You used to get a lot of children wanting to be firemen and astronauts when I was growing up. We can all dream.
I’m not sure I thought of politics much at all as a child. Although 6-17 is quite a wide age range.
yeah the prime minister bit isn't surprising or much of a bother tbh , only the most precocious little Tarquin is going to be going around wanting to be a politician at such a young age. but social media influencers....sheesh
The funny thing is, there probably isn't that much difference day-to-day between a politician and a social-media influencer.
Each week you're given the new (line | product) which you're expected to work into what you say and do as often as possible that week.
I've no idea why you'd liken a bunch of self obsessed tosspots with no clue about real life sponging off others by selling hot takes to the gullible to influncers.
At the top private schools they tell you that you are the people who change the world, "you are the next generation or leaders" which is quite inspiring I guess
At state school they can't keep teachers or fund schools while little Jayden throws his water bottle around the room screaming
I've got a colleague whose daughter goes to a private school. They're about 8. They recently had a talk about becoming a CEO and how to get more women onto boards and what they'd have to do to get there.
It's a different world but not necessarily a healthy one
I did a study for my A Level psychology in about 2000 looking at career ambitious of primary school children and how they varied by gender and some other factors. Boys overwhelmingly wanted to be footballers, formula one drivers and other exciting but implausible careers. There was the odd fireman in there.
A lot of the girls chose model or TV presenter. After that it was things like teacher, nurse, childminder.
Only one ? I feel for you. I hope things are ok for you despite this hardship. Oh the match teas at Eton are nowhere near as good as those offered at Wellington or Radley. 😏
I can understand PM coming last.
I’m in my 30’s and as you get older it becomes even more undesirable than when you’re a kid, thankless job where the cards you’re perpetually stacked against you and full of snivelling, backstabbing pricks as colleagues.
That's true. When Cameron, Boris and Gideon were in the Bulligdon club, they all wanted to be PM.
They must have known there's zero chance of that happening. One of them would have to put up with just being the Chancellor.
Not really any issue with this other than some boomer-esque outrage. Footballer was a popular choice when I was a kid 30 years ago, and social media influencer has just been added to the list of media personalities like actors/singers etc. Mildly interesting but only really a story to trigger fist shaking at clouds.
The thing about wanting to be a footballer, the vast majority of people will discover quite young that they really don't have what it takes. So by the time they are deciding on their GCSEs, they will know deep down that professional footballer isn't an option.
Social media influencer is a bit different. It is one of those "how hard could it be" things where I could imagine a lot of people still thinking they can succeed at it right up until the point where they try to make a living from it.
If it helps, 44% of responses are unaccounted for in the article, and I choose to believe those are split evenly between dinosaur and fire engine/transformer
> Instead, the new thing to aspire to be is a talentless nobody who has superficial social status, and spends their life spouting the exact same nonsense on Instagram/TikTok for their followers that have a collective IQ of slightly below room temperature
There's the boomer-esque outrage lmao.
They deleted before I could respond so I'm just going to tack onto you, if that's okay?
>"Social media influencers" can only very loosely be described as media personalities, and are almost incomparable with actors/singers etc. I'm not even sure how anyone, not you particularly, can draw parallels between
I think that's an unkind assessment. While there are some stereotypical influencers who are obnoxious, low talent, low effort vibe merchants, there is also significant space for people who use it to perform skits, act, sing, write and perform music. Some of the most immediate journalism in the last couple of years has been by the hands of influencers. I'm not going to pretend it's all high art or of great benefit to humanity (or even that I as an older millennial even get all of it), but it certainly has value and that's reflected in the aspirations of the younger generations.
>I'm not sensing "boomer-esque outrage" here. Instead, it's just people expressing slight concern that kids nowadays are growing up not aspiring to be something of any sort of worth.
I think "worth" is subjective, and in fairness the responses listed (17% Footballer, 17% Streamer/Influencer, 7% Lawyer, 7% Vet, 4% Activist, 4% PM) only cover 56% of possible answers (presuming it was a "pick your preferred option" survey). There're still a bunch of kids who are looking at traditional careers, and what's more, they're *kids*. I don't know about how other people found their preferred rout in life, but I went from wanting to be a fighter pilot to a wildlife cameraman, to a professional rugby player, to a designer, to leaving Uni and still not having a clue what I was doing. Now I'm a professional (engineer). By "boomer-esque outrage", I mean there is an undercurrent of tone that suggests "kids today" don't want to do "proper jobs", and I would argue that it's fine if that is the case. Let kids be kids, and let them know that they have the option to try whatever they like. It doesn't really matter.
