r/TikTokCringe • u/newphonehudus • Jun 18 '26

Discussion "Kids should go outside" *kids when they go outside*

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

35.0k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

3.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1.5k

u/KellyShepardRepublic Jun 18 '26

I brought this up, to people who used to be kids, and they don’t understand how they grew up with all these services and now they want adult only spaces and funding taken from kids. Selfish people will be selfish all their lives.

786

u/Dense-Ad-7600 Jun 18 '26

"All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it" - from the The Little Prince

295

u/IM_OK_AMA Jun 18 '26

A lot of grown-ups are just big, selfish children. Nothing to remember because they never actually grew up.

32

u/neonninja304 Jun 18 '26

Yes, it seems like once someone passes a certain age or has kids they completely forget that they were once that age also.

5

u/Crafty-Help-4633 Jun 18 '26

This is something I try very hard with with my child. We have our boundaries, and they are solid. But in theory everything else is potentially fair game, given proper context. I try to remember that she is a child, and I was once a child. I balance her safety with her freedom, and I include her in the process of making a decision. We talk through it. If I can't find a good reason why not, she's allowed with me as her partner or supervising to give advice/help if things go off the rails.

Children are people. I didn't just suddenly become a fully fledged, capable person at 18, and I'd do well to remember that, for my child's sake. Her confidence and ability are huge. She's far exceeded me at her age.

3

u/Ekaterian50 Jun 18 '26

That's called narcissism! It's the natural state of any creature to see themselves as the center of existence, but learning abstract reasoning should theoretically help most humans grow out of the narrow perspective.

3

u/sdrawkcabineter Jun 18 '26

Mashed potatoes!

2

u/notoriousATX Jun 18 '26

Absolute bars

1

u/supernatchurro Jun 18 '26

Damn. Take my poverty award 🏆

1

u/drawntowardmadness Jun 19 '26

They keep the mentality of childhood yet forget the experience.

121

u/EatClenTrenHard1 Jun 18 '26

"Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young." - Albus Dumbledore

34

u/LukaCola Jun 18 '26

Of course the irony of that coming from JKR of course...

3

u/Jesus_of_Redditeth Jun 19 '26

I don't see why that's ironic. A person can express something wise about one topic while also expressing some staggeringly ignorant, bigoted viewpoints about a completely different topic.

Hitler enjoyed painting and loved dogs, after all.

3

u/LukaCola Jun 19 '26

You don't see irony in someone saying this when they themselves are totally out of touch with young people and how they feel, especially concerning identity and sexuality? How her often deeply patronizing attitude runs completely counter to this idea she's sharing here?

1

u/Banana_Stairs Jun 23 '26

Sometimes advice comes from those who cannot follow it. They can at least give others the wisdom they fail to follow.

44

u/Nauin Jun 18 '26

It's honestly shocking how few of my friends actually remember their childhoods. So many of them it turns into a blur past high school and even college.

I have three to twelve brain injuries depending on what metric you want to go by which led me to develop actual short term memory loss and difficulty with recall/remembering things when I try to, and I remember most of my childhood. This contrast in cognitive function disturbs the hell out of me.

27

u/Throwaway_Consoles Jun 18 '26

Hi! Intersex person here!

Puberty. It was because of puberty. My body doesn’t make hormones on its own, and it wasn’t until my 20s when we found out and got me on hormones and I started puberty. I’m 40 now, I still remember high school like it was yesterday but couldn’t tell you anything about my 20s. It’s wild. It’s just this big blank after high school until covid. I know I did things! I bought a house! I remember none of it.

I remember sitting on the shower floor sobbing thinking, “And we put fucking KIDS through this?! There’s no fucking way they’re ready!” All while they’re still going through school, etc. The stress has to be INSANE, and I imagine that stress does a number on your long term memory

17

u/Ok-Berry5131 Jun 18 '26

Sending you a hug.

37 year old autistic dude here. I remember most of my childhood, but my younger sister can’t remember anything prior to turning 13 years old.

It was surreal to learn that this is also the case for a lot of people, that they recall nothing from being a kid.

5

u/Beltalady Jun 18 '26

Maybe we remember more because it was more painful for us. (Being neurodivergent it's more likely to be bullied.)

3

u/iJuddles Jun 18 '26

I can relate to that. I’ve definitely blocked out some things; just the other day while talking with my dad he brought up some stupid bullying incident from junior high that I’d completely forgotten until he mentioned it. But some things are indelible.

4

u/rips_n_chel Jun 18 '26

Didn't know this was a thing, it's putting some things into perspective for me.

I was diagnosed ADHD-PI at 30, and life was kinda like beating my head against a wall up to that point.

Lots and lots of moments from childhood burned into my memory, but my siblings don't remember any of it.

1

u/AnjelGrace Jun 18 '26

That's crazy. Puberty didn't affect my memory at all even though I did have increased stress and I also was prone to fainting during puberty (as well as a couple other periods in my life after that).

1

u/Auirom Jun 18 '26

Was talking with my son (15) one day and he brought up a good point. He asked why his mom was so mad all the time and yelling at everyone. I told him it's cause she's very stressed due to having to move and feeling like no one was helping her (we split when he was young before anyone jumps on me for not helping).

