Cynicism and Cadets

Stern reminders are fine at home, but not on forums for cadets or midshipmen (I'm referring to whatever this YikYak crap is)....

When I was a cadet, parents has the parent's listserv to talk about things they didn't know about. They would relay what their kids talked about, but they were spared from the very real (and ugly) reality of what cadets and midshipmen think and talk about at school. Ignorance is bliss. :biggrin:
 
BigBear said:
I would venture to say that the things we do today are not much different than the things college kids have always done. We just have more ways to record and share those things.

I apologize if this derails the thread, but I would advise some in this thread, especially those that are not old grads, to accept that a bunch of high performing young adults locked in a granite prison and constantly told they aren't doing well enough are not going to recreate Shakespeare when given an outlet to vent through.

Seriously parents, you will not understand what you see on Yik Yak and should leave it alone for us.
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Ok, in defense of my generation. We did not in any way shape or form twerk! That one is all on this current generation!:shake:

We all understand people need to vent. We each have had our hard times and difficult roads to travel. We all have gotten stupid from time to time and said things we probably ought not to. We don't need to have attended an academy to understand that sometimes, something has got to give.

As to understanding what we see on Yik Yak. We do understand quite a bit. Do we understand everything? Of course not. What we are concerned about is that some of the blatantly vulgar things may come back and bite someone in the rear. Some of them are posted for shock value.

Some people post because "I just can't take it anymore." Some out of loneliness and the need to share. Sometimes knowing that it is out there for someone to read can help. Other times it is to find people who see things the same way. Then there is the humor for fun. Also, the "I'm bored, so just put something out there." Some are to vent. Some are to answer the question "am I the only one who ...." Others are to see if there will be a reaction (the poke it with a stick and see what happens). Etc.

Yik Yak is like every other social media. Just be careful. Vent away. Post away. But understand there may be consequences down the road that may sneak up on you at the most unexpected time.

Oh and one other thing that my generation did not do...text in the bathroom. That's all on you guys! :eek:
 
BigBear said:
I would venture to say that the things we do today are not much different than the things college kids have always done. We just have more ways to record and share those things.

I apologize if this derails the thread, but I would advise some in this thread, especially those that are not old grads, to accept that a bunch of high performing young adults locked in a granite prison and constantly told they aren't doing well enough are not going to recreate Shakespeare when given an outlet to vent through.

Seriously parents, you will not understand what you see on Yik Yak and should leave it alone for us.
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EDelahanty said:
It's been pretty well confirmed by experts that if you were to install a large number of chimpanzees in the basement of the British Museum and furnish them with an equal quantity of typewriters they would eventually recreate the works of William Shakespeare - plays and sonnets.

Pretty sad that you high performing young adults admit you can't keep up with a bunch of English monkeys.
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It's a good thing that the cadets don't reproduce the works of William Shakespeare. They might be dismissed for plagiarism. The monkeys on the other hand were never admitted to West Point and aren't held to the same standards, so if they miss a few words here and there...

That being said, I'm laughing the most at the point that we are complaining about the cadets (expressing our cynicism about their cynicism) and in that other thread about Army Football being equally cynical...

Monkey see; Monkey do!
 
goaliedad said:
That being said, I'm laughing the most at the point that we are complaining about the cadets (expressing our cynicism about their cynicism) and in that other thread about Army Football being equally cynical...

Monkey see; Monkey do!
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Its obviously been a slow news day!
 
If parents think Yik Yak is bad, I can't wait to see their reaction when they find the apps similar to Yik Yak, but with pictures... :rolleyes:
 
Some of old timers marvel at this stuff because of the world we came from. In my case it wasn't carrier pigeons as Scout suggests but the only instant message was a few distinct hand signals, a punch in the mouth or the spoken word. Chat rooms were bathroom stalls or spray painted fences. Pictures were taken with stand alone cameras that required film - and unless it was a Polaroid, it had to be taken somewhere to be developed. Group messages were done on a party line (phone). Note passing was the best we had for messaging.

But were we cynical? Did we complain? Did we try to outsmart the adults in our lives? You betcha!
 
USMCGrunt said:
But were we cynical? Did we complain? Did we try to outsmart the adults in our lives? You betcha!
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You got that right, we just hid it better and didn't leave an electronic paper trail........

Thank God!!
 
-Bull- said:
If parents think Yik Yak is bad, I can't wait to see their reaction when they find the apps similar to Yik Yak, but with pictures... :rolleyes:
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Streetchat is just amusing - does anyone take these things seriously?
 
Every college has their own Yik Yak feed, it's good for a pick-me-up if your looking for a laugh, some colleges are more creative than others. It's totally anonymous to other users, but not so much to the government. It's all fun and games until someone decides to put out fake threats saying they're going to shoot up the school with details about how they're going to do it, parts of the school were shut down for it. Feds found the joker pretty easily and he's since been arrested and charged with two counts of terroristic threats, probably won't be returning to school any time soon. Some hackers from my school also deleted entire feeds from rival schools as a way to celebrate an upcoming football match, and deleted a few more after we lost as retaliation.

So...Yik Yak. Fun, but not as anonymous as one might think.
 
I realize that I am in the minority here. Most parents are just along for the four year ride, visiting the academy a handful of times and receiving only the carefully edited info that their cadet/mid wants to share with them. PPW! Football games! Graduation! The cadets are so polite! It’s all so wonderful! That is exactly what the academies want.

I lived at USMA in my youth, which is to say that I know far too much about how the place works and what cadets are capable of doing. All cadets – even ‘the good ones’. I provided the get-away car when my cadet friends wanted to blow post to go to the movies or to a diner. (Across the river to avoid running into upperclassmen. Always across the river.) I know where Redoubt 4 is and how to access it. (Thank you Kosciuszko.) I never supplied cadets with alcohol, though I easily could have if they asked for it. I was once invited to an off-post cadet religious retreat to nanny for the kids of the chaplain running it. Naturally, being a civilian female, I was also then invited along for the illicit after hours trip into town using the academy van. OK, so it wasn’t to a bowling alley like on the current football thread, but rather a pool hall. Some very un-cadetlike behavior ensued. And these were the church-goers!

I know that when contemporary youth are placed under an archaic disciplinary system that was begun in 1802 that they will rebel and find ways to push it but not break it. This has been going on since the place began. This is why cynicism runs rampant. It is no different today than 50 years ago than somewhere in the middle when I was witnessing it firsthand.

I doubt I’ll ever take precious time out of my life to download Yik Yak to see what cadets are currently saying. For the parents that have, and are shocked, just turn away. Like BigBear said, it really does not concern you. Anyone here who is married to a grad knows their stories of cadet indiscretions; children are then sent to the academies and you know they will have their own rule-breaking indiscretions. They are not the robotic toy soldiers they look like when on parade.

There is the service academy image that everyone wants to believe in, and then there is reality.
 
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