Arseholes, why are there so many of them?

[MatildaIThink]

It seems to me that the number of arseholes is multiplying at a rapid pace and I am wondering why?

Just from the last week:
One of the parents screaming at the head of the nursery (that my son also goes to), at drop off because they would not accept their child as she had been sick twice, outside, during drop off, was bright green and had a very high temperature.

My husband was out for a run one morning last week, there was a delivery driver with a flat tyre that he was trying to change and my husband asked if he needed a hand which the driver greatly appreciated. My husband said that multiple times whilst they were changing the tire people beeped horns and shouted at them to "get out the fucking way", there was nowhere the driver could have gone, the tyre was completely off the wheel so he could not drive any further and he was pulled over so far the passenger side of his van was in the bushes on the pavement (the next parking area on that road is more than a mile away, but it is a wide road where you could realistically get four cars across so no real issue).

Over the weekend my brother took me and my mum for lunch on Sunday (my husband had our kids at home, normally we would all go, but Mum wanted a lunch with just the three of us as she wanted to talk about end of life care, power of attorney etc. she is not close yet, but wants to get it in place now) to a nice restaurant. It is not a restaurant where one would take young kids, but a family had any they were also letting their children make a lot of noise and run around, after being told to control their children multiple times the manager kicked them out when one of the kids knocked over a waitress carrying food. The family who were kicked out kept making threats to "trash you online with bad reviews" and other similar things as they were leaving.

One of my staff has come in incredibly upset this morning, someone reversed into her in traffic (the reversed at least four meters, possibly five), got out and started screaming at her, saying it was her fault, threatening her, before driving off through a red light. Luckily she has a dashcam and has reported it to the police as well as insurance.

I have noticed that since coming out of the first lockdown there seem to be far more arseholes around and they seemed to have increased their arseholery.

YABU - No, there is the same level of arseholes as before
YANBU - Yes, there are more arseholes and they are worse than ever.

We all have to make certain assumptions about life to make it feel manageable. Like, nothing bad will happen to me. If we did not make these, we would not be able to function. COVID seriously challenged these, and increased general cognitive pressure. You can't live in social groups without compromise but if people feel under pressure this is more difficult for them. We also live in a time when social media, reality tv and the behaviour of public figures values their own needs before anyone elses and that is a part of this too. It is very sad.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow

I often think this is due to the amount of people in the country. Everyone’s on top of each other all the time. In shops, car parks, roads, wherever. Then people get territorial.

M25 is prime for this. Leave the 2 second gap and people just pile in it.

Any motorway within about 20 miles of it is the same and then people settle down and drive sensibly!

A fish rots from the head, and society is no different. Look at our politicians, entitled bunch, fiddling expenses and taking bungs, same goes for local councils. Political parties stirring up hate - calling the other party scum in public. MSM stirring up rage and panic for a few more clicks. I'd quite like to go and live on an island!

@TotallySuper

I think we all had a year off arseholes due to living in our lockdown bubbles and now we just notice them more. There have always been the same amount of arseholes IMO.

I agree with that. They've always been out there, and pre covid, in our "normal" lives, we probably just zoned them out. Now, after so many people have suffered an introverted 18 months, not going out as much, working from home more, etc., we just notice it more after 18 months of "peace" away from them.

@GoodnightGrandma

People seem very entitled these days.

I do think that this is a huge part of the problem, everyone seems to be very aware of 'm'rights' but few are willing to accept 'm'responsibilities', everything has to be someone else's fault.

@MatildaIThink

The recessions of the seventies and nineties were far worse economically that the economic mess from Covid. Far more people lost their homes, many many more had their equity wiped out and/or ended up in negative equity, inflation wiped out many people's savings, pension schemes went bust etc.

Different people have different experiences. Lots of people (probably the majority) didn't lose their homes/jobs/pension funds, and didn't suffer negative equity in the 70's/90's recessions. For lots of people, it really was just "business as normal" if they didn't work in the badly affected industries/areas and didn't need to move house!

