Would Everyone Please Stop {Pretending they Grew up Poor? (rant)

[wokofshame]

"things are so hard for us"
"those yuppies" "fucking yuppies"
"fuck them they're loaded"
"it's not easy this life" "we're so tuff"
"give me this" "i wish i was rich too"

Remind you of 80-90 % of "travelling kids" (summer soldiers)?
The only scene I know of where more people pretend they grew up poor is the hip hop scene, fitty and biggie and jeezy growing up selling crack so they could afford some recording time to lay down their lines.
I grew up with parents in debt, patched pants, and free school lunch. But I was never hungry and never was in need until i went out on my own. My grandfather is loaded from running his metalworking company and he always bailed my parents out, now I'm 23 and my parents make way better money and built their house bigger, my grandfather's business is going down the tubes because of Chinese imports but he's objectively a millionaire from running it for 50 years.
What I'm trying to say with this story is that life wouldnt be hard for me unless I Made It So. I got all the opportunity in the world and so do most of you.
So please shut the fuck up about how poor you are. It's your choice. You could have a job and shit if you wanted to. Your parents are fucked? Google Stafford Student Loans, Pell Grants and Job Corps. Go to the Job Service office and the DHS and apply for everything.
Get some ingenuity and apply in multiple states or multiple identities.
Like me, you want more out of life. Or maybe you're just doing it because it's cool. But no-one owes you shit.
I'm sick of the toxic mixture of self-righteousness and self-pity that pervades our scene.Poor people in the USA just dont have it all that damn hard. People in Africa or Brazil or India do. Here, you can be a lazy ignorant drunk fuck with no work ethic and still have your own trailer and a cell phone.
There, life is actually a survival struggle. Trying to get food on your plate. Aint' no Food Stamps.
I plan to be fairly wealthy one day. How? Because when I put my mind to something I fucking work hard at it. And when I am i wont take no shit from oogles with 20$ of patches cursing me for not giving them change. Unless you're actually hungry i got no fucking pity. I'm saving it for your mom who you're such a dick to and never call.

 

[cricketonthemove]

:applaud:

Very, very well said.

 

[Mouse]

it's a big privilege of white middle class kids to CHOOSE to be poor. Aren't we lucky ?

 

[wildboy860]

We're all lucky to have our own options!!!

 

[content2roam]

I agree completely. I mean I grew up on welfare and all that shit struggling but why bring that up. I choose to travel..ive had jobs and enough to have a decent place and all that but I choose to live the way I do. The pity me stories are rediculous. If you survived then obviously it wasnt that bad. Everybody wants to one up everyone else...why? Why can't everyone just understand that other people struggled in the past and move on. Fuck the past and fuck the future..live in the present.

 

[farmer john]

. If you survived then obviously it wasnt that bad. Fuck the past and fuck the future..live in the present.

AMEN well said

bitching about the past isnt going to impress anyone and your pipe dreams arent going to either actually contributing will tho

 

[hazmatMatthew666]

dude, ya couldn't have put it better,i grew up with free lunch and patched clothes, i never bitched, complained or wanted, i hate these kids who are "tired of living in suburbia", fuck man. Now you got me ranting

 

[joshbryan]

excellent rant. i agree. i didn't grow up poor, but I've seen poor (mainly outside america). some of the poorest people in the world have made my day. hundreds of times. "blessed are the poor" Jesus (he'd hop trains with us. and supply the wine)

 

[dirtyfacedan]

Great thread MURT. I/we (all of us) have seen some fucked up shit, and yes, been through tough times...but still, we, most of us, have it pretty good. I have had the benefit and gained some insight from living in many homes as a child, with many families. I wouldn't trade that for the world. I have seen a lot of people complain, when they have little reason to do so. I try to make it conscious effort not to bitch, nor go into the gory details about my upbringing like I used to. It's all in the past. All the choices I make now are MY CHOICES. I don't need some fuck telling me i'm a (insert pigeon hole statement) because i don't ride trains, nor squat, nor whatever as much as i used to these days. This is where I am in MY LIFE, and doing the things I WANT. WE are responsible for OUR actions, and OUR outcomes! We reap what we sew.

Your a rich man already MURT, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise!

 

[Dameon]

Poor me...I grew up so poor my parents only got me a Razr and couldn't afford an iPhone. So I ran away to live on the streets where life is so hard! I have to walk all the way to the nearest bum feed half a mile away to get food, or ask people for their leftovers!

I hope you'll give me change when you're rich, Murt.

 

[kolte]

I grew up with parents in debt, patched pants, and free school lunch. But I was never hungry and never was in need until i went out on my own. My grandfather is loaded from running his metalworking company and he always bailed my parents out, now I'm 23 and my parents make way better money and built their house bigger, my grandfather's business is going down the tubes because of Chinese imports but he's objectively a millionaire from running it for 50 years.
What I'm trying to say with this story is that life wouldnt be hard for me unless I Made It So. I got all the opportunity in the world and so do most of you.

The fact that your circustances were bareable, and your Grandfather had money, leaves you with little right to judge people who may have experienced significantly more difficult and desperate conditions as children.

It's unfair to expect a child or even a teenager, to utilize the oppritunities availible to them, if they have no encuragement from any of the adults around them, who are supposed to be their role models.

 

[lowerarchy]

Hey Murt, good rant.

