Valentine day is originally a Roman festival that pairs men and women together by lottery. However, modern society and marketing have changed the festival into forcing men to spend extravagant amounts of money to please a woman.

The traditional festival today is nothing but an expensive dinner and used as a new way for your partner to judge how much you are willing to spend for your significant other. If you fall in the group of thinking valentine day is very important, you are an “animal on a farm” being manipulated and herded around by nothing but marketing.

Many are using Valentine day to show off on Instagram to compare themselves with others. Superficial people indeed.

Here is a story of a girl who has been brought up marketing like a “farm animal”

Hi all! With Valentine’s Day around the corner, what do you think of your boyfriend suggesting to celebrate over dinner at Sushiro (a pretty affordable sushi chain in sg). Would it be considered as a lack of effort in planning as we are both working adults and it’s our first Valentine’s Day celebration in our 3 years of dating…

What should I do?

Here are what netizens think:

• Free food also complain. (You don’t like I go la). Also Sushiro is slightly more expensive than other places like sushi express(I think). Maybe to you it is affordable but to him it is considered expensive? Maybe he saving up for his future with you in it? Maybe you can ask him about his rationale when choosing a place to makan for Valentine’s?Not happy say something, discuss and agree on a place you 2 will be satisfied with( if cannot agree, one of you gotta give in to the other)

• By posting this it sounds like you are expecting your bf to do more for Valentine’s day. You could ask your other attached female friends and see what they think of it. You could consider what to counter-suggest to have dinner at some other place and see what your bf thinks. What is important is that both of you are agreeable to how you want to celebrate your first Valentine’s day celebration and it is a lovely and pleasant experience for both of you.[But I would say, it is the thought that counts and you should count yourself fortunate that you two are a couple and can celebrate Valentine’s day together after 3 years of dating. But yes, I understand this Valentine’s day is quite a milestone so do as you please.

• Valentine Day has become so commercialized now . Any day can be Valentine day as long as there are love between the couple ! At least it is a decent sushi place , have a meal , chatting and thank you each other for the love and companion .Celebration held in posh restaurants doesn’t equal he loves you more too probably only for Ig show off etc

So my 17 year old daughter made the choice to become a raw vegan a couple of weeks ago.

I have no problem with her choosing whatever dietary path she feels is best for her but she now requests that I cook separate dinners for her and find a way to accommodate her in all family meals. I told her that while I respect her food choices, it would be a lot of work for me to have to make two separate sets of food all the time.

I told her she’s welcome to cook them herself or wait until she moves out to be a raw vegan. My husband doesn’t think it was considerate of me to say that to her.

Is it my fault?

Here are what netizens think:

• Exactly! Learning to cook would only be setting her up for success, vegan or not.

• I’m always surprised by parents who will bend over backwards to accommodate their kids eating preferences versus having them cook themselves. I learned to cook because I’d ask my mom, “what’s for dinner” and if she responded with something I didn’t like and I said “ew,” she’d say, “well, you cook then.” So I did.

• Yep, I was 11 when I started to ask my parents to leave a piece of fish for me to cook myself because I didn’t like how they made it (it was a nasty fad, baking it under a layer of mayonnaise – I hated it and preferred to pan-fry it). A 17 year old is perfectly capable of accommodating her own food choices – especially raw vegan ones, since that involves no difficult cooking techniques.
  
• Her Mom isn’t going to be there to navigate her food choices in the future when She leaves home, so she might as well learn now. Her diet choice shouldn’t be another chore for Mom.