He’s always wore sketchers. Like since he was 4. Recently, he got really emotionally taking about shoes he wanted for middle school. He said if he doesn’t get Nikes he’s going to get teased. Great fucking marketing work Nike.
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It’s not a Nike thing. It’s a kid thing. Kids are dicks, sorry
Is that why Apple has got the US by the balls because people want to avoid the dreaded green bubble in iMessage? I’m not from the US so that might be me misunderstanding the situation, but I’ve been told that even many adults in the US view that as a valid reason to avoid anything that’s not an iphone, because of some social stigma attached to the green bubble.
As an American I’m still not convinced.
Apple successfully sold themselves as a better choice, the “in”thing - to adults. Most adults I know have iPhones and the ones who don’t seem self-conscious about it. It might have partly to do with Android phones originally sold as the budget alternative. We’re the shallow ones.
Kids can take their cues from adults: they see iPhones as the “better”, more desired choice. But also take it to the next level, with teasing and bullying.
I find it hard to believe anyone cares about the color of text bubbles, especially since kids don’t use iMessage, despite all the media making that claim. It’s just an excuse, but the social stigma is real
Green bubble shaming is real and I felt it in middle school but more so in highschool from my own softball team. Hated that shit, but I loved my Moto g7 play so those bitches can fuck themselves.
You can call it social stigma but it’s really just that there’s more you can do when texting someone else with an apple phone. A lot of the time the same messaging has a totally different vibe than when both people are on iPhones. Things can be lost in context etc.
Some of that has disappeared with RCS support, fortunately.
But yes, Apple successfully positioned their texting app as a rich formatted chat app when used between iPhone users, behaving more like WhatsApp or KakaoTalk or other chat apps than like traditional texting. But when messaging people without iPhones, it was just standard texting (worse, since they would degrade the quality of MMS images more than necessary, as I understand). To the uninformed, this seemed like everyone else were the ones lagging behind. “How could your phone be any good? Images you send are terrible. I can’t name chats that have you in it. If I react to your messages it spams the group chat.” Etc.
Brilliant, but absolutely evil, move by Apple. Unfortunately it worked. The only reason I use an iPhone today is that years ago I got tired of being left out of conversations and media sharing by my family and my wife’s family, who all use iPhones. So when my OnePlus 7T Pro 5G McLaren Edition died an early, watery death (rest in peace, king among phones) and nothing else really wowed me in the Android space at the time, I bit the bullet and went to the dark side. I enjoy the iPhone, but I’m still bitter about why I got it.
I broke down and got an Iphone because everyone I know expects me to just magically know how to use any piece of tech. I got one just so I could help family with theirs and I can say I enjoy it more than any android I ever had.
Yep. Agreed
Most of my immediate family are on Android and use Signal. I’m happier this way.
When I was a kid, there was a phase where everyone was obsessed with red flannel. Went on for like 3 months.
Imagine a pro dominantly black/Latino school in the hood where we’re all dressing up like Al Borland from Home Improvement.
I mean, I can see it
Caprice (or Taurus?) police car and fingerless glove really date this photo.
That sounds awesome.
It’s both. Kids suck and can be clique-like over the dumbest things. But these corporations also realize the amount they can make when their brand is a “status symbol”, and they purposely market around that.
Because they learn from their families, usually. I remember the uppercrust side of my family kicking dirt from a family member’s grave onto his second wife’s grave. So classy.
I got teased for my shoes. I got better shoes, I got teased for my jacket, I got a better jacket. So then they just made shit up to tease me about.
I saw the fucker that bullied me relentlessly for all three years in middle school about 10 years later. He was pounding stakes in the ground setting up for a carnival. He stopped me in apologized which was kind of surprising. I gave him an absolutely hollow but convincing thanks and what about my day.
I did a little light internet stalking, turns out he’s vocal that can’t keep a job, construction companies fire him for “no reason” and he’s now down to whatever local company will hire him for physical labor. The only truly sad part is he has multiple children with multiple women and will not own up to any of them.
Though, I really suppose I owe a lot of who I am to the hell he put me through. Insults mean fuck all to me and I can ignore stress in a bad situation and make solid decisions.
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How much did your repairs cost?
priceless
for everything else there’s mastercard
My grade school bully is serving life in prison for attempted double homicide. IIRC he’s also a sex offender.
Obviously the decisions he made as an adult are his responsibility, but honestly I feel bad for him. He didn’t have much of a chance. His home life was terrible, and he took it out on those around him. He had no positive role models in his daily life besides those at his school, who were always punishing him because he couldn’t conform to a world utterly foreign to his own where people weren’t constantly shitty to one another, and the school didn’t have any better idea how to handle him. The kid had no support. His father was in and out of jail/prison, his mother was overwhelmed. He fell through the cracks.
