happybadger

School teaches you to parrot what you're told back to the teacher in return for rewards, kind of like a dog who's told to sit and then given a treat.

Early in your education, the rewards for sitting are awesome. You get a sticker, a lolly, maybe something from the toy chest if you're really good at sitting. You play fun games that reinforce the idea that "sit=reward" like Head's Up Seven Up and that game where the teacher turns off the lights and someone taps you on the shoulder and you have to correctly answer a maths problem in order to tap someone else.

Then they introduce punishment as failure to sit. Not everyone gets a sticker and some kids get time-out. Dissent of any kind will have you sitting with your head in your arms for ten whole minutes and speaking out of turn, even if you're right, earns your hand a trip to your mouth for the next twenty. There's always a worse punishment waiting just over the horizon, the ultimate one being parent teacher conferences.

Then they up the stakes. If you sit extremely well, you get a pizza party. If you kneel, they give you something called a C. Nobody wants a C but you're not sure why. All you know is that you don't want a C and so you try and sit better.

This continues until secondary school, at which point you're feeling burnt out from all that sitting. Ms. Mayes speaks up, "BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!", and introduces the concept of a building where everyone drinks and parties and fucks 24/7 where you'll have total freedom and can do all the drugs you want and will never ever ever grow old and a rabbit in a giant hat will always be late for something.

But there's a catch...

That C you've become okay with won't cut it. This place, this magical hedonistic wonderland, only takes B students, and if you're an A student they pay you to go there. Awesome, you think.

But there's a catch...

You don't know if you can get all A's and you can't afford it with B's. Get a job making $4 an hour three hours a night two nights a week and make enough to get a car so you can drive around your small town looking for things to do with friends you'll never speak to again and use that car to get a job making $5 an hour four hours a night five days a week.

Now A's are not a possibility. No way, no how. You've got a job that's stressing you out. The rewards for sitting become a really abstract idea of wealth and happiness and the punishment for not sitting becomes living in a caravan with your wife/sister with eight screaming kids waiting on a welfare cheque so you can make some meth.

Sitting becomes life, anything else a fate worse than death- mediocre existence. You'll sit harder than you've ever sat before. You'll take easier sitting classes to boost your sit point average. You'll join sitting teams where you sit in line with a dozen other sitters as your coach says "SIT HARDER!". You'll join sitting bees where judges say "sit" and you'll sit in front of an audience as they judge your ability to sit correctly. The reward is scholarship on top of scholarship, the punishment a return to the job you had to quit because your car broke down and the $40 you had saved for university after paying to take friends and girlfriends out on the town went to your older brother for a pack of fags because the man on the telly said "smoke" and you're such a whore for commands that it sounds like a great idea.

Senior year is here and you're a sitting machine. You'll get hernias from sitting so hard, but damn it all it's worth it. You'll sit perfectly in every class for no reward, you'll sit quietly at lunch and sit quietly at home as you practise your sitting for a big sit test. Together with other sitters you'll study sitting for the sitting finals, and then you'll ace them because you're a sitter not a quitter. "Congrats!", they'll say. "Buy a ring!", they'll say. "Buy a suit!", they'll say. "Sit until we call upon you to receive your diploma!", they'll say, and you'll sit because you've earned the right to.

The university accepted you! You still got B's, but that's no problem because the man at the bank said "sign." and gave you a whole bunch of money that you won't have to pay back for four whole years. That's four years of partying, of drinking, of sleeping with slutty girls and broing out with your bros over gamecube and natty ice. You're going to be free to do all the fun shit you've seen in every movie about uni ever made. You'll throw couches off roofs and travel across Europe finding yourself and eat Ramen noodles and play light-hearted pranks on the RA's.

You go to your first class, head high and ready to start the rest of your life with a bang. The teacher says "alright everyone, please sit", and you sit.

A car drove past me as I was crossing the street and yelled "Do a barrel roll!

Have you ever taken a look in the mirror and said "I'm so internet-famous that cars break their vows of silence just to talk to me"?

Do you consider yourself a celebrity? If so, how do you intend to use your voice in the future? You've definitely got the good side of 4chan pinned with Canvas, but do you want to leave it with these two businesses or utilise this kind of piranha pit-style interaction further and eventually do something on the scale of, say, Wikileaks or Anonymous (mainly just the idea of using anonymous flash mobs for social good)?

My favourite teacher, out of three countries and maybe a dozen schools, was a bloke in his first year. He was vehemently opposed to any sort of state-encouraged pampering and was very blunt with his students, saying "this is what the government expects me to let you get by with, and I have to comply." He then explained that while we could do the bare minimum and pass, it would later fuck us over tremendously.

He was the only teacher who really talked to us as adults, and his class was the only one that I actually tried in because of that. Worth a shot.

I call first go. There's still sloppy seconds, bloody thirds, crusty fourths, and charred remains.

1) If you're not paying for a product, you are the product.

The last time you convinced me to do this my butt hurt for a week. Can someone else be the product next time?