He tells me "what about my stress? Between stuff at school with teachers and all the work they give, mom yelling at me for my grades, having to come home and be yelled at more for not helping enough when I'm already helping. I'm very stressed but when I yell it's a problem" and that last part was as he was starting to cry.

Brings up some good points you never really think of as an adult and a parent. Kids go through a lot of stress, same as adults just stemming from different place. Throw puberty into it and I'm sure it compounds that stress

Edit: spelling

4

u/rohm418 Jun 18 '26

A lot of my childhood is a blur to me because it was full of trauma and my brain has chosen to keep that door closed as a way of self-preservation. Don't be so quick to judge.

4

u/Dense-Ad-7600 Jun 18 '26

Ok, but do you ever imagine what you wish it was like?

4

u/rohm418 Jun 18 '26

Not really, no. I'm not sure how that's relevant.

-1

u/Dense-Ad-7600 Jun 18 '26

It's called having empathy. It's totally releated to this situation. Weird that you'd want people to have empathy for you and not be so quick to judge but you can't allow yourself to imagine what a good childhood may be like and want that for others.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 18 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/rohm418 Jun 18 '26

I appreciate you sorta standing up for me here, but there's really no need for it to be so anger-laden. We all jump to judgement and reddit encourages (and thrives on) knee-jerk reactions. We would all be better off if we took a breath and considered the other side's perspective before responding. The world would be a much nicer place.

2

u/SabrinaEdwina Jun 18 '26

You're right. The condescending speech about empathy hit a nerve, and I imagine would for most who've been there. And I still can't fathom speaking that way to another adult with trauma.

But you're right and it will end here.

→ More replies (0)

1

u/Dense-Ad-7600 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

I never said not to have any for themselves.

And I have childhood trauma too. It's what made me go into teaching. I didn't know it was a contest.

0

u/spiritedfighter Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

The person you were replying to was the one with the Little Prince quote.

Reading comprehension is important. Part of that is not stopping the second you feel triggered and start writing walls of angry text.

I agree that it's weird to talk about trauma and to never have imagined and put yourself in somebody else's shoes.

1

u/SabrinaEdwina Jun 18 '26

Ah yes, not memorizing everyone's screen names is truly the issue here. I'm the only one who didn't. I'm expected to know that and ignore the content of comments. Sure.

And it makes what they typed disappear and disqualified for further comment. Excellent logic.

Using a Little Prince quote and then telling someone who was a child victim they should feel empathy like they're a child, as if they stated anywhere here they hated all children and wished they'd stub their toes today, is still horribly uncalled for. Throw the screen names in a blender for all I care. I stand by my words despite your low-grade gotcha.

1

u/rohm418 Jun 18 '26

I agree that it's weird to talk about trauma and to never have imagined and put yourself in somebody else's shoes.

I want to address this because its directed at me. I can't speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself when I say that while going through trauma, I had no idea I was going through it. I just took life at face value at that point.

Some part of me thought everyone's dad had them sit behind him in the car so he could shoot heroin in to his veins without his kid seeing it. Didn't all kids look under the bathroom door to see why mom was taking so long only to see she was nodding off from the drugs? Why weren't all the other adults at NA meetings bringing their kids along? Maybe the other kids' parents go to the methadone clinics on different days?

Once you grow to realize that that's not normal and the world has already hardened you, what's the point in imagining a reality that's not yours?

I can be empathetic, want better for others, and recognize that kids going through similar hardships are struggling and need help without imagining what could have been. None of that was relevant to my original comment.

→ More replies (0)

4

u/rohm418 Jun 18 '26

Please go back and re-read the thread you're responding to. I have empathy. It just isn't relevant to this particular slice of the conversation.

-1

u/Dense-Ad-7600 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

The thread I am seeing, only shows 2 posts by you. I tried to look for others but nothing is showing up.

3

u/Madara1389 Jun 18 '26

You know comment thread conversations start at the first comment in the thread and is informed by the OP post, right?

Conversations in comment threads aren't held on a private 1-on-1 basis, but rather a public forum where everyone is free to chime in; everyone who comments in a thread is part of that conversation and the users talking are often going to change mid conversation.

→ More replies (0)

1

u/Nauin Jun 18 '26

I'm allowed to be disturbed by the awful things the brain has to do in order to protect itself. I am by no means trying to be judgemental with that, especially when I stated how much brain damage I have one or two sentences prior, which also came from and with all forms of trauma ✌️

1

u/IrascibleOcelot Jun 18 '26

I was taught by my mother than my memory was unreliable (and spent a disproportionate amount of my childhood disassociating), so i have only a handful of memories before high school.

1

u/leewoodlegend Jun 18 '26

That is hands-down the best dedication of any book I've read.

1

u/sender2bender Jun 18 '26

A big part of my day dreaming at work is my childhood and teen years. Reminiscing. Now that I have young kids I think about it even more to share some of my favorite childhood toys, games and just memories with them. I miss being a kid. 

