memories.
  - salt-thrower 5y ago
    Great points. I mentioned this in another comment but it’s worth adding that the Right does this too. Like adults in the 70’s and 80’s trying to cancel heavy metal bands and get dungeons and dragons banned because it was “satanic” and would corrupt the youth. Ridiculous stuff, but similar behavior from a different political faction.
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      Yup! And some of the other things involved actual state action, which is obviously way more problematic than people whining on twitter. Honestly, I’d go further. First, college students are and have always been extreme. Getting too riled up about it is frankly blasé. Second, contrary to the pearl clutching we live in a golden age of free speech. You can say all kinds of shit online now that would’ve gotten you literally lynched a few decades ago in some places. On the right and the left there has been an absolute flourishing of the kind of speech that “respectable” society chilled out even during my childhood, the idea that free speech is in trouble is utterly unfounded. Never mind how much easier it is to speak your mind anonymously, something that was reserved only to the kind of people who could get op-eds in the past. What I think is actually happening here is that the kind of cultural and economic elites used to speaking at the people are suddenly finding them speaking with the people, and they’re not enjoying finding out what the people really think. In fact the only threat to free speech I can see is the very people whining about the “woke mob”, who are trying to connect online criticism with actual violence.
- klodolph 5y ago
  Students at UC Berkeley have been accusing people of being far-right reactionaries for longer than I’ve been alive. They’ve always been seen as extremist. Maybe it’s just the student protests in the 1960s succeeded in completely changing the political landscape. But the idea that 1960s UC Berkeley was not “extreme” is ahistorical. Hell, UC Berkeley protests have their own Wikipedia page, just for the 1960s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960s_Berkeley_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960s_Berkeley_protests
  - watersb 5y ago
    I was a student at UC Berkeley in 1980s. We woke-rolled one another mercilessly on a daily basis. Also there was Naked Man: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Martinez https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Martinez
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      I think a non trivial percentage of this is some people refusing to admit that they’re now the very adults that they once pilloried and hated. It can’t possibly be just that they’re now the adults rolling their eyes at the annoying college students they once were, no the children must be wrong (insert Simpsons meme here).
    - dekhn 5y ago
      that's such an odd story; at the time, I attended UCSC (not far from UC Berkeley) and public nudity was a regular feature and totally accepted in classes (my RA spent the entire day nude, including cafeteria, class, and studying on the quad, and nobody batted an eye). We also had co-ed bathrooms and pot smoking was not disallowed (amusingly, the leadership went out of its way to reduce drinking, but not smoking, based on the history of abuse they had seen).
      - watersb 5y ago
        We had the co-ed dorms, which seemed to work out. If you were too offensive, you were Spoken To. I had friends who were members of fraternities or sororities, and they were far more strict on a daily basis. That structure also seemed to work for people who were more accustomed to family as a public persona. The scope of their mistakes were perhaps more broad. And then... there were the co-operatives. The communes. More rules and work duty, usually better living conditions than the dorms. Finally, perhaps, there were the Streets, which at the time were very densely packed with people in urgent need of psychiatric care. De-fund the hospitals! 1980s. For all that, nudity was a real stretch. It was rough, and it was weird.
jollybean 5y ago
Differences are 1) the students didn't run the institutions, with the ability to thwart rhetoric made in good faith, have professors punted etc. and, 2) protesting against Black people having to use the 'back entrance of the theatre' in the 1950's is altogether different than many of the tactics used today related to not allowing discussion about issues with which some might disagree. I'm glad 1960's students made progress, especially with respect to difficult issues like apartheid. I'm equally glad (and I'll bet most share the same view) that students might want a more objective look at, for example, the Israel/Palestine conflict. The issue is the authoritarianism of the context, and the cancellation/derision of those who don't share the same view, and other ridiculous postmodernisms, such as literally removing photos of previous graduates (i.e. mostly white men) because it's offensive to the sensibilities of those who think it contravenes a positive learning experience. [1] Cleese is exactly right. Very few are concerned with the 'good faith' arguments of any group. It's the intolerance displayed by some camps that is the problem, not their arguments. [1] https://thepostmillennial.com/university-removes-alumni-photos-from-1907-in-promise-to-show-a-more-diverse-and-inclusive-vision-of-engineering https://thepostmillennial.com/university-removes-alumni-phot...
- klodolph 5y ago
  > protesting against Black people having to use the 'back entrance of the theatre' in the 1950's is altogether different than many of the tactics used today related to not allowing discussion about issues with which some might disagree. That’s some kind of ahistorical, mythologized idea of what the UC Berkeley protests were like. They may have started out with good intentions, but they turned into parties, and the parties turned into riots. It was civil rights protests, LSD, mace, riots, free love, and firebombings. You can’t just pick out the civil rights part of it, the part you like, and pretend the other parts didn’t exist.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    Also, some of it turned into legitimate terrorism campaigns, such as the weather underground. Taking a step back and looking at the typical behavior of college age radicals, this current cohort is pretty mild. Any attempt to mark them as uniquely strident and aggressive is pretty ahistorical. Call me when they start building and mounting barricades.
tomjen3 5y ago
Honestly I would have much, much more respect for somebody advocating for gay rights (even to extremes) back then than today. Back then there was real issues for gays, including legal discrimination. Today there is only social discrimination and that is at a much lower level. Basically back then it seemed not only sincere but useful. Even if you were only doing it to show of, you were doing some good and risked some social cost. If you do it today you do no good and do not risk anything.