It’s no surprise he turned out a piece of shit.
That doesn’t excuse his actions. Plenty of people come from difficult origins and are good people leading decent lives.
But I do pity him.
He chose Hookas instead of Hoka
Happened to me. Got Nikes, got teased because they were not a good enough model. Kids are monsters.
Yeah, he’s not getting made fun of for his shoes. They’re just a convenient target of ridicule. Son is about to learn a life lesson.
I’m sorry. People are shit.
Yup. Learned that one back in the 3rd grade. This stuff is hard if you’re not experienced enough to know how people work.
On the upside, I learned that one cannot buy their way into other’s good graces, especially if they’re going to require you to modify your behavior to get there; they’re lying and that was never the issue. On the downside: holy shit that hurts once it goes wrong the first time.
As an adult I can also appreciate that there are situations where you can “buy your way in” to a club or status of some sort. IMO, those situations are generally not worth it to begin with, requiring an never-ending stream of cash to keep up appearances. Plus, it surrounds you with other people that also believe, and are invested, in the program. It’s a recipe for elitism at best, and a big 'ol grift at worst. Better friends and relationships can be had for $0 everywhere else.
Did you try to teach him to be proud of his independence and differences? Maybe you can work with him on nice come backs against the teasing.
As far as I remember (25 years ago), this doesn’t work. Kids just don’t appreciate witty comebacks
If anything they lean in and double down.
It works if they’re not comebacks, but actually hurtful insults.
They go hard, you go harder.
That poor kid is getting beaten up lmao
I avoided bullying in school by being fucking oblivious. It was effective.
Maybe that could be taught
You know what works?
Punching your bully in the face
Oh man it’s like every out of touch bad advice I was given as a kid came back.
Being proud of your independence and difference is bad advice? What’s your world like then, submitting and following others?
Yeah let’s be proud of his independence by promoting him to make choices such as what shoes he wears.
The kid wants something so he can practice the art of being social and fitting in. You are not enriching their lives by giving them the answer without letting them work it out and come to their own understanding.
Comebacks dont matter when you can just point at the shoes and call him broke (im not a teen anymore but come on guys lol, thats when you fit in to avoid issues or have issues, no magical way out)
There is a way out, but it involves not caring what classmates think. That’s a high bar for a lot of kids, especially in middle school. Kids have to come to that conclusion on their own. No amount of adults telling them “you shouldn’t care” will change things.
By high school I found social success after not caring what others thought. But I had been bullied my whole school experience up til that point, so by high school I had run out of fucks to give. In other words, I learned the hard way, but that’s something every teen has to figure out for themselves.
The trick is not to care most of the time. Then the day you start caring and throwing punches they’re not prepared
I don’t know about now, but back in the 90s the magical out was that you punched them in the face.
Back then the concept of a school shooting didn’t exist, and parents didn’t threaten to sue the school every 5 minutes.
So teachers would just let the fights go.
“Oh, Billy tried bullying Bobby, and now Bobby punched Billy in the face? Eh…call me when they break bones and spill blood. I’m going to go make popcorn.”
These days? I’m sure both kids would get expelled.
Yep. I was poor and weird but I was also 6 foot tall and pretty big. Its amazing what one really good punch to the face of someone does to your rep for the rest of high school.
The kids that dont ocassionally crash out to defend themselves are the ones ppl watch as schoolshooters like the ones that never defended themselves growing up and just simmer, the quiet ones
But it’s not “his independence” if it wasn’t his choice to buy those shoes. You cannot be proud of your own choices when they weren’t your own choices.
That’s actually a really good point you’ve made here. It’s easy to defend the shoes as a parent because you’re the one who (1) understands the rationale behind buying them and (2) made the decision to buy them
I wonder if a good decision in this scenario is to just give the child a shoe allowance and let them pick. If they want Nike’s they will have to find a pair that fits the budget
Kids this age are able to pexress what they want. While he probably didn’t at 4, it’s possible he agreed or even asked for the last ones he got.
I guess he had more than one pair and he could have been asking for the last ones.
he could be but hes gonna get roasted for sketchers til college probably
I always knew shoes weren’t going to save my kids from bullying, so I got them karate instead.
The bullying still happened, until they decided it was time for it to stop. Then it stopped.
I don’t have kids, but I do have a brother who is young enough to be my child, and I was very happy when he broke the nose of his bully.
That motherfucker had to learn.
There was some anxiety on my part when my middle child told me he punched his bully in the high school cafeteria. I had felt his punches through a heavy-duty punching shield, and I assumed it would lead to criminal or civil cases. However, when I asked if the bully was ok, he said he pulled the punch.
That sounds like your kids responded in a way that every karate club teaches against.
