Do people really love it when bad things happen to people and hate it when good things happen to people?: A deliberately controversial post

Preface:

Here’s another draft from 2014 that never got finished.  Let’s see if we can finish it now!  And provoke discussion!  BTW, newer readers– back in the day when we had more bandwidth (though I’m not sure why we had more bandwidth?  I guess everything was easier pre-Trump) we used to occasionally post deliberately controversial posts wherein we would post what was basically a position piece and then encourage discussion (both assenting and dissenting) in the comments.  (If we didn’t want to allow for dissent, we would not post with the debatable or deliberately controversial tags.)  (Debatable was for smaller posts where we didn’t feel like there was as much discussion to be had.)  If you’re interested in the conversations from these, check out the “deliberately controversial” tag and especially read through the comments section– Grumpy Nation has always been full of intelligent and thought-provoking commenters.

This post was inspired by the comments section in a lauravanderkam post.

crabs in a bucket, mommy blogs

We don’t go those places anymore.  (One of us never did)

Love leightpf.wordpress.com  Read the patty books by carolyn wells… Change the radio station…

chat history 5/6/14

Alas, google conversations seems to have deleted the chat history from before a certain point.  2014 definitely isn’t in there.  So much lost!  Leightpf.wordpress.com is now private access, but it was a wonderful blog from someone who spoke confidently (and correctly!) about personal finance, particularly personal finance for upper-middle-class earners.  Unapologetic.  The Patty Fairfield books are an early 20th century series about a nice girl who was always the “popular girl” and was from a working-rich family (her dad is a lawyer, IIRC) and everyone liked her and she did fun things– free on gutenberg or for kindle.  (Her mom did die before the series started, but her father eventually remarried one of her older friends, which is a bit sketchy.)  The comments on the goodreads post for the second book sum up how it’s an antidote to h8ers.  Ok, with that context (or lack therof)… what was it we wanted to say?

Post start:

In the comments section of a Laura Vanderkam post, Leanne says:

I also don’t understand why most people respond so strongly to the “hardship” stories. It’s not my personal preference; I find “success” stories much more interesting. I’d rather look up for inspiration than down for validation, but I think that viewpoint is more the exception than the rule, unfortunately, at least for adults.

We agree.  I feel really sad when my friends have to deal with hardship and health problems (and I listen because it’s my friend!) and I certainly don’t actively seek out such stories from other people.

Many people do.  They prefer blogposts where people have hardships and health scares.  They love when someone’s “perfect” life is shown not to be so perfect after all.  They love divorces and finding out the gossip of what happened to cause the divorce (so long as it’s not the boring “we grew apart”).  The Financial Blogsnark sub-reddit is almost entirely comments about some woman named “Hope” who has been a financial train-wreck for over a decade.  (How do I know this?  I don’t keep up regularly with many personal finance blogs anymore, but saw a post title on a blog roll and checked in and then I, TBH, wondered what had happened to the Frugal Girl when she signed a new lease and this sub-reddit had the whole story.  That said, I would have been happier with “we grew apart.”)

Back in the day, I used to spend a lot of time on mommy forums and mommy blogs, and there was definitely a big negative contingent of people who loved to hate on successful women.  (And lots of dramatic fights about WOHM vs. SAHM etc. etc. etc.)  It was a big time-suck, and although some useful things came out of participating in those fora and reading those blogs, it’s nice to be away from the drama and negativity.  IRL, people just aren’t that negative when your kids are doing well and you’re balancing work and child-rearing like they are online.  Maybe they feel that way deep down, but at least they’re polite enough not to say anything or to yuck anyone’s yum, so to speak.  Or at least not to me.

I don’t know what the scientific evidence says– do people prefer sad or happy things?  Popular fiction sales suggest that the average person likes to read about people getting out of bad situations.  So maybe a little bit of both?  And, of course, there’s also the people who enjoy best sellers of fine literature where everything ends sadly.

So it could just be that there are different kinds of people.  There’s a couple of econ papers that find that on average people are happier getting off of Facebook, but that is driven by the contingent of people who get jealous of others’ successes.  Not everyone feels threatened by curated lifestyles, but a good proportion of people do.  Not everyone likes reading sad stories, but a good proportion of people do.  Some people really do enjoy schadenfreude.

For another perspective, in the comments section Ana says:

As far as why negative posts get more interest, its likely partly because we find flaws more relatable than perfection… if someone describes a challenge they are facing, I can give advice, support, commiserate, & also learn from the advice and experience of other commenters—much more of a productive discussion.