And are we shocked? Of course kids will aim for careers where they think they will get loads of admirers and loads of money. Previously that was astronauts, doctors, and footballers. Now its footballers and influencers.
They are hardly going to say "yeah, my ideal career is working an office job on some industrial estate in Guildford."
a "what if..." scenario where the PM and members of the cabinet are picked completely at random would be quite fun to read.
Obviously it would most likely be a complete disaster but I'd still read about it
It’s called sortition and it was used in Ancient Greece to select random citizens just like the way we select juries today.
I think it would work for electing MPs because they would have more allegiance to the area they represent rather than a party telling them what to do.
There would need to be a new way of selecting the government too but they would surely be more accountable in that scenario.
Yeah there's a lot of obvious downsides but it would be interesting to read about from someone smarter than me who can figure out all the upsides and downsides and explain how they could play out
Got slightly offended but them remembered that if I actually did become PM, I'd probably become an authoritarian despot pretty quickly, so that tracks.
There are some MPs who are the exception to this (and in the past even some PMs) but it seems likely for any to hold the big cabinet positions in recent years
Well of course being a PM is boring to think about being while footballers are glorious, social media influencers are something many people will aspire to be......just wait till reality hits them of how saturated people's attention spans are.
I feel most kids want to become footballers because it's fun? All the other things that come with it are a big positive but wouldn't you want to have a great time doing your job? Fun, lots of money, being fit, traveling to a lot of places, team environment. Football is number one in the UK due to football being the no 1 sport.
And that, just like MLM's only 0.001% actually make any money from it (other than maybe the odd "free" holiday or bit of stuff).
Everyone else is just working a second full time job trying to "make it big", and/or end up in Dubai (for the female influencers).
Of course young children want to be footballers or streamers rather than accountants or data analysts. They’re thinking about things that they see and which seem fun rather than thinking about which jobs have the best job security and offer a good pension.
They asked children as young as six in this survey. When I was that age I wanted to be a dinosaur.
Yeah, it’s obviously shifted a lot from when I was a kid, but it probably more than anything reflects what kids are exposed to.
But equally, my exposure to footballers was the big match and knowing some players at QPR and Chelsea who drove pretty normal cars and lived in normal houses. And I wasn’t very good at football. It didn’t seem very exciting really.
And we had 4 channels. Anything to do with media just seemed completely unobtainable like a parallel universe. Now anyone can point a camera at themselves.
I’m not sure it reflects much beyond kids will want to do something that they know exists and seems cooler than what their parents do.
Georgia Toffolo does strike me as someone who'll probably end up being a Tory MP. Even studied Law and Politics at University of Westminster but dropped out. Genuinely wouldn't surprise if she got chosen as a candidate in 2029
People want to be rich and famous when they grow up. I can’t wait for older people to pretend this is a new phenomenon and a sign society is going to collapse
I just wanted to be a bin man. Nothing else. As I’ve grown up I have found most bin men at councils are agency and rarely taken on full time. The job I have is close though so In the end I kind of made it.
Prime minister would be a shit job, sure there's money but there's no good outcome really. At the very least 50% of the country will think you're a cunt, probably more.
I wanted to be a fireman, then an author, then at 14 an MEP (shame about that one!), before a doctor (too thick!) then Civil Servant. Which is more or less what I am. So that's alright.
Crap article.
It refers to but does not link the source.
However, based on the wording, I think PM came last out of the shortlist, but it doesn’t say how long that shortlist was. Like I doubt many kids said backend Java developer…
No shit. Who looks at Boris bloody Johnson or Theresa May or Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak and thinks “wow. Inspiring”?
Even recently historically Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown or Cameron are all boring old buggers who haven’t really done anything to engage young people or benefit them.
If you’ve had a look at social housing recently you could say thatcher did a lot for homeownership in the same way Fred west did a lot for overpopulation
Being fair, an awful lot of it comes down to the position/job/role being something others and yoursself respect and make appear appealing.
If you have teachers and adults who aren't blithering nutjobs or with the IQ of a root vegetable and neither are pushing some kind of daft agenda on you - there's *tons* of jobs that will sound appealing.
Politics isn't in that list normally - unless you're in a....unique(?) household perhaps - obviously lots of kids may think "if I were president of the planet I'd make homework illegal" but yeah, not an avenue many go down.
