living in the 'hood, here, i'm constantly engaging with parents yelling at their kids.

"stop doing the thing i told you to stop doing!"

the kid keeps doing it. and, the more the parent yells, the more the kids continue. in fact, they seem to take pleasure in it. the more abusive the yelling gets, the less the kid listens.

because children are trolls. epic trolls. it's maybe the condition that defines being a child.

a lot of anarchists will argue that parenting is the sole exception to authoritarianism. but it's really just symptomatic of our collective inability to get out of these shackles. based on my own observations, i'd say it's one of the clearest demonstrations of the failure of authoritarianism.

the kid will eventually realize that when you play with fire, you get burned - but if you yell at them, you just increase the probability that they have to learn it the hard way.

so, i'm constantly tempted to intervene and actually *explain* why you shouldn't do the thing that they're being yelled at not to do. but, i know if i were to do that, i'd just get yelled at, too.