• Wytch@lemmy.zipEnglish
    34·
    22 hours ago

    I must be weird because I grew up in the 80s, in the heyday of marketing this shit to kids, I had all the violent action figures, and I was skeptical of the military to the point it caused a rift in my family.

    And I grew up to be an anarchist. 🤷‍♂️

    Did I learn the wrong lessons from G.I. Joe?

    • DagwoodIII@piefed.socialEnglish
      9·
      20 hours ago

      I managed to get my pacifist mom to buy me toy guns. I had a space gun, a spy gun, a cowboy gun, and a military gun. Played with GI Joe.

      When I got old enough to want to look ‘adult’ I put away all those guns and never wanted to have a real one.

      I think we’d have fewer adult gun collectors if they’d been playing with guns as kids.

      • Natanox@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        3·
        9 hours ago

        Not so sure about that, this probably heavily depends on your individual character and perhaps even more on who likes weapons when you were really young. If someone you intensively hate as child preached pacifism (or vice versa, people you looked up to being gun nerds) you’d be drawn towards weapons I’d assume.

        You probably learned a lot from your mom, both her values and that she apparently trusted you to explore stuff she might dislike herself (even if you had to nag her to death for it). Sounds very healthy to me. 😉

    • Sundray@lemmus.orgOPEnglish
      14·
      22 hours ago

      I didn’t watch G.I. Joe until I was much older so I can’t really judge – I grew up wanting to be a Gargoyle, though.

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      4·
      19 hours ago

      Did I learn the wrong lessons from G.I. Joe?

      Sounds like you learned EXACTLY the right ones and it’s the “normal” kids who learned the wrong ones 🤷🏻

    • Sundray@lemmus.orgOPEnglish
      4·
      17 hours ago

      I don’t know when it started, but it’s been going on for at least a year or two. I wish they would rerun them in their original format but I still enjoy them this way too.

  • uuj8za@piefed.socialEnglish
    12·
    22 hours ago

    My kid nephew says he wants to be a solider when he grows up, my brother encourages it… this comic hits hard… 😭

    • BeUnique@lemmy.zip
      9·
      19 hours ago

      I’m in the same boat. Family tells me to keepy mouth shut and I do for now since he’s only 7… As soon as he reaches his teens I plan on slowly starting to deprogram him.

      All he talks about is “When I grow up I want to be in the army!”

    • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      17 hours ago

      so, here’s what you do. if you’re in the US, show them what the Army Corps of Engineers or the Coast Guard do. Those are the two that are routinely deployed to save people’s lives in emergencies and natural disasters. Like yeah, it’s kind of an ACAB thing where being in the military sucks and you’re forced to do heinous shit just by being in the military, but that branch and corps are much more “helping people” oriented than “killing people” oriented

  • yucandu@lemmy.world
    5·
    20 hours ago

    I wanted all the toy soldiers and guns, but my parents and my teachers wouldn’t let me, or any of the other kids for that matter. I grew up in the “making finger guns gets you suspended” era.

    And America isn’t protecting corporate interests overseas. They’re protecting an ethnostate, and just being sadistically violent.

    • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works
      7·
      18 hours ago

      And America isn’t protecting corporate interests overseas. They’re protecting an ethnostate, and just being sadistically violent.

      Porqué no los dos?

  • Lojcs@piefed.socialEnglish
    2·
    18 hours ago

    Speaking real, the first product review I watched on YouTube as a teenager changed my brain chemistry. I don’t even remember what it was about and I have way too much cognitive dissonance about it today. But that’s the moment I stopped valuing things based on the value they provide me and started valuing them based on their inherent and relative qualities.

    On one hand I can’t imagine not doing market research to find the best kind of a [thing] I want to buy and ending up overpaying for an inferior product. On the other hand I hate to be cursed with this mindset whereas once it would make me happy to have the [thing] at all. It’s like I suddenly became upsellable.

    Maybe it’s just growing up. Maybe that was just an extension of my aversion to making a value judgement about anything. But it does make me cringe a little.