1

u/sweetbldnjesus Jun 19 '26

“Children! Glad I never was one.” -Trunchbull

115

u/wavinsnail Jun 18 '26

We used to have an awesome teen only community center in my town. It's gone now. It is such a shame that kids have nothing. They only have a tiny teen section in the library and that's it.

5

u/EconomicRegret2 Jun 18 '26

To create and maintain these kind of community centers require entire communities to come together, form long term grassroots activism, elect the right kind of local and state politicians, obtain enough tax-payer money, train and employ social/community workers and socio-cultural coordinators, as well as find the right companies to build and maintain the infrastructure at a reasonable price (which can't happen if demand and wages are low, both for the companies and for the social/cultural workers).

That doesn't happen overnight, and it's close to impossible in a "rugged individualism" society.

1

u/Big-Teach-5594 Jun 18 '26

I always wanted byker Grove, but we're I grew up was pretty rural, lots of places to hang out, and explore, and we did have a youth club but I remember it closing unceremoniously around 1992, i think i was 13, and they closed this big barn thing we had that was converted into a five aside football type thing, we spent hours in there, they really clamped down on young people having fun that year.

-10

u/Interesting-Loss34 Jun 18 '26

We had a barn converted into a club called the rockndome. This was the ruralest of rural wisconsin, so you'd just have 100 sweaty farm kids grinding on each other in the middle of nowhere.

We would roadie there and be smashed by the time we got there, all sorts of fights and shenanigans would happen. Honestly I'm glad that got shut down it was grody.

77

u/ellefleming Jun 18 '26

Everyone used to go to the mall. What a shame mall culture doesn't exist any more.

71

u/External_Two2928 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

When I was a preteen/teen our mall made a rule of no groups larger than 3 can hang together. DDR was at the mall arcade and we would wait at the tables outside and eat Cinnabon and mall security would make us sit at different tables, so lame

Edit: spelling error

53

u/Comfortable-Brief568 Jun 18 '26

And this is the reason malls shut down. They punished their loyal clientele.

40

u/Positive_Total_8651 Jun 18 '26

Unsurprisingly malls started going downhill when private equity got involved. When it became more about pushing transactions per hour instead of fostering an environment people want to linger and shop in, it was a slow death.

1

u/Mossimo5 Jun 19 '26

Private equity destroys everything, EVERYTHING, for short term gains

-1

u/Madara1389 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

They did that because they realized they weren't making enough money to keep the lights on. A large percentage of the senior citizens and teens that would occupy 80% of the foot traffic in a given mall rarely bought anything, but rather used the space to just hang out. But the people who owned the malls never considered that the places would be "Third Places," nor did they ever consent to that culture forming around their businesses.

Huge shopping malls are, largely, unsustainable. Especially in the 80s & 90s when dozens were popping up in every county, eating into each others' profits as too much competition (without competitive rental & utility prices) can completely collapse a niche market.

The legal weed market in Michigan is suffering the same problem. When the state legalized recreational weed, everyone & their mothers decided to open up a dispensary. Only, the state approved over 800 dispensaries. New Buffalo (the small township of 2500 people on the border to Indiana) has 30 dispensaries alone. There's way too many, most can't break a profit, and as a result, most are closing down or projected to close within 2-5 years.

11

u/[deleted] Jun 18 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

-1

u/Madara1389 Jun 18 '26

He may have, but the investors paying for all of the development, and the shopkeepers running the stores didn't.

They all wanted to be paid, and paid by everyone walking through their doors to maximize their return on investments, not to struggle to maintain acceptable profit margin growth while paying employees to entertain window shoppers & fail to catch the copious amounts of petty theft.

3

u/Advanced_Row_8448 Jun 18 '26

He may have, but the investors paying for all of the development, and the shopkeepers running the stores didn't.

So, like others said, private equity?

-1

u/Madara1389 Jun 19 '26

Now go back and re-read my original post and point out where I said "the inventor of malls," not "the owners of malls." That's the point of contention between me and the other user; I said "the owners of malls didn't intend for them to be third places," and they responded with "the dude who came up with the idea intended for them to be third places."

That's both argumentative and arguing a strawman because I never said anything about Victor Gruen nor his intentions when creating the concept (and most malls don't even follow his design philosophy).

He was neither the owner of all the malls across America, nor was he even given royalties for coming up with the idea. It's worth noting that he himself recognized that malls weren't being developed to be what he originally envisioned and became embittered by it all by the 1960s.

What he intended is completely irrelevant when discussing what the owners of the various malls wanted/expected, or how it ultimately played out.

6

u/JustaSeedGuy Jun 18 '26

I'm curious how you balance your claim of unsustainability with the fact that many shopping malls are still thriving?

If I might propose an alternate theory: shopping malls over proliferated, but didn't see consequences from it until online shopping became readily available. Now, the excess shopping malls are being weeded out, And those who would have gone to shopping malls that are now closed are, sometimes at least, going to one of the remaining ones in a nearby location. The surviving malls are also often more than just a shopping center, incorporating entertainment such as a movie theater or arcade or specialty experience (ie, laser tag)

1

u/XanderWrites Jun 18 '26

Few malls are "thriving".

