He’s always wore sketchers. Like since he was 4. Recently, he got really emotionally taking about shoes he wanted for middle school. He said if he doesn’t get Nikes he’s going to get teased. Great fucking marketing work Nike.

  • 5in1k@lemmy.zip
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    36 minutes ago

    Happened to me. Got Nikes, got teased because they were not a good enough model. Kids are monsters.

  • BigTrout75@lemmy.worldOP
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    52 minutes ago

    Well understood. His Mom was poor and bullied in school. So much so that she brings it up from time to time. She quickly bought him the shoes. I’m going to work on getting him Vans or Hookas in the future.

  • NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip
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    4 hours ago

    At all the schools my kids went to… Nobody cares. The kids really don’t give a shit what other kids are wearing. In some ways it’s bizarre given that wasn’t the case when I was a kid. But in many ways it’s great. I rarely ever hear of bullying, kids just are themselves.

    Of course thats woke, because they actually speak to the kids and tell them to consider others and will not tolerate intolerance. So I expect schools like these are few and far between.

  • GaMEChld@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    Man I went to a very affluent school and no one gave a shit about what sneakers we had. Unless you had Heeley’s of course. ZOOM!

  • AA5B@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    The specific request is kind of interesting - when I was a kid, everyone had to wear Nikes or get teased. However for my kids, Nikes were always out.

    Fads always come in cycles

  • dan1101@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    I went through the same Nike crisis when I was in middle school. Had to have them because my friends had them. Instead I got to joke about my “genuine imitation Nikes” from Kmart.

    It’s painful for kids that want to fit in because because they don’t have the wider and wiser perspective that most of us do as adults.

    • Maeve@kbin.earth
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      4 hours ago

      Because they learn from their families, usually. I remember the uppercrust side of my family kicking dirt from a family member’s grave onto his second wife’s grave. So classy.

    • AreaSIX @lemmy.zip
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      9 hours ago

      Is that why Apple has got the US by the balls because people want to avoid the dreaded green bubble in iMessage? I’m not from the US so that might be me misunderstanding the situation, but I’ve been told that even many adults in the US view that as a valid reason to avoid anything that’s not an iphone, because of some social stigma attached to the green bubble.

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        As an American I’m still not convinced.

        Apple successfully sold themselves as a better choice, the “in”thing - to adults. Most adults I know have iPhones and the ones who don’t seem self-conscious about it. It might have partly to do with Android phones originally sold as the budget alternative. We’re the shallow ones.

        Kids can take their cues from adults: they see iPhones as the “better”, more desired choice. But also take it to the next level, with teasing and bullying.

        I find it hard to believe anyone cares about the color of text bubbles, especially since kids don’t use iMessage, despite all the media making that claim. It’s just an excuse, but the social stigma is real

      • RedPostItNote@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        You can call it social stigma but it’s really just that there’s more you can do when texting someone else with an apple phone. A lot of the time the same messaging has a totally different vibe than when both people are on iPhones. Things can be lost in context etc.

        • TheRealKuni@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          Some of that has disappeared with RCS support, fortunately.

          But yes, Apple successfully positioned their texting app as a rich formatted chat app when used between iPhone users, behaving more like WhatsApp or KakaoTalk or other chat apps than like traditional texting. But when messaging people without iPhones, it was just standard texting (worse, since they would degrade the quality of MMS images more than necessary, as I understand). To the uninformed, this seemed like everyone else were the ones lagging behind. “How could your phone be any good? Images you send are terrible. I can’t name chats that have you in it. If I react to your messages it spams the group chat.” Etc.

          Brilliant, but absolutely evil, move by Apple. Unfortunately it worked. The only reason I use an iPhone today is that years ago I got tired of being left out of conversations and media sharing by my family and my wife’s family, who all use iPhones. So when my OnePlus 7T Pro 5G McLaren Edition died an early, watery death (rest in peace, king among phones) and nothing else really wowed me in the Android space at the time, I bit the bullet and went to the dark side. I enjoy the iPhone, but I’m still bitter about why I got it.

