People becoming increasingly rude and self entitled

[SusanandMidge]

A friend was told to fuck off by a delightful woman at the weekend when she asked a bunch of adults (late 20s, early 30s) to turn off the loud music they were blaring from the pavement and singing along at top volume to at 11pm.

On Saturday I had a woman with a young child in the car refuse to reverse when she was driving the wrong way in a car park and our cars met. She insisted I reverse and even opened her window and said a sarcastic 'now was that so hard' when she passed me.

My neighbour was berated by an affronted father, one night last week, for asking a child aged about 12 who was creating an absolute racket outside her house at about 10.30pm and refusing several requests to move, where she lived so she could speak to her parents. Apparently she really upset the child who arrived home in tears!

Is it my imagination or are people becoming increasingly self entitled and highly indignant when asked to show a bit of consideration or manners to others?

You’ve got the wrong generation there, they’re the ones with manners.

Love how there's 7% who think you're being unreasonable (based on your examples presumably) 🙄

Not that you're trotting out an ageist ignorant stereotype there or anything.

I spent the weekend camping at a Rock Festival.

Honestly didn’t hear one single argument, heard no raised voices (except singing etc), saw no entitled selfish behaviour. You could leave your belongings and didn’t have to worry if they’d still be there when you went back. If you needed help any and everyone would be happy to give it. Not a tiny fest either, about 4000ish.

I came out of there feeling like a real human. That’s how real humans should be.

15 mins in the ‘real’ world soon put an end to that.

Presumably the Rick festival has people who paid, are excited to be there and enjoy other people sharing their passion.

The bus, not so much.

Although not a P&O cruise I've been on a few and only ever encountered rudness/entitlement once and your assumption of it being 60 year olds is so far off the mark.

Accept certain inalienable truths,
prices will rise,
politicians will philander,
you too will get old,
and when you do you'll fantasize that when you were young
prices were reasonable,
politicians were noble, and
children respected their elders.

It goes further back than Thatcher. The 60s saw a decline in deference to people who considered themselves our ‘betters’, ( that’s no bad thing). However, the increasing culture of ‘I know my rights’ and ‘don’t you dare tell off my child’ has gone too far. The sense of not bringing shame on your family has, unfortunately, gone.

I don’t think @PrimitivePerson said all religious people are hardcore or abusive - but individual experiences of organised religion are clearly relevant to any discussion of your belief that it is/was a positive force on society.

I agree that it’s getting worse too - in my experience anyway.

I work on reception at a leisure centre and the utter entitled rudeness we get from people is ridiculous. In the last week I’ve had:

• A parent who had a shouting tantrum because there is a 12 month waiting list for swimming lessons and she wanted her child to start right away and WHY WAS I NOT MAKING THIS HAPPEN?
• A family of 6 who were told that the swimming pool was full so they’d have to wait until enough people got out before they could go through. “Well there’s only 6 of us and my little lad doesn’t like to wait so we’ll just go in now.” Er, no you won’t.
• Someone full on shouting at me for giving her her £2.50 change in 50ps because we’d run out of pound coins. “But I need pound coins.” “I’m sorry, we don’t have any. Would you prefer to pay by card?” No she wouldn’t. She demanded to speak to the manager who also informed her that we didn’t have any pound coins FFS.

During the covid restrictions we had people regularly complaining that they had to pre-book swimming sessions. Then when the restrictions were lifted, the SAME people complained that there was no booking for swimming sessions any more because the pool was filling up too quickly.

I realise that this is all very swimming pool specific but I have noticed it as a general theme in all areas of life. There are a lot of people who don’t like or accept being told no these days for even the most minor of things and they have tantrums to get what they want like spoilt, overgrown toddlers. There have always been rude, entitled arseholes in life but I swear there weren’t so many even just 10 years ago.

Thevproblem is that if you are polite and considerate you begin to feel you’re a walkover and stop being polite and considerate, so it’s a bit of a vicious circle. Further up the thread a poster quoted Margaret Thatcher on there being no such thing as society. Another poster pointed out there was another important quote, but accused her of being hard of thinking.why the rudeness even on MN?

Every single time there's a thread on here posted by a struggling parent or step-parent who is at their wits end or possibly finally lost it with a horrifically-behaved child they are basically accused of child abuse, told to be nicer to said child, called cruel if they plan to kick them out even if the child in question is in their early twenties...