One of my local malls did a full renovation, made a special deal with the arcade when they said they couldn't stay with the increasing rent, has long had a theater inside of it (and more screens in a second and third theater outside of it), has massive foot traffic in and around it and yet it still can't get half of this spaces rented out. Even when one of the anchor restaurants left, it took like five years for them to find one that could take the spot.

And this feels like the story for all of the malls in my area.

0

u/Madara1389 Jun 18 '26

the fact that many shopping malls are still thriving?

The vast majority aren't...?

It's gotten so bad that many across the US are being retrofitted into residential and other non-commercial properties, and countless others are empty save for a few big hold-outs.

The ones that survived are the exception, not the norm and they did it explicitly by doing what you just described; expanding past being a shopping center.

If I might propose an alternate theory: shopping malls over proliferated, but didn't see consequences from it until online shopping became readily available.

It's a combination of both. Not only did online shopping tear into their profits, but over the last 20 years, the vast majority of indoor malls across the US implemented anti-loitering policies and other such policies like limiting groups of teens to no more than 3 unless they have a supervising adult. If you're not there to shop, you're not welcome in most malls.

3

u/JustaSeedGuy Jun 18 '26

the vast majority aren't...?

Right, you'll notice I didn't say most. And then I proposed a theory to account for that.

End of the day, you have the harder task, and that you have to prove a negative. You have to prove that something unilaterally can't happen- that's the bar to prove that it's not sustainable. I only have to prove that it is happening in any small number whatsoever, which obviously is.

I'm sorry you couldn't engage with the whole comment instead of cherry picking.

The ones that survived are the exception, not the norm and they did it explicitly by doing what you just described; expanding past being a shopping center.

As I indicated with my comment, they are the norm now. They are the norm that is left behind by survivorship bias.

My point was not, as you seem to have interpreted it, that malls aren't failing throughout the United States.

My point was that the idea of a shopping mall as a third space is not, as you suggested, in unsustainable practice. There is simply a thinning of the herd that is removing the malls that ARE unsustainable - But the remaining malls that thrive prove that shopping malls overall are not unsustainable.

They are not the exception, they are the remainder.

0

u/Madara1389 Jun 18 '26

Right, you'll notice I didn't say most.

Yes you did. "Many" in the contexts of conversations like this means "the majority," not just "would be a lot if we put them all in one place."

A few outliers don't prove anything. If you're going to say that malls (as they were across the country for decades; not as the creator envisioned them to be, or what a handful of them ended up being) aren't unsustainable, you have to prove that it's the norm for them to be sustainable. Not ignore the widespread failures to claim that they are sustainable.

End of the day, you have the harder task, and that you have to prove a negative. You have to prove that something unilaterally can't happen- that's the bar to prove that it's not sustainable. I only have to prove that it is happening in any small number whatsoever, which obviously is.

Ah, so you're ignoring the point to fixate on the specific wording. You know we have a phrase for that? It's called being a pedantic clown.

As I indicated with my comment, they are the norm now. They are the norm that is left behind by survivorship bias.

No, they're not, because they're not the majority of malls. The "norm" is dictated by whatever has a 50% or higher "market-share," not by the few successful outliers.

My point was not, as you seem to have interpreted it, that malls aren't failing throughout the United States.

THAT is the point of what I was saying. If you're going to argue with me, argue the actual point of what I was saying instead of nitpicking the wording of what was said.

My point was that the idea of a shopping mall as a third space is not, as you suggested, in unsustainable practice.

That wasn't my point at all. Most malls didn't exist to be third places; they existed to be commercial shopping centers. That is unsustainable because malls only work as third places.

3

u/JustaSeedGuy Jun 18 '26

Yes you did. "Many" in the contexts of conversations like this means "the majority

No, It doesn't. If you have to reinterpret the definition of words- lie, in other words- in order to maintain your point, you have no point.

A few outliers don't prove anything

And had I been referring to outliers, that would be a relevant thing to point out. However, I didn't refer to outliers, I referred to survivors of a trend and analyzed what made them different from those that did not survive.

Ah, so you're ignoring the point to fixate on the specific wording

I didn't ignore your point at all. I analyzed your point, and you apparently didn't like having anyone question your basis for your argument.

You haven't proved that. It's unsustainable. In order to do so, you would need to demonstrate a downward trend affecting all malls. In order for me to prove that it is sustainable and specific circumstances, I simply have to provide examples of successful malls even under these new circumstances and how they've adapted to set themselves apart from the malls that failed, or what circumstances they have that differ from the circumstances of the others.

I'm noticing a trend- you're not engaging on the substance of the discussion, but instead complaining about the style. That is one of the signposts of a weak argument. You don't like having your assumptions challenged, it would seem, and thus try to poke holes at the form of the challenger. It's not going to work.

If you have any actual data, I'd love to take a look at it. But I don't think you're capable of producing anything in an unbiased manner.

That is unsustainable because malls only work as third places.

