I had a bit of a poke at a particular slice of humanity last month — that ever-growing segment of our society who get outraged and offended over anything and everything. From the feedback I got from friends after that issue of NZV8 hit the news stands (which was a lot more than usual), it seems that the behaviour of these constantly-offended people — mostly two or three decades newer and shinier than us old dinosaurs — is pissing everyone off. It’s quite a topic of conversation now; not to the extent to which everyone I know expresses their hatred for the current Labour government, but it’s getting up there.
Old mate Andy Smith from Levin said, “I think your article in the latest magazine is hugely relevant as it applies right across all of society, not just. Your Straight Talk column re ‘Offended’ is right on the money. My wife and I don’t do Facebook as we can’t stand the trolling keyboard warrior shit that goes on, so we don’t even know the worst of it. But there’s a lot of people in the real world who share your sentiments. Good on you for standing up to this crap. I think a lot of younger parents are to blame. They told their kids that they’re perfect, there’s no such thing as ‘failing’ or ‘losing’, and a lot of these kids become little shits, and then older shits, and respect for others never enters their distorted brains.” When we had a chat about it on the phone a bit later, Bill went on to say, “I don’t know where or how this will end, especially with this ‘woke’ government we have setting a ludicrous example and exacerbating the problem. I’ve learnt with my daughters that I have to be so careful when discussing things like sexism, racism, and even electric vehicles. Thankfully my son is more realistic.” Bill went on to say, “Younger generations seem to have a view that older, white males are the cause of the world’s problems. Most of us think that’s pretty unreasonable, because the vast majority of us have worked bloody hard throughout our lives, did the right thing, paid plenty of taxes, and brought our kids up well.” There’s another good point hidden away within Bill’s very astute comments. While we’ve all learnt to carefully navigate our way through conversations with our kids, or our younger work colleagues, we older ‘pale stale males’ have had to learn tolerance, become more considered in our thinking, and more cautious with what we say — but I don’t seem to see any compromise coming from the outraged and offended modern generations. There’s an important point here before any younger readers look at this and think this is just an old vs young thing — this is actually not the case at all — I know plenty of older people who are self-absorbed wankers, and heaps of younger guys and girls who have a fantastic attitude — I got to know lots of them when I was racing in the South Island 2KCup series. The reality is, however, that most of this bullshit behaviour is coming from people in their 20s and 30s, and perhaps even into their 40s. That’s just the plain old truth right there.
