Would you ever enlist in the military? I personally would not.
BluRayHiDef
The military isn't for everybody, but a reality I saw that was bad for recruiters was the fact that less than 25% of men and women in the US between the ages of 17 and 24 are even eligible to enlist in the first place. The remaining 75% is either too fat, has a criminal record, has medical problems, is a drug addict, or is too dumb to pass the ASVAB.
For the 25% that is eligible, the vast majority of them don't want anything to do with the military because they want to go straight to college or have other plans. Lucky for the military, though, since less than 1% of the population serves at anytime (not counting the past such as during World War 2) they usually still meet their recruiting missions.
The biggest issue some people have that I see is the misconceptions such as people thinking you won't make any money in the military or you're going to live in Full Metal Jacket type barracks for your career. You actually start out making more than your average high school graduate and for the single guys most Army barracks look like this after basic is over.
Fact of the matter is getting hurt is always going to be a possibility so that's a risk you have to take. But that doesn't mean you will get hurt. There's no ratings showing the 95% of troops who return from deployment unhurt, so the 5% that is hurt or killed gets all of the attention. If CNN did daily reports on Private Smith who plays World of Warcraft without incident nobody would watch.
One more thing to consider is that Call of Duty and the vast majority of other games about the military focus on infantry and Special Operations. That's what holds the attention of gamers. No gamer is going to care about the other "boring" jobs such as being a finance clerk or some other desk job that almost never leaves base, so they focus on the front line jobs that most civilians think are the ONLY jobs in the military.
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