Date: July 2nd, 2021 2:17 AM Author: provocative rough-skinned locale stock car
"Membership for the BSA’s flagship Cub Scouts and Scouts BSA programs dropped from 1.97 million in 2019 to 1.12 million in 2020, a 43% plunge, according to figures provided to The Associated Press. Court records show membership has fallen further since then, to about 762,000."
Date: July 2nd, 2021 2:19 AM Author: provocative rough-skinned locale stock car
"The Boy Scouts of America said this week that the organization would create a “diversity and inclusion” merit badge and make earning it a requirement of becoming an Eagle Scout, the highest scouting rank."
Date: July 2nd, 2021 2:30 AM Author: provocative rough-skinned locale stock car
2018 -- "The Mormon Church has been the largest participant of the Boy Scouts in the United States, making up nearly 20 percent of all of the Boy Scouts’ 2.3 million youth members."
Date: July 2nd, 2021 2:26 AM Author: beady-eyed ticket booth
skin suit
i saw a bunch of "boy scouts" last week in greenpoint doing something, 100% asian kids and probably 80% girls. dorky old white guy "troop leader" wearing hiking boots, didn't seem like he even had a kid there. weird.
Date: July 2nd, 2021 7:24 AM Author: hairraiser massive headpube
Boy Scouts is a great organization, but when I was growing up, it was never really cool. Had this sort of dorky vibe in contrast to competing activities like Little League, which seemed a lot cooler. Great thing in which to participate, but it was always at risk.
Date: July 2nd, 2021 9:07 AM Author: Cerise Philosopher-king Foreskin
It was definitely for dorks whose parents thought they needed to do something. Cool kids played football, basketball and baseball and didn’t have time for some walk around the hills bullshit
Date: July 2nd, 2021 9:54 AM Author: stirring plum set
It's a good organization for big dorks though. I wasn't in scouts but my biggest nerd friend was, and he had a lot of good friends from scouts which was good because he didn't have a lot of friends at school.
Date: July 2nd, 2021 9:56 AM Author: passionate national security agency
It was always the weird nerds at school who did Scouts. That stigma plus constant need to signal on social media, streaming networks, and general erosion of civic culture in the US doomed the org.
Date: July 2nd, 2021 5:18 PM Author: Carnelian french chef
Those of us at school in scouts would never admit it. We’d call it “soccer practice” at school. Like oh yeah you gonna be at “soccer practice” tonight?
Date: July 2nd, 2021 9:13 AM Author: hateful cream stag film
I think COVID is responsible for the recent drop, but another factor not addressed here (in addition to the girls/Mormon thing which was a huge blow to membership) is the skyrocketing fees. When my son joined it cost about $15/scout to register w national. By the time he crossed over it was $66 or $72 and new registration fees on top of that. Note the article says "according to Court filings." Current members are basically paying reparations for lawsuits they had nothing to do with.
Date: March 2nd, 2024 11:11 PM Author: twinkling really tough guy sweet tailpipe
Same. No one taught me how to use it, either, which was a lot of fun. I figured it out pretty quick, though. But I was around 8 at the time and it was cub scouts and the scoutmaster (the "den leader" in cub scouts) was hammered.
Date: July 2nd, 2021 10:00 AM Author: passionate national security agency
Scouts was always a bit creepy and lots of boys got molested or raped on those long trips to the woods with random scout “masters”. It’s good that they’re dying out. Let individual parents form their own camping groups with their kids if they want.
Date: July 2nd, 2021 11:03 AM Author: stirring plum set
Usually it's like that, and the scoutmaster is just one of the dads. If it's just some random guy who's not a dad of one of the scouts, I agree that's a red flag.
