Note that I’m not just talking about the shitheads who cause forest fires or water contamination, with their bullshit. I’m talking about ANY of this dumb shit.
People used to have some goddamn dignity. If you wanted to keep the sex of the baby a secret, then you’d have both pink and blue cigars ready to hand out, after the birth. If you wanted the doctor to tell you, then that’s fine. You’d be talking to your friends and you’d go “yeah, the new kid’s gonna be a girl.”
The whole concept of an extra baby shower, just to hoot and holler about that shit is FUCKING INTOLERABLE.
As far as I’m concerned, it shows that these dipshits are only interested in their offspring as accessories to their own lives. They’re after the attention they can get, off the back of their children. They’re after the lifestyle of being a parent, so they can associate with other people who define themselves based on the social and material trappings of parenting. And they’re drooling after social media likes and views.
Anyone who participates in that shit is proving that they’re not interested in being the parent of a human being. They’re just making a doll to dress up and pose for pictures, starting before the child is even out of the womb.
To reiterate the title: if it was up to me, everyone who has ever had any kind of gender-reveal nonsense for their upcoming kid should have that child seized by the state, hopefully to be raised by real people, rather than soulless degenerates.
What? No, traditions proliferate because of network effects and cultural momentum.
Yes, that’s the mechanism of their transmission. But their PURPOSE is to reaffirm cultural norms, chiefly ones related to humility and basic conformity to one’s society. Not the “I’m going to do literally everything exactly the same as everyone else” sort of conformity, mind you. Just the BASIC kind of conformity and humility. The kind that says “I’m no more valuable than everyone else in the community.”
Rushing to join a new tradition (especially one that hyper-celebrates one’s own reproduction) is an indication of the opposite impulse. You’re communicating that you’re better, more important, more valuable than your peers and your ancestors. That’s destructive and maladaptive. Not everyone can be the best. If everyone thinks they’re the most special, then nobody will want to do the equitable sharing and sacrificing that all societies have to do, in order to keep running.