    • VitoRobles@lemmy.today
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      10 hours ago

      When I was a kid, there was a phase where everyone was obsessed with red flannel. Went on for like 3 months.

      Imagine a pro dominantly black/Latino school in the hood where we’re all dressing up like Al Borland from Home Improvement.

    • SphereofWreckening@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      It’s both. Kids suck and can be clique-like over the dumbest things. But these corporations also realize the amount they can make when their brand is a “status symbol”, and they purposely market around that.

  • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    Eh, my dad wanted me to not be teased because of clothes or whatever. Except I saw through the bullshit and didn’t ask anything. So he basically forced me to wear the ugly shit he thought would look good. When all you can wear is ugly shit picked by your well-meaning parents, ya knaw.

    “Demonstrative consumption” is the word. It hurt my social ties with those I’d want to talk to, but was ashamed of this, much more than fucking poverty probably would.

    He had sort of a trauma from his own childhood, but that’s frankly no excuse because he didn’t even try to talk to me about this. I’d tell him it’s a school half-stacked with children of thieves (aka government workers, it’s not USA so I won’t take any bullshit about “hard-working administrators”, a different part of the world), so, first, I’d prefer to have clear cultural separation from them, second, I didn’t want to be there. The dumb fat pig moron wouldn’t listen, he thought me complaining is the problem so he should find some way for me to waste my resistance energy.

    Well, those little jerks played a prank on him, which I did try to prevent, but as you’ve probably guessed, he thought my resistance to his good wise decisions to be the main threat, so they succeeded. He tried to blame it on me later. I do feel bad for him, but he deserved every bit.

    OK, so much for memories.

    • Maeve@kbin.earth
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      4 hours ago

      “Demonstrative consumption” is the word

      Ostentation?

      Parents sometimes can’t help not wanting to put their kids through what traumatized themselves. At least he wasn’t trying to force you to ensure it because he had to go through it.

      • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        Yep.

        Parents sometimes can’t help not wanting to put their kids through what traumatized themselves.

        Except inverted.

  • flop_leash_973@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    No matter if you end up getting him a pair or not. Be sure he understands that such things as bullying people for having the “wrong” shoes is shallow clique nonsense and he should be better than that.

  • rumba@lemmy.zip
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    12 hours ago

    I got teased for my shoes. I got better shoes, I got teased for my jacket, I got a better jacket. So then they just made shit up to tease me about.

    I saw the fucker that bullied me relentlessly for all three years in middle school about 10 years later. He was pounding stakes in the ground setting up for a carnival. He stopped me in apologized which was kind of surprising. I gave him an absolutely hollow but convincing thanks and what about my day.

    I did a little light internet stalking, turns out he’s vocal that can’t keep a job, construction companies fire him for “no reason” and he’s now down to whatever local company will hire him for physical labor. The only truly sad part is he has multiple children with multiple women and will not own up to any of them.

    Though, I really suppose I owe a lot of who I am to the hell he put me through. Insults mean fuck all to me and I can ignore stress in a bad situation and make solid decisions.

    • TheRealKuni@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      My grade school bully is serving life in prison for attempted double homicide. IIRC he’s also a sex offender.

      Obviously the decisions he made as an adult are his responsibility, but honestly I feel bad for him. He didn’t have much of a chance. His home life was terrible, and he took it out on those around him. He had no positive role models in his daily life besides those at his school, who were always punishing him because he couldn’t conform to a world utterly foreign to his own where people weren’t constantly shitty to one another, and the school didn’t have any better idea how to handle him. The kid had no support. His father was in and out of jail/prison, his mother was overwhelmed. He fell through the cracks.

      It’s no surprise he turned out a piece of shit.

      That doesn’t excuse his actions. Plenty of people come from difficult origins and are good people leading decent lives.

      But I do pity him.