Submitted 8 months ago by robocall@lemmy.world to aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/8c238522-2248-452d-bf59-7afec5b26303.webp
I went to highschool and university in the US - I was lucky that I got a scholarship and that covered pretty much all my tuition costs.
But I had a friend, one year older than me, who joined and served in the US army for something like 2 years just so he could get his university costs covered and to save some money for living expenses.
It may not be intentional, but the high cost of higher education is an excellent recruiting tool for the US military.
It may not be intentional
Nothing is unintentional.
Wasn’t there some tweet of a US general that said to not get rid of high college costs because they would get less soldiers signing up?
Totally not intentional, I’m sure.
It’s creepy that they’re allowed to text children without their express consent. Assuming that this is a real text exchange and that OOP didn’t wilfully give the recruiter their number earlier.
So they’re old enough to decide to join the military but not old enough to handle receiving an unsolicited message on social media?
Recruiters start working you long before you’re old enough to join.
You can join the military before you can drink. This country doesn’t make sense.
It’s not about “handling” anything. Not sure how you inferred that from my post.
Are you okay with army recruiters having your child’s cell phone number without their express consent?
This is Facebook messenger or instagram, either way public profiles
Not that it matters too much but it looks like Instagram or Facebook direct message
Back in the early 2000's I had a recruiter call my house asking for me, creepy AF.
Seeing the army recruitment at comic Con always skeeves me out. I see them talking to 16-17 year old socially awkward kids who don’t know any better. Really predatory.
Really predatory.
It’s interesting that the US has not signed the international agreement against child (<18 yo) soldiers - solely so that the US armed forces can sign 17 yo recruits.
I just thought the Comic-Con would have been a terrible recruiting ground. The military want people that follow orders. The actively discourage intelligence.
Military brat here, half the soldiers I meet are massive nerds and the other half are goobers (meatheads, guys with no prospects, guys who always wanted to be in the army). Take that as you will.
They don’t though. Certain jobs don’t need you to be a genius, but the military really wants all the smart people they can get.
Army recruiters in your school that somehow use social media to contact you?
Institutionalised creepiness.
Wait until you see “career day” at school.
Lol. The recruiter targets the poor. They can pull all sorts of things including calling the parents to pressure high schoolers into joining. If you can’t stay at home past 18, you don’t have much of an option.
I still fondly remember my friend Bob Niederider from high school in the '80s. One day an Army recruiter came to talk to our history class, and at the end he asked if anybody had any questions. Bob raised his hand and said “yeah I have a question: does napalm still stick to kids?” I didn’t really appreciate this at the time - and the recruiter certainly didn’t, either.
I remember mowing the lawn at home in the early 2000s when an Army recruiter pulled up and tried to get me to sign up. We lived in a cul-de-sac, so he was clearly there for me. I was 17 at the time.
The older I get, the more creeped out I am that they showed up unsolicited and talked to me without one of my parents present.
I remember a recruiter coming up to me, trying to shame me.
“Don’t you love your country?!” He shouted. This was after 9/11 too, and being brown, I didn’t say what I wanted to say because i was 17 and was absolutely sure this guy would beat me up.
Yup. Although it’s not generally 1 per school. More like 1 per 10 schools. No different than job recruiters for any other field.
well there’s one difference at least
“How do you feel about killing innocent children in foreign countries?”
“Eh… I’m fine with that.”
“Great! Welcome to Nestle!”
No different form any other organization that prey upon our children
Prey? It’s a path into the middle class for many people. Even during the forever wars there was 2/3rds of the force that never deployed.
It was required in my school to take the ASVAB. If we missed we’d face repercussions. I purposely answered questions wrong-- not all of them because it would look too obvious, but I apparently still scored high enough that they still considered me. I got my results in class, we had someone from the military come speak with us and try to get us to sign up, and even text messages.
Shit was so fucking annoying.
I asked a friend of mine from where I used to live if she had to take it and she asked me what the fuck I was talking about.
I mean, shit, I guess when you live in a state that is known for having awful levels of education they figure they can shove you in the military instead.
…Or football.
What score do you think is the cutoff to not be called?