throwawaysea 5y ago

I feel colleges today are at an extreme beyond those in the past. For example consider that UC Berkeley once had a movement to uphold free speech (https://www.dailycal.org/2020/01/26/free-speech-movement-cafe-celebrates-20-years-at-uc-berkeley/ https://www.dailycal.org/2020/01/26/free-speech-movement-caf...). Today supporting free speech would have you labeled as a far right fringe reactionary, and it’s not a position students can take freely. And of course there have been numerous events that were cancelled or disrupted by rioting mobs of students that do not want their adversaries to be heard. At a very fundamental level, colleges today are illiberal compared to the decades past.

ashtonkem 5y ago
Nah, they were pretty crazy in the 1960s and 1970s too. Some students went as far as promising to take up NVA arms in protest of the Vietnam war, an obvious farce. These things come and go in waves, and people have short memories.
- salt-thrower 5y ago
  Great points. I mentioned this in another comment but it’s worth adding that the Right does this too. Like adults in the 70’s and 80’s trying to cancel heavy metal bands and get dungeons and dragons banned because it was “satanic” and would corrupt the youth. Ridiculous stuff, but similar behavior from a different political faction.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    Yup! And some of the other things involved actual state action, which is obviously way more problematic than people whining on twitter. Honestly, I’d go further. First, college students are and have always been extreme. Getting too riled up about it is frankly blasé. Second, contrary to the pearl clutching we live in a golden age of free speech. You can say all kinds of shit online now that would’ve gotten you literally lynched a few decades ago in some places. On the right and the left there has been an absolute flourishing of the kind of speech that “respectable” society chilled out even during my childhood, the idea that free speech is in trouble is utterly unfounded. Never mind how much easier it is to speak your mind anonymously, something that was reserved only to the kind of people who could get op-eds in the past. What I think is actually happening here is that the kind of cultural and economic elites used to speaking at the people are suddenly finding them speaking with the people, and they’re not enjoying finding out what the people really think. In fact the only threat to free speech I can see is the very people whining about the “woke mob”, who are trying to connect online criticism with actual violence.
klodolph 5y ago
Students at UC Berkeley have been accusing people of being far-right reactionaries for longer than I’ve been alive. They’ve always been seen as extremist. Maybe it’s just the student protests in the 1960s succeeded in completely changing the political landscape. But the idea that 1960s UC Berkeley was not “extreme” is ahistorical. Hell, UC Berkeley protests have their own Wikipedia page, just for the 1960s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960s_Berkeley_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960s_Berkeley_protests
- watersb 5y ago
  I was a student at UC Berkeley in 1980s. We woke-rolled one another mercilessly on a daily basis. Also there was Naked Man: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Martinez https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Martinez
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    I think a non trivial percentage of this is some people refusing to admit that they’re now the very adults that they once pilloried and hated. It can’t possibly be just that they’re now the adults rolling their eyes at the annoying college students they once were, no the children must be wrong (insert Simpsons meme here).
  - dekhn 5y ago
    that's such an odd story; at the time, I attended UCSC (not far from UC Berkeley) and public nudity was a regular feature and totally accepted in classes (my RA spent the entire day nude, including cafeteria, class, and studying on the quad, and nobody batted an eye). We also had co-ed bathrooms and pot smoking was not disallowed (amusingly, the leadership went out of its way to reduce drinking, but not smoking, based on the history of abuse they had seen).
    - watersb 5y ago
      We had the co-ed dorms, which seemed to work out. If you were too offensive, you were Spoken To. I had friends who were members of fraternities or sororities, and they were far more strict on a daily basis. That structure also seemed to work for people who were more accustomed to family as a public persona. The scope of their mistakes were perhaps more broad. And then... there were the co-operatives. The communes. More rules and work duty, usually better living conditions than the dorms. Finally, perhaps, there were the Streets, which at the time were very densely packed with people in urgent need of psychiatric care. De-fund the hospitals! 1980s. For all that, nudity was a real stretch. It was rough, and it was weird.