Same with covid, whilst lots of people benefitted from WFH, furlough, grants, etc., a huge number didn't. There were over 3 million excluded self employed/freelancers for a start. Lots of businesses have closed down, lots of people have lost their homes, lots of people have run up massive debts just to keep their head above water. Sadly quite a few "excluded" people have committed suicide. Many are still unemployed or working in low paid jobs despite having trades/professions that would be well paid in "normal times".

So, you really can't say that people were worse off in the 70's/90s' recessions. It depends on the person. Lots have really suffered financially due to covid due to the scatter gun approach to government support where some people were showered with support and others were ignored/excluded.

@sst1234

A year ago, I would have said that attributing this to lockdowns is extreme. Now I completely agree. Lockdowns have ruined a generation’s life chances, peoples overall health, many people’s finances and people’s behaviour in general. A government must not be allowed to do this. It’s structured cruelty.

Utter rubbish, how long are we going to blame the lockdown for every little thing? This trend of lack of personal responsibility has been going on much longer than the last couple of years.

A fish rots from the head, and society is no different

But our politicians and other leaders have always been the same - plus ca change and all that.

Utter rubbish, how long are we going to blame the lockdown for every little thing? This trend of lack of personal responsibility has been going on much longer than the last couple of years

And YY to this. Previous generations in our living memories lived through 2 world wars and all the chaos, poverty and destruction that brought - there wasn't the same level of arse-holery from them.

What ‘generation have had their chances ruined?’

Tad over dramatic? My dd 15 is still sitting GCSEs. Ds is still working.

I do think the internet has allowed arseholes to connect in greater numbers so it validates their beliefs.

The biggest arsehole in my view is the doctor who told my 85 year old gran to stop drinking so much tea, as the caffeine wasn't good for her heart.

Dear doctor, do you know what's not good for a widow with not much life left who might die next Tuesday? Taking away the one last pleasure she could actually self administer and enjoy.

Twat.

I work in retail and I can confirm that the general public behave far worse post lockdown than they did previously.

@FreeBritnee

Let’s not forget the terrible daily news. I mean really Armageddon stuff from Covid, to terrorism, climate change to hypersonic weapons. I honestly feel like we’ll all be dead within a decade so what’s the point!

But none of that is new! My daughter was amazed when we talked about how we had to check under the car with a mirror when we worked with the military in the 80s then cross our fingers when turning on the ignition, how we had the evacuation plans in the cupboard ready to go within half an hour, I recall going to school, I'd be about 15 in 1963, not knowing if we would be going home, it was during the Cuban missile crisis and nuclear obliteration was a very real threat. If we had taken the 'dead within a decade' attitude we would have gone crazy.

I’m nearly 50 so I remember a lot of that. The climate change emergency feels different though I think. It’s very final.

Yes for the most part - however in your example of the parent at nursery - I've been that incredibly stressed parent 20 years ago where I simply couldn't take time off even unpaid (I also had no family support whatsoever) and it is horrendous. Clearly that child should not have been in nursery but for the parent to be so insistent suggests there may be more to it.

The other examples, yes people absolutely are arseholes. The other day I got beeped repeatedly by the twat behind me because I stopped to let someone cross at a pedestrian crossing. I will admit that I responded with a stream of invective which means I am probably an arsehole too :)

I also ended up in a row with another tosser (who told me I should 'watch myself') in a local supermarket because he'd been verbally aggressive to a doddery nonagenarian he accused of queue jumping (bearing in mind we all had less than 10 items..). The worst part of that was the other 20 people in the vicinity completely ignored it.

I also find that the people who spout a lot of be kind nonsense (like my twatbadger neighbours who have a big be kind sign on the front of their house) are often the biggest arseholes of all!

You only need to read the covid threads from 18 months ago where some arseholes were using covid as an excuse to publicly humiliate, bully people in supermarkets, public footpaths and parks and you can see how much power they were given to do that and also the theory of every man for himself attitude was proven many times from toilet paper to petrol crisis.

