Society has a serious problem with what I will refer as "entitlement culture." We see it in the media, on the Internet, and our everyday lives. The United States was built and has prospered on the idea that anybody, not just the privileged nobles at the top, can make it, as long as a person is willing to devote time and effort to work, develop their talents, and do the right things. I graduated from high school twenty years ago, and that was certainly something that was taught back then, so it was not that long ago. Today, it seems like all we see and hear is the complete opposite.

There is an attitude that has infiltrated the American psyche (and probably outside of America as well) that you should not have to work hard. That people that do all the wrong things deserve the same things as the people that do all the right things. That the people that do the right things are only able to do so because of privilege, so there is no point in trying to do the right things, as it would be futile to do so for somebody that is (supposedly) lacking "privilege."

This attitude has led to what I will call THE LACK OF SHAME. There used to be a point, it was within all of our lifetimes, that people felt shame for doing traditionally shameful things. Begging for money on a street corner was once seen as shameful. Falling behind on your rent and being evicted was once seen as shameful. Being chronically unemployed was once seen as shameful. It seems to me that the opposite is the case today.

This idea has been percolating in my head for a while, but it boiled over a couple of nights ago when I saw a certain GoFundMe. This person is a government employee and was asking for money to buy a house. I don't want to link to the page, as I don't want to dox anybody, but the basic points were:

(1) She is a government employee, which is a low paying job.
(2) She has massive amounts of credit card debt. Like close to $50K.
(3) She is single.
(4) She had cancer a few years ago, for which she started another GoFundMe back then. She says she is doing okay now on the page.
(5) She is in her 50s, and the only way that she will ever be able to retire is if she buys a house. She can't buy a house because of her low pay and because she is single. She wants to retire when she is 62, and needs your help to do it.

I was particularly offended when I saw this GoFundMe, as you can look up her situation on the Internet almost instantly. Her salary is publicly available, and is over $125K a year. She has a Patreon, which gets her another $1,500 a month. She has publicly posted about having her student loans forgiven, thanks to the public service loan forgiveness program. If this the kind of person that should be publicly begging for money?

I don't know if the act of begging for money by itself is a huge problem for society. We constantly are asked to donate money every single time we check out at any retail store, as if the company can't donate their own money to a charity. I have seen a rise in requests for tips for things that have never been tip-worthy before; I have been given prompts to tip at a self-checkout kiosk. The constant and pervasive begging for money is a symptom of something larger: people just do not feel shame anymore. We were once expected to work for what we had, and we were allowed to feel proud for earning what we had. Nowadays it is the complete opposite: it is totally alright for somebody, even upper middle class people, to beg for money. On the other hand, if somebody worked for their lot in life, it is just because of blind luck, so that person should be guilted into giving away their money.

My purpose in typing this out is to see if I am the only that that feels this way. I have a feeling that this will get a lot of pushback on this forum, which would be great. I would really like to be convinced that I am wrong and overreacting to something that is not quite as serious as the amount of time this has been on my head suggests.

To have shame do you have to have pride or are these not all that connected?

Is pride on the decline as a lack of shame increases?

That's an interesting question and it is worth thinking about. I would think that a decline of shame is related to a decline in pride. So I guess the question is, how can we make it so that people can have pride in themselves again?

The woman you give as an example just seems like a grifter and probably isn’t representative of very much. There has always been grifters, that isn’t anything new.

I sort of agree with your general point. I think society is better when people feel they are in a position to improve their lives through striving/hard work/self responsibility/pride. I think it is better to feel this, even if that feeling is somewhat delusional.

The idea that success is mostly due to blind luck is a damaging idea for a society to believe, even though I think it is basically true.

It's very difficult to say for sure whether this is actually trending in the wrong direction, or if the internet just shines a spotlight on these people and it seems worse than it really is.

I saw a video the other day of a mom walking into a pharmacy with her kids, loading up a ton of laundry detergent and whatnot, and simply walking out. People confronted her, she pulls a gun, her daughter who couldn't be more than 8 or 9 cusses out the cameraman and said very matter-of-factly that this is how they pay their bills. She gets into an SUV so it's not like she was homeless and just needed some bread.

I'm sure these people have existed forever. I'm also pretty sure she's an outlier. But her video is up on the internet along with probably hundreds more of similar situations and nobody finds it at all remarkable to watch a family walk into a Walgreens and pay for their items at the cash register.

The internet enables insane behavior like your GoFundMe woman, but people with that mentality have always existed.

To your overall point though, I do think it's getting worse because there are simpletons out there who see this sort of thing and emulate it, where they might not have gone down that road if left to their own devices in 1993 before we were all chronically online seeing this crazy stuff.

It definitely seems like being asked to tipped for things that weren't previously considered rippable (like at a Chipotle or those types of restaurants) is a new thing.

Eh, that's just a natural progression to an existing system, compounded by runaway software developers just grabbing easily available modules for their POS software. Chipotle or its equivalent has always had a tip jar on the counter for people to throw their spare change into. When cash went away, so did that residual revenue.

