Why I don't shop at stores that ban young people.

So this is my first rant, and I shall start off with a subject that seriously pisses me off. Namely, places that ban children or teenagers. For example, these things that have popped in the news from time to time:

Disney World Bans Children From One Of Their Restaurants

Shopping centers showing mallrats the door

These are just two examples of what I'm talking about; if you want to see any more, just do a Google search, there are a ton of articles like this around. I'd talk about more, but I'm lazy. :P

The one thing I have to say about places that do this is... well, this: I will not go to, shop or eat at places that ban children or teenagers. It will not happen, EVER. And I have two reasons for this.

The first one is that I find this kind of nonsense absurd, discriminatory and morally reprehensible. You do not ban a group of people from your store, your restaurant, your mall, or any normal place based on what they are from the outside. Ever. No, I do not give a shit if it's "private property and the owners can do what they want", because no, you can't. If any store or restaurant or mall owner today tried to ban other groups of people, like, say, black people or males, you can bet any money there'd be a huge media shitstorm about it and everybody would be all up in arms about violating their rights. Blanket bans would never fly when applied to any other group of people, yet it's acceptable when it's done to young people? I don't fucking think so. It's not acceptable to me, anyway.

The second reason is that the main excuse used to justify this -- "curbing bad behavior" -- is nothing but bullshit. Not only is this playing on worthless stereotypes, it's also not the real reason places are banning young people. If it was really about behavior and not age, then they'd simply oust the people who are actually causing trouble regardless of age and leave everybody else alone. But instead, they resort to a blanket ban, and the real reason is simple: Instead of doing the right thing, the malls, restaurants and stores just want to bilk money out of self-centered, ignorant older people who are offended and intimidated by people younger than them.

This is blatant in the Disney article(really, Disney banning children from one of their restaurants? Good god, what is this world coming to?). I mean, really, the people who wanted the ban in the Disney restaurant were whining about wanting an ADULT ATMPOSPHERE in a place that is DESIGNED TO CATER TO CHILDREN AND FAMILIES. That's like bitching about Chuck. E. Cheese not having a freaking bar and peep show in the back. If you want to go to a place to have a vacation and an adult atmosphere, maybe you could try, oh, gee, I don't know... NOT GOING TO DISNEY WORLD. There are other amusement parks that have bars and stuff, go to one of those and stop ruining shit for the rest of us just for your convenience.

The Cleveland mall article isn't so straightforward about this, and if you think about the excuses they used to enact their ban, you'll see how utterly ridiculous they really are. Too loud? It's a mall, what do you expect people to do, whisper? Being in large groups? Are you out of your minds? Vulgar language? Well, I'm sorry, I didn't know that this was communist China and not America. And then it talks about loitering even though the article itself says that teenagers who shop at malls spend $56.50 per trip. As for the other things like fighting, those are things you'd throw out anyone from any other age group for doing, so why only complain when teenagers are the ones doing it? These excuses just reek of bullshit.

A lot of these complaints just make it seem like the thing that bothers older shoppers is the fact that younger people are around them, and if that's the case, the older complainers need to get the fuck over themselves and realize that they're not the only ones who exist on the planet Earth. There is no reason to be fearful or hateful of someone else based on age, younger people are not out to get you, idiotic behavior happens in all age groups, and younger people have a right to go to malls, stores, restaurants and other regular places like everybody else.

And if you seriously are scared of teenagers or children, then you need to take a good long look in the mirror, and then go get your head examined.

Honestly, some people... :/

Anyway, the point of all of this is that I don't shop at places that ban younger people. I'm not giving my money to people who cater to discriminatory practices just to line their pockets.

And that's it. I guess.


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