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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   27206 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 2024

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Non-political topic—dog culture. For the holidays, I was in physical stores shopping. It amazed how many people brought their dogs. One had brought a big dog that when it went by someone the dog owner struggled to keep the dog from jumping on the other customer. Dogs were in the freaking grocery store.

To me, this is entirely unacceptable. Some people (yours truly) don’t much care for dogs as the barking can be disquieting. More to the point I was raised believing there was a time and place for everything. Stores were not dog places. Yet that has seemed to break down. My question is why.

Are dog people convinced that all humans love dogs (except for evil humans) and therefore there ought not be a problem? Do they simply not care about old norms?

If you have kids, I strongly encourage you to have your kids point and say "OH MY, A DOG IN THE GROCERY STORE! HAVE YOU EVER SEEN ANYTHING SO RIDICULOUS? DOGS DON'T BELONG IN THE GROCERY STORE!" and have your kids laugh maniacally.

Something about saying it in a toddler voice makes it kryptonite.

My kids did this for me without prompting. Someone was taking their tiny little rat dog on a stroller ride in the neighborhood and they saw it and said something like "WHAT!?! Why is a dog in a baby stroller!? Babies are supposed to go in strollers."

Does remind me that I'm being somewhat of a hypocrite on the dog front though. I bring my kids to the grocery store and they can probably just as easily gross someone out. They might be snotty and coughing. They'll touch anything and everything. They'll run out of aisles and sometimes run into people. And I don't even have them on a leash. (I'm joking a little for exaggeration. My kids are generally well behaved and a little shy in the grocery store, but Im just giving the shape of the argument.)

To add some iron to @hydroacetylene's point: kids in supermarkets are a specific exception made in order to serve the greater societal interest of "there should be a lot of kids" by removing hassles for parents, not an example of the normal rule and thus not something that should be generalised. (And there is no societal goal of "there should be a lot of dogs", hence an analogous exception is senseless.)

Except kids deserve accommodations and dogs don't.

I have my values and they're better than yours.

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