Which may be true for some, but there are definitely people who are there for the schadenfreude and not to help.

Grumpy Nation:  Do you think people enjoy when good things happen or bad things happen to other people?  Under what circumstances?  Discuss in the comments below!

 

 

 

 

Figured out why I’m not as interested in watching Try Guys anymore

First off I just don’t have a whole lot of time right now.  But even so, I’ve added a dropout.tv subscription after running out of things I wanted to watch on YouTube, so it’s not just that.

I was listening to Dear Hank and John, only it was Hank Green and Sam Reich from College Humor/Dropout.  They were talking about Taskmaster.  My entertainment worlds collided.

The day before I’d been trying to listen to a Try Guys Podcast and switched to Eat the Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster with guest Kiell Smith-Bynoe because on the TryGuys Podcast Keith had suggested that the person who ran around naked out of the bath shouting Eureka was Albert Einstein or Isaac Newton or someone like that.  (Archimedes!  I screamed mentally, and I don’t mind if you get the wrong person, but at least get the right Era and part of the world.) Ed and James and Kiell made a lot of dick jokes, but there was a wide variance to the humor.  They knew things and some jokes were dumb but some were smart and they shared knowledge instead of ignorance.

Keith isn’t dumb, but he’s ignorant about a lot of things.  Raine (their podcast person) is ignorant about anything except current pop culture.  And Zach often pretends to be dumb.  (Why pretend?  Because when he’s talking on non-Try Guy podcasts he’s extremely knowledgeable and thoughtful and has actually said he plays the dumb persona on Try Guys on purpose.)  I’m too old for that.

What’s missing with Ned and Eugene gone is a baseline level of knowledge and competence and the willingness not to hide it.  They’ve brought in outsiders, but Kweisi is similar to Keith and while I love watching Jonny’s baking stuff (his area of expertise), it’s more of the same in almost any other situation.  There’s no contrast.  Kweisi would be fantastic with Eugene or someone like a Ned who wasn’t a douche, but with Keith or with Zach pretending, there’s too much overlap.

One reason Eat the Menu still works for me is because Keith has a phenomenal knowledge of the fast and fast casual food industry.  He knows stuff and shares it and can compare with previous experiences.  There’s learning and knowledge and growth (though he really should have known not to eat that whole fried mac and cheese ball in the first Cheesecake Factory episode– I like the show better before he gets a food coma when he’s actually talking intelligently about the food).

After I wrote most of this post, they had Grant from College Humor/Dropout on the Eat the Menu and these points were exactly illustrated by the conversation about where Tuscany is.  Grant and Keith may look alike, but Grant has a lot wider general knowledge base.  I just… need some general knowledge and some amount of me learning a little bit in my entertainment.  It doesn’t have to be everybody, but I need at least one person who KNOWS stuff.

So, yeah, my recommendation to save TryGuys is for Zach to shed his “I’m the incompetent one” persona, and/or for them to bring on more guests who contrast against the ignorance.  People who might end up being good at whatever they’re doing even if they haven’t tried exactly that thing before.  Like if they’d brought someone tho did other kinds of art to the recent glass-blowing episode instead of just three stoners.

Apologies for anyone for whom this is too inside baseball!

Do you have any thoughts on Try Guys/Taskmaster/Dropout.tv/Hank Green/etc.?  What makes your video entertainment work vs. not?

People like being told what to do

This is a post I started back in 2013!  Here’s my notes.  Let’s see if I can create the post!

I’m not crazy about it.  But in general, as an adult, i’ve noticed people don’t want to take responsbility be blamed

people who want to lead are leaders talk i went to

don’t try to stomp out bossiness… today’s bossy kids = tomorrow’s leaders

I don’t like being told what to do usually.  I’m one of those who will dig in my heels when someone says “you should” when I’ve already thought about the topic and decided I don’t want to.  Lots of how I live my life is based on me wanting autonomy.  That said, there are some situations where it’s easier just to be told what to do– Co-Pilot is nice for not having to figure out what exercises to do when.  Someone else figures all that out.  Back when I went shopping with a friend who enjoyed being a personal shopper I was happy to stay in the dressing room and to try on and buy what she told me to.  But in general, I like deciding what to do myself.  Being a professor is a pretty good job for my personality in terms of the amount of me deciding what I want.

But, I’ve noticed though some people don’t like being told what to do, a lot of people do.  Far more people, in fact.  People like not having to think.  People like having someone else take the responsibility if things go wrong.  People like to say they were just following orders and someone else should be blamed.

