I realized that nothing I've posted thus far has been all that funny. This is probably because we have yet to explore topics I feel passionate about. Terms of endearment, future plans, and mission statements don't really whip me into a verbal frenzy. When I am passionate about something, especially if I hate it, I'm freaking hilarious. This is most easily seen when I'm being childish and throwing some sort of tantrum. I end up ranting about whatever is most angering me and instead of seeding mob level hatred my rants leave people bent over laughing. I'm sure some of the appeal is visual because I gesture emphatically and turn a little red but I bet the essence will come through in writing. All that being said, let's talk about frat boys.
I really hate frat boys. I hate Greek life in general, but at the core of my hatred is the all boy clubs. I think part of it may be that the girls who ended up in sororities either were apathetic about the process and didn't change much as a result, or weren't the sort of girls I'd spend time with in the first place. In contrast, the sorts of guys who pledged frats were some of my friends; and then they changed.
Now is a good time to talk about the Milgram Experiment. If you know exactly what I'm talking about you can skip this paragraph. Double points if your mind was already heading in this direction reading the last paragraph. The short dumb version (because if you really cared to know you'd open a new tab and wikipedia "milgram" right now): people couldn't believe the atrocities committed by Hitler's troops in WWII and they started to think maybe there was a flaw in German people that let them follow orders when normal people would say "that's some sick crap. I quit." Milgram let people think they were giving someone in the next room painful shocks. Participants thought that through the luck of the draw they were the person giving instead of reciving the shocks, and they could hear the guy in the next room crying out in pain. (It's worth pointing out that the whole thing was a set up and the guy in the other room wasn't really being shocked.) Consensus was that after going up a few levels on the shock'o'meter most people would decide that some wacky experiment about education wasn't a good enough reason to torture another human being and they'd walk out. Not so. Most people went up really far in the shock scale. Some even maxed it out. Conclusion: people kind of suck if you put them in an awkward enough situation.
You want more proof? Go read about the Stanford Prison Experiment; it's pretty much like pledging except it's in a jail...wait, that essentially is pledging. There are fewer girls. There's the difference. Want even more proof people suck? Read the From Jerusalem to Jericho study.
Now that you feel a lot like you did the first time you finished Catcher in the Rye, let's talk about frats. Poeple don't do well without a common uniting goal, especially man people under 25. You need the right sort of goal too. Brotherhood? Not a good goal. Win the hockey title? Not a good goal. Review music? Not so bad. Write poems? Pretty decent. Learn math? Perfect. Math teams generally don't get in trouble for taping someone to the wall and leaving them there for days. Or for having men line up naked and sing while doing jumping jacks after no having slept for more than 10 minute intervals all week. You know why? Because they are focused.
Supposedly the army takes druggy loosers and turns them into upstanding responsible men. Frats take socially awkward teens and takes a final swing at their self esteem before dressing them up in a uniform and a ritual that forces a certain kind of social interaction from which they may never deviate. As far as I can tell, what boys learn in college can stay with them at least until their 50's. Maybe longer. This is why I don't understand dating dramatically older men, unless it's for the money. You can't bank on them being less messed up or more mature.
Anyway, hazing, also known as brain washing, or conditioning, scares the poop out of me. I don't understand paying for friendship or family as being any better or less pathetic than paying for sex. And furthermore, there needs to be a common theme. The frats which I least hate all have themes which draw a certain sort in and unite them: a music/theater frat, a geek frat. Those things are not without issue as themes, but they are the best I've seen.
No comments:
Post a Comment