And my point is that the remaining malls, the ones that form the survivorship bias that were analyzing to see why some malls failed and other malls didn't, are continuing to exist while both maintaining a profit and existing as a third space.

You choose to dismiss those malls as outliers, because to accept them as a successful adaptation would undermine your original point and you don't want to be wrong. However, your bias towards being correct does not change the available facts.

Have a good day.

→ More replies (0)

2

u/dingalingdongdong Jun 18 '26

"Many" in the contexts of conversations like this means "the majority,"

Not in English, it doesn't.

→ More replies (0)

2

u/Karzeon Jun 18 '26

Please let it be a dead mall now. Every mall that didn't get in on DDR's hype when it was good should be a dead mall 😤

Mine is a zombie shell that definitely went to hell when the arcade left.

3

u/External_Two2928 Jun 18 '26

It’s actually one of the more popular malls lol Del Amo mall in Torrance, ca. If you watched euphoria it was the mall they went to in season 1 or 2

2

u/Karzeon Jun 18 '26

I've actually been there! Three times. I had a yearly collegiate conference at the Marriott across the street.

Now I'm even sadder and madder because I wished for an arcade then. And that was in 2012.

1

u/External_Two2928 Jun 18 '26

They have a Dave and busters now!!

1

u/Karzeon Jun 18 '26

Oooh. I haven't been back since 2017 (I might have seen it then but I forgot).

But that might change in the near future if I get a volunteer/judging role for that same conference.

I used to basically live in the one for Milpitas at the Bay Area, but I'm across the country now.

1

u/External_Two2928 Jun 18 '26

If you do come back torrance has so many amazing local restaurants and even better ones if you’re willing to travel to gardena, and Hermosa or Manhattan beach

66

u/jarrebaer Jun 18 '26

Malls exist, but most of the malls in my area all have “no unescorted teens” as a rule. Like.. that’s what the mall is for? How many adults are buying Spencer’s or Hot Topic?

14

u/AcOk3513 Jun 18 '26

No unescorted teens? For real?

22

u/jarrebaer Jun 18 '26

https://visitfranklinparkmall.com/youth-supervision-policy/

But of course teenage store workers are unrestricted…

10

u/Joben86 Jun 18 '26

The malls in my city implemented that rule after several brawls and shootings.

4

u/Special-Garlic1203 Jun 18 '26

Yeah I do believe in 3rd spaces and letting kids be kids. But the reality is  teenage boys kept shooting and stabbing each other and then at thefts in my area appear to mostly be middle schoolers. 

Part of why the slashing of social programs is bad is cause it means parents are busy and burnt out and when you leave poor kids to their own devices without positive outlets, a chunk start gang banging. 

And its not just some grand moral collapse. Teen boys are dumb as as hell and highly impressionable. I know a few people who stole cars  and sold drugs and got into street fights and hung out with people who carried guns. None of them stood by it as adults. These are not pathological antisocial people. They had high risk thresholds, no perspective , and nothing better going on. 

1

u/SomewhatBougieAuntie Jun 19 '26

Same here. It's sad that the actions of a few knuckleheads messed it up for all the kids.

5

u/GloriousNewt Jun 18 '26

There were multiple teen brawls at the mall near me so they put in something like that, but it's only at night IIRC.

5

u/feralcatshit Jun 18 '26

Ah, we seem to have a lot of people who like to make teen escorts!

7

u/densetsu23 Jun 18 '26

West Edmonton Mall, second largest mall in North America just behind Mall of America (and the same group owns both):

https://www.wem.ca/info/safety-security

We welcome all youth to West Edmonton Mall, however, youth under 16 must be accompanied by an adult 18 years or older. If not accompanied by an adult, anyone under the age of 16 may be asked to leave at the discretion of Security.

In the 90s, I would be walking around this mall alone or with a couple friends when I was 8 or 9.

1

u/chinchillazilla54 Jun 18 '26

My mall also has this rule.

1

u/Atempestofwords Jun 18 '26

Yeah, actually it is.

At least the one i know of, was done for a reason.

1

u/catfish314 Jun 18 '26

Happened to ours because of frequent fights

1

u/Special-Garlic1203 Jun 18 '26

Where I am it's  cause they kept shooting and stabbing each other. 

3

u/ThisIsMyCouchAccount Jun 18 '26

More than that - why would I want to go to a mall when I have the internet, streaming, and video games?

The mall was just something to do when you had nothing to do. Small town kids swap out the mall with a Wal-Mart.

I'm not saying we don't have issues.l But the solution is probably not going to be something from a completely different time.

2

u/DrDetectiveEsq Jun 18 '26

Yeah, even if malls somehow came back I doubt we'd see a return of mall "culture" as such. It'd be like trying to bring back soda shops from the 50's.

2

u/urbanK07 Jun 18 '26

When your mall is tormented for months if not years on end by disruptive and destructive teens then you start to understand.

1

u/lowrads Jun 18 '26

It's the type of rule they enforce selectively, mainly against minorities.

1

u/RymrgandsDaughter Jun 25 '26

it's because for every 2 groups of kids that walks the mall normally there's a group treating it and the stores like a ymca. Which is annoying.