I went to a talk something like 15 years ago where someone who studied leadership came in and told us what characteristics leaders have.  And almost all leaders share the characteristic that they want to be leaders.  People who want to lead do.  Whether or not they’re good at it, there are enough people that want to be led and enough people who don’t want to take charge that there’s room for a lot of people who do want to take charge to do so.  They’re not necessarily good leaders, but they are leaders.

Back 10 years ago, I still had a kid in preschool, and people were always apologizing for their “bossy” daughters.  But it’s not bad to be bossy.  We need people to be bosses.  Today’s bossy kids are tomorrow’s leaders.  They might need some training on listening and communication, but the telling people what to do part isn’t the problem.   That’s an important skill that we need some adults to have.

Do you like being told what to do?  When do or don’t you?  Do you enjoy leading people?

Being a professor in the South

Another post from the 2013 drafts.   Here’s what I had in notes:

respect, authority

means more when they call you Mrs. but don’t do the same for men

Something that is very weird about the South is how top down everything is.  As a professor you’re put on this kind of pedestal.  People just assume you’re right about things.  Since 2013, maybe that’s eroded a little bit with the Southern attacks on knowledge/learning/expertise, but among many of the students there’s still a lot of up-front (possibly pretend) respect for authority.

The students call you ma’am and Doctor Lastname a lot.  (Doctor is a higher sign of respect than Professor.  Yes, I know it’s different elsewhere.)

They have to be pushed hard to think for themselves, though that’s maybe a different rant.  They definitely want you to give them the “right” answer that they can parrot back.

One side effect of all this, is that when they disrespect you, it means a lot more.  In a lot of California schools, calling a prof by their first name is just how things are done.  Here in the South, if they call you Mrs. and they call your male colleague Dr., well, that’s a big sign of disrespect.  This is still a problem in the rest of the country where women will be Mrs. and men will be Professor, but I argue it’s even worse here because the Mrs. doesn’t get as much respect here compared to elsewhere and the Dr. gets a heck of a lot more.  The gap is even bigger.

Of course, now being a professor at a public school in the South means you have to be super careful about anything you say about politics or DEI or CRT etc. etc. etc.  Ugh.

Fighting as bonding

This draft started in 2013!

Apparently I was reading The Great Brain to DC1 (hard to believe DC1 is heading to college only 10 years later!).  It’s a book set I think in the late 1800s about a Tom Sawyer-esque kid.  You know, the adorable con-man type.

I never cared for the book, but my mom loved it and sent a copy to DC1.  She’s not as soft.  #2:  I loved them!  But I didn’t really understand the brother-dynamic.

Here, 10 years later, I’m not exactly remembering the specific fight, but there was a fight in it and afterwards the boys became friends.  This was a common trope!

I think I first came across it in Robin Hood and his Merry Men — Robin defeated someone using staffs on a bridge, IIRC (was it Friar Tuck?)  But it was all over “boys” books.

Today, we don’t see the trope as much, except maybe in tournament animes, where they’re generally fighting in a more formal setting and come to respect each other as opponents, rather than because they hate each other.

In real life, the trope doesn’t go over very well.  It’s much better to talk things out without someone getting beaten first.  And with guns so much more prevalent, there’s a very real chance combatants will die rather than bonding after an altercation.  Hopefully fighting to settle schoolyard disputes is no longer blessed by school administration.  Hopefully the term “tattling” (which encourages kids to keep the wrong secrets) is no longer something kids can be punished for, and hopefully bullying is being actively discouraged (note:  anti-bullying was in when DC1 was in middle school, but now that DC2 is there, that seems to be out of fashion, and as a result bullying seems to have increased again).

Adults get put in jail for throwing a punch.  Kids should learn non-violent ways of solving disputes younger.  And they can learn them as early as age 3.

Did you grow up with fighting as a bonding activity?  Did the children’s literature you read feature it?

Ask the grumpies: Should academic men get paternity leave?

CG asks:

[C]ould [you] do a deliberately controversial post about whether or not male academics should get a semester of parental leave when their partners have babies? I have some conflicting thoughts on that which I will leave for another day. And there is relevant research.

I feel like they should because otherwise their wives end up doing all the childcare stuff and the husbands don’t do any (#SwedenResearch). HOWEVER, the economist guys I know definitely abuse this and come into the department as if they don’t have a kid at all, they’re just not teaching and their SAHM wife just takes care of everything. One of them even sent his wife and newborn to another state to stay with extended family(!) But there’s not really any way to fix this situation. Forcing people to say they’re the primary caregiver just leads people to lying. And my DH was an equal co-parent and that should be encouraged. There’s just going to be either type 1 or type 2 error no matter what you end up deciding.  Personally, I’d rather err on the side of the wives not doing all of the childcare.  In some cases dad getting a semester off could mean mom gets to keep her job.  It also means the babies are more likely to bond with dad which will make dad feel more valued and want to continue interacting, which is good for everyone.