Date: July 2nd, 2021 2:19 PM Author: Ebony 180 senate
it is wise to remember that a lot of kikery goes into how all of this is spun:
wiki--
The newspaper discovered that 1,151 Scouts reported being abused by their leaders during the studied 19-year period, mostly before the implementation of the Youth Protection Plan. They published a detailed list of 416 cases from 1971–1990 where a US Scout leader was arrested or banned from Scouting for sexual abuse of Scouts, adding that experts said the real number of abusers and victims was probably several times higher. The newspaper articles later formed the basis for a book by the main journalist involved, Patrick Boyle: Scout's Honor: Sexual Abuse in America's Most Trusted Institution.
so even if you multiply that number by 20 you're talking about tiny numbers over millions of scouts. the libs were trying to kill scouting for years and their reporting was designed to poison the well on that. you're more likely to be molested by your uncle than your scoutmaster, etc.
ultimately, they went the route of taking over the institutions instead of attacking from the outside.
Date: July 2nd, 2021 11:01 AM Author: electric locus hunting ground
For years and years the Mormons funneled their teen boys into the program. They were a major percentage of the membership. They pulled the plug when the BSA announced that it would open membership to girls.
Date: July 2nd, 2021 11:25 AM Author: hateful cream stag film
I would also argue that lack of parent participation is a big factor as well. Seeing this a bit in kids' sports too, but it impacts scouting more. Parents want to be able to drop off and leave or be on their phones. Two-income households and longer work hours also mean less time/energy to help with extra-curriculars. Our pack had a bunch of Eagle scout dads, and it was like pulling teeth sometimes to get them to help or volunteer. By the time we crossed over it was mostly moms running it.
Date: July 2nd, 2021 11:58 AM Author: Ebony 180 senate
the scouting curriculum (minus some fucking dei badge) is the best curriculum that a young man can do. most boys would quite frankly do better spending 2 years doing the scouting curriculum instead of full time hs. going camping once a month (as the curriculum actually advises) and doing 1 long term camp a year is 180.
the shit around it kinda got super corny. i loved my time and i learned more earning my eagle than i did in college.
americans are so over the fucking top is the problem. i hear about all these eagles at 15. like dog, not everything needs to be so OD.
anyways. my advice is get all of the merit badge pamphlets, save all the curricular materials, and teach your kids off of that because institutional scouting is basically doomed. i wonder what happens to all the camps.
honestly, get the older ones in black and white if you can. also, this book is indispensible if you're being serious: the fieldbook. but THIS ONE not any other one. they completely fucked this book up in later editions.
Date: July 2nd, 2021 12:51 PM Author: hyperventilating deranged property
most of the camps around here are being sold off. its pretty sad. many of them were great. took a century to acquire them, and only a few years of lib infiltration to burn it all down.
Date: July 2nd, 2021 12:23 PM Author: mint fluffy organic girlfriend love of her life
tbf, their enrollment numbers were droppign bigly before the diversity bullshit. just not something that adapted well to the times. sad beacuse dorky as they were it would be nice to have some structured/forced outdoor activity time/learning for kids nowadays instead of being glued to tiktok and fortnite and shit
Date: July 2nd, 2021 2:05 PM Author: Ebony 180 senate
i think that messed with the formula that worked. and striverism took hold. scouting is awesome if it's something you do casually. once troops started to the bimodal distribution of hood after school programs (inschool scouting) and "eagle factories" for loser weirdos who wanted to earn all the badges and get all these eagle palms it became preposterous.
it should always have been something you did rather casually. once kids were made to become super strivers the org was cooked.
Date: July 2nd, 2021 4:25 PM Author: bull headed nursing home antidepressant drug
Former Eagle scout here. I was a Mormon kid who was basically forced into it by my parents/church community. I had some good experiences, I guess, but I can't say that I feel bad that my kids won't do the same thing. I'm all for exploring nature, but I can do that with day hikes. I don't need to sleep on the ground and shit in a hole. And I feel like 90-95% of the merit badge work I did was just busy work. I'm struggling to think of a single thing I learned as a Scout that I even remember now (much less use in my current life).
