My newest, possibly worst idea yet (home ec content?)

The other morning, i was perusing the facetubes, as one is wont to do, when i came across one of those "millenials and hipsters suck" videos. As i rank hipsters right up there with murderers and false hippies, i clicked. And watched. It had some very random statistics about how millenials don't know E36 M3, like how to boil an egg, or how to change a tire. This is even more painfully true as swmbo jr ( 1-6-2000) is a protoype millenial, and can't do E36 M3 if it doesn't involve her iphone and pinterest, or her youtubers. (Dont ask. How she thinks they belong to her is beyond me.)

Then it hit me. There is a neverending market of funny E36 M3 on the internet videos. Some of them even teach useful stuff, like mighty car mods. I have been told more than once that i am fairly entertaining. I know how to do all the things i listed, (admittedly i cheat on hard cooked eggs, i put them E36 M3s in the oven) and then some. Maybe i create a home ec youtube series. Maybe its funny. Maybe i sell ad space. Maybe it does nothing. Those that have met me in person can attest to the amusement that would be had at watching me sew a button, or make some draperies. (Yes, i know the basics of a sewing machine too).

The question i would have is, what sort of topics would you expect in a home ec, or life skills class? I already know the basics, changing a tire, making change, etc. But im running out of ideas after about 6 shows. Swmbo can help me some, and i could make a bajillion basic cooking videos, but i want more.

How too balance a checkbook/bank account. How too grocery shop for something other then monster energy and cheeto's, Some of the basics of cleaning drains/plumbing, maybe some info on diffrent types of lightbulb and how too change them etc. Basic people skills!

Plumbing damage control - what to do in order to keep your floor from becoming a lake of E36 M3 before the plumber arrives.

cookies. bake cookies.

"take responsibility"

Grtechguy wrote: "take responsibility"

Jesus. Id have to make a 2 hr special for that.

Where to even begin? You could follow my brother around with a camera and get endless ideas.

Just this weekend it was a clogged condensate line in the house which I fixed while trying to make him understand that it was a job any semi-handy human should be able to handle and why water dripping INSIDE the house was a bad thing.

How to buy tires without being taken for a ride.

How to get estimates for work.

How to handle your taxes (pro tip: use a pro)

How to use birth control (!)

KyAllroad wrote: Where to even begin? You could follow my brother around with a camera and get endless ideas. Just this weekend it was a clogged condensate line in the house which I fixed while trying to make him understand that it was a job any semi-handy human should be able to handle and why water dripping INSIDE the house was a bad thing. How to buy tires without being taken for a ride. How to get estimates for work. How to handle your taxes (pro tip: use a pro) How to use birth control (!)

That's the thing. I thought my part time kids when i did retail were bad. I'm not kidding when i say swmbo jr and her friends about the most useless people on the planet. She refuses to vaccuum because she claims she scared of it, but somehow thinks shes going to be a rich and successful home architect, with her own firm (!) When she can't be bothered to install an app on her precious iphone so she can check how much $$$ is on her damn allowance visa. That was the other part that inspired it. I need her to be functional in a year and a half so she can go off to college and actually adult.

I think you could come up with ideas just by writing down everything you do every day. That might sound like I'm over simplifying it, but seriously, for everything you do, there's SOMEONE out there that doesn't know how to do that.

You could create a series on toilets alone.
1) How they work.
2) How to flush one if there is no water running to it. (the one at the kart track had a water leak at the wall. Argued for 20 minutes with someone who is the VP of a large company that you just pour a bucket of water into the bowl to flush. He was convinced they weren't that simple.)
3) How to fix one that "runs" all the time.
4) How to install a toilet cleaning tablet. (I wish I was kidding....)
5) How to adjust one that isn't level.
6) How to replace a toilet seat.
7) How to correctly plunge a toilet.
8) How to turn the water off on a leaking toilet.

Make them short, simple and funny. Fill the description with key words that people would search on. If you're that entertaining, you might be come a YouTube superstar!!

And in a slight defense of millennials, why should they need to learn when chances are there are 200+ videos or instructions on how to do it on the web? They'll learn to when they need to. My son couldn't understand the purpose of reading a map when he has GPS on his phone. Until we were caught in a huge late night traffic jam on I-35 and found the side roads to get around it with a map while GPS just kept telling us to say on I-35.....

-Rob

In reply to mndsm:

Man, you are going to need to be putting a lot of $$$$$$ on that allowance visa to pay for her architecture firm.

