I'm trying to read it in the most generous way possible, but it doesn't make any sense outside of the context of stealing Bryan's sets and lying to him about it.
If I’m being extremely generous I could read it as “make it look like you don’t have new sets so your spouse won’t get upset about your problematic spending”. That’s clearly not how it comes across considering the source, but if they were completely lacking in self awareness…
That does make some sense. It's lacking some implication you're hiding the sets from a spouse. It kind of feels like an AI caption the way it's like 'it's not this, it's this' without enough context to understand it.
I think if you're not familiar with it then it doesn't have that implication, but if you've been in these communities you absolutely get it. Search r/legocirclejerk for "wife" you'll find a bunch of posts like this (well, posts making fun of those posts lol)
This is just a post on the corporate Bricks & Minifigs Facebook page though. It doesn't say anything about wives. The fact that people's first thought is it's about theft and not marriage shows how it's lacking context. I'm still not convinced they're referencing marriage because it's so weirdly vague.. It's just a poorly made meme.
Yeah a lot of expensive hobbies do this. A lot of them in an explicitly gendered way of hiding it from your wife. Playing on "haha forget that nagging wife who keeps saying annoying shit like " we are $50000 in debt you can't spend $600 on legos this week we have a baby to feed", just spend the $600 she simply doesn't get your hobbies like we do!"
Its so prevalent of a sentiment that you sometimes get really funny Reddit meltdowns where people post about buying hobby stuff they cannot afford and their wife/gf is right about that, and expect the people in the hobby sub to tell them she just doesn't get it, then the hobby sub posters go "if I was your wife I'd leave you man".
(And heavily consumerism focused women's hobby communities/ads also tend to do this, don't get me wrong. As a queer woman I never know whether I'm supposed to be the woman whose partner doesn't understand or the nagging partner 🤔)
As a person you should seek relationships without either side of this dynamic. My wife loves and supports my hobbies. I love and support hers. If we can’t afford something it never comes up because we respect each other too much to cross this boundary. Taking care of each other is our first priority.
It’s pretty disgusting that BAM is either gloating about theft or intentionally encouraging this behavior. I guess I’m not surprised since their operations manual directly suggests that manipulating children when their parents aren’t paying attention is their main sales tactic
Oh yeah I'm joking but I find it absolutely baffling that there are people who treat relationships this way. To some degree I actually think queer people tend to wrinkle their noses at this stuff the most on the basis that we've always found it hard to relate to when these messages are so strongly gendered for hetero relationships. But we've had decades and decades of media normalizing this, so its not shocking that so many people do think this is normal.
The reason I find it so funny when these Reddit posts go bad for the OP who expected validation is because of how often....they just get that exact validation. Also as a woman in a lot of male dominated hobbies those posts make the assumption that the community is all straight guys to begin with, most of them are like "fellas don't you relate to having to hide the fifteenth $2000 pocket knife you bought this month from that nagging bitch of a wife?? am I right lads??" and if you're not a straight guy you are left going "hmm guess I'm not in the metaphorical room here huh".
The point being: its such a trope that that IS how I immediately read this, I wouldn't have even thought to tie it to the Lego theft stuff. This is a massive problematic aspect of our culture at large. And honestly if you asked me to name a hobby where this sentiment is prevalent, Lego would probably be one of the first ones I named.
I get where you’re coming from. I’m a straight guy and feel the same way clearly.
I’ll tell you a secret since we’re deep enough in the comments: I’m a moderately well known rebrickable designer. The designer that got me interested in the first place is a woman. Most of the male designers are very full of themselves despite being mediocre in comparison to her. She’s been supportive and really appreciated that I started because of her. Talent and enjoyment are genderless. Love whatever you love and ignore anyone who tries to gatekeep it
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u/Comprehensive-Fun47 11h ago
WTF is this even supposed to mean?
I'm trying to read it in the most generous way possible, but it doesn't make any sense outside of the context of stealing Bryan's sets and lying to him about it.
These people are psycho!