Any sort of boundaries or discipline has posters saying they're in tears to read of the cruely and abuse and "I pity your children".

That thread about French children sitting nicely at dinner - yep you guessed it. French parents are abusive.

The discipline you receive and the boundaries that are in place for you as a child become your inner voice and sense of self-restraint as an adult. Now we're raising a generation that won't have that, what could possibly go wrong?

You're right that parents trusted their children with a lot more freedom.

But if you behaved badly, there were plenty of adults who would take you to task for it and at least some of them would tell your parents. You were out and about but knew exactly what the expectations were. My mum used to tell me that I was representing our family.

Totally this. It's mind boggling how entitled some people are.

Looking hard at my neighbours here.

Have been on Celebrity/Princess cruises with majority American cruisers. The way they speak to staff is unbelievable- so rude. In contrast to the cruise we’ve just been on - P&O from Southampton, mainly Brits.

Ironic that the rudest poster is the one telling us all we need to get religion. Not a great advert.

It's the result of a society that's obsessed with the 'self'.

OH works in a place that's semi retail, A regular customer came in on Saturday and was told that the system he usually used had changed and he'd have to used it differently. Instead of saying, "Ok what do I have to do?" he walked out shouting "Stick it up your fucking arse".
Why people have to be so horrible I do not know - it's not the staff who make the new rules anyway.

I used to live near Oxford Street and went there at least once a week. I now avoid it like the plague. The few times I have been in the last few years there have been incidents I have witnessed. I was standing at a bus stop, two women arrived and a man separately. The man had no hands free, he was carrying bags, and looking up at the bus timetable. The two women stood right behind him talking, and one coughed right into the back of his head. He turned around and looked at her in disgust. She belligerently said What? He said why would you cough at me? With that, with no other words from him she started smacking him over the head with a telescopic umbrella she was holding like a club. And then start shouting that he was disgusting, attacking defenceless women like that. I was mouth agape, he had to drop the bags to defend himself. Like the coward I was I did nothing but stood guard over his bags. When they stomped off I did offer to be a witness to the police that he was the victim not them. But he didn't want to call the police. So a lack of great shops up there, and a lot of damaged people.

It’s so hard to gauge this kind of thing. People have always complained that society is worse and that the young are ruder and less disciplined.

That said, I do think people are more aggressive and rude. Part of the problem is Thatcherism and its legacy. Thatcher encouraged greed and aggression. Instead of neighbours, people became rivals or competitors. Individual success replaced the common good. (And I say that as a moderate, one nation conservative btw.)

Another big problem is overcrowding. There are just too many people jammed onto this little island. There were a billion humans on earth in 1900. By 1960 that had trebled to three billion. It’s now eight and heading for ten. The more humans there are, the more we get on each other’s nerves. Too many people, too many houses, too many cars, and too much noise. It makes everybody jumpy and irritable. By the time I have driven across town on a Saturday, my nerves are shredded and I could kill someone. Any zookeeper will tell you that animals start attacking one another if you put too many of them together.

Difficulty getting NHS support for medical and mental health issues might be a contributing factor. People who are suffering are on a short fuse.

Where was I rude? I was merely stating facts.

Yep, I have noticed an increase in selfish arseholery and I have been blaming lockdowns. It's like a not-insignificant percentage of the population completely forgot how to engage in society (and drive - does nobody indicate now??). Maybe it's just social media giving everyone a platform and an inflated sense of importance, though; people are trying to demonstrate "main character energy".

DH and I were recently woken up at 6:50am on a Saturday by our nearby neighbours. The man was using the world's loudest air compressor to fill the car's tyres while the woman went back and forth, bringing luggage from the house and banging around in the boot. They were out there for 20 minutes, having a shouted conversation the whole time. The noise was incredible. I don't know if they are completely lacking in self-awareness or just fucking arseholes but either way, I can't imagine getting up to go on holiday at that time and not doing everything I can to keep quiet

Yes, definitely true. What I meant was that if all humans could be like that all the time the world would be a great place to live.

Sadly I think humanity is in a downward spiral right now. It seems people prefer confrontation and aggression to any other option.