My guess is they call you regardless of score and use the score to decide how to make the sell. They need all levels of people to stand in front of bullets and maintain a base/outpost.
Joke is on you; they left all the kids that made perfect scores alone. They knew they couldn’t convince them to join.
When I was in school we had to take it but the recruiters also passed back the results. So even if you didn’t want to join it was supposed to be useful information about what you’re good at doing.
Ironically they may have tried harder because you scored low. The phrase “Asvab Waiver” exists for a reason. And there’s very few people who couldn’t drive a truck or something useful.
My highschool had the same thing, they made it sound mandatory but a handful of us found out they couldn’t force you to take it. So yea while 99% of my classmates took it the 5 of us got to sit in a empty classroom and wait it out
This sounds worse than sitting through a time share presentation.
But better than a friend trying to get me to join their downline.
Texas?
I’ll go against the grain here.
I joined not long after high school because I want gonna be able to pay for college, not that I was a good student anyway.
Spent most of my 4 year Air Force enlistment in the UK doing what I wanted - sysad, basically. Never deployed.
Got out and worked for increasingly higher pay and now I make $250k+ without a college degree.
^^ Found the lemmy army recruiter
It’s pretty fucked, honestly. They regularly posted up in the lunchroom at my school, recruiting people with promises of scholarships.
We didn’t get text messages like this, but I’m not surprised to see it. I do wonder how they get the numbers though. Is it just data broker bullshit or is the school system selling out their own students’ information?
Wait till OP hears about mandatory service in other countries.
Do the kids of the ownership classes also have to serve with the rest of the grunts? Or are they sectioned off to champaign units thhe way George W. Bush did his Coast Guard tour? Or given exception like for Trump’s bone spurs?
If aristocrats are on the front line with the of the enlisted, there might be better regard for vets.
I wonder if those countries also face thensame degrees of top-down abuse and sexual assault for which the US Army is reputed.
Lol that’s what I was going to say.
There’s nothing wrong with mandatory military service if your military doesn’t pick fights with everyone else’s.
Hi I’m SSG Douchenozzle, ever had a nightmare that you can’t wake up from? With PTSD we can make that your reality.
how did SSG CarbonizedMiddleEasternToddler even get this kid’s number? Like, are schools colluding with recruiters to just ship underperforming kids off to die?
My child’s high school sent a letter home asking for permission to share his information and transcripts with military recruiters.
Highschools ask for the students cellphone numbers? I’m out of touch, I graduated before everybody had a cellphone. What do they need the students numbers for?
My college sold me out. (Or got hacked or something).
They misspelled my middle name and suddenly, I got bank offers and all sorts of weird shit with that misspelling. I’m actually thankful they misspelled it because it helped me pinpoint my shitty college as the culprit.
I won’t be surprised high schools do it too. A little “oops I didn’t know” deniability and “fuck those kids” adult mentality.
My college sold me out.
I went to a state school in the early 90s. Taking a specific sequence of physics classes was the cue for Navy nuke tech recruiters. And they were aggressive. Turns out someone in the registrar’s office would search for students with that class sequence and sell the info to Navy recruiters. The person got fired, and there was a bunch of pearl-clutching. And yet military recruiters are still such a fixture of college campuses.
Yeah I read recently that selling student data is a pretty common practice for colleges. It’s good income for them, and students aren’t able to track it easily so they don’t make a fuss.
I believe this particular communication is through Instagram messages.
When I was in high school, during the last 3 months of the school year … I forget if they were the Army or the Marines, but they had a table with a display and two guys in the hallway right outside the cafeteria.
Same, except it was one guy and the coolest phone you could get was a Nokia brick. It was a super poor school so no one had one.
I very much remember wanting to get the limites edition phone that they actually made, an actual working phone that was pretty darn close to the one the characters used in the 2nd and 3rd Matrix movies, haha.
/Then I would be cool/ rofl.
We had a recruiter 20 years ago. The kids are smarter these days tho it seems.
