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[–]RamblingOtter 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

There are several issues at play here.

If you drill down to the root of it, the average man does not want to be handed a huge paycheck every month for simply existing. OK, I tell a lie, that would be mighty fine. But it's obviously not realistically going to happen now is it.

So the average man, like all average people, has to work for their lives. When their in their teenage years, they don't have a lot of responsibilities in life. They may have a girlfriend to date, a shitebox car to run, a couple of hobbies, maybe going out with the boys every other week, but most of their life is taken care of by parents. As they get older, they will need and/or want more things. Such as if that girlfriend becomes a wife, if their parents house is no longer their home and they need to pay rent/mortgage, that shitebox car has had its day and he now needs something reliable to get to a job that he can survive in.

Whether or not you necessarily agree about that's how life should be or not, it is the general progression of the average man.

If a man has left with no education and thus no real value to the workforce, sure he can join McDonalds. And while he's a teenager that may be just fine. But as he gets older and wants to progress in life, that McDonalds salary won't cut it anymore. Similarly the graduate who has just left higher education and is still working his McDonalds job he had while working in university/college wants to make use of that qualification, not be stuck flipping burgers for his trouble.

What men want is to know that there is a route upwards. When a man knows that there is no route upwards and this is it for him, that's not a good position to be in. Whether he's the guy who's gone to the mediocre best he can in his field, or he's the guy who fucked up school and facing 50 years of minimum wage before he retires, everyone wants to know that there is some route out. Whether it's further education as an adult, traineeships that actually mean something, not just McDonalds managers, apprenticeships that will teach you a trade that's useful i.e. plumbing or electrical, not needlepoint or bullshit sales jobs.

The trouble is a lot of kids figure out really early that there is no route upwards. Their parents have demonstrated that by holding onto dead end careers while our government over here in the UK has made higher education so expensive, it's completely inaccessible to all bar the very rich or those on benefits. The average middle class man right now simply cannot afford the £60,000 to put a single child through university and the prospect of telling an 18 year old that that's what they're going to owe before they've done a single day in their chosen profession - if they even have a clue what they want to be at that age - it's all rigged.

These kids aren't stupid, they know the game is rigged, they know they're likely fucked out the gate.

And then you wonder why they act up?

[–]LyingSpirit472 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

While you make a good case, that's a case for "okay. Don't even bother going to these places. No one is holding a gun to your head saying 'work at McDonald's or we shoot you.' If the game's this rigged, then simply saying "we want more money, we want benefits, and if you can't give us this, we won't work for this little.'.

By contrast, acting up in these jobs? THAT'S what can turn that route upwards into a route downwards very, very quickly. When you have no route upwards and you're at your dead end and it's never going to get better than this, all you have left to sell yourself on is being a reliable worker and someone who can fill the role. And if you do that, then at least you can make some laterals for slightly more here or there, possibly even break through and get past that dead end one day.

Acting up and sabotaging things, on the other hand, will likely lead to you getting fired from these jobs...and if you're really in a situation where you're at your peak and your dead end, any bridge you burn means that much more and will mean you'll only put yourself in a worse situation. Even if you're in the "sabotage things so it goes viral on TikTok", 1) it won't go viral when everyone else does it, and 2) It'd last maybe an hour at most, and it likely wouldn't even make you notorious enough to have people want to see your Twitch or pay to see you on OnlyFans.