Thread by @MarkOneinFour

Looking at the usual rehearsed hot takes about hungry children and families and thinking: people love to judge others levels of personal resourcefulness and to imply that they would know 'ten simple tricks' to solve the problem as if being in need were a failure of imagination

Hot takes around poverty are absolutely dripping with survivorship bias, as are any discussions of need where there is a notion that personal coaching can overcome systemic inequality. People literally only listen to the experiences of those who overcame, not those who cannot

People with their hot poverty takes absolutely adore valourising their own life hacks while suggesting that other people's attempts to get by are silly, misguided and morally reprehensible. Yes, your way of getting through worked for you but there were loads of people that didn't

So with poverty 'life hacks', so with apocalyptic survival. Authoritarian people love the idea that given any form of hardship, they'd have the personal resourcefulness to survive. The rest of us kind of realise it takes a mesa of help to make it through things *together*

If you have a full belly and warm home, your advice that people should be more like you doing things that you actually never have to do because your belly is full and home warm, you are just bigging yourself up, not helping anyone at all. You are just saying need is illegitimate

So much of the discourse around voting to not provide free meals for kids basically amounts to people saying 'if my kids were hungry I would feed them'. Which is just ignoring the problems other people have while robustly mouthing off. Which is a strong British trait

There is a brutality to British public life and attitudes to need, poverty and lack of essentials. People who talk about how they 'made it through and why can't others' want an outside authority to pat them on the head and say 'well done'. To be given dignity they'll take others

Because class is so ingrained in British life, people are quite prepared to throw other people who are struggling to the wolves if it means someone more comfortable than them pats them on the head and says 'well done for not costing me anything, you're almost like one of us'

When people have their hard hot takes about poverty they are valourising struggling, as if having lived through horrible times at great cost was a more valuable idea than preventing others living through horrible times at great cost. Like: there's no medals for bad times, chief

It's horrible to see people who have experienced horrible, life limiting, soul destroying poverty arriving at arguments that amount to 'the only way I can gain and hold self respect from my awful experience is to argue that others should go through it too.'

I'm sorry that hard times were hard for you in the past and well done getting through them. I see and hear you. But I think you're wrong to wish that on others so that they can know how you felt. I can't make up for what you didn't have, but we can stop the cycle together

Having made it through poverty and limited chances to a degree of comfort is an achievement. But other people didn't make it through, and won't make it through in future. Privatising the idea of survival down to personal traits might make you feel more secure, but it doesn't help

British society is so unequal one thing people fear is having their self respect taken away. People who struggled and survived can be so terrified of having that achievement unrecognised they'll argue for others to go through hardship so their achievement isn't forgotten

It's a testament to how unequal British society is that people will literally argue about who is better at being poor when confronted with reality of other people's struggles to have a life and feed their family. People love to claim they were the deserving poor and others aren't

Literally, hot takes after MPs voted down extending free meals for kids amount to 'back when I was poor I was mint at it and totally aced it and all of you currently poor people are just noobs and I was the winner of being poor and now I'm not so there'