Thanks for responding.

I can't provide insight into the dislike for everybody, but I can speak for people like myself.

University for me was an educational privilege and I honestly really went there just to learn. Social activities were a very distant third in terms of what I wanted out of school. Along the way I made many friends in the classes I took, people who were also there for similar reasons. We self-organized into study groups and helped each other with course selection etc.

If we just wanted to hang out, we did that also.

Quite a few of those people have stayed life-long friends. So the social-network aspects of fraternities always seemed kind of unimportant to me as I left college with a pretty robust social network. It's simply not an appealing pitch to join.

I know there's stories of people who went to the same fraternity recognizing each other's 20 year old rings in an interview and getting a job or some similar scenario, but that too seems like a scenario I'd rather not be involved in. I'd like to be hired and I hire based purely on job qualification, not having a shared hazing history. Again, not an appealing pitch.

> I got what I wanted out of it (my wife).

As it turns out, quite a few of my friends (including myself) also found their spouses in college, outside of the greek system. As it turns out people find ways to socialize without the need for a structured system. I'm glad it worked out for you, but it's not really appealing to people like me.

> You have access to tons of events with good looking sorority members every week which increases the likelihood that you'll get somewhere with someone. You meet so many different women your head spins, the odds are just in your favor.

And I think you hit the nail on the head. It seems to people like me that frats really serve no purpose except providing yet another form of the meat grinder bar scene, except probably under drinking age (so doing it illegally) and looking for hookups. Which is fine I guess if you need that sort of semi-structured environment, but again that's not what I or any of the people I hung out with in college went to college for.

And let's not kid ourselves, I attended enough frat parties hosted by my friend's frats at various other schools that I'm well aware of the amount of underage drinking and rampant drug use that goes on inside of the greek system. Not saying it doesn't happen outside of the system too, but if I were campus cop looking to make my quota for the month, all I have to do is park outside of the nearest frathouse any night of the week and I'll find something illegal to make an arrest on. Property destruction, fights, theft, drugs, rape, illegal drugs and drinking, all happen at fraternities at rates that far exceed what you'll find just about anywhere else on any campus. That's the "special" treatment that people complain about. Yeah sure there are the twice a year symbolic busts, but if anybody was really concerned about what was going on at the local frat house, all the cops would have to do is come stand outside for 5 minutes during a party and they'd have probable cause on something to take action. But they don't and it's understood that they don't do it.

I remember when I attended my first frat party. I was in a long gap between highschool and college, and one of my friends invited me to come hang out at his school. He had joined a fraternity and managed to get a room in the fraternity's house. I remember the smell the most, but we made it to the party and a local, very bad DJ was providing the tunes, every third song was the Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony" which had become some kind of de facto song for the frat so every time it played, every member of the frat stood up and sang it. Apparently this song was played multiple times per day every day and had been so for the entire semester. I was sick of it after the 3rd play. It's a social event, so I talked to people, while I was there a drunk out of her mind freshman and I started chatting it up. It quickly devolved into her bawling her eyes out while telling me about how her father used to hit her. After a few minutes of this, she asked if I wanted to go back to my room with her (she thought I was in the frat). I declined, she shrugged and went to go start over the same sad scene with another guy.

The rest of the party, and all the other frat parties at other schools and frats I've ever attended were basically similar.

The house was a mess, it reeked from one of the bongs that were constantly being smoked, one of the rooms was designated the "trip room" for people wanting to do hallucinogenics in a safe place. Animals live in nicer environments. There were parts of the building that clearly weren't up to code. There was a pool table in the basement we went to go play on for a while. But it was so old the cue ball literally shattered into pieces after a few hits.

Naked and half-naked girls were running around everywhere, the "tie on the dorknob" sign was every third door. My friend and his girlfriend ended up screwing each other while they thought I slept on the floor nearby in his room one night. Yeah, I can see that being fun for a while, but it also should get old after the upteenth time.

I never saw anybody doing anything that even remotely resembled studying.

At the end of the weekend he looked at me and was like "why don't you come to school here and join my frat, isn't this great?"

I thought he may have been suffering from some kind of brain damage.

This is all well and good in college I guess. You're young and allowed to experiment and "find yourself" and whatever. But the problem is that this lifestyle ends at some point. You graduate and go on to life. But for some frat guys they think it doesn't end. They never want to leave the parties, the easy nightly fucking, the parties, and all the rest -- and oh yeah, the parties. They find themselves in some mid-level corporate management job, or managing a startup, and mistake every social situation, even work ones, as an extension of what they experienced in their Greek life. They think that because they belonged to a social club for four years and nailed lots of girls that they know how to navigate every kind of social exchange. But they mis-read every environment and respond to it with the one social tool they have in their bag, the one they spent 4 years mastering, the frat party guy persona, and it's awkward and embarrassing and cringeworthy. But it's also annoying, stupid and childish.

And in the end you end up with unbelievably absurd interactions like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NAzQPll7Lo

or this
http://valleywag.gawker.com/snapchat-had-the-frattiest-creat...