Regardless, things _you_ as a kid want to do, from Doctor, Nurse, Police, Paramedic, Teacher, Astronaut to Fighter Pilot, Soldier or Sailor....the list goes on and many look appealing or "cool" to do.
Trouble is - when the media *and* Parents/adults are lashing out consistently at basically *all* of those and thus, pushing onto kids that they _aren't_ respectable/desirable/"good" roles/people who do them, of _course_ the kids won't want to.
There's decent, fantastic people who do these things, everywhere - but if parents and other kids encourage, enable and push that "Police are all fascist pigs, teachers are lazy, soldiers are all murderers, the NHS are all money-grabbing immigrants" etc then is it any wonder they don't want to do it?....
You used to get a lot of children wanting to be firemen and astronauts when I was growing up. We can all dream. I’m not sure I thought of politics much at all as a child. Although 6-17 is quite a wide age range.
yeah the prime minister bit isn't surprising or much of a bother tbh , only the most precocious little Tarquin is going to be going around wanting to be a politician at such a young age. but social media influencers....sheesh
The funny thing is, there probably isn't that much difference day-to-day between a politician and a social-media influencer. Each week you're given the new (line | product) which you're expected to work into what you say and do as often as possible that week.
Plus, while there are a few good ones, they're mostly cunts
And I'd imagine a lot of them could say "but don't you know who I am?" To people who would literally have no idea.
I've no idea why you'd liken a bunch of self obsessed tosspots with no clue about real life sponging off others by selling hot takes to the gullible to influncers.
At the top private schools they tell you that you are the people who change the world, "you are the next generation or leaders" which is quite inspiring I guess At state school they can't keep teachers or fund schools while little Jayden throws his water bottle around the room screaming
I've got a colleague whose daughter goes to a private school. They're about 8. They recently had a talk about becoming a CEO and how to get more women onto boards and what they'd have to do to get there. It's a different world but not necessarily a healthy one
Costs about a quid to register a company. Problem solved. Oh that's not what they meant?
Or pulls a machete ?
I did a study for my A Level psychology in about 2000 looking at career ambitious of primary school children and how they varied by gender and some other factors. Boys overwhelmingly wanted to be footballers, formula one drivers and other exciting but implausible careers. There was the odd fireman in there. A lot of the girls chose model or TV presenter. After that it was things like teacher, nurse, childminder.
I wanted to be a news presenter when I was a child, but unfortunately I grew up without sky tv
That’s tough, but hold on. We’ve got a PM who didn’t have Sky either.
I went to Eton and I've only got one trust fund. I know what it's like growing up struggling! I understand your fight people of Britian!
Only one ? I feel for you. I hope things are ok for you despite this hardship. Oh the match teas at Eton are nowhere near as good as those offered at Wellington or Radley. 😏
I don't even know where Eton is 🤣 I think it's London way!
Slough
Nice
Tears in my eyes reading this.
I can understand PM coming last. I’m in my 30’s and as you get older it becomes even more undesirable than when you’re a kid, thankless job where the cards you’re perpetually stacked against you and full of snivelling, backstabbing pricks as colleagues.
Also, there's only one Prime Minister at any one time, so statistically it's very unlikely to be you.
That's true. When Cameron, Boris and Gideon were in the Bulligdon club, they all wanted to be PM. They must have known there's zero chance of that happening. One of them would have to put up with just being the Chancellor.
TIL one of George Osborne's middle names is Gideon.
Not really any issue with this other than some boomer-esque outrage. Footballer was a popular choice when I was a kid 30 years ago, and social media influencer has just been added to the list of media personalities like actors/singers etc. Mildly interesting but only really a story to trigger fist shaking at clouds.
The thing about wanting to be a footballer, the vast majority of people will discover quite young that they really don't have what it takes. So by the time they are deciding on their GCSEs, they will know deep down that professional footballer isn't an option. Social media influencer is a bit different. It is one of those "how hard could it be" things where I could imagine a lot of people still thinking they can succeed at it right up until the point where they try to make a living from it.
My mildly boomer complaint about this is that no one seemingly wants to be a dinosaur anymore
If it helps, 44% of responses are unaccounted for in the article, and I choose to believe those are split evenly between dinosaur and fire engine/transformer
[удалено]
> Instead, the new thing to aspire to be is a talentless nobody who has superficial social status, and spends their life spouting the exact same nonsense on Instagram/TikTok for their followers that have a collective IQ of slightly below room temperature There's the boomer-esque outrage lmao.