People like to pretend they are/were poor for a number of reasons:

1. Every interesting cultural artifact in the world comes from poverty. Rich people contribute nothing, when was the last time you heard "oh shit you gotta hear this track it's the newest thing from Belvedere California!"
2. Every cool anecdote must involve being poor. Otherwise, all stories sound like this, "I had an intractable problem with my wife who was bored with life but I flew her to Monaco in my jet and we spent $100,000 on roulette and went to the opera so now everything's fine." No challenge to overcome? No story to tell!
3. Everything was better in the past, no exceptions. That's why norms have such fond memories of their "poor student days," even though when they were living them they hated it, but now they look back at all the ramen they ate and think they were poor but they probably weren't.

 

[Monkeywrench]

Word.

 

[wizehop]

I'm with Murt on this, although I think everyone is...?

Poor or not, why the fuck does it matter...

 

[carnytrash]

The fact that your circustances were bareable, and your Grandfather had money, leaves you with little right to judge people who may have experienced significantly more difficult and desperate conditions as children.

It's unfair to expect a child or even a teenager, to utilize the oppritunities availible to them, if they have no encuragement from any of the adults around them, who are supposed to be their role models.

As much as I enjoyed the rant, I have to agree with this point as well. A lot of people have passed judgment on me and seem to be under the impression I'm a trust-fund baby and my dad is loaded enough to give me whatever I want. If that was true, I wouldn't have been struggling for survival over the past 10 years, half of which I spent bouncing around the concrete jungle of Philly. Certainly I wouldn't have ended up back in Jersey with nothing more than the essentials for living.

That's just the way things are tho, and I take them for what they are worth, without feeling the need to be holier than thou. There's no point to that, b/c I know there are people worse off than I am, so I come to appreciate all the little things that mean the world to me. In the end, that's all any of us really have.

 

[seasonchange]

it's probably safe to say that most of us were raised in middle america, yes, but i don't really care about backgrounds much either way. i'd say that voluntary poverty sort of evens out the playing field as you get older.
so yes, i could've finished high school with a diploma. i probably could've had a car at some point in my teenage years. i had a cell phone in high school. being raised in the midwest (and the united states in general) means i've been given all sorts of opportunities growing up. the door to a "successful" future, has at times, been wide open, beckoning.
but somewhere along the line, years ago, i grew restless and resentful of the so-called-values that had been instilled in me growing up. i didn't want the life my parents lead. i didn't want their 9 to 5s, arguments, mortgages, regrets. settling down, to me, has always been synonymous with giving up.
basically, what i'm saying is, embrace your past. even if you were "privileged," "lucky." you can run from it, you probably won't escape it. you might. but it will always be the place you started. what matters is, you're here now.
so get real, get in touch with yourself (past, present, and all) and embrace your fucking future.
+ + + + +
i've got a few lofty goals laid out for myself, but i've seen in my own past that where there's a focused and hard set will, there will be the drive to pave the way. i know that whatever i set my mind to, i will manifest in time.
+ + + + +
sad truth: laziness will continue to pervade our scene as long as there are kids who have yet to find a reason for living beyond getting fucked up every day, all day.

 

[coolguyeagle76']

im poor, i eat poor food, i do poor things, when will people respect my life style, i mean my poorness. i mean im not from like, you know, a rich place but my soul is rich and stuff. trains trains brains trains canes. i write poor poetry on my mac, but like, can i still be poor if i have a mac??!!! answer these questions ether people. i cannot go on, i am hungry with poorness and there is no pooridge in my squat house.

 

[Medusa]

Yeah, I'm really fed up with all the ignorance and desperate acts to fit in that I witness while traveling. High school's over. All I'm concerned with is people being honest and not pretending to be something they're not. I really don't give a damn about whether you were rich or poor as long as you have a good head on your shoulders...

 

[Nelco]

I'm not going to spend time reading the rest of this.
I'm was born a broke nigger.
Had plenty of money for five years of my life..and shared it and still lived like a scrub..and decided I prefer being financialy powerless.
It doesn't really matter though.
Stereo types are mindless systematic, ways of categorization of humans.
Circumstance and choice are the only realistic deciding factors, with stuff like this.
I'm not big on being a hater personaly.

 

[Mayor Cantrell]

Poverty does exist in America in a substantial way, and just because a lot of white, middle class kids make up the majority of traveling kids doesn't invalidate the fact that there are people who have definitely grown up in poverty.

I agree with your post for the most part, and I wish people would stop pretending they came from the shit end of the stick, particularly because that erases the stories of those who have had hard lives. If you hear a million kids saying they grew up poor and that they didn't quite "choose" this "lifestyle"" then the ones that have had that background are not going to be heard or believed. I grew up in a strange situation myself, on WIC and in deep debt, in a working-class suburb, and I actually went hungry quite a few times. Luckily, my high school was mixed income, so I graduated with a good education and I've even completed a semester of college. Right now I'm working on getting disability for some mental issues that I have (as a result of growing up in an abusive environment, a head injury, and my genes) and so it's very very difficult for me to hold a job. But nonetheless, I won't knock any one else that travels that had it better than me, as long as they're honest. Where you come from is not your fault. It's what you do with your life that matters, as banal of a phrase as that is.

I think class matters not because being poor makes you "better" but just because it's a category of culture that influences one's personhood. But I highly doubt that this attitude will change much in the traveling world.