Sadly all the branches have one at the schools. I made the mistake of taking the ASVAB test in high school to get out of class, scored well and was hounded by all of these guys. The marine recruiter showed up at my house carrying a CRT TV/VHS combo to try and convince me to join lol
Marine got a workout that day
I had a very anti-war sociology professor that had been protesting since vietnam. Despite his qualms with military industrial complex, he would always say that the the military is the last vestige of upward mobility in the united states as it’s one of the few places where you can enter a playing field that is somewhat leveled for new entries, have merit impact your growth, and get access things like subsidized education. Sure there’s still racism, sexism, etc. but in terms of economic mobility it provides a decent ladder.
I once read an article that basically called the military a billion dollar vocational school program and it really shifted my perspective. Like I kinda don’t give a shit about most people or why they join - maybe it’s that chance at upward mobility, maybe it’s the desire to serve a cause, maybe it’s a desire to feel a part of something bigger, all of which are legit human needs and desires. As an idea, I’m kind of neutral leaning towards negative in the military. It’s when I start looking at it in the broader context thag I get angry, and it’s not necessarily at the rank and file, and sometimes not even the mid to high leadership. It’s the presidents and the politicians and business people who lead the whole thing and play games with people’s lives. I even have sympathy for the angry knuckle dragging meatheads because they just got duped, again, by the ruling class.
Its a noble path that has been corrupted by politicians.
War is lame. It’s just a bunch of people killing each other while the real people in power sit in comfy chairs watching it all unfold. Can we just all get along?
Oh wait, you have oil? Oh, um, he hit me first. 💥🔫⚔️🛢️💯
Can’t you get paid to become an officer with a good non-combat role in the US? Sure being cannon fodder sucks but becoming an engineer or a doctor at their expense can be a decent upstart.
When i was in high school 2003, my physics class devoted an entire period to a military recruiter… Sufficed to say, only the redneck kids were interested.
SSG means sexy space girl or super Saiyan god?
Always has been.
The meaning of “recruiter for your school” might have more to do with the Army coordinating who is actively recruiting where, than someone who is permanently installed at said school. So more “I’m the recruiter the Army designated for” than “I’m your school’s recruiter”. Big difference. I’ve never heard of the latter.
I recall a few weeks back in the 1990’s where different armed forces recruiters were allowed to set up a booth in my HS cafeteria. In hindsight, it seems like the faculty should have launched a whole job fair while they were handing out favors. Which just raises more questions. Anyway, this recent social media angle fits with the same M.O. - they’re super aggressive and will work every angle to get closer to potential recruits.
The bigger problem is that, like all military posts, they rotate people frequently. IMO, there’s little incentive to strictly observe social norms since they’re never sticking around for more than a couple years. Yes, you can report people, but that has got to feel like playing whack-a-mole.
I went to college in my 30s and got texts and calls from recruiters for months. I never knowingly gave my contact info to them, so I’m assuming they got it from the school.
“What do you mean “the”?”
While in my country, some recruitee bribe the recruiter to be able to join…
this is what happens when your training gives your members permanent irreversible brain damage (haha i love concussions)
The us military is a fascinating thing.
Here in Mexico, if they did that, an army of moms would kick their green asses in all of their offices.
I once stole an entire stack of pamphlets from a miltary recruiter it was hilarious.
i went to a high school that had a JROTC program so having a recruiter was extremely expected for me, but forthem to send unsolicited recruitment texts lol? yall go to some sussy ass schools
Got_Bent@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Their recruiting offices were set up directly across the street from my daughter’s high school right next to the Burger King where all the seniors went to lunch.
Shady as fuck
WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 8 months ago
They also exclusively target lower to middle class areas because rich people have options, and the capitalist oligarchy love that poverty to cannon fodder pipeline.
Linkerbaan@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Which is conveniently the real reason they are trying to ban abortion. Because poor kids without options are easy to recruit as cannon fodder
BakerBagel@midwest.social 8 months ago
They target a lot of wealthier neighborhoods as well. Lot of failsons that can’t get into a good college because of their shit grades, but a couple years in the army as an NCO means they can get into a decent school afterwards.
frezik@midwest.social 8 months ago
Why Do They always send the poor?
Tedrow@lemmy.world 8 months ago
The one in my town is right next to GameStop.
Mango@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Isn’t there a law against people who take advantage of kids being near schools?