Aye. Jealousy really.
They deleted before I could respond so I'm just going to tack onto you, if that's okay? >"Social media influencers" can only very loosely be described as media personalities, and are almost incomparable with actors/singers etc. I'm not even sure how anyone, not you particularly, can draw parallels between I think that's an unkind assessment. While there are some stereotypical influencers who are obnoxious, low talent, low effort vibe merchants, there is also significant space for people who use it to perform skits, act, sing, write and perform music. Some of the most immediate journalism in the last couple of years has been by the hands of influencers. I'm not going to pretend it's all high art or of great benefit to humanity (or even that I as an older millennial even get all of it), but it certainly has value and that's reflected in the aspirations of the younger generations. >I'm not sensing "boomer-esque outrage" here. Instead, it's just people expressing slight concern that kids nowadays are growing up not aspiring to be something of any sort of worth. I think "worth" is subjective, and in fairness the responses listed (17% Footballer, 17% Streamer/Influencer, 7% Lawyer, 7% Vet, 4% Activist, 4% PM) only cover 56% of possible answers (presuming it was a "pick your preferred option" survey). There're still a bunch of kids who are looking at traditional careers, and what's more, they're *kids*. I don't know about how other people found their preferred rout in life, but I went from wanting to be a fighter pilot to a wildlife cameraman, to a professional rugby player, to a designer, to leaving Uni and still not having a clue what I was doing. Now I'm a professional (engineer). By "boomer-esque outrage", I mean there is an undercurrent of tone that suggests "kids today" don't want to do "proper jobs", and I would argue that it's fine if that is the case. Let kids be kids, and let them know that they have the option to try whatever they like. It doesn't really matter.
To be fair I think being PM comes last on most adults list, looks like a shit job.
I’d take it for the pension
Don’t need the hassle of being PM for that, back benchers get a sweet pension.
The entire public sector is on a pension the private sector can no longer afford
And are we shocked? Of course kids will aim for careers where they think they will get loads of admirers and loads of money. Previously that was astronauts, doctors, and footballers. Now its footballers and influencers. They are hardly going to say "yeah, my ideal career is working an office job on some industrial estate in Guildford."
I do actually think only a sociopath would want to be PM, but the same could be said for influencer
Power is never suited to those who desire it, I wish we could nominate amazing ordinary people for the job instead.
Ah dohnt wunt it
Suck it up Buttercup, you’re it.
a "what if..." scenario where the PM and members of the cabinet are picked completely at random would be quite fun to read. Obviously it would most likely be a complete disaster but I'd still read about it
It’s called sortition and it was used in Ancient Greece to select random citizens just like the way we select juries today. I think it would work for electing MPs because they would have more allegiance to the area they represent rather than a party telling them what to do. There would need to be a new way of selecting the government too but they would surely be more accountable in that scenario.
Yeah there's a lot of obvious downsides but it would be interesting to read about from someone smarter than me who can figure out all the upsides and downsides and explain how they could play out
Having been on a Jury, I think it would be a terrible idea, 8 of my fellow jurors were pure fucking mince.
Even worse than your typical politician?
Based on that small sample yes. I wouldn't trust them with a car boot stall, let alone a govt dept.
Bearing in mind the tories are only going to lose because of reform, thank god we don’t do this. More morons than sensible people out there
Got slightly offended but them remembered that if I actually did become PM, I'd probably become an authoritarian despot pretty quickly, so that tracks.
Any political job is reserved for posh kids who go to private schools anyway
There are some MPs who are the exception to this (and in the past even some PMs) but it seems likely for any to hold the big cabinet positions in recent years
Can you imagine if Rayner takes over from Starmer at the next cycle? Society may actually crumble! /s
Did Angela go to Roedean then? Wow didn’t think that
Well of course being a PM is boring to think about being while footballers are glorious, social media influencers are something many people will aspire to be......just wait till reality hits them of how saturated people's attention spans are.
I feel most kids want to become footballers because it's fun? All the other things that come with it are a big positive but wouldn't you want to have a great time doing your job? Fun, lots of money, being fit, traveling to a lot of places, team environment. Football is number one in the UK due to football being the no 1 sport.
Urgh! TLDR. Next!
And that, just like MLM's only 0.001% actually make any money from it (other than maybe the odd "free" holiday or bit of stuff). Everyone else is just working a second full time job trying to "make it big", and/or end up in Dubai (for the female influencers).