However, I do find it bizarre that membership is dropping now that girls are allowed. Going camping with girls as a young teenager was basically my fondest wet dream. I remember they hired a couple female staff at scout camp one year. We used to hide outside the showers every night hoping to catch a peek. (This was in the pre-Internet days, so the closest thing to boobs that any of us had ever seen was the Victoria's secret catalog.) I would have thought that sneaking off into the woods with a girl (or just creeping outside her tent as she changes clothes) would be 180^180 as a 13-year-old boy. Maybe real girls aren't as exciting to today's 13-year-olds who can see boobs any time they want once they are old enough to have a smartphone. Or maybe parents don't love the idea of coed camping trips as much as I would have as a 13-year-old. Who knows?
Date: July 2nd, 2021 4:30 PM Author: provocative rough-skinned locale stock car
I don't think the value to be found is really in learning dumb shit for merit badges. It's the experiences -- camping in a snow cave, going for a week-long hike, having positive role models, etc. And maybe you'll pick up a few knots and a littel first aid along the way.
Date: July 2nd, 2021 5:08 PM Author: bull headed nursing home antidepressant drug
I mean, I do have a few good memories of scouting. Eating smores over the fire in the woods. Getting my mile swim recognition in a tiny glacial lake (and nearly getting frostbite in the process). Doing a rope course in the trees at scout camp. Hiding in the bushes outside the showers hoping against hope to catch a glance of boobs on a hot 16-year-old staff member (and end up seeing some 50-year-old scoutmaster naked instead). But yeah that's literally all I can remember from my scouting days. And I could have made similar memories without being a scout.
Date: July 2nd, 2021 5:29 PM Author: Carnelian french chef
I enjoyed parts of it as well. I hated the dorky part of it and would never speak of it outside of it. Didn’t like the ceremonies or uniforms either. In high school, conformity was an obsession with me and the site of myself in the uniform filled me with dread.
It did force me to do backpacking and go camping, which I never would have done on my own. Learned to be uncomfortable sleeping in the cold or hot, so that was valuable as well. Had various leadership positions that possibly gave me some confidence to offset the self consciousness that being in it on the first place gave me.
I enjoyed summer camp. Ours was on a lake so we’d go sailboating in small sail boats, which was 180. Kind of amazed they just let 2 kids age 13-14 get on a sailboat and go out into the water alone.
Date: July 2nd, 2021 4:33 PM Author: Carnelian french chef
Ask yourself What kind of 13 year old girl would want to go walk around in the woods wearing a dorky tan short sleeve button up Boy Scout uniform shirt, neckerchief, green shorts and green socks and you’ll have your answer
Date: July 2nd, 2021 4:49 PM Author: Carnelian french chef
We’d bring them. I remember being embarrassed eating at a Waffle House on the way back from a camping trip wearing my Boy Scout uniform at age 14 or so.
Regardless, what kind of fantasy land are you living in where tens of thousands of attractive 13-18 year old girls are regularly attending “patrol leader councils,” wearing said dorky uniforms to meetings on Monday nights, are participating in the order of the arrow where you dress up like an Indian and dance around (probably racist anyways), earning pointless merit badges to sew on a sash, spending one weekend a month hiking in the woods and learning to either not take a dump all weekend, bury your shit in the woods, or carry it out? That they’d just love to know what happens to tampons in the middle of forest?
Do you think these attractive teenage girls are going to want to be walking around reciting “a scout is trustworthy, loyal, kind...”. Do you think they’re going to want to salute each other with three fingers cocked at their eyebrows?
Like in any time in history, has there ever been a pent up demand for tens of thousands of women in the prime of their lives to dress up in fake military uniforms and go camping? Like the only thing preventing these girls from Doing so was that the Boy Scouts didn’t let them?
Date: July 2nd, 2021 5:04 PM Author: bull headed nursing home antidepressant drug
What kind of TTT troop were you in where you had to wear the dorky uniform to scout camp? I'm pretty sure that the only time we ever wore our uniforms was at award ceremonies and things like that. We definitely never wore them when camping.