jollybean 5y ago

Differences are 1) the students didn't run the institutions, with the ability to thwart rhetoric made in good faith, have professors punted etc. and, 2) protesting against Black people having to use the 'back entrance of the theatre' in the 1950's is altogether different than many of the tactics used today related to not allowing discussion about issues with which some might disagree. I'm glad 1960's students made progress, especially with respect to difficult issues like apartheid. I'm equally glad (and I'll bet most share the same view) that students might want a more objective look at, for example, the Israel/Palestine conflict. The issue is the authoritarianism of the context, and the cancellation/derision of those who don't share the same view, and other ridiculous postmodernisms, such as literally removing photos of previous graduates (i.e. mostly white men) because it's offensive to the sensibilities of those who think it contravenes a positive learning experience. [1] Cleese is exactly right. Very few are concerned with the 'good faith' arguments of any group. It's the intolerance displayed by some camps that is the problem, not their arguments. [1] https://thepostmillennial.com/university-removes-alumni-photos-from-1907-in-promise-to-show-a-more-diverse-and-inclusive-vision-of-engineering https://thepostmillennial.com/university-removes-alumni-phot...

klodolph 5y ago
> protesting against Black people having to use the 'back entrance of the theatre' in the 1950's is altogether different than many of the tactics used today related to not allowing discussion about issues with which some might disagree. That’s some kind of ahistorical, mythologized idea of what the UC Berkeley protests were like. They may have started out with good intentions, but they turned into parties, and the parties turned into riots. It was civil rights protests, LSD, mace, riots, free love, and firebombings. You can’t just pick out the civil rights part of it, the part you like, and pretend the other parts didn’t exist.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  Also, some of it turned into legitimate terrorism campaigns, such as the weather underground. Taking a step back and looking at the typical behavior of college age radicals, this current cohort is pretty mild. Any attempt to mark them as uniquely strident and aggressive is pretty ahistorical. Call me when they start building and mounting barricades.

tomjen3 5y ago

Honestly I would have much, much more respect for somebody advocating for gay rights (even to extremes) back then than today. Back then there was real issues for gays, including legal discrimination. Today there is only social discrimination and that is at a much lower level. Basically back then it seemed not only sincere but useful. Even if you were only doing it to show of, you were doing some good and risked some social cost. If you do it today you do no good and do not risk anything.