Am I projecting? What do you think, fellow lemmings?
Yeah, there’s a gas leak everywhere and where just realizing it.
Well humanity is dying a little bit due to climate change.
People have been trying to ignore the world so they can get their high for the last several decades to the point where one the largest companies advertising on the internet is one where you pay people who label themselves as “councilors” with barely training to gaslight you hopefully to feel better and people know brand name drugs for helping them feel better and suggest them to others if you are wealthy enough. And been struggling to hold onto that sense of normalcy at all costs of the world.
And all of that avoidance meant jack-shit when the real world changed anyways and it didn’t just stay the same.
People likely feel lied to and that miserableness spreads like a virus of selfish people doing anything to prove themselves better than others at the cost of others.
Over 20 years ago I started to see the many problems with the world. Over the course of those ~20 years I saw more and more problems begin, none of them are ever resolved. There was a point where I believed I wouldn’t live long enough to see the full ramifications, but now it seems like those problems are compounding faster and faster.
every day that tub of elemental lead looks more and more delicious
Mercury. Be mad and dance at your own parties while everyone else loses their head.
wouldn’t you believe it, there’s a tub of mercury RIGHT NEXT to the lead!
please don’t tell the EPA
Climate change is getting worse and the world in general is sliding into fascism. The odds of things getting better in our lifetimes is very low. I’m only happy when I’m focusing on what’s around me and not the big picture, because the big picture is bleak.
I agree that things are bleak. I also try to focus on practical, local things on which I can have a positive impact.
I’d like to think