And yeah, although you are highlighting the weirdest shit in scouting, I'm guessing that most teenage girls would not be interested in going camping once a month with a bunch of dudes. (Although I'm not sure how many guys would be interested these days if they didn't get pressure from parents/church.) But you only need 1-2 girls in your troop for incredibly quality spank bank material creeping outside their tent. And you know that these girls are going to be able to have their pick of any dude at camp, so they are almost certainly going to sneak off in the woods for, at the bare minimum, some quality makeout sessions. As a 13-year-old virgin who had never seen a boob, knowing that there was even a 0.1% chance that she would pick me would be more than enough to convince me to shit in a hole for a week.
Date: July 2nd, 2021 5:12 PM Author: Carnelian french chef
I can’t remember the reason we had them that time, but we def had to bring them on occasion. I earned my Eagle Scout and so did a bunch of the guys there.
Even 1-2 girls in the group would disrupt the whole dynamic. Dorky boys would end up stopping to come bc they would get made fun of by everyone else even more to impress girls. I remember some kid crying like a bitch that we didn’t clear the proper space around the camp fire when we were camping in the rain. Everyone made fun of him, but ended up coming to begrudgingly like him because he was a fun foil in the group. That kids not going to come on a trip with girls because he’d be too embarrassed. That kid comprises probably 30-40% of the kids in scouts now if I had to guess. As time as progressed, less normal kids are getting involved and staying involved
Date: July 2nd, 2021 5:48 PM Author: bull headed nursing home antidepressant drug
Eh, my guess is that the kid who is crying at scout camp is only there because his parents made him go in the first place. That isn't going to change if there are girls in the troop. If anything, that might make him more likely to go. Some girl might feel bad for him and give him a pity makeout session in the woods or quickly flash him in her tent.
Date: July 2nd, 2021 5:11 PM Author: Yapping Boistinker
cr. i actually really hated parts of it. the camp food was terrible, the religious nonsense, being forced to recite dumb shit like the Scout creed or whatever the fuck it was to advance, the camp restrooms were covered in shit and no one made any effort to clean them, etc. there were some fun parts, but overall it was an unpleasant experience. i repeatedly told my parents i wanted to quit but those fags wouldn't let me.
Date: March 12th, 2022 10:26 PM Author: Heady Pungent Shitlib
Have The Girl Scouts Changed Since The Boy Scouts Let Girls In? They Haven't.
Even with the Boy Scouts of America accepting girls into all levels of scouting, the Girl Scouts has not seen a significant decline in membership.
Jennifer Bartkowski is the CEO of the Girl Scouts of Northeast Texas. She said the Girl Scouts organization doesn’t see the Boy Scouts of America — or Scouts BSA, as the organization is sometimes called — as competition, because they’re unique programs. She said the most important thing the Girl Scouts offers is a space that’s built by girls, for girls only.
“Girls are in a mixed gender space all of their lives,” Bartkowski said. “There are very few opportunities for girls to be in a single-gender space where they can rely on one another, build relationships with one another, be themselves, not have to compete for space, not have to show off in any kind of different way.”
Date: March 12th, 2022 10:37 PM Author: Ebony 180 senate
i'm all over the above thread since i probably have the most institutional knowledge on scouting.
while covid may have hastened the death, it was always coming. the writ large problem was the change of the american family. so many kids either are 1) in single parent households w/multiple children and can't "split the difference" w/r/t having some kids in one thing that the others cant be a part of, 2) or their parents work so much that they can't volunteer, 3) find the values corny. moving scouting to zoom and then cancelling summer camps was just a death sentence.
Date: March 12th, 2022 10:45 PM Author: MASE (MASE)
I come back to this thread occasionally whenever Scouting comes up in my IRL. It’s unbelievably sad. Boy Scouts are needed more than ever, but we simply aren’t strong enough to sustain it anymore. What a tremendous loss.