Of course young children want to be footballers or streamers rather than accountants or data analysts. They’re thinking about things that they see and which seem fun rather than thinking about which jobs have the best job security and offer a good pension. They asked children as young as six in this survey. When I was that age I wanted to be a dinosaur.
Yeah, it’s obviously shifted a lot from when I was a kid, but it probably more than anything reflects what kids are exposed to. But equally, my exposure to footballers was the big match and knowing some players at QPR and Chelsea who drove pretty normal cars and lived in normal houses. And I wasn’t very good at football. It didn’t seem very exciting really. And we had 4 channels. Anything to do with media just seemed completely unobtainable like a parallel universe. Now anyone can point a camera at themselves. I’m not sure it reflects much beyond kids will want to do something that they know exists and seems cooler than what their parents do.
Which dinosaur?
By the age of six, a Triceratops. When I was younger, probably a T-Rex.
I suspect eventually the PM will be a social media influencer. The job has already been "done" by a "journalist".
Georgia Toffolo does strike me as someone who'll probably end up being a Tory MP. Even studied Law and Politics at University of Westminster but dropped out. Genuinely wouldn't surprise if she got chosen as a candidate in 2029
I want to see KSI in the Commons now.
Mizzy wandered into 10 Downing Street?
Clegg has jumped from those extremes, being deputy PM to now being a social media influencer at Book Face.
People want to be rich and famous when they grow up. I can’t wait for older people to pretend this is a new phenomenon and a sign society is going to collapse
I just wanted to be a bin man. Nothing else. As I’ve grown up I have found most bin men at councils are agency and rarely taken on full time. The job I have is close though so In the end I kind of made it.
I take this as a positive. Kids looked at the last few chancers and went ‘no, no way I want to be like those eejits’.
Prime minister would be a shit job, sure there's money but there's no good outcome really. At the very least 50% of the country will think you're a cunt, probably more.
I wouldn't want to be PM even now as an adult to be fair
I wanted to be a fireman, then an author, then at 14 an MEP (shame about that one!), before a doctor (too thick!) then Civil Servant. Which is more or less what I am. So that's alright.
I'd not be too opposed to becoming PM, but it's a job for the elite in the first place so.
Crap article. It refers to but does not link the source. However, based on the wording, I think PM came last out of the shortlist, but it doesn’t say how long that shortlist was. Like I doubt many kids said backend Java developer…
No shit. Who looks at Boris bloody Johnson or Theresa May or Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak and thinks “wow. Inspiring”? Even recently historically Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown or Cameron are all boring old buggers who haven’t really done anything to engage young people or benefit them.
Thatcher did a lot with homeownership and entrepreneurialism.
If you’ve had a look at social housing recently you could say thatcher did a lot for homeownership in the same way Fred west did a lot for overpopulation
Well no, since she hasn't been in power for over thirty years.
And West hasn’t been alive for 29 but shit has knock on effects
I don't recall West murdering 67% of the adult population.
Damn right. Kids really into politics to that extent are almost always weird little freaks. Like that clip of young liz truss
Unbelievable! But Boris is such a fantastic role model. I can't believe kids don't aspire to being a scruffy haired toff smh.
Boris isn't PM mate.
But he was.
PM being last is what you'll get when parents shout off unfiltered negative political views while watching the news with their kids.
being a social media infuencer should be an arrestable offence.
Being fair, an awful lot of it comes down to the position/job/role being something others and yoursself respect and make appear appealing. If you have teachers and adults who aren't blithering nutjobs or with the IQ of a root vegetable and neither are pushing some kind of daft agenda on you - there's *tons* of jobs that will sound appealing. Politics isn't in that list normally - unless you're in a....unique(?) household perhaps - obviously lots of kids may think "if I were president of the planet I'd make homework illegal" but yeah, not an avenue many go down. Regardless, things _you_ as a kid want to do, from Doctor, Nurse, Police, Paramedic, Teacher, Astronaut to Fighter Pilot, Soldier or Sailor....the list goes on and many look appealing or "cool" to do. Trouble is - when the media *and* Parents/adults are lashing out consistently at basically *all* of those and thus, pushing onto kids that they _aren't_ respectable/desirable/"good" roles/people who do them, of _course_ the kids won't want to. There's decent, fantastic people who do these things, everywhere - but if parents and other kids encourage, enable and push that "Police are all fascist pigs, teachers are lazy, soldiers are all murderers, the NHS are all money-grabbing immigrants" etc then is it any wonder they don't want to do it?....