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Original poster

Why do old white men hate Greta Thunberg so much?

705 replies

MotherOfDragonite · 21/12/2019 15:57

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"?

OP posts:
larrygrylls · 21/12/2019 18:45

She is intensely irritating, she knows little of the science of climate change and about what is already being done and she picks soft targets.

In addition, as someone said above, she does not need to travel around the World when Skype exists.

I am middle aged, white and male but I know plenty of females of all ages who also find her annoying.

Choice4567 · 21/12/2019 18:47

@MissLadyM Why don't you like Malala?

HowlsMovingBungalow · 21/12/2019 18:47

I also think attending a ER march is bucketlist tick for teens next tick? Next years Glastonbury.
It is bullshit.

WorraLiberty · 21/12/2019 18:47

We can discuss to what extent particular individuals may be more or less irritating than another, when female Aspies aren't automatically perceived as irritating. Culturally, we are not at this point, and on an individual basis, nor are you, otherwise you wouldn't have taken such exception to it.

We can discuss it whenever we please.

Her 'How dare you' speech was irritating as fuck and would have been if it had been delivered by girl/boy/man/woman or dog.

Nothing to do with her AS and everything to do with ridiculous patronising overacting imo.

roiseandjim · 21/12/2019 18:48

I'm a white girl in my 20s and I can't stand her.

Ohyesiam · 21/12/2019 18:50

Because she’s right.

midnightmisssuki · 21/12/2019 18:51

No one I know likes her either 🤷🏻‍♀️

koshkat · 21/12/2019 18:51

I'm a white girl in my 20s and I can't stand her.

Well get a fucking grip of yourself then. How pathetic.

Skidzer · 21/12/2019 18:55

@Koshkat I suggest you get a grip of yourself as you're coming across as frenzied to me at least.

Bluerussian · 21/12/2019 18:56

I've come across that attitude too, op and don't understand it. I think she is admirable and would be proud to have her as a daughter; people don't have to agree with her but the nastiness is unnecessary.

One elderly man of my acquaintance scoffs at a young girl who hasn't been to university and studied meteorology, "telling us what to do". Another one derides her appearance. Are they jealous I wonder? It's so stupid, it's not as if we see her on the news all the time either.

UtuNorantiPralatongsThirdEye · 21/12/2019 19:01

Lots of people dislike her, probably 50:50 split of the people I know.
When I saw that "how dare you" speech I actually thought it was some type of pisstake, she behaved ridiculously.

JamieVardysHavingAParty · 21/12/2019 19:03

I am sure you did find it irritating. We've covered that. It wasn't a random speech delivered by a dog. (I'm not saying you would have liked the speech if it was delivered by a dog!) That speech and its delivery reflected the speaker. If she didn't have AS I imagine she would have delivered it entirely differently, as the whole way through, she sounds like someone with AS!

You didn't like the way she said it because it was patronising and overacting, etc, but how can that be divorced from the fact that she has a neurological condition sometimes classified as a social communication disorder? This kind of thing is explicitly one of the issues for autistic people.

It's like remarking that you find it really annoying when someone with Tourettes keeps having involuntary tics, but you'd find it just as annoying if someone without Tourettes did the same thing. Yeah, but they wouldn't.

larrygrylls · 21/12/2019 19:09

It is odd that the same people urging us to listen to ‘experts’ on Brexit are more than happy to listen to a 16 year old on a subject of considerable scientific and ethical complexity.

It is just about the ‘woke’ feeling that they are on the ‘right side of history’.

LakieLady · 21/12/2019 19:11

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.

Grin That's my childhood and teenage years you're talking about, @Dontsweatthelittlestuff! We had a coalman deliver feck knows how much coal every winter, because we didn't have central heating. My dad cycled to work because in the 50s you had to be really well off to afford a car (although he did get a motorbike in 1960). My parents grew a lot of their own veg because they were poor, not because they were green. My mum didn't get a tumble drier until 1970, because they couldn't afford it.

These things were aspirational, and as they got cheaper they got more commonplace, but no-one realised the environmental cost. Even after Schumacher published "Small is Beautiful" in the early 70s, it still wasn't recognised.

Some people still don't want to know the cost, because they don't want to have to go back to living like poor people because the planet can't afford the price. People like Greta Thunberg are shouting the price from the rooftops, and it makes people uncomfortable. The science is unarguable now, everyone knows that, but some people want to carry on sticking their fingers in their ears and pretending it isn't happening. Greta's words being regularly on the news makes it hard, which makes her unpopular.

Smilethoyourheartisbreaking · 21/12/2019 19:11

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

PaddyF0dder · 21/12/2019 19:12

She reminds old men of their irrelevance, failure and mortality.

1Morewineplease · 21/12/2019 19:13

Not huge fans in our household.. two late fifties and two young twenties.
The whole thing with this young lady seems far too manipulated and a bit creepy.
That being said, we love her sentiment and passion.

HowlsMovingBungalow · 21/12/2019 19:14

Agree @larrygrylls.

WorraLiberty · 21/12/2019 19:14

If she didn't have AS I imagine she would have delivered it entirely differently, as the whole way through, she sounds like someone with AS!

And there it is Jamie - you imagine.

The truth is some people find her irritating and some don't. You're hell bent on believing that every person on this thread who finds her irritating, does so because she has AS.

And yet you just imagine Confused

RhinoskinhaveI · 21/12/2019 19:15

a young woman who is taken seriously is a threat to male power, if a young girl like that has a voice then all the other women would want one too and men (who in days of yore could take it as read that all women would instinctively defer to them) will have to compete to be heard and to get what they want.
Of course they are reacting against her, no-one willingly concedes territory which they consider rightfully theirs

BerwickLad · 21/12/2019 19:15

I am not old, or white, or male and I think she's annoying. Mostly because of the preachy middle class finger pointy movement that has grown in her name and which she has done nothing to distance herself from. Public school kids blocking roads preaching to people? Seriously, fuck off.

WorraLiberty · 21/12/2019 19:16

She reminds old men of their irrelevance, failure and mortality

Even those who fought in the war, for her right to freedom of speech?

Irrelevance?

JamieVardysHavingAParty · 21/12/2019 19:21

And there it isJamie- youimagine.

The truth is some people find her irritating and some don't. You're hell bent on believing that every person on this thread who finds her irritating, does so because she has AS.

And yet you justimagine

Actually, I don't "imagine". That's a word put in to soften my post, to avoid it coming across as more didactic than I want. If she didn't have AS, she would have a different brain, and be a different person and so would speak differently. Logic.

I have not at any point said "every person on this thread who finds her irritating, does so because she has AS". But it's playing a role the size of Canada, all right.

JamieVardysHavingAParty · 21/12/2019 19:22

Er, pretty sure the likes of Jeremy Clarkson are a bit young to have fought in the second world war.

BerwickLad · 21/12/2019 19:26

Old white men can't do anything right, can they? They've even gone and got voting all wrong. By a massive majority. They're all so wrong, wrong, wrong and should sit in the middle of roads emoting like blue haired pricks about polar bears and killing the planet.