r/mildlyinfuriating • u/TheAeroplaneBear2906 • Jul 16 '26

Unskippable ad Clear Backpacks + Pay to Keep Your Phone

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My freinds school is now requiring these items, and is also using AI to promote this đŸ« 

17.9k Upvotes

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1.6k

u/viktorrvaughnnn Jul 16 '26

For real I cannot imagine going to a school that feels like a PG13 prison everyday.

1.1k

u/PITCHFORK_MAGNET Jul 16 '26

I mean
 trying to have kids stay off their phones is reasonable. The backpack part is depressing though.

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u/christona-bike Jul 16 '26

I was in high school when everyone had a smartphone but these weird pouches were not a thing, you just knew not to have it out in class and it'd be taken if you did. Its genuinely so simple, I don't get why they have to do all this.

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u/threedogdad Jul 16 '26

because teachers should be teaching, not playing phone police all day. it's ridiculous they were ever allowed in class.

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u/RunBrundleson Jul 16 '26

I was a substitute teacher briefly and the kids just assumed because I was a sub it didn’t matter and literally every kid had their face buried in their lap staring at their phone.

I’m not gonna give the kids too much shit, we created electronic heroin and then sat our kids in front of it at age one and didn’t think through the consequences.

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u/thephotoman Jul 16 '26

It’s more of a slot machine than heroin.

I spent the last week and a half scrolling TikTok to see what the problem was. And the answer was that TikTok, like all social media, is an inconsistent reward system. You finish a video you like, then scroll to find shit. It’s the inconsistent reward mechanism that keeps people sat in front of slot machines.

I wanted the experiment to last two weeks, but I callee it early: when every video I saw led me to blocking the creator because they were clearly a narcissist projecting their insecurities onto entire demographics, it wasn’t worth continuing.

Also, I’ve noticed that the kids can’t relate to each other anymore. The boys have no friends: they don’t trust other boys not to be the kind of abusive douchebags that they’d have to cut out. The girls are lost in an affirming circlejerk of self-victimization. They’ll volunteer to be the real victim in situations that have nothing to do with them, as they understand and embrace innocent victimhood as their gender role.

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u/Gold_Independent_428 Jul 16 '26

When people say things like “the boys have no friends; they don’t trust other boys not to be the kind of abusive douchebags they’d have to cut out,” they’re really describing how toxic masculinity teaches boys to fear vulnerability and expect harm from other boys, not some inherent flaw in boys themselves. And when they observe that “the girls are lost in an affirming circlejerk of self‑victimization” or that girls “volunteer to be the real victim,” what they’re actually seeing is how girls learn to express pain in exaggerated ways because their real struggles, including the very real harms many experience from boys and men, are often minimized, dismissed, or ignored. These patterns aren’t natural gender traits; they’re symptoms of a culture where boys are punished for softness and girls are believed only when their suffering is dramatic enough to be undeniable.

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u/thephotoman Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

Thanks for the proof of my point. You’ve turned yourself into “the real victim” of this situation that isn’t about you. And you’re showing your lack of internal agency as well: you do not wish to master your emotions, and therefore they jerk you around like a dog on a leash.

You aren’t a feminist. Your blather here reinforces the patriarchy. Your unwillingness to own and regulate your emotions is not liberation, but slavery to your most ephemeral whims.

ETA: but of course, so many young women are drowning in glaze that they can’t see criticisms of their emotional immaturity as anything but misogyny.

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u/kfkrneen Jul 16 '26

This conversation is about children though. I don't see how what you've said applies to the previous comment. They were clearly not speaking of themselves, but of kids.

Children cannot be expected to "master their emotions" or critically examine their behavior. They recreate what they see. It's not their fault, it is ours for letting the algorithms parent our children and not stopping the incessant push for regressive gender roles in online spaces frequented by kids.

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u/Gold_Independent_428 Jul 17 '26

From what I've seen he lacks the emotional maturity to engage with actual facts. He just resorts to insults and generalizations.

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u/thephotoman Jul 16 '26

Children will rise to expectations set for them.

If you coddle them, they will not learn how to control those emotions. They’ll just reach adulthood, have crashouts over everyday things, and wind up getting themselves and others hurt.

You are giving girls the soft bigotry of low expectations, not challenging them to grow.

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u/Gold_Independent_428 Jul 17 '26

You’re not “calling out emotional immaturity,” you’re using contempt and personal insults to avoid engaging with the actual point I made. Nothing in my post was about me being a victim, it was an analysis of how gendered social conditioning shapes behaviour, and you responded by attacking women, pathologizing emotion, and declaring yourself the arbiter of who is or isn’t liberated. That’s not mastery of your emotions; that’s projection dressed up as superiority. And the irony is that you’re accusing women of “glaze” while refusing to acknowledge your own hostility, your own defensiveness, and your own inability to discuss gender without demeaning people. If you want to disagree, disagree with the argument, not with an entire gender and not with invented flaws you’re assigning to me because you felt threatened by the topic.

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u/xxxpinguinos Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

No idea how old you are, but at least when/where I went to high school (graduated 2017) we were reasonable humans about it. Of course some kids would just be on their phone a lot and hide it, but most of us weren’t, and some teachers even let us listen to music or something if we were doing independent work. Because we were reasonable about it and didn’t abuse it

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u/Ryaninthesky Jul 16 '26

Post Covid students have not been reasonable about it.

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u/xxxpinguinos Jul 16 '26

I’m aware, I’ve seen the horror stories. I was more responding to “it’s ridiculous they were ever allowed”

It wasn’t always this bad

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u/Gold_Independent_428 Jul 16 '26

I never allowed them, I saw the writing on the wall, but when parents don't support you, this is the outcome.

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u/christona-bike Jul 16 '26

I wish the outcome looked more like "okay, have your phone then, but if you aren't paying attention you will fail." But kids aren't allowed to fail grades anymore. It's ridiculous.

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u/Gold_Independent_428 Jul 17 '26

Me too, but I'm expected to police them. There needs to be more accountability and consequences.

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u/Dr_Fortnite Jul 16 '26

teachers are always going to be toy police in school . do you think kids in the 80s were just locked in because they didnt have phones?

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u/threedogdad Jul 16 '26

I was there, as were all of my family members. In lower grades there were some toys a brought in now and then, that's it...and it was clear you were breaking the rules. These days every kid has a phone with them regardless of grade/age and they don't think of it as a toy but an essential device. It's not remotely the same.