Date: March 2nd, 2024 12:28 AM Author: Contagious stead elastic band
I mostly hated Scouts. Some random thoughts:
-the masters were the worst part. My dad was involved in coaching sports and shit but never volunteered with scouts except a weekend camping trip or two. Most of the scout masters were absolute fucking losers IRL with some weird power complex who loved the quasi-military structure of it. Several stayed involved well after their kids were 18 and it was super creepy. When I look back on all the men I ever met as a kid in any context, all 10 of the top 10 creepiest were scoutmasters. Even the normal ones seemed to care about nothing besides getting eagle for their kid as if it has meant jack shit since 1990. One of them I barely knew seemed genuinely angry I “said all the right things, but it’s about what you say, not what you do” during my Star rank panel I nevertheless passed (which meant absolutely nothing). I genuinely can’t figure out the psychology of someone like that who would give a shit that some random kid wasn’t super involved in scouts and still met the requirements for some meaningless rank.
-I was from KC and we has this super gay “Indian” tribe called Mic-O-Say. Not flame, the KC Chiefs are named the Chiefs because of this “tribe.” Fortunately I didn’t go to the local summer camp enough years to get pulled into it, but even as a conservahero I thought it was pretty fucked up having to go to ceremonies where a bunch of nerdy white adults played dress up as shirtless Indians and gave all these self-serious speeches about connecting with earth spirits and shit in the most laughably stereotypical Indian shaman cadence.
-the weekly meetings were pointless and my mom made me go to about half of them until I was 15 or so. There were a few solid dudes but most of them were weirdos and it was basically recess for an hour or whatever at some random church.
-high adventure was the only worthwhile part. I did Philmont and Sea Base and while the people sucked, the experiences were pretty cool, especially Philmont. I assume BSA won’t own Philmont for much longer for financial reasons.
Date: March 2nd, 2024 10:48 PM Author: bonkers gas station
“ even as a conservahero I thought it was pretty fucked up having to go to ceremonies where a bunch of nerdy white adults played dress up as shirtless Indians and gave all these self-serious speeches about connecting with earth spirits and shit in the most laughably stereotypical Indian shaman cadence.”
You are correct it’s fucked up and it has nothing to do with politics. It’s just dorky, strange, pathetic, and probably pedo for adult men to be cosplaying about cowboys and Indians to influence children. Its the most bizarre power fantasy power trip.
Date: March 3rd, 2024 4:29 PM Author: Contagious stead elastic band
I agree with that and it’s 90% of why I thought it was fucked up too, the politics part is that I guess I had just enough shitlib in me to think that acting like sacred Indian spiritual leaders was inappropriate for what’s now known as cultural appropriation reasons, on top of the bigger issues you described of it being creepy and lame.
Date: March 2nd, 2024 11:59 PM Author: Carnelian french chef
I had some pretty good experiences. Most of the adults in mine were pretty normal. Even some of the mean dorky ones taught me some stuff that I still recall today, so wasn’t totally worthless. Was super dorky and would never admit to doing it at school. I wish there was a less dorky way to do it.
I ended up getting Eagle, but wouldn’t ever put my sons in it. Bunch of dorky libs now. Fuck it
Date: March 2nd, 2024 11:14 PM Author: bat-shit-crazy stage
My scout troop was 180 because we were a marching band and got to travel around the country and be on TV and meet girls in other marching bands. At scout camp we were first in line at mess hall and never had to wear uniforms except when we did ceremonial shit. We also fought a lot and caused a lot of damage to dormitories, rest rooms, buses and a church basement. We were racist too and no one cared.
Date: March 3rd, 2024 2:16 AM Author: histrionic claret party of the first part
I was in the Scouts starting about 1958. It was 180 then (800 guess I should say). No pedo stuff. Lots of camping/shooting/sports/survival/survival/hunting/fishing/nature activities. Acquired a ton of useful skills. Adult supervision but we quickly learned how to organize and take care of ourselves. Merit badges had real content. The old Scout handbooks are still useful survival guides. Here's an ad from one of mine as example of how things have changed. Aimed at 12-15 year old boys: https://imgur.com/UNYoMbE