Why do old white men hate Greta Thunberg so much?

[MotherOfDragonite]

My 65 year old uncle and friends of a similar age (and also white, though not necessarily all British -- others are American, German and Australian) seem to talk about her an awful lot with great vitriol and hatred.

They seem to have shared views about climate change, but I still can't understand why they hate Greta so much. Not only do they comment on her, but they post unpleasant memes about her. While I understand that they fundamentally disagree with the concept of climate change, I don't really understand why a 16 year old girl with Aspergers, who does not live in the UK and who clearly has good intentions even if they disagree with them, is the focus of so much of their ire.

What is it about Greta that older men find so very "triggering"?

Yeah I dunno what those scentists in the Artic/rain forests/oceans have been doing for years and years ...

I know many young women mid 20s who don’t like her

This thread is revealing to me. Like a previous poster Greta Thunberg always reminded me of Jean of arc. Also think she s good as she s an interesting alternative role model for children out there. She has massively highlighted climate change too. Comes across as sincere too. Don t think she s irritating at all. Think people who say the truth are always irritating.

For some people.

if they were her ideas then fine but most of this is coming from a self promoting mother and her daughter has become her voice box.

who else makes a nationwide announcement about her daughters Aspergers diagnosis, before the climate stuff kicked off.

Oh another old white man bashing thread

YABU , Yes.

44yr old white female I don't like her. No problem with her views but she is so pushy with it and has such an attitude i just switch of from her.

Why isn’t she at school? I don’t know if old white men are the only people who find her irritating but they sure as hell aren’t the only demographic.....

I am not quite old white woman and I won’t be joining her fan club.

She annoys me for her attacks on the older generations.
The older generations who had their milk delivered in bottles, bought their coke and lemonade in glass bottles which were then returned for the 3p deposit, rarely flew as the short city break in Amsterdam had not been invented yet, didn’t have their diner delivered to their door by just eats as most takeaways were limited to the local chippie, ready meals were in their infancy and Vesta was introducing the country to freeze dried curry. The first processed foods like chicken Kiev’s were being launched but most people shopped local for local produce.

She comes across as a zealot, which will generally polarize perceptions and reactions.

I wonder if that may be partly down to her AS? I've only worked with AS adults, but have found that they can be inclined to be quite dogmatic and very black and white about stuff.

Older generations burnt shit loads of fossil fuel too it isn't as simple as old vs young.

It's like when people dislike Meghan Markle, ithasto be because she's mixed race and not because they just don't like her for whatever reasons.

Yes, it is a bit like MM, because yeah, people with subconscious prejudice against people who seem weird don't, funnily enough, notice it.

Nice comparison, actually, but there it is. People without autism find autistic people "irritating as fuck".

I think she is doing an important job. Myself and my boys also admire her and similarly participate in this action.

Once again I do wonder why I am on Mumsnet since I'm not sure if it is good for my mental health but she is putting out a message that many do not want to hear, not for glory or fame. I think she is aware of exploitation, she turned down a debate and $100000 from Steve Crowder as she (correctly) guessed it would be a bear-pit and achieve nothing.

As a female Aspie and a mother of two I have come to terms with the fact that I only have to breathe to annoy people. I also think that she has done a lot to bring the fact that she and other female aspies do exist.

This thread is a useful reminder about how hostile the world is to people who want to state facts and do something. Facts don't care about feelings.
It is also a hostile world for Aspies as evidenced by this thread. We are most of the time honest to a fault but we can only be honest based on known data - we can appear to lie and be two-faced beacuse we don't feel safe or haven't got our facts right.

I think she is percieved as a threat - she can see climate change up close and personal - I was also seen as a threat by my peer group. I to have a rather blunt way of communication - more European as it were - this was almost certainly why I missed out on a promotion and struggled to find work.

Also I know she doesn't offer solutions but she is in high school - she is asking those who SHOULD do to do so - but too many are interested in their money-hoarding offshore accounts rather than doing something useful with it.

Your net worth is £0 when you're dead. You can't take it with you.

The older generations who had their milk delivered in bottles, bought their coke and lemonade in glass bottles which were then returned for the 3p deposit, rarely flew as the short city break in Amsterdam had not been invented yet, didn’t have their diner delivered to their door by just eats as most takeaways were limited to the local chippie, ready meals were in their infancy and Vesta was introducing the country to freeze dried curry. The first processed foods like chicken Kiev’s were being launched but most people shopped local for local produce.

Oh god, this sounds like one of those awful Facebook memes that often get shared by the over 50's to remind us all (namely millenials) how much better they are than us.

Greta's message is
Listen to the Scientists - do what they suggest to reduce the scale of climate change

Its very simple and she repeats it very clearly
such that it is now mainstream
which it was not when she started her actions

and her words have reduced the value of many fossil fuel companies
good

She’s a young girl who doesn’t present as conventionally ‘feminine’, visibly doesn’t give a shiny shite what old white men think of her, and who is telling them in brisk and unapologetic terms precisely how wrong they they are.

Hence the huge investment in depicting her as a puppet and/or vulnerable and/or ridiculous.

Howls we didn’t have cleaner energy. It was coal delivered by the coal man and kept in a bunker outside the back door and burnt on an open fire.

Dont think it’s age or gender bias at all. People of all ages and gender dislike her. I hate the way she is being manipulated by others though who are using her popularity to meet their own agendas. It’s disturbing to see.

I think she's awesome. She's made me stop and think before buying stuff and I no longer go for "disposable" cheap clothes. I buy a lot less stuff, but spend more on each item. And I mend things that I would have previously thrown out, where possible

You should have been doing this all along and should not have needed a 16 yr old hypocrite to tell you. It is not as if all this is new. I learned back in 1962 that everything we put down the drain ends back in nature and bees are crucial to our survival.

I would like to add back then we bought our veg etc in paper bags or carried them loose in our shopping bags, our milk came in glass bottles that were washed and sent back to the dairy and it was delivered in electric vehicles. Back then we also walked to school. My mum rode her bike into town to shop - had a great big wicker basket attached to the handle bars. I did the same. We didn't have to lock our bikes up. Many were left propped up on the curb on the High Street. No locks. I was raised in a normal for the day family - in other words they weren't environmentalists.

I can't stand Greta because she is a hypocrite, extremely annoying and probably has been exploited.

Man on the only thing I share on Facebook is pictures of my cats

None of us had ever listened to scientists until Greta piped up on her SM campaign.

Okay.

I am glad she is in contact with Malala - I think she is aware about being a puppet and is acutely uncomfortable about being fetishized this way. She is after all a young girl with limits.

Ironically, my work directly tackles the challenge of clean energy yet I am compelled to fly around the world like a bouncing bomb...

Ok Jamie so each individual person with AS is absolutely wonderful and if anyone says any different, it simply has to be due to their AS and never down to anything else at all?

As a female Aspie and a mother of two I have come to terms with the fact that I only have to breathe to annoy people.

Asbsofuckinglutely. I once got a talking to at work because my colleagues complained that I breathed too loudly. WTF! I was being disciplined for breathing.

JohnMcCain Once again I do wonder why I am on Mumsnet since I'm not sure if it is good for my mental health but she is putting out a message that many do not want to hear, not for glory or fame. I think she is aware of exploitation, she turned down a debate and $100000 from Steve Crowder as she (correctly) guessed it would be a bear-pit and achieve nothing.

On MN, everyone cares about autism, if they can use it to defend an OP's abusive partner or it's a male Sheldon. Genuine autism, especially female autism, jumping up and down in obviousness on their screen, is abrasive, shouty, irritating and so on.

T