Slashdot Mirror
Old People Enjoy Reading Negative Stories About Young
A study by Dr. Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick and co-author Matthias Hastall suggests that your grandma's self-esteem gets a boost when she hears about the stupid things young people do. "Living in a youth centered culture, they may appreciate a boost in self-esteem. That's why they prefer the negative stories about younger people, who are seen as having a higher status in our society," said Dr. Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick. From the article: "All the adults in the study were shown what they were led to believe was a test version of a new online news magazine. They were also given a limited time to look over either a negative and positive version of 10 pre-selected articles. Each story was also paired with a photograph depicting someone of either the younger or the older age group. The researchers found that older people were more likely to choose to read negative articles about those younger than themselves. They also tended to show less interest in articles about older people, whether negative or positive."
That certainly explains the widespread appeal of youtube fail videos starring spectacular parkour and skateboard wipeouts.
The youth is wasted on the young, but the decrepitude is aptly deployed on the geezers.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Schadenfreude (Scha¦den|freude)
Pronunciation:/d()nfrd, dnfryd/
noun [mass noun]
* pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune
+
"Get off my lawn"
=
TFA??
...to the farmers' market?
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Reminds me of all the news stories who point out how today's 20- and 30-somethings are living at home with their parents, as opposed to the baby boomers who were ambitious and hardworking and started their own households in the early 20's. You can tell they were aimed at older readers because it ignores the fact how the boomers' greed destroyed the current economy, thus necessitating their children and grandchildren to stay home because they can't find jobs.
That would explain why we've been told, since the beginning of time, that society is collapsing and "kids have no respect these days":
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."
~ Socrates (399 BC)
Warning: This sig is not thread safe. For more information see Slashdot's sig policy.
"Trip and break your arm getting off my lawn! "
(which reminds me of the old joke...
A young person in a sports car cuts off an old lady in a Cadillac.
the old lady honks in irritation and the young person shouts out, "you were too slow! I'm younger and faster!"
to which the old lady guns her Cadillac into the sports car shouting, "Well I'm old and insured!"
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
When I was young, old people were still properly annoyed at the stupid things we used to do, instead of secretly enjoying it!
People like to read stories that confirm their own preconceived notions.
"Damn kids, back in my day we didnt do that sort of thing, we did it another way, and it was better! Kids ain't got no respect these days. And see? This book proves I was right!"
I'm not entirely sold on the self-esteem would explain this: the elderly could be more pessimistic, perhaps they had a more negative experience during childhood (WWII anyone?) that they can better relate to, or perhaps they're cranky that they're about to die and jealous of the kids that can actually go out and have fun.
While I'm not entirely familiar with German culture (although i should be, half my office is German!), Europeans seem to have a much more respectful attitude towards the elderly than, say, the US (as can be seen, for example, by the number of elderly going to retirement homes, as opposed to being with the family). One way to test assertion this would be to compare the results with similar studies using polar opposite societies, one that is well known to respect the elderly (Japan? Italy?), while the other less so (US?). In addition to providing more credibility, it may also shed light on whether it's because the elderly are just simply cranky. just my $0.02
This just in: Young People Enjoy Reading Negative Stories About Old People.
You can even see the movie version of this joke in "Fried Green Tomatoes (1991)"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101921/quotes?qt0443462
And young people love reading negative stories about old people. i.e. this one. So what.
Those folks that want the young to be mad at the old so that they can get enough support to push the Social Security Trust Fund onto the stock market, where it may be more easily separated from the American people?
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Each story was paired with a picture. All they've proven is that old men like looking at pictures of hot young girls!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."
~ Socrates (399 BC)
Unfortunately, there is no evidence that Socrates ever said that. Your quote first appeared in the book Personality and Adjustment in 1953. There is no evidence of the quote before that date. See
http://www.bartleby.com/73/195.html
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=398104
Ummm so the lower status people living in an ageist culture enjoy something negative about the higher status people? Wow who would ever have imagined? The sad thing is that someone was actually paid to "discover" this utterly obvious bit of human nature.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
I would suggest that many 'old' people don't think of themselves as old. Thus they tend to see younger people as their near peers, and older folk as, well, old folk. So when we see our 'near peers' do something that we are too wise to do, we judge them as less than ourselves (and have a satisfying ego moment). And when we see 'old folk', we just seem to have less in common with them.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Like we really needed someone to tell us that old people are the worst people on this planet.
Unfortunately, there is no evidence that Socrates ever said that. Your quote first appeared in the book Personality and Adjustment in 1953. There is no evidence of the quote before that date. See
If you want to get technical about it, there is no direct evidence of Socrates saying anything. Most of what we know about him is through second hand accounts.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
You guys on your you tubes suck. Now, GET OFF MY LAWN!
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
...and in other obvious "news," teenage boys like to lie about largely fantasy sexual conquests! --- Oooh...wait, maybe I can get a federal grant for that study...!
From TFS: "They also tended to show less interest in articles about older people, whether negative or positive."
So ... even old people don't like or care about old people?
Terrorist, bomb, al Qaeda, nuclear, yellowcake, kill, assassinate. Carnivore is dead... long live Echelon.
Youth-centered culture? Is that why the boomers are doing everything they can to ensure that no subsequent generation will have the same prosperity they did?
The works of Plato and Xenophon are direct evidence.
Most of which were by people who directly knew him (i.e. Plato) as opposed to someone who lived in 1953.
(+1, Disagree)
Followed by, "Low-Digit Slashdotters Enjoy Reading Stories About the Failures of Other Websites."
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
...and makes it appear that they have something to do with each other.
Negative news is more interesting than positive. People are more attractive to photos of attractive strangers than of unattractive strangers. Throw in another fact, old people are older than most people making news, and you get the results of this study. If the photo is of a well known celebrity or politician, it would still be clicked on more if he was in a scandal. And then another fact, people learn discretion as they age. Some of those young people having bad things happen to them are just immature. Someone established in business or society knows better than to appear on youtube falling down drunk.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
How does this compare with young people's enjoyment of negative vs. positive storeis about old people? Because unless such a study shows that young people enjoy reading positive stories about older people more than negative stories, I don't see that this study has shown anything surprising or interesting. In fact, I don't see how this wouldn't boil down to "People in Group A enjoy reading negative stories about opposite Group B". I bet Democratics enjoy reading negative stories about Republics, Atheists about Christians, Children about Parents, Men about Women, Gamers about Non-Gamers, Nerds about Non-Nerds, Straights about Gays, I could go on.
Didn't their society end up collapsing? Yes, the human race went on, but with quite a gap in the ideals of that culture.
From the blurb at the top, it sounds as though the researchers could have misinterpreted their results. I can't imagine an old fuck (love ya Georgie) like me getting an ego boost from seeing young folk fail, except for the mentally challenged or those in the beginning stages of dementia. I don't have much time left and it does my heart good to see younger men and women succeeding in every human endeavor around the world which, of course, includes my children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews.
Yes, and it collapsed because their warrior class spent all their time playing "oil the spear" with young boys. See? Kids destroyed ancient Greece. Q.E.D.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."
~ Socrates (399 BC)
Unfortunately, there is no evidence that Socrates ever said that. Your quote first appeared in the book Personality and Adjustment in 1953. There is no evidence of the quote before that date. See
http://www.bartleby.com/73/195.html http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=398104
Although, from that second link, they make it clear that Plato claimed Socrates had made statements to that general effect, and Plato himself had directly stated something similar -- so while Socrates may not have said those specific words, it's pretty clear that both Socrates and Plato were saying things that were so similar as to be practically identical when the vagaries of translation are taken into account, as did Hesiod at roughly the same time. So the OP's point, that "the kids these days are all lousy slackers" was being made 3000 years ago, is still valid.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Because they like to dump their problems on the young generation in the form of short-term gains.
Physorg.com covered this story two days ago. Here is a link to the original article from Ohio State University which sponsored the research.
Many people believe there are multi-generational economic/social trends- I think there is more to it than carmudgeony old people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondratiev_wave
love is just extroverted narcissism
at least, not as far as this grandma is concerned! I think it's just another attempt to force a wider gap between the generations (and judging by some of the responses here, it's not a difficult task). Oh, and just for the record, I am not a 'miserable shit' and I do NOT vote Republican. Talk about generalizations...
So the OP's point, that "the kids these days are all lousy slackers" was being made 3000 years ago, is still valid.
That is exactly what I meant.
Thank you for replying while I was busy.
Warning: This sig is not thread safe. For more information see Slashdot's sig policy.
and her co-author Matthias Hastall
Heck, I feel better already! They should do this study in South Korea!
Set your phasers on "funky"!
wtf? I guess it was the age...
Whenever you start segregating into groups, you'll find that it results in an us and them mentality. Often that will result in appreciation of anything that makes "them" look bad and "us" better.
I'm sure that the same results would have been observed if the groups were conservatives reading negative stories about liberals or vice versa.
Well...That just burns my britches!...Those meddling kids....There ought to be a law....Feh!
It's probably necessary for the elderly to read these articles and raise their blood pressure.
After all, it's probably the the closest thing to exercise they can safely accomplish.
Given that newer, healthier folks are popping up daily; it concerns me that the youngsters have not learned very well from the mistakes of biblical proportions that others like myself have made. Lessons that the unlearned will learn will be repetitive, merciless, and unyielding.
The works of Plato and Xenophon are direct evidence.
Also this video.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Most of which were by people who directly knew him (i.e. Plato) as opposed to someone who lived in 1953.
Yeah, that's kind of what I meant by second hand.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Nah, you're getting it wrong. Obviously, military spending destroyed ancient Greece ;)
If by collapsed you mean invaded by "barbarians" that basically absorbed the Greek ways as their own, then have the same be done to them by the Romans (that then "collapsed" into the European nations and the various churches of christianity).
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Am I the only one who comes to think about the legendary Monty Python sketch?
Muddying the waters even more, Plato also sometimes used Socrates as a character in some of his stories to represent a certain viewpoint (aka socratic method) and not because Socrates necessarily said any of the things his character said
Nah, you're getting it wrong. Obviously, military spending destroyed ancient Greece ;)
Yes, they spent all the money on oil.
Be seeing you...