WilD wrote: In reply to mndsm: Man, you are going to need to be putting a lot of $$$$$$ on that allowance visa to pay for her architecture firm.

The berkeley i will. I suspect her future will sound an awful lot like "and can i interest you in our credit card to save 10%".

We live in orlando. She wants to do theatre makeup and sfx if architecture doesn't fly. She's actually a talented kid with art, and i know damn well she'd do good things in costuming at say, universal or disney. But all she does is complain about not having the right stuff and how mom needs to buy her E36 M3, when she's spent her entire weekly allowance, for almost two months straight, on pizza. Mom is a pushover because of the past, so that doesnt help. But i got that part figured. Mom wants to go cool places and do E36 M3 before were old, so she's turning the heat up on swmbo jr.

rob_lewis wrote: I think you could come up with ideas just by writing down everything you do every day. That might sound like I'm over simplifying it, but seriously, for everything you do, there's SOMEONE out there that doesn't know how to do that. You could create a series on toilets alone. 1) How they work. 2) How to flush one if there is no water running to it. (the one at the kart track had a water leak at the wall. Argued for 20 minutes with someone who is the VP of a large company that you just pour a bucket of water into the bowl to flush. He was convinced they weren't that simple.) 3) How to fix one that "runs" all the time. 4) How to install a toilet cleaning tablet. (I wish I was kidding....) 5) How to adjust one that isn't level. 6) How to replace a toilet seat. 7) How to correctly plunge a toilet. 8) How to turn the water off on a leaking toilet. Make them short, simple and funny. Fill the description with key words that people would search on. If you're that entertaining, you might be come a YouTube superstar!! And in a slight defense of millennials, why should they need to learn when chances are there are 200+ videos or instructions on how to do it on the web? They'll learn to when they need to. My son couldn't understand the purpose of reading a map when he has GPS on his phone. Until we were caught in a huge late night traffic jam on I-35 and found the side roads to get around it with a map while GPS just kept telling us to say on I-35..... -Rob

Not less than an hour ago i had to teach her....and i'm not kidding.....how to find the correct plug and unplug the berkeleying router to reset the wifi.

mndsm wrote: Not less than an hour ago i had to teach her....and i'm not kidding.....how to find the correct plug and unplug the berkeleying router to reset the wifi.

See what I mean? If you really can add some comedy to them, you could have a blast doing videos like that. Hell, if nothing else, it's an outlet for frustration!!

-Rob

rob_lewis wrote:

mndsm wrote: Not less than an hour ago i had to teach her....and i'm not kidding.....how to find the correct plug and unplug the berkeleying router to reset the wifi.

See what I mean? If you really can add some comedy to them, you could have a blast doing videos like that. Hell, if nothing else, it's an outlet for frustration!! -Rob

The comedy writes itself.

mndsm wrote: Not less than an hour ago i had to teach her....and i'm not kidding.....how to find the correct plug and unplug the berkeleying router to reset the wifi.

Gee, I'm sure glad you're so patient and are willing to teach her about stuff like this, I'm sure that you came out of the womb knowing this stuff and that no one had to teach you or that you didn't have to learn it yourself.

Yeah, young people don't know everything and they can be pretty damned narrow minded with a lack of logic. Its called being a teenager/young adult. Since Mom apparently had to do it for her due to whatever bullE36 M3 happened in the past, she's at a disadvantage to begin with, so maybe instead of using sarcasm and shiny happy person-ism, some patience might go a long way to steering the swmbo jr Titanic away from the iceberg of Real life.

Stefan (Not Bruce) wrote:

mndsm wrote: Not less than an hour ago i had to teach her....and i'm not kidding.....how to find the correct plug and unplug the berkeleying router to reset the wifi.

Gee, I'm sure glad you're so patient and are willing to teach her about stuff like this, I'm sure that you came out of the womb knowing this stuff and that no one had to teach you or that you didn't have to learn it yourself. Yeah, young people don't know everything and they can be pretty damned narrow minded with a lack of logic. Its called being a teenager/young adult. Since Mom apparently had to do it for her due to whatever bullE36 M3 happened in the past, she's at a disadvantage to begin with, so maybe instead of using sarcasm and shiny happy person-ism, some patience might go a long way to steering the swmbo jr Titanic away from the iceberg of Real life.

