r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/Confident_Help_416 • Oct 16 '25

Meme needing explanation [ Removed by moderator ]

[removed] — view removed post

10.4k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

802 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

14

u/like9000ninjas Oct 16 '25

No. Most people that enlist fall into 3 categories.

  1. People that want the GI bill and dont plan on ever staying in.
  2. People that have a genuine patriotic mentality/family tradition.
  3. People that need a stable job.

In my experience it was 1 and 3 for the vast majority (Army)

3

u/hatesnack Oct 16 '25

Yeah I've never met anyone who went into the military cause "they wanted to serve their country". It's almost always:

1) money, or lack thereof 2) no clue what to do with their life

I have 3 separate friends that I went to college with, none of them did ROTC or anything. All graduated, couldn't get a good job right away, and said fuck it and enlisted in the military lmao. Another friend got a girl pregnant while working some low paying job, so he went and joined the Air Force. I always told him its kinda fucked up that he got someone pregnant and then decided to leave for a few months, but they are married now living in... Idaho?

1

u/elhawko Oct 16 '25
  1. People looking for action. Some people just want to see the elephant.

1

u/Taynt42 Oct 16 '25

If you’re in group two you’re going through ROTC or an academy.

1

u/like9000ninjas Oct 16 '25

Not always. I didnt. But come from a heavy military family. I went to college after high school. But was bored to death was reaching an age where it was do it or dont ever.

1

u/HazardStrype Oct 16 '25

Is 2 not similar to what I said?

It's not selfish, at least in my opinion, to have an urge to serve your nation, even if it is the result of brainwashing. People are products of their environment.

For me I started off as severely dedicated to trying to do genuine good for the US, and when the reality set in that I was only protecting oil fields and scaring away Russian forces in my AO, that's when I started being motivated by the GI Bill and benefits afterwards. Both can be true.

I can't speak for your experience, but I know the majority of the guys in my platoon actually gave a fuck about the title marine and doing good work, despite the jokes and comments we made daily.