Why am I raising my kids Chareidi? Because they don't got rizz
They're so ohio and that makes them great.
I’ve been getting complaints about my chareidi bashing. Some have asked why I raise my kids chareidi when they may grow up thinking the world is 6000 years old and believing in daas torah. Shouldn’t I raise them Modox? Here’s why. (Warning: This is a boomer rant and includes examples of outside world exposure).
I work in the mental health profession by trade and deal with Jewish and non-Jewish kids. That is why I raise my kids chareidi.
Chareidi gedolim1 warned about television and the damages it causes. They were right. Chareidim threw out their TVs. Meanwhile, all the Modox have TVs (the machmir modox have 96 inches).
Chareidi gedolim warned about the internet and the damages it causes. They were right. Chareidim got filters. Meanwhile, all the Modox have unfiltered internet in their houses (the machmir modox hold filters are assur because chas veshalom it might block an educational site).
Chareidi gedolim warned about smartphones and the damages it causes. They were right. Chareidim got kosher phones and tagged their smartphones. Meanwhile, all the Modox buy their kids smartphones in fifth grade (the machmir modox at birth).
The results are obvious. Chareidi kids are generally getting a healthy childhood - an actual childhood. Modox and non-Jews are exposing their kids to the sewers of the world and starting off their lives with brainrot. For that alone, it is worth raising your kids chareidi.
It gets way worse however. At least in the past, kids growing up modox and nonJewish had a childhood. TV and the internet may have exposed them to inappropriate - even pornographic - content, but their brain still worked. One could possibly make an argument that exposing them early to such things will help them for the real world. However, with the rise of tik-tok and the video-short, the brains are broken.
Once, TV shows and movies had a plot, and no matter how fast-paced and attention span killing the show was, it made some sort of sense. This helped the brain work, in some weird sort of mutated way. No longer.
This is now the content your young schoolage child is watching and sharing online:
You see, people realized if you engage the brain with visuals and loud noises, nothing needs to make sense. When you raise your toddlers on ipads from age 2 and they arent watching shows but shorts, the brain just wants that pick-me-up dopamine juice as it scrolls to the next video. The result? Lots and lots of what is called brainrot. (This is not my term - it’s theirs. They know it). The brain cannot even focus on a 10 second clip anymore. It is just a rat watching a flashing screen.
And that small part of the brain left unrotted? You know what it is focusing on? It’s this:
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
(You notice how he moves weird? That’s brainrot on fire. You won’t catch a yeshivish kid like talking or acting like that.).
What he is focusing on and what is important to him is exactly what you’d expect if you’d take a little kid and expose him to the internet’s values and let him raise himself on that: Sex sex and sex. (maybe a little $$$ too).
Little kids are looksmaxxing, talking about gyatts, and trying to get rizz. (You can google that if you want). When I was 11 I was playing with lego. These kids are trying to get rizz. Guess what? Your yeshivish kid barely knows what rizz is. Which is why I am raising my kids that way.
And it’s not healthy either - the kids I work with are incredibly messed up after being raised on iPads and screentime whenever they needed a soother. And since it is not actual movies where they can actually learn some social skills, but rather brain rot, they barely make eye-contact and cannot focus on anything more than ten seconds (except, maybe, a gyatt). They aren’t even keeping up with the Kardashians2 - they’re keeping up with gaming streamers and outsourcing their actual video gaming to someone else (that’s how little they can focus - they can’t focus on a fully immersive game, they need someone to entertain them.) It’s gotten so bad that even those ten second clips need to have two videos at once! (see footnote for extreme example)3
The Modern Orthodox community decided to raise their children in this cesspool of sewage called the modern world. (Though the OU, thankfully is trying to change that). The Chareidi community didn’t. And that’s why I am raising my kids chareidi.
Yes, I’ll expose my kids to the good (and probably some of the bad) stuff of the world. Yes, I’ll let them watch Star Wars and read Harry Potter. I’ll teach them math, English, and when they get older, about Torah & Science resolutions and maybe even some Zionism. I’ll teach them how to use the Internet responsibly. But I’ll do it in my terms when they’re old enough. I am not letting the world raise my kids - which is why they are growing up in the Chareidi system.
One final word:
Is this what you want your seven your old to sing? (Notice the song length)
Or this? (acapella)
This doesn’t mean they foresaw this with magical powers. It just means they happened to be right this time. The gedolim being neviim is not the purpose of this post!
Side note: I included that gratuitous Kardashians reference so I could include this story: Once, my brother gave an aufruf speech with a pretty modern crowd where he mentioned the Soloveitchik family and said “If you don’t know who the Soloveitchiks are, they are the Kardashians of the yeshivish world.” The joke flew over most peoples heads and only two people gasped, as that Venn diagram of people who know both are very small. But I found it funny, so I am including it here.
Including this example below. Tznius warning. See the emoji use, two videos, and inability for the brain to focus.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Just pointing out, my point is not that the Gedolim had magical superpowers. But in this case they happened to be correct, regardless of their original reasoning.
This post details exactly my criticism (and then some) of the unfortunate consequences of internet usage in a post Covid era.
I’m in a place where I interact frequently with goyim and goyishe kids and frum kids and “modox” kids and everyone, so before anyone says anything, I do know what I’m talking about. You wouldn’t believe the amount of children I’ve seen for whom the only words on their mind were “skibidi” and “toilet”. Even the Jewish but more modern kids were all talking about “gyatts” and other such brainrot all day. For some reason, however, the chevra from the more “yeshivish” crowd, despite them also having internet access, turned out completely normal (in comparison)! Otherwise, most kids the age of that kid in the linked TikTok video that I know are doomed.
None of these kids have probably ever gone on a set of monkey bars. Almost of these kids are really chubby for no reason. Zero meat on their arms. Incapable of speaking about normal things that don’t include either some random swear word or brain rot.
A couple of years ago, I worked at the summer day camp at a martial arts club I’m connected to. Besides trips and games and stuff, we had them do some math and learning to make sure they didn’t completely go off the deep end. So they did the couple math problems and whatever, but when it came to English, the results were dismal. One of these kids, at that time 9 years old, who was talking all day about whatever brain rot was in vogue back then, and could draw you the most exquisite depiction of whatever shin daled was the subject of the aforementioned discussions, couldn’t spell the words “bread” or “home”. A fourth grader who doesn’t know how to spell “bread” but knows all of the skibidi lore there is to know. This is no longer just brain rot; it’s frontotemporal atrophy.
On a more positive note, the learning went sort of normal, despite the audience by this point lacking most/all cognitive ability.