*Is legally required to say it is against
Every serious bullying incident I ran into growing up ended when a kid got popped in the mouth. Every unserious bullying incident made no impact when I knew if it got serious, I could pop them in the mouth and likely come out on top.
I’ve met way too many adults with personality issues that were a product of adults telling child them “physical violence is always wrong, just tell an adult, be the bigger person” etc. It always needs to be taught as a last resort, and it needs to be understood that even justified violence comes with consequences and other tools must be used first, but when you’ve done everything you’re supposed to and no one is helping to the resolve the problem, sometimes you have to do it yourself.
It ain’t pretty, and it ain’t ideal, but it’s the way it is.
When I was young (in the late 80’s) it was Air Jordans.
But, on top of being teased for not having them, you would also get jumped by kids who wanted to steal them from you.
It’s still air Jordans because Nike is a joke.
I tried, His Mom agreed and already bought him shoes.
One of mine is in high school, and as much as I hate the confirming culture, especially because it’s led by morons and marketing, I choose the same path. I allowed my (now high school kid) to participate in all the awful crap that I would never do myself when she felt middle school pressure. She was in the popular kids group.
The caveat has been it all comes with extreme education from my end. Not demeaning or condescending. I over-preach about marketing/ads/influencers and constantly question why people make the choices they do. I question everything though. “How do you know that?” often leads back to tick tock.
In my experience, the OTHER kids are now getting smarter as they age. Mine is now able to live her life how she wants and is still with that same group , and the kids (I shit you not) look to her for purchasing advice. The vanity kinda goes away as their brains leave that dumb social hierarchy age.
Note: My kids are/were decked out in Nike. We live by the world headquarters and a good chunk of the kids’ parents work there. If that isn’t peer pressure, I dunno what is!
I don’t know if this is a bad idea, but recently all the Chinese manufacturers spoke out about how much the products they make actually cost, you can find the exact warehouse that makes them, and order directly from them, at a ridiculous mark down. Like a 10th of the price, or less. Might be worth some research. I see Adidas sambas for $10, including postage. They’re all there. They just don’t have the actual name label on them yet, because that’s all they do when they reach the distributor, though, so might be useless to you.
How do you find these?
I was too lazy to actually go find the specific warehouses. I just downloaded taobao, it’s partially in English now. I’ve seen and saved a few tiktoks with descriptions of the locations and which places do which items / brands. I just genuinely don’t have time to deep dive and do proper research, though.
The solution to bullying is to do as the bully says /s
It seems to be working for America right now.
Good luck fighting 200 8 year olds
Easy as an adult, not so much as a kid with a similar age
LPT If you back down a narrow corridor, make them come down single file, you can take them one by one.
I went through the same Nike crisis when I was in middle school. Had to have them because my friends had them. Instead I got to joke about my “genuine imitation Nikes” from Kmart.
It’s painful for kids that want to fit in because because they don’t have the wider and wiser perspective that most of us do as adults.
Man you have way more faith in adults than I do
That’s the thing, crap kids are still going to bully.
Pay him self defense lessons. Beating up bullies is cooler than any snaekers
Yeah this is a Nike problem and not something that’s been going on since the beginning of formalized group education.
I got shit on for not having Nike shoes, in the 70s.
Pre-teen is the worst age for this. Just try to get your kid past this the best you can. Happens everywhere, eventually they will mature and learn.
Heck, this is always the plot in school movies.
At all the schools my kids went to… Nobody cares. The kids really don’t give a shit what other kids are wearing. In some ways it’s bizarre given that wasn’t the case when I was a kid. But in many ways it’s great. I rarely ever hear of bullying, kids just are themselves.
Of course thats woke, because they actually speak to the kids and tell them to consider others and will not tolerate intolerance. So I expect schools like these are few and far between.
Same for my kids’ school.
Kids are very materialistic.
When I was in middle school, I was probably the worst for me with the bullying. I came from a family that didn’t have a whole lot of money. Like even the cheap stuff we had to cut corners with. And well I was fully aware, that there was no real difference between what I had and what they had, it didn’t stop the consistent bullying. And the teachers never cared. The other students didn’t care in fact some of them would chime in too. And when that’s your life for several hours a day 5 days a week… You eventually just get to a breaking point.
I’ll never forget the day I basically had a complete emotional breakdown because we were doing back to school shopping at Target, and I saw one of those trapper keepers. With a weird designs on the outside. They were all the rage. And it was like eight bucks I think. My mom did end up buying it for me, but only because her soon-to-be 5th grader, collapsed in the isle crying. I don’t remember what I told her, but all I could think about was having that was going to make life just a little bit easier for me.
Kids can be real assholes to other kids.
Buy him a crowbar.
Ultimate tool against bullying
An old steel rod car antenna is the ultimate. All you have to do is slice the air a few times and the sound alone will keep everyone away