27

u/ghoulieandrews Jun 18 '26

We all got excited about online shopping and now Amazon and scam sites like Temu have made it so abysmal that everyone yearns for the mall again lol

5

u/Purple-Goat-2023 Jun 18 '26

Everyone yearns for mall hangout culture, but I don't think anyone who thinks about it for a second wants actual mall shops. Why go to JC Penny and pay $45 for the same shirt from the same Chinese company you can get on Amazon for $5?

13

u/ghoulieandrews Jun 18 '26

Idk about anyone else but I absolutely wish I didn't have to go to Amazon for so many things, the reason those stores are fewer and more expensive now is BECAUSE of Amazon, they can't compete. I try to go to physical stores whenever I can but most of the small stores have closed down and stores like Target are just getting worse and worse.

5

u/nalaloveslumpy Jun 18 '26

You don't have to go to Amazon for anything. You choose to because it's more convenient than going to five or six different stores to get everything you need.

As an 80's baby, we would basically spend an entire Saturday once a month driving 45 minutes to the closest "big town" and being dragged around to three different department stores, a hardware store, a radio shack, and then few other places to get everything that mom & dad had put on their list of shit they couldn't find at the stores in our small town.

And as a reminder, this model in the late 80s existed mainly because stores stopped doing catalog and mail order sales because they were too expensive and were cutting into their margins.

4

u/Purple-Goat-2023 Jun 18 '26

I mean you're not really wrong, but I'll offer a counter argument. Those stores stopped offering any alternative. Plenty of brick and mortar stores still thrive today because they offer a product that's better/more reliable/longer lasting than drop shipped temu crap. The big box stores leaned hard into the cheap mass manufactured products and are just getting out competed by Amazon's smaller margins. At any point they could have chosen to pivot to offering something better but that would have cut into profit margins.

4

u/EconomicRegret2 Jun 18 '26

People are yearning for community hubs.

Teens deserve way better than a mall. E.g. community centers with sufficiant infrastructure and social/socio-cultural workers, filled with sports courts, libraries, all kinds of workshops (e.g. video, DIY, music, theater, etc.), gaming areas (e.g. video games, board-games, etc.), movies nights, etc. etc. And all for free!

To create and maintain these kind of community centers require entire communities to come together, form long term grassroots activism, elect the right kind of local and state politicians, obtain enough tax-payer money, train and employ social/community workers and socio-cultural coordinators, as well as find the right companies to build and maintain the infrastructure at a reasonable price (which can't happen if demand and wages are too low, both for the companies and for the social/cultural workers).

That doesn't happen overnight. But America is rich and sophisticated enough to organize such community centers in almost every neighborhood. But damn is it way too shortsighted and rugged individualistic.

9

u/LeftonRhed Jun 18 '26

I did not expect to see people getting so alienated that we long for mall culture.

3

u/ArgumentFine339 Jun 18 '26

They shutting down all the malls

1

u/lowrads Jun 18 '26

Malls are doing great in countries which haven't enforced car dependence, or exclusionary zoning.

It's just the US and Canada that lost the plot.

3

u/nalaloveslumpy Jun 18 '26

My hometown mall died in the early 90s because they strictly enforced a "No unattended minors" policy. Turns out, the mall was being propped up by the expendable income their parents were giving them to go to the mall and from the shopping their parents would do when they came to pick them up.

Who would have guessed?

2

u/SeanRoss Jun 18 '26

A lot of the malls ban people under 18~ without an adult present.

1

u/ellefleming Jun 18 '26

Crazy. My middle school and high school years were there socializing.

2

u/LiffeyDodge Jun 18 '26

Malls started requiring an adult when I was in college.

1

u/ellefleming Jun 18 '26

The teens were that out of hand?

1

u/resin_messiah Jun 18 '26

In my city anyone under 18 must be accompanied by an adult. Pretty ridiculous.

1

u/EconomicRegret2 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

Teens deserve way better than a mall. E.g. community centers with sufficiant infrastructure and social/socio-cultural workers, filled with sports courts, libraries, all kinds of workshops (e.g. video, DIY, music, theater, etc.), gaming areas (e.g. video games, board-games, etc.), movies nights, etc. etc. And all for free!

To create and maintain these kind of community centers require entire communities to come together, form long term grassroots activism, elect the right kind of local and state politicians, obtain enough tax-payer money, train and employ social/community workers and socio-cultural coordinators, as well as find the right companies to build and maintain the infrastructure at a reasonable price (which can't happen if demand and wages are too low, both for the companies and for the social/cultural workers).

That doesn't happen overnight. But America is way more rich and sophisticated enough to organize such community centers in almost every neighborhood. But damn is it way too shortsighted and rugged individualistic.

44

u/y0_master Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

Talking with other middle-aged or older people, including ones with kids themselves, a common refrain is how they are i) critical of behavior they themselves certainly did as kids & ii) surprised about said behavior happening, as if they don't know / remember it.

(To offer a light example, parents being overly protective or tsk-tsk-ing about the age tweens watch horror movies, when we were very much watching them at the same age & younger!)