That said, we did hire mother’s helpers when we had the semester off from teaching for DC2 and I think DH was even briefly unemployed during DC2’s infancy and I was able to keep my research agenda going. But teaching with DC1 as an infant (no leave), even with the mother’s helpers, was pretty impossible. We had more than one load of laundry that went moldy and once I ran out of gas at work and DH had to bring some so I could make it to the gas station and come home.

CG adds:

I’ve been feeling cranky about the prof in our dept with a SAHM wife who is taking parental leave and claiming he’s the primary caregiver. And also remembering my first maternity leave where DH was traveling for work 4 days a week and I had to manage a toddler (first kid was born during grad school) and a baby mostly on my own while definitely NOT doing any work but also feeling guilty about it. I don’t think my crankiness about my colleague is necessarily fair or coming from a rational place and I’ve been struggling to articulate why I’m so salty about it.

xykademiqz adds:

Maybe there are men who pull their weight around newborns as much as their wives do, but honestly I have yet to meet one IRL. My husband sure didn’t, and none of my male colleagues seem to. They have a baby and are back at work immediately, like nothing happened. Most men I know seem to treat anything having to do with kids as opt-in; they elect to opt into some aspects but not others, and get to pat themselves on the back for being unusually virtuous and egalitarian. But women never have the option to opt out. This makes me seethe whenever I allow myself to think about it.

I also hate that the physical effects of childbirth are somehow not on the table when people discuss parental leave. A woman who gave birth needs 6+ weeks for minimum physical recovery; this cannot be transferred to any parent who did not, in fact, give birth. Yes, having a new kid is disruptive to the whole household. But it’s definitely drastically more disruptive to the person who just had their insides explode.

#1 counters: My body was ok at 2 weeks for both kids, but I was young and had very easy natural childbirths (literally an hour of pushing for each, which I understand is unusual). C-sections are actual surgeries and obviously need as much recovery time as any surgery.

My husband was also doing as much for our newborns as I was, if not more. I mostly did inputs and some daytime stuff. He took outputs and nighttime stuff, along with some daytime stuff (for DC1 we alternated days since neither of us had any leave). And we hired college students. But he’s not an economist.

CG reiterates that #1 is an exception:

I had 2 very tough vaginal births with major blood loss and physical injury both times and one c-section. The c-section was the easiest recovery, which gives you some idea of the extent of the damage the first two times. I was young and in good shape, just really unlucky. Twice. So yeah, the physical effects of childbirth are definitely a way in which it might not be equivalent for birthing and non-birthing parents…

Grumpy Nation, what do you think?

Is there such a thing as an overachiever?

This post is from the 2012 drafts.  I think I was annoyed with people calling my kid an over-achiever, and annoyed with being called an over-achiever as a child.  I think I get less of that now (I’m achieving less?)… but I’ve tried to finish off this post anyway so we have something to post for Monday!

There’s achievement.

And there’s underachievement.

Pretty much everyone is an underachiever.  Nobody is going to reach their fullest potential– that requires the optimal amount of effort and the best luck.  That’s just really unlikely to happen.

But you can still achieve a lot as an underachiever.  And quite possibly be happy because achievement isn’t everything!

How do we define achievement anyway…

And here’s a line I have no idea where I was going with this:  “maybe watching videos helps maximize the whole person even if you go over the amount necessary to maximize your work-life…”  Like… what?

Oh I bet I know!  I bet I was using watching videos as an example of goofing off and not trying to optimize achievement.

How do we define achievement anyway?  Maybe goofing off by watching youtube videos helps to provide happiness, even if it doesn’t optimize some measure of work-life balance, which is a stupid concept anyway.

What are your thoughts on the concept of “over-achievement”?  What is achievement anyway?

 

What do our children owe us?

This was an Atlantic article from just before Thanksgiving that apparently I didn’t link to.

My answer:  Nothing.

They didn’t ask to be brought into the world– for most of us, that was our selfish choice.  (Sadly, for a growing number of people in the US, it wasn’t a choice at all, but still, not the choice of the child.)