The combination of our incompetent corrupted gov, covid, brexit, supply chain issues, petrol crisis, financial crisis, losing valuable workforce from the European countries and now climate change has pushed people over the edge where people are behaving erratically. I must admit I've also become an idiot as I'm on standby for any confrontation I may face in public. I'm going to underline this standby is not to defend myself in a restaurant or when a shop assistant asks me to do something on their premises but when a member of the general public uses a telling off tone that you would use towards your dog when they misbehave is when I will stand up for myself.

There's asking nicely and then there's a tone you would use it to degrade a person in public. Communication is key, ask nicely and I will move mountains for you. Ask like a entitled knob, then I will crush you with those mountains. Am I arsehole?

I’m nearly 50 so I remember a lot of that. The climate change emergency feels different though I think. It’s very final

I felt like that with the threat of nuclear war between the USSR and America in the 80s - remember that animated film When the Wind Blows? My mum thought the end was coming in the Cuban Missile crisis, my granny thought it was final in WW2, my great granny thought it was final in WW1 and the flu pandemic. Before that it was war, famine, grinding poverty, the Highland clearances for my forefather and mothers, disease, childbirth - and on and on and on.

I think the example being set by our current Tory leaders is partly responsible. Their entitlement, grasping avarice , and "rules don't apply to us" normalises the same behaviour by others

@EvilPea

I do think the internet has allowed arseholes to connect in greater numbers so it validates their beliefs.

Yy to this.

All the bloody echo chambers online echoing and validating people's prejudices . Algorithms reflecting back to people their own bigotry, so when they are challenged in RL they react with disbelief and aggression. Not used to healthy educated debate & instead confusing Facebook click bait for political and scientific fact 🤦🏻‍♀️.

Yes! I’ve found myself asking ‘where did all these arseholes come from?’ or something to that affect multiple times, although I’d say it’s been getting worse over the last few years.

My theory until now was that all the really horrible kids at school grew up and are now adults with kids of their own.
That and I think social media has a lot to answer for. It’s sort of become more acceptable to look out only for yourself and see everybody else as an enemy of some sort.

Off the top of my head some things I’ve seen in the last year or so:

• A grown man run up and push a young boy over in the street, yelling ‘little shit!’. They were nowhere near him and had been on a push scooter next to their mum.

• A woman in asda scream at another that she wished her unborn baby was dead because she was walking too slowly.

• We accidentally ended up walking past the local high school at 3 and several different groups of kids decided to jostle my elderly mother apparently for fun. One group deliberately lined up so she couldn’t get past then laughed at her when she asked to get through. They even mimicked ‘excuse me please’ back at her.

I’ve seen so much of it over the last decade or so, I could swear it’s getting worse!

@EvilPea

I do think the internet has allowed arseholes to connect in greater numbers so it validates their beliefs.

Absolutely correct. I was thinking that the other day. All those outlier thoughts that made you feel alone and so you kept them down. Now they can go online and find friends with the same fucked up mentality and form a group. Terrifying!

Sadly I completely agree with you. I have a customer facing role and the level of entitlement and abuse is getting worse and worse. I am also noticing more impatience and aggression on the roads :(

I think Covid has created a lot of arseholes. I’m probably one of them now. Prior to Covid I always went out of my way to help people, volunteered, gave money to charity etc etc. But I realised during Covid that society doesn’t give a fuck about me. No one protected me while I was vulnerable and waiting to be jabbed. I was threatened with prosecution if my children didn’t attend their Covid ridden schools. People wore their masks under their chins or not at all meaning that I couldn’t even go to the supermarket. Could I get a delivery slot? No! We had weeks of surviving on what we had in the cupboard. I absolutely hate people now and realise that only my family matter. No more volunteering for me! I charge top whack for everything I do, pay as little tax as legally possible, would throw anyone under the bus to get my family ahead. The world can fuck off!

I think people are more stressed and therefore less tolerant.