Don't like engineering? Quit! Weather too cold? Go home! Don't like hard work? Stop! Can't make payments on time? Don't! Can't pay the mortgage? ! Can't balance the budget? Don't! Mom, Uncle Sam, The Chinese, they'll bail you out!

It's okay to not be a man. It's even okay to admit it.

Love it. +1.

Actually, no, you're both losers for bashing a 19/20 year-old on an internet message board. Just because he's having trouble figuring out where he wants to go in life, he's a loser? Give me a break and gain some perspective for christ's sake. Some of the most talented, most brilliant, most interesting, most wonderful people I know are in their 30's (or older) and still haven't figured out exactly what they want to do with their lives. Like she said, her son simply wasn't ready. I do think, though, that after awhile he will need to begin to support himself as opposed to getting money wired to him, but apart from that, he's doing just fine on this planet.

Seriously, I can't imagine how unhappy the two of you might be. Why else would someone go out of their way to write something so mean-spirited?

seanmi:

Actually, no, you're both losers for bashing a 19/20 year-old on an internet message board. Just because he's having trouble figuring out where he wants to go in life, he's a loser? Give me a break and gain some perspective for christ's sake. Some of the most talented, most brilliant, most interesting, most wonderful people I know are in their 30's (or older) and still haven't figured out exactly what they want to do with their lives. Like she said, her son simply wasn't ready. I do think, though, that after awhile he will need to begin to support himself as opposed to getting money wired to him, but apart from that, he's doing just fine on this planet.

Seriously, I can't imagine how unhappy the two of you might be. Why else would someone go out of their way to write something so mean-spirited?

Mom is the biggest loser for setting her son up for public ridicule by writing this insipid article that broadcasts all of his many failures to the world at large. Honestly, what was the point of this piece? To showcase the author's lousy parenting skills? To make her son look like a total failure who can't even go to the bathroom on his own? To gloat about how the children of the privileged can screw up again and again and constantly get bailed out by their helicopter parents?

Agreed, the article didn't do much for me either, but it seems to have been enjoyed by others so who are we to say what's pointless? I'd be slightly bothered by this if I was the son, but I believe the mom's thinking here is, "Well, none of my son's friends read Slate so what's the big deal?" The mom's decision to write the article is questionable, yes, but I don't think that makes her a loser. You guys like to throw around loser left and right around here, huh? She's lucky she's connected with Slate, though. Most people wouldn't be able to publish a personal vent piece like this anywhere.

I do, in fact, feel a bit sorry for the son. He has been a passive actor in his personal failure, and his mother is an enabler for his interminable adolescence. Is the son, in fact, a "loser" at this point? Perhaps not, but he is certainly on his way, and when he is a without a doubt, dyed in the wool, middle aged loser, he will undoubtedly look back and blame his mother. He will be right to blame her, although his anger at her will be misdirected at some specific instance in the future (when she decides to stop paying for his rent and groceries at the age of say, thirty) rather than for what is abundantly clear to any neutral observer - a horrific (and sadly, not uncommon) case of overly protective mothering.

seanmi:

Actually, no, you're both losers for bashing a 19/20 year-old on an internet message board. Just because he's having trouble figuring out where he wants to go in life, he's a loser? Give me a break and gain some perspective for christ's sake. Some of the most talented, most brilliant, most interesting, most wonderful people I know are in their 30's (or older) and still haven't figured out exactly what they want to do with their lives. Like she said, her son simply wasn't ready. I do think, though, that after awhile he will need to begin to support himself as opposed to getting money wired to him, but apart from that, he's doing just fine on this planet.

Seriously, I can't imagine how unhappy the two of you might be. Why else would someone go out of their way to write something so mean-spirited?

Firstly, /r/-tard, I find it amazing that you could magically infer all of that about me from a grand total of two words and two characters. You must be a regular John Edward or Amazing Kreskin. You're certainly, as Ali G might have said, a mentalist.

Secondly, be an enabling turd all you want; I assure you, it's no skin off my nose. Be a soft-hearted, weak-kneed clown and let lazy, shiftless people take advantage of you until the end of time. It's a free country. But if you seriously believe there is a direct corollary between people who merely "haven't figured out exactly what they want to do with their lives" and doing exactly NOTHING, you are, in a word, delusional. That's funny, because the people I know who are "rediscovering" themselves or whatever term you want to apply to it are doing things like volunteering in an effort to pump up their resumes for the Peace Corps., or learning a new instrument or trade, or traveling on their own dime, not sitting in an apartment paid for by their mommies playing Xboxes paid for by their mommies, and eating Cheetos paid for by their mommies as they piece it all together, while pretending to justify the entire ruse by attending a couple of hours of, haha, community college per week. No, I would not include this kid in such ranks. Now, "spoiled trust fund brats", well, I could get on board with that.

You are what you overcome. It is as simple as that. A person's character is established by the obstacles they rise above in achieving their place in the world, and the positive contributions they make to their community and the world at large. This kid fails on all fronts. Could he change? Sure, and so could a 60 year-old convict, I suppose. But people are typically what they by the time they reach adulthood, and I much doubt that someone so soft and doughy that they idly tossed away a free ride to a prestigious top-tier university in order to lay in the sun or play Xbox all day will amount to much in this life. Your supposition about him eventually supporting himself is completely laughable in the context of what the writer put to pen, whether you want to admit it or not. Perhaps his evidently affluent family can use their connections to eventually get him into some reasonably high-paying job where no skills or drive are required, sure, but he's not going to be a fully independent man or a valuable member of society, You might as well believe that he'll eventually become CEO of a Fortune 500 company, or perhaps a latter day Picasso or Segovia. If you want to take a Pollyannaish approach to the world, go right ahead. For my part, the soft-ass 19 and 20 year-olds I knew all grew up to be boring, do-nothing, soft-ass 30 year-olds. One of them, my own brother, happens to be slinging burgers at the BK lounge. But hey, he's a nice guy. Just don't expect to get your bail money back from the time you got him out of jail up in Columbia County, or that $500 you spent last Spring to satisfy the last of his costs to get him off probation, because it isn't happening.