I'm in the real estate and construction business and I've seen tipping options on e-invoices for building materials/services. Whatever payment provider they use just has that **** turned on by default because it doesn't cost them anything and they'd be happy to collect 3.5% of the tip, too. The owner of this company probably has no idea his invoices are asking for tips.

When I think of the downward trend in society when it comes to lack of shame, I'm thinking of rampant criminality and people creating public scenes over something completely trivial like a missing McNugget or someone assuming their pronouns based on outward appearances. Basically, Twitter users in real life.

But Donkjr is right in that it used to be shameful to be chronically unemployed or require handouts even if you're fully fit, and that has almost entirely gone away. What I think the problem is, is that it's not because of compassion or understanding, but instead this somewhat new mentality that it's not the fault of the unemployed person to begin with. They're only unemployed because of latestage capitalism or some other boogeyman. Not because they have 6 face tattoos and can't be bothered to put on a shirt without holes in it.

This is an excellent example of what I am thinking about. To your point, it may just be that this kind of thing is just more visible these days, during the social media age. Still, it seems like just a few years ago that kind of behavior was just not tolerated, and it certainly was not celebrated. It used to be that if you were stealing from a store, you at least felt enough shame that you tried to do it in a clandestinely manner. These days, people feel so entitled to take whatever they want that they do it out in the open. Not only that, but you can go on any one of those videos and you will find at least some comments about how big bad corporation deserves to be stolen from, how this wouldn't happen if the minimum wage was higher, or whatever else is the hot take of the week justifying theft.

It's definitely the justification that grinds my gears the most.

Slavery existed, so that's why I'm not allowed to be pissed off when people steal **** out of our cars at night because we forgot to lock the doors. Okay, society, thanks for the input.

Turns out that feminizing the culture has unintended consequences. Sharia law is not the answer either.

i have a lot of shame that i still spend time on these forums

There is no top-down solution to justice. Social norms and law can only give the illusion of justice.

Agree with you OP. I have been thinking about this theory for awhile now too. I think a lot of it was actually borne out of Covid and this notion of big government really coming to the forefront of politics - issuing health directives, restricting people's movements through lock downs and quarantine, giving people more welfare to cope with job losses throughout the pandemic, etc.

People have been very comfortable now with this age of working from home to make demands (usually only in writing and not prepared to back it up with speaking with people).

It's interesting that you think all of these implements were political in nature and not the fact that thousands of people were dying each day due to a novel virus that the best scientists in the world did not yet know what they were dealing with. Let's people know you're a Trumper without saying you're a Trumper

Bundy is a trumper through and through, and he doesn't deny it IIRC.

I think most of what you identify (Patreons, GoFundMes, increased tipping culture) are driven more by economics and changing technology than by culture. Some of this may be tied to inflation outstripping wages in many sectors, rising housing prices, rising costs of education, etc. It's much easier for a business to add a tip line to an iPad and pass on the cost of increasing pay to their employees to the customer rather than pay their employees more. And frankly, I think many (American) customers would prefer to tip 20% than have the cost of the item increase by 20%. Tipping feels good, menu prices going up feels bad. And fewer people would resort to begging their social network for money when Fido or Grandma needs hip surgery if fewer people were living paycheck to paycheck or we had a real social safety net and affordable health care. I hate the term, but welcome to late-stage capitalism. I'm by no means a socialist, but this is an inevitable outcome of the vast inequalities in our society.

But as I think others have already pointed out, this is mostly just social media, and sites like GoFundMe and iPads at checkout lines making it easier for people to ask for money and making it more socially acceptable to do so.

"Feminizing the culture?" Oh dear.

I think its related to inflation.

Where is the obligatory Nash pic from your spank bank? You're flagging, button. Flagging.

Disagree. I think the whole pandemic has made society much more softer. Much more inclined to ask for handouts than to actually work for it. I might also add that it has made government much more harder to administrate with all the nutjob conspiracy theorists out there too brought about by the anti-vaccination crowd.

It again goes back to that people want to avoid social interaction these days. They want to be on their phones or have their headphones in. A go fund me page is like a cursory glance at a website, facebook post or X (twitter post) and they can express their interest or like in it at the click of a button by donating $5 or $20 which they can do as all these credit card details are stored in your device. It isn't like it was before when people had to actually convince someone to start a pledge which required phone in donations (to show someone that there was a genuine financial need for it). There is none of that accountability now but the person's own conscience and that coupled with a lack of social interaction these days is causing these go fund me pages to frequently pop up for less than needy causes.

OP should be ashamed for posting that boomer rant.

anomie

So the reason that people are more willing to be parasites is because "capitalism bad?" Has there ever been a period in American history where the economy has been more robust than from 2010 to the present?

in Joe Biden's America 125k a year is not enough to buy a house and retire. economy is doing great all the pundits say!

Or, we could look at it this way: the fact someone as incompetent as you are has a sniff of making 125k a year is self-evidently quite the success of "Joe Biden's America".

that doesnt even make sense