We have a responsibility to feed, clothe, shelter, educate, love etc.  Again, this is our responsibility and a gift to the children, but responsibilities and gifts do not create an obligation.  Miss Manners is very firm on that last point about gifts.  Gifts are freely given but the recipient is free to do whatever they want with them.

Whether our children want anything to do with us as adults, that’s their choice.  We should do the best we can to help them become functioning adults.  Once they are adults, then they get to decide what to do.

Our kids are really cool and get more cool every day, so we hope we get to see them as adults.  But that’s a choice on their parts and not an obligation.

Do you feel like you owe your parents anything?  If you have children, do you think they owe you anything?

Your children can do chores

This is a post draft from 2012.  All that it had was the heading– your children can do chores.

I’m not sure if this was a result of mommy bloggers complaining about waiting on their kids, or if it was just a reminder to myself that kids are often more competent than one realizes.  They start out so little and then grow so quickly.  So you forget to let to let them try things like putting on their own shirts.

Now, in 2022, we’re all at the age (#teen/#preteen) where they want to help less and it would be less effort to put their dirty dishes/socks away or to take their laundry out of the dryer rather than nagging them to do it themselves.  But also DC1 is going to college next year and needs to not be a horrible roommate/dorm person.

I worry especially for boy children– some of them seem to be able to skate through life with mommy waiting on them and then replace mommy with girlfriends and eventual wives.  Some of them never learn to take care of their crap and that’s unfair to future women who love them, or at least live with them.  Boys need to get used to doing chores as a service to their future partners.

Did you help out around the house as a kid or was taking care of chores a shock when you were on your own for the first time?

Ask the grumpies: Will your kids be paying a portion of their college costs?

bogart asks:

[Are] people are planning to have their kids pay a portion of college costs and if so, how much.

Background: I have 1 kid and expect to be able to afford to send him anywhere (this is more a function of an employer’s tuition benefit than household wealth, though we are not comfortably off). Both I and my stepkids (whose college I also helped pay for) graduated college with some debt, not an obscene amount (let’s say 1/3 of our first year’s anticipated salary had we gotten an entry-level college-graduate job). I’m inclined to expect roughly the same for my DC, with him either working summers (or whatever) and/or taking on (sensibly financed) student loans. But at this point that’s just a vague notion, not an actual plan. I’m interested to learn what others’ thoughts are on the pros/cons of college kids investing some of their own current/future $$$ on their education, with a note that I definitely know that needing to work lots while in college creates lots of problems for lots of people and don’t want that for DC. And also whether DC does or doesn’t cover what I’m (vaguely) thinking of as a reasonable amount isn’t going to have a big impact on our household’s financial well-being one way or the other. And that I realize I’m lucky and frighteningly privileged to be able to say that.

Related posts: Should parents pay for their childrens’ college?  You can read this deliberately controversial post for why we think the argument that people won’t care about their own education unless they’re paying for it themselves is not a great one.

We are planning on paying full tuition, basic living expenses, and textbooks/etc. expenses for our kids in college.  Probably we’ll also pitch in for one of those overpriced refrigerator/microwave units for the dorm room.  If there are any loans, we will take them on.

I figure they can pay for any extras (meals at restaurants… not sure what else… concert tickets?  plane tickets to visit significant others?  stuffed animals?) out of their earnings, either summer earnings or work during the school year.  My friend whose kid is at Brown is paying for full dining hall PLUS multiple restaurant nights a week, though she just had a conversation with him about that.  (But Mommmmm, the restaurants are so good here!)

Not sure about masters degrees– we will cross that bridge if we come to it.

I graduated with my parents paying the 0% interest subsidized loans they’d taken out on my behalf (we were very low income).  DH graduated with 10K of unsubisidized debt at ~8% interest that we scrimped like crazy to pay off ASAP.  I worked for spending money for extras during the school year and DH worked over the summers.

Paying college tuition is a great way to transfer money to the next generation while avoiding gift/inheritance taxes.  It also doesn’t have the problem of creating more expenses like giving someone a house downpayment would nor does it teach people to live large when they can’t really afford to like giving them cash or a fancy car would.  So if you can afford it, why not?

Leah adds:

I was super grateful that my mom helped me graduate debt free by picking up extra shifts nursing. I think the path to take depends on your family. I totally understood the value of what my mom did for me. I worked hard in college. I had a work study job, got extra scholarships each year, and worked for the school newspaper. There’s more than one way to teach being fiscally prudent. Do what works for your family.

Grumpy Nation:  Those of you who partook of higher education, who paid for it?  If applicable, what do you plan to do/did you do for your kids?