I’ve been interested in this whole prepping thing for the past couple of years, and I noticed something: A lot of people seem to look down on it. The words “prepper” and “prepping” sometimes get negative reactions, and it got me wondering–why’s that?

It feels like some people see preppers as paranoid conspiracy theorists or just plain weird. But when you think about it, there are a ton of reasons to prep, like natural disasters (earthquakes, storms) or a bad economy. Prepping doesn’t necessarily equate to being a bunker-dwelling hermit, right?

What do you guys think? Why do you reckon “prepper” and “prepping” get a bad rap? Is it just how the media paints it, or is it something else? Any of you gotten weird looks or comments? How do you deal with it? And do you think folks are seeing preppers differently now with all the stuff going on in the world these days?

  • @IonAddisEnglish
    9•1 year ago

    I’ve two anecdotes.

    • I had a friend who was raised by preppers and basically abused by them as a child in the guise of teaching them to be self-reliant. Abused as in–left outside in the cold without food as a pre-teen child and expected to use survival skills to live through the night. There’s no few “prepper” communities who become prepper because their ideology was too radical for regular people, which means many preppers are weird politically or religiously, and those who get out of those cults obviously have many justifiably harsh things to say about prepping that filter on to the mainstream.
    • I’ve another friend, ex-mormon, who is watching their parents piss away their retirement into prepper stuff for an apocalypse that’s never going to come. The prepping is not carried out with thoughtful, measured decisions. It’s peer-pressure from a religious community all hyping each other up. And its preying on seniors, like so many scams do. For obvious reasons, seeing this happen to family and loved ones leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths. So they’re going to talk about what they see is consuming their parents, and that too will filter to people in the mainstream and give prepping a bad rap.

    Over time, I’ve more inclined towards a prepping lifestyle–but it’s because I have trauma that makes it hard for me to hold down a 9-5. So when my life already has a habit of ping-ponging between feast and famine, and I can’t seem to kill the reason I ping-pong due to trauma, my work-around is to prep when I have income, and survive on it later when I don’t. I approach it with measured reasons.

    In my unique situation, “prepping” is basically a work-around bandaid to my PTSD, and I’m well aware my circumstances are NOT the same as other people’s, and I have no intention of converting others or drawing them into it.