Bratty tweets about Christmas gifts disturb parents

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It’s not easy being a kid today. Everywhere you turn it seems like adults are out to make you look like a spoiled, entitled brat.

The most recent example is comedian Jon Hendren’s list of real tweets from kids who were angry that they didn’t get an iPhone, or iPad, or a car for Christmas. Hendren assembled the tweets on Christmas Day and published them on his own Twitter feed.

Here is a G-rated sampling:

‘No Iphone. I hate my dad.’

‘Just cried for like 2 hrs straight cause i didn’t get a car.’

‘Seems like I’m the only one who didn’t get an Iphone for christmas.’

‘If you got an iphone i hate you.’

Yikes!

Hendren’s list of bratty re-tweets quickly made its way around the Internet, showing up in blogs and other Twitter feeds where adults expressed dismay at the entitlement of the youth today.

‘This guy @fart is retweeting all the spoiled brats that didn’t get what they wanted. The entitled dregs of society. Nice work, parents.’ Jason Clarke tweeted.

‘Twitter reveals the worst Christmas gift getters ever,’ Leslie Horn of PC Mag wrote.

The list even became the inspiration for a song by the singer Jonathan Mann. A YouTube video of the song featuring profanity-filled tweets went up Tuesday and got more than 117,000 views in less than 24 hours.

We agree that the tweets are super obnoxious, but we can’t help but wonder whether kids today actually feel more entitled than ever before, or is it that thanks to sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, adults are just aware of how entitled kids have always been, and more likely to exploit that entitlement, which could just be called ‘childhood’ and ‘adolescence.’

Consider the popular YouTube challenges that late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel occasionally issues to parents to essentially prank their kids and record their reactions.

Kimmel’s Christmas challenge -- in which he asked parents to give their kids terrible Christmas presents and then keep the camera rolling while the kids cry or patiently explain that they didn’t want an onion for a present -- has had 14.25 million views on YouTube.

Kimmel’s Halloween challenge, in which he asked parents to pretend to have eaten all their kid’s Halloween candy, has been viewed a whopping 25.8 million times.

Yeah, it’s funny ha-ha, but it’s also kind of mean.

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-- Deborah Netburn

Video: Jimmy Kimmel’s YouTube challenge: I gave my kid a terrible present. Credit: YouTube.