The crux of the problem isnt willingness to teach. Its the lack of willingness to learn. She would have been content to not have internet aside from her iphone and pretend she was unable to school or whatever, had i not intervened. I have all the patience in the world for people who want to learn. This one, and her ilk display a level of apathy that is unheard of. I get it seems a little brusque, and it damn sure is. But there are so many i know like her that cannot balance the aforementioned checkbook and just dont care to learn, its frightening. I have not exaggerated a single thing thus far, and there are dozens more i could use. Like the logical fallact that cutting soda for "proper" southern sweet tea (read sugar syrup with caramel color added) is enough to drop significant weight, discounting the steady diet of Dominos, taco bell, and doritos that she thinks is fine. And when you attempt to guide by showing healthy, or healthier....she claims it hurts her stomach. Ain't nobody got time for that. Try to teach her how to dishes, she throws a E36 M3 fit and goes to her room. Her case might be a bit severe, but I've met her friends. They're all verrrrry similar.

Another example. Her and a friend went for a walk last night around the pond in our complex. I can see it from our living room. Her amd said friend got lost walking around the pond and had to call here to know how to get home.

When I was in high school and building R/C models, my brother and I learned a lot of things from building a model sail boat. Things like how to melt lead shot and pour it into a mold for a keel weight. We also made our own hull, pretty much like a full-sized boat. But the thing that stuck with me in terms of skill was making the sails from some rip-stop flag material and a sewing machine. I still occasionally do a bad job of it, but can manage to run a mostly straight seam. Heck, even hand sewing buttons is a good to know.

I'm glad I'm not the only one seeing this. It's downright frightening. I also can't believe how prevalent it is among people who've actually made it through college(of course everyone seems to pass these days as long as they take out loans but that's a different rant), even as old as me, not even 30 yet.

The amount of people who fall into shock when they come over and I'm doing basic maintenance on the house or car is staggering, let alone these young wastes who expect everything handed to them.

Like mndsm said, it's not even that they couldn't find the information, it's that they have no desire to learn the information. Why people actively want to be so willingly ignorant of basic life skills is beyond me. (Yes I understand the hypocrisy from my refusing to learn how to detail my car, but I learned how to paint it and learned I'm not patient enough for the detail work, there's a difference)

Edit: was actually thinking tonight about making a YouTube channel of my daughter dancing to different music. She dances differently to different things, and it's dumb and cute enough probably make a mint in advertising.

This just in: some kids are dumb and lazy. Heck, it seems like half of them are below average

I keep thinking that this YouTube channel under discussion is the new Red Green show.

Change a tire.
Sharpen a knife.
Hammer a nail.
Brew coffee.
Jump start a car.
Cook bacon.
Drive a manual transmission car.
Back a trailer.
Cook eggs.
Shake hands.
Sit.
Good boy/girl.

Keith Tanner wrote: This just in: some kids are dumb and lazy. Heck, it seems like half of them are below average I keep thinking that this YouTube channel under discussion is the new Red Green show.

My beard is better than his. But...there mightbe some veracity to those thoughts.

I knew people like that in high school.

Back in the 80's.

Why do we think kids today are so new and unique in their... whatever you call it?

As far as I can tell, it happened in the two generations before me, as it has in the two past. The only difference now is that in the novel of faces and tubes of all- it's all more public.

johnnie wrote: Change a tire. Sharpen a knife. Hammer a nail. Brew coffee. Jump start a car. Cook bacon. Drive a manual transmission car. Back a trailer. Cook eggs. Shake hands. Sit. Good boy/girl.

Rollover and play dead are in season 2.

alfadriver wrote: I knew people like that in high school. Back in the 80's. Why do we think kids today are so new and unique in their... whatever you call it? As far as I can tell, it happened in the two generations before me, as it has in the two past. The only difference now is that in the novel of faces and tubes of all- it's all more public.

The level of apathy hasn't necessarily changed. The only excuse i can come up with is information straight up wasnt as available. I had to learn to do brakes from family. These days, YouTube takes care of that....which frustrates me to no end. The kids born after about 2000 have no real excuse for lack of information. I can pulk up instructions on how to change a starter, hell order the part and the tools, a paper manual, and some booze to drink while fixing, while sitting on the throne reliving taco night from my cell phone. People like grm as a whole should be on the increase, not the decline, due to the sheer volume of information out there.

In reply to mndsm:

You need to separate the want to learn and figure it out and the ability and availability to do so.

The rate of want doesn't change much. More so, the need of learning it goes down- so even the people who don't want to learn are not forced to learn just to operate.

I think it's better this way- the people who come here are more the ones who WANT to learn.