Hatebook [UPDATED]

Ronni Bennett at Time Goes By has discovered, via Freydblog, that there are dozens of user groups on Facebook devoted to -- hating old people!  Read both posts, the excerpts are amazingly vile and often verbally violent.  They flunk Ronni's "bias test" (just substitute the words "women" or "black people" for old people), and they are in egregious violation of Facebook's own terms of service.  Call it free speech if you will, but Ronni searched Facebook and couldn't find any equally egregious comments against blacks or women.  If such exist, apparently they are removed.  Or maybe people have learned to censor themselves in those instances.  Old people are fair game.

As Ronni points out, this story should be in the media.

UPDATE: Be sure to read the comments.  Adrian re-does the research and puts this phenomenon in the context of other "hate" groups on Facebook, which are pretty much firing off in all directions ("Afghanistan sucks ass").  It makes the "hate old people" phenomenon fade into the wallpaper a bit.  Granted, the wallpaper itself gets ugly.

Comments

[Pastor_Jeff]

At the grocery the other day, I was taken aback to hear across the aisle a preschooler in a shopping cart say, "Hurry up, you old grandma!" This was repeated several times with no comment from the parent pushing the cart. I wonder where the kid learned it.

[Rod]

Thanks for spreading the word. Considering the location (Facebook), a lot of it is probably just kid stuff. It remains to be seen whether the increase in the number of elderly and the societal costs of providing adequate medical care will produce generational warfare. Unlike racial, ethnic, or gender based bigotry, which are directed at the "other," hating the elderly is hating your future self.

[amba (Annie Gottlieb)]

Rod -- it may be "just kid stuff," but who told kids old people were legitimate, even funny targets to vent hate and fantasies of violence at? Those same parents wouldn't let their kids talk that way about animals.

I'm not saying I've never cracked a politically incorrect joke about ANY ethnic, gender, or generational group. That's done in a different spirit, though. At least they're funny. :-P

[PatHMV]

Have you seen Talladega Nights, the movie? There's a scene around the dining table where the rich NASCAR driver's 2 young children are talking back at and ridiculing their grandfather. It's funny for being so inappropriate, and we're laughing AT the parents who allow this, rather than with them (plus the kids are shaped up later in the film by another grandparent), but I can see where a bunch of teenage idiots might emulate it too much.

[reader_iam]

I find this appalling.

At the same time, in real life, the most absolutely nasty and vicious things that I've recently heard come out of people's mouths have been from older ones. No contest, and I spend a lot of time around people of all ages. So I'm just steadily becoming more disillusioned and cynical about people, human nature (my own included) and the world we live in. It's depressing.

I'm beginning to understand the attractions of a hermitage (preferably unplugged).

[StephanieWestAllen]

Here is a post from earlier today at The Elders Tribune entitled "A young person's perspective as to why young people might hate elderly:"

http://www.elderstribune.com/editorial/2007/jul/28/young-persons-perspective-why-young-people-might-hate-elderly

[Dave Schuler]

The youngsters had best get used to being dissatisfied because they're going to keep being dissatisfied for a long, long time. The old folks of today are the Baby Boomers of yesterday and the same demographic features that made the 60's the time of the youth generation and the 70's the time of the Me generation will keep the age cohort at the top of the heap for another 20 or 30 years or more.

[Rod]

Amba:
As I look back at my post, I realize that I was rushed and interrupted before completing my thought, so here is the rest, reflected through the prism of your response.

I was starting to reflect on the pervasiveness of hatred. When I was in high school in the mid 60's, the jocks hated the greasers and vice versa, and the "intellectuals" looked down on both and were respected by neither. Children are notoriously cruel to outsiders. We were not "taught" to hate so much as competitiveness and fear and anger sprang up from somewhere within us and begat hatred. We had to be taught not to hate. It is possible those young people were not taught to spout hateful things about their elders - they were simply not required to respect them.

[Adrian]

i definitely question the research here. yes, there are anti-old people hate groups on facebook, but there are a whole bunch of other hate groups, too! here are a few i found in about half an hour, just a small sample (but before i give the list, which has a lot of profanity btw, a brief moment for my favorite facebook group:"I'm Saving Myself For Wild, Passionate, Awkward Honeymoon Sex") On to the list :

"A Solution to the problem of old people and young kids" is an anti-child group, too, btw.

there's also "Old people and teenagers need to get off the road"

"teenagers against underage facebookers"

"teenagers! DJ your phone up your ass!"

"teenagers scare the living shit out of me"

"Young people are too noisy" [description: "I hate young people"]

"Annoying screaming babies suck"

"Punching babies"

"Children suck"

"Emo kids make me want to punch infants"

"Boys suck major ass!"

"Reasons why guys just plain suck"

"All Men Suck!"

"Fuck breeders"

"Feminists Suck!"

"Girlz Suck!"

"Women Suck!"

"Women are the greatest manipulative bullshitters on the planet"

"Women don't belong in sportscasting"

"Men are simply superior to women"

"Why women should be banned from the bar"

"Women are terrible drivers"

"Humans suck"

"Ban the fat ugly people"

"Chute fat people they can't silent us" [description: "kill fatties"]

"Ew fat people"

"fat people piss me off!"

"i hate white people"

"all y'all white people look the same"

"i hate drinking with white people"

"black people, are you brain dead?"

"black people stole my cell phone so i need your numbers"

"people against stupid black boys"

"I should have gone to a blacker college"

"I should have gone to a whiter college"

"I hate stupid people"

"Bubbly people are all wankers"

"Bitch, shut the fuck up and make me a sandwich"

"God, I fucking hate the French"

"I hate poor people"

"Afghanistan sucks ass"

"Slow walkers should pretty much, um, die"

"Against abortion. For killing babies."

"Liberals Suck"

"Prudes pretty much suck at life"

"Jesus, Mohammed, Allah, Poseidon and Jew God can Suck my dick."

"The Beatles really suck hard"

"I don't hook up with Republicans"

[Adrian]

some of those are jokes, some are serious, just like the old people groups in that post. my point is that there is a lot of crazy and very mean stuff on facebook, they can't police it all, don't let it get to you!

[Adrian]

okay, final comment: all my grandparents are dead, i loved my grandmothers very much (never met my grandfathers). but that was a different generation. i have nothing but respect and love for the greatest generation and the generations before them. but there is no way in heck i'm going to respect old people when old people are going to be all the aging hippies. they didn't respect their elders and i won't respect them. they all 'hoped they'd die before they grow old' but of course will soon want the country to revolve around them. and the AARP does suck!
(my favorite friends, whom i've known since my infancy, are old people, btw, but real old people - in their 70s and 80s)

[Meade]

"...but there is no way in heck i'm going to respect old people when old people are going to be all the aging hippies."

Adrian,
Hate groups, whatever the target of their hate, need to be resisted and rejected, don't you agree? The true hippies of the 60's have all but disappeared but who can disagree with their essential ethics of peace and love?

With all due respect to you, clearly a caring, articulate, and perceptive young person...

1. The vast majority of people born between 1945 and 1965 never were hippies.

2. There are no hippies. All that is left is hippie wannabees, fakes, and posers. Real hippies either got a clue and dropped back in to the mainstream culture of jobs and child rearing or else died of various excesses.

There are plenty of reasons to disrespect the hippies. Being old and dead is not one of them.

Btw, I like your favorite Facebook group and would like to think you may run into my daughter there.

[amba (Annie Gottlieb)]

Adrian,

Thanks for the perspective and the context . . . I was GOTF (gasping on the floor) round about "Afghanistan sucks ass." Very much appreciate the research. I did not have time to do it, and accepted the poster's statement that she had. In that context, old people can take it on the chin along with just about everyone else.

Also, you are right about the baby boomers being insufferable -- and what you call "real old people," born during or before WWII, agree with you -- but take a closer look. It is mainly a thin slice of the baby boomers -- affluent, college-educated, counterculture "veterans" -- of which I am a (reformed) one (but like reformed alcoholics, you've always got to watch yourself) who are obnoxious. I just met a guy in his 50s who was STILL full of himself and pleased with himself in that recognizable old way -- that "we're the hippest generation ever, we stopped the war" way, though not in so many words -- this after being kicked around by life for 35 years?! Fortunately, most of these kinds of baby boomers are confined to academia and Hollywood. Unfortunately, both those maximize young people's exposure to them and (as Meade suggests) distorts the impression of the generation as a whole, which mostly let that wave pass over their heads and got on with life, because they had to.

But even more obnoxious than them (or us) are the marketers who have decided the way to make lots of money is to pander to us nauseatingly. That retirement-investment-advice offshoot of American Express, of which I have thankfully blocked the name, is a big offender -- you know the commercials, they show the same people surfing or whatever at 20 and 60 with a bad rock'n'roll background -- or driving an old VW bus with long hair and beard, then driving a Hummer or whatever expensive thing it is now, implying that you were infinitely cool and hip then and you still are now, just a lot richer. Unfortunately, the culture is going to be inundated with this stuff for the next 10 or 15 years . . . stick your fingers in your ears or use the mute button. I do.

[Adrian]

Dear Meade,
You're right, you're right, I know you're right. I was blatantly generalizing. As Amba said, that existing hippie segment still thrives in university, so I'm just over-exposed to them and frustrated. I'll be nicer to boomers from now on!
And great to hear your daughter is in that group.

[C. Nicole's Freydblog]

Wait a minute - I'm confused. Were the last few posts about hating hippy baby boomers a joke? Please tell me you're being poetic and ironic to prove a point.

[amba (Annie Gottlieb)]

C. Nicole, it's just that "I get to bad-mouth my own group" thing. Black people get to use the n-word, and old hippies get to use the h-word. I am pretty critical of my own cohort and generation. Didn't used to be (wrote one of those "we-have-a-special-mission" books back in the '80s before I realized my generation was just like every other generation, in the basics). I'm overreacting.

[Emy L. Nosti]

I share a very uncommon first name with someone prominent, but spelled differently, and there happens to be several hate groups devoted to this person. A good percentage are erroneously with my spelling.

It amuses me to no end that "I hate [Emy]" and "America against [Emy]" have several thousand members, so I've thrown my hat in as well.

--

C. Nicole, I'd say there's also a big difference between making fun of someone over something that's not a choice/cannot change and making fun of your own and your peers' past indiscretions.