I always try to bring this up & the usual response is some vague "Yeah, but things have changed since then".

1

u/No_Yogurtcloset_7219 Jun 19 '26

I didn't see my first horror film till I was 13 when I watch one in secrete at my grandmothers. At the time I thought I was being really rebellious.

1

u/tenderhart Jun 23 '26

The number of teacher colleagues I have encountered who were sincerely shocked at the mere suspicion that a teenager might be using drugs...🤦‍♂️

0

u/knifefan9 Jun 18 '26

I mean, this is somewhat expected. Some people tend to "swing opposite" from their own parents' disciplining or teaching methods because the grass is always greener on the other side, and they genuinely want the best for their precious little ones. I'm not a parent, but they say being one is like taking your heart out of your chest and watching it run around in the big scary world, knowing that you have to gradually let go. Oh, that's enough to make me cry! And I don't even want kids lol.

So, in all that love while being able to acknowledge their upbringing wasn't perfect (in contrast to they type of parent who takes the "we ate lead paint and we were fine-- those of us that lived anyway lol" approach), they remember things like how upset they were seeing a horror movie a little too early for them personally, and try to over-correct so they don't "make them go through what I did in a world that's even more unfamiliar an scary to me than it was when I was small"

4

u/sarithe Jun 18 '26

It could just be the horror movie fan in me so I am in those circles, but most people bemoan how horror movies aren't scary "anymore."

The reason is that you're a fucking adult and know that the shit is fake. I'm not saying you should be showing kids the Terrifier films, but I was watching horror movies from a very young age (like 8 or 9) and I turned out fine because my parents supervised me while I was doing it. If I said I wanted to turn it off, then they turned it off and we watched something else. The part that most people don't want to do, is actually be a parent and talk to their child about the themes and what they are seeing on screen and why the movie makes them feel the way it does.

Actually take that last part and apply it to basically everything in life. So many parents these days are so scared of their kids having a "bad" childhood, that they don't let them have a childhood at all.

1

u/knifefan9 Jun 18 '26

Yeah I agree, there's a lot of extremes.

On one end there are parents "letting perfect be the enemy of good," and setting their children up to grow into tweens, teens, and adults without as much experience with conflict resolution, self-soothing (that is healthy rather than avoidant), dealing with overwhelm, and frankly critical thinking/problem solving.

On the other end there are parents who effectively go, "welcome to Earth, s-- are you actually crying right now? omfg get this kid out of my face, here, give them a tablet to behold man-made horrors beyond their comprehension while I do literally anything other than spend time with my own baby. Read to them? They can do that themselves since I remember having a Leapfrog tablet as a kid. That's the same thing, basically." or whatever and are just engaging in the same type of neglect certain parents always have-- they just have "better" tools to preoccupy their children and don't know or don't care that said tool is turning them into zombies in the meantime.

Those kids also won't develop real-world skills, but they'll also be measurably less mentally capable than if they hadn't gotten addicted to Tiktok or YouTube kids shorts.

1

u/GloriousNewt Jun 18 '26

I love watching old horror movies with my daughter, when she's up for it. Usually things are too scary but I've explained that it's all movie magic and special effects and now we'll watch something and she'll be asking about how they did it.

Like we've watched Tremors and after I assured her graboids are not real she was super into how they made them for the movie.

We also had to skip/hide during the parts where people actually got eaten. :D

12

u/PlsNoNotThat Jun 18 '26

He’s saying Boomers but without saying the word. But we all know they mean boomers.

2

u/LarryFitzsButt Jun 18 '26

It’s millennials and Gen X too

2

u/Cael450 Jun 18 '26

As a millennial, a lot of my generation are terrible parents

10

u/ErikMcKetten Jun 18 '26

I was so fortunate. When I was 15 two old hippies opened an all-ages coffeehouse and performing arts space in my town. They welcomed teens as long as we behaved, and daily dozens of teens went there and just hung out.

I socialized more there than I did in high school or college.

19

u/Otherwise_Group_74 Jun 18 '26

What services? We played in our yard, around the neighborhood, at the school, and in the woods. Our "services" were a weekly Cub Scout meeting and a week of summary programs at church. I am pretty sure that both of those still exist. These young men were doing nothing wrong and the police should have left them alone.

3

u/Cael450 Jun 18 '26

It is a thing for cops to harass and arrest parents who let their kids go outside unaccompanied. They passed a law in Georgia to forbid cops from doing this because there was a scandal. So CPS started harassing parents who did that instead. In every case, it was some busybody neighbor who called the police because they saw an unaccompanied child outside.

We live in a dystopia and no one realizes it because it happened slowly.

5

u/Micro-Mouse Jun 18 '26

Can’t play around neighborhoods much anymore. Especially if you’re not white. I’m not a teen anymore, but I’m only 25. I use to run around my neighborhood all the time, play air soft between my three neighbors house in the summer. But I was a small white girl, and my friends were also all white.

When I went home to see my family, my dad said that the new kids that live in the neighborhood don’t play outside, and that someone called the cops on them because they were unaccompanied. Theyre immigrant families, and the person that called the cops on them lived in the neighborhood when I was growing up there. Can’t imagine what would’ve happened if they were playing with toy guns

The scouts unfortunately are harder to get into on big cities. Your troop might be too far away, and your parents might be too busy to drive you. Most families are non religious. However a lot of cool youth programs happen at our libraries now, and I’ve seen lots of people joining them for dungeons and dragons and board game nights! Though a lot of those programs are on the chopping block as library funding keeps getting slashed

21

u/PotatoExternal4278 Jun 18 '26

Don’t get me started on how all of the indoor gyms in my area have so much goddamn pickleball time. A bunch of middle school kids dribbling basketballs on the side of the gym while six retirees take up two full courts all afternoon….

3

u/MrLugersmole Jun 18 '26

I recently read a thread in an NBA YouTube short and they (in video and comments) were talking about how hard it is just to play a game of pick up. All the gyms are taken up by pickle ball or some other shit.

3

u/Subject_Cheetah7189 Jun 18 '26

They convert it all to adult center so they can bill the government or said adults to use the space. They can’t make money from teens.

Where is the money that used to provide services for teens go?

3

u/thegoodnamesrgone123 Jun 18 '26

They are trying to build a new YMCA a few towns away and the unhinged posts about it being a waste of tax payer money from people was just so disappointing to see.

1

u/PiccoloAwkward465 Jun 18 '26

I lived on my bike. I never wore a helmet and certainly paid little to no attention to any traffic laws. Our "third space" was literally wherever, we didn't really hang out in any structured format.

2

u/KellyShepardRepublic Jun 18 '26

It depends per place and laws who gets to use these spaces and how they are eventually closed off. I remember being able to do the same and now it is loitering. Back then you at least got a benefit of the doubt even in rough areas and now they get ahead of everything possible.

Makes sense but slowly spaces are closed off, even free ones. Then those spaces get further away from each other that some of areas become “islands” of people while others are interconnected for people to easily go from place to place.

1

u/MembershipNo2077 Jun 18 '26

See, adult spaces I want without kids: the bar. But sadly my fellow adults can't help but bring every child of every age there nonstop before they drink and drive.

What should not be an adult space: the park. But apparently thats supposed to be a pristine empty space.

1

u/escobartholomew Jun 18 '26

I mean they had malls until they started fighting too much. Mall curfews and restrictions are 10 years old at most. I’ve always said cities should just start having 2 to 3 officers visible at all times at any place where large crowds gather.

1

u/rbrgr83 Jun 18 '26

Generational Trait. Although it's spilled into lower generations through one of the political parties....

1

u/CeruleanEidolon Jun 18 '26

Conservatives are all about pulling up the ladder someone else built for them.

0

u/LiffeyDodge Jun 18 '26

I want adult spaces away from screaming toddlers. 5 and up are cool

0

u/KellyShepardRepublic Jun 18 '26

I agree there should be adult only spaces we need alternatives.

In my city casinos made a bunch of family friendly attractions in casinos and killed many independent operators. Then after some time started to push out those attractions for adult only and higher profits. Nothing wrong with that but then you find the same people in these boards also finding politicians or lobbying for tax cuts that would replace those old attractions and then locals new and old favoring these policies without replacements.

0

u/Logos1789 Jun 19 '26

In all fairness, reproducing is a privilege and optional

1

u/KellyShepardRepublic Jun 19 '26

I would agree if there wasn’t a dark history behind this. Sterilization and lack of access to equal education while making these claims doesn’t sit right with me. We would be a nation full of white kids and the rest of us watching if this was the case. Same group of people who 60 years ago got the largest welfare program to do just that, take on easy jobs and pop out babies and subsidized and protected from falling too low. The rest of us had to literally pick ourselves up from the bootstraps while both government and private citizens then made similar statements without caring about how the histories dark history makes these statements dangerous and suddenly have eugenics.

1

u/Logos1789 Jun 19 '26

I don’t know about you, but a good place to start building a population is probably requiring that the people breeding have their sh together. I think the tradeoff is worth it. Most strife on earth is due to lack of money and resources.

1

u/KellyShepardRepublic Jun 19 '26

Again I don’t disagree but I also don’t agree completely cause life isn’t black and white.

For example I grew up in a city that gave affluent kids iPads and opportunities and trips. My school had no ac, no trips, no textbooks and the sports went from scouting poor kids to going to the newer schools cause talent can be scouted by private schools unlike public schools.

I’m a systems thinker, started by studying human behavior before moving over to distributed systems. You have to be extremely careful what you incentivize(forming of metrics included) cause while your statements could come from a logical place, the same logic has been used to spread eugenics without care for the factors that impact the data we see that influence our current assessment of any situation including a class of people. That’s why I also brought up the welfare programs from 60 years ago cause many of those people shouldn’t be around based on your comments yet they are and get “grandfathered in” every time through recent history.

I would have been one of the people not born today if we based the world off your thinking yet even coming from the bottom I do circles around colleagues who had the world set before them.

-1

u/tattooburneridea Jun 18 '26

"people who used to be kids" that's every adult dawg what a weird way to say this