09/25/23 - Well, all that money you spent on him was wasted then.
“A new park got built near our community, with gym and playground equipment there, so lots of people take walks there at night. I went for the first time today after dinner, and found to my delight that they had swings. But a lot of kids were playing on the swings, so I waited to the side until one opened up. I happily sat down and only swung for maybe a couple of minutes, when a mom took a maybe 7-8 year old kid to my side and told me, “My daughter wants to play.”
Her tone made me really displeased. Like, I waited in line for this too. What’s up with your attitude?
But I was too shy to say I wouldn’t give up the swing to a little kid. Just as I was feeling conflicted, the mom said again, “Okay?”
Like, she sounded so entitled.
In the end, I didn’t say anything and just gave her the swing, because I didn’t want to get into a fight in public. God, I feel so frustrated. Do I not have the right to stand in line and play on the swings just because I’m an adult?”
Comments say, “The reason I work so hard to stay childfree isn’t so I can accomodate all of your stupid brat’s demands. Thanks.”
“The swings in playgrounds are meant for children though. So, I don’t know how to feel about people telling OP to just say no. You can find a bed and breakfast with swings for adults, or buy a swing chair yourself.”
“If you’re gonna be such a spineless bitch, don’t post it on the internet and make other people frustrated too.”
“Just found a hot take that says Wei Chigong [early Tang Dynasty general] beat up members of the imperial family and got away with it, and yet Hou Junji [early Tang Dynasty general] only robbed some peasants and was imprisoned, and that means that Li Shimin [second Emperor of Tang Dynasty] wasn’t actually a good guy, he was just putting on a mask. He’s actually mean and heartless and cruel…
I’m just like…dude, as a normal, average person, how are you putting yourself in the shoes of soldiers turned bandits?
How is it worse to beat up the imperial family than to rob peasants?
Beating the imperial family, at the very most, is only a moral mistake. Robbing peasants is a political and legal wrong. They’re not on the same level at all.
Li Shimin is a nice guy, but he’s not a Nice Guy, okay? He didn’t conquer the world with love and peace. Don’t take his usual friendliness to mean that he can’t be strict when he has to be.
If he sends you to fight a way, and you let your soldiers rob his people, how is it wrong to order you executed? I bet that’s what the peasants wanted.
And not maintaining military discipline is a huge problem for commanders! How can you keep up your fighting form when you’re raping and pillaging all day?
If it’s heartless for Li Shimin to empathise with peasants here, then I hope every ruler can be exactly this kind of heartless.
We need this kind of heartlessness.”
Comments say, “Only robbed peasants?? Only??? What?”
“He was using the title that Li Shimin gave him to rob peasants. But beating up imperial family members was just something Wei Chigong did in his off time.”
“I just don’t get anyone who’s a part of modern society, who still values imperial lives more than peasant lives.”
“My friend just shared with me a conversation she had with her son who’s in second grade.
Just now, her son said to her, “Mommy, you can always kiss me.”
She asked, “Even when you’re as old as daddy?”
Her son is like, “Yup.”
And she’s like, “But I might not want to then.”
And her son is like, “Yeah, that’s right. I guess you wouldn’t want to kiss a creepy old man.”
It took a while before she realised that her son thinks of his dad as a creepy old man.”
Comments say, “Wow, what a perfectly clear understanding of the world.”
“You won’t want to kiss him by the time he’s in middle school—he’ll be covered in acne and grease, much worse than his dad.”
“Boys won’t let mommies kiss them after middle school. If you have a great relationship, you might get away with hugging him in high school.”
“Covering a point that no one else seems to be—I’ve written plenty before about marrying down, but the part I’m writing about today is the worst of all.
If you marry down, and all of your friends marry down, that’s somewhat alright. But what if someone in your friend circle married their own class? Or even married up? They’re switching new houses every five years. You hear that they’ve got a mansion that’s being remodelled too. They’re carrying Chanels and Bulgari every time they head out.
And what about you? You’re providing for an uncaring, poor husband in your own house. That might even be fine. It’s just that your MIL occasionally comes over to criticise everything about your life. The money you make is just enough to not starve, and your husband’s stingy as fuck. His face falls if you so much as suggest you want to buy a new dress. The only comfort you have is that at least you have your own house and your in-laws don’t come over so often. You just have to put up with your horrible husband for the most part.
What if you’re someone who married down while still living with your parents? And your in-laws are from the countryside, the kind that never helps. They give you a 10K red pocket and a basket of eggs and some pork feet when you have a child. And meanwhile, your friends are in month-sitting centres, doing yoga, looking radiant. And you’re holding your baby in the side-bedroom that can’t fit anything, surrounded by plastic containers of shit.
Everyone else’s lives are getting better and better. People who both have real estate before they marry could sell and combine and turn it into a mansion.
You were just like everyone else—a single girl with her own house. And yet, your husband doesn’t have a house, buying a new one is too much trouble, you have to start over collecting points for your school district. When you get invited to your friend’s house-warming party in their new mansion, can you hold back from having a screaming fight with your husband when you get home?
I guess you probably can hold back. Marrying down means you’re learning how to hold back every day of your life. You must be an expert by now.”
Comments say, “People who marry well don’t post about it on social media though. It’s people who are single or marry their own social class that post the most. I don’t know anyone who’s married down.”
“I feel like a lot of girls aren’t exactly looking to marry down. She just hadn’t met anyone she liked when she’s at the right age, so she just chose the best out of what was available to her. They’re not lovesick so much as just…resigned to fate?”
“The worst victim of marrying down is actually the children.”
A tiktok video from the west captioned, “My fourth time crying today, and my emotional support dog is looking at me like this.”
Comments say, “The dog is like, “Fuck, I picked the wrong major. I should’ve been a seeing eye dog instead.””
“Dog: Jesus! Should’ve just grit my teeth and been a drug sniffer!”
“Dog: How about we just both eat a piece of chocolate and die together?”
“Dog: Cry, cry, cry! You’re crying this family apart!”
“East-Asian children’s ultimate fantasy about death is imagining their parents wailing and gnashing their teeth in grief in front of their corpse.
What would they think when they saw my corpse? Would they regret it? Would they feel guilty? Would they regret criticising me, mocking me, oppressing me the way they did? Maybe every East Asian kid has wondered about this. Guilt is the heaviest shackle a parent can lay on their child. Children want to shift that shackle back to their parents in the most extreme of ways. Death isn’t a release for them, it’s a twisted form of revenge.
But what would happen after you died? Would your fantasy actually come true? The story of Nezha [folkloric character] gave East Asian children the answer. Even after cutting his flesh and ripping his bones out to pay back his parents, when Li Jing saw a resurrected Nezha, the only thing he had to say was a cold, curt, “Disobedient brat.””
Comments say, “I’ve thought about it as a kid. For years, every time I thought about suicide, I’d fantasise about my parents grieving afterwards. It wasn’t until I heard my mom mocking and making fun of someone else’s kid that committed suicide, saying that he was ungrateful, he didn’t know how lucky he was, he was irresponsible, so filially unpious, that I realised my fantasies are just that. And so I stopped fantasising about death.”
“A brother of mine committed suicide. Everyone’s been bad-mouthing him for years.”
“My dad’s coworker’s kid committed suicide. Last month, he told my dad over dinner, and my mom and dad just brushed it off with a single line of, “Well, all that money you spent on him was wasted then.” I was sitting right next to them as I listened in silence.”
Under the hashtag #Police report on primary school student severely abused by his classmates, a blogger with an American IP writes, “When I saw this news about what happened in Shanxi State, Datong City, Dacheng Bilingual School, I was totally dumbfounded. In a closed, boarding school, a boy was continually abused and raped by his classmates from second grade to fourth grade. It was only found out by his grandmother when he started showing suicidal tendencies.
My kiddo is also in second grade. I feel like at this age, people are still just innocent, naive kiddos who still believe in the tooth fairy and Santa Claus. I couldn’t believe those two boys knew how to go about raping somebody at eight years old. That they could actually come up with all these degenerate ideas and go about making it happen in reality.
This kind of bullying and abuse is often done as a matter of entertainment and usually spreads as gossip very quickly throughout the student body. Did no one else talk about this? Did the boarding school teachers really not know?
The victim’s family doesn’t want financial reimbursement. They just want those two little bastards and the school to openly apologise. I mean, it’s not like they can demand more. But for the abusers and the school, they won’t actually suffer any consequences for this. It’s such a pity that China has such low payments for emotional damage, and there aren’t any punitive damages. Even if no one went to jail for this, the school would have to be fined into closing down, and the abuser’s family have to be fined into selling their houses to pay back the money, in order for society to learn anything from this at all
The damage to the victim’s body and heart is going to be life-long. This isn’t just going to twist his attitude about sex as he grows up, but his own personality, identity, and sense of happiness and safety. Childhood sexual abuse has been linked to depression later in life. I hope there’s enough love in his family to heal him.
I’ve written before about a case where a boy was abducted by a man and sexually abused for several days. After he was rescued, he returned to normal life with the help of his friends and family, and even publicised his identity and what he went through.
Parents and teachers at school need to remind kids that if they’re bullied at school, they need to tell the teachers and their parents right away. If you put up with it when it’s still light, they won’t give up, they’ll just think they can get away with it and do it more.”
Comments say, “I don’t get why they’d give up on financial compensation, because it’s going to cost money to send their kid to a psychologist, right?” and OP replies, “Because if they demanded money, then the victim would get less support and might even get internet bullied.”
“Tell the teachers? As a fifth grader’s mom myself, I can tell you from experience that telling the teacher accomplishes nothing. Some teachers even tell the students as soon as the semester starts to not bother them with stupid bullshit, because they don’t have time to deal with it all.”
“Oh my god, I’m speechless. Only second grade, and they know about sexual abuse, and they can do it to someone of the same gender? I can’t imagine what kind of stuff they must’ve seen as little kids. I feel so bad for the victim. He’s going to have to use the rest of his life to heal from this. His sexual orientation might even change as a result of this. If the bullies are such bastards at this age, it’s hard to imagine what kind of villains they’ll grow up into. They need to be punished harshly.”
What is the average sentiment towards children on Weibo? I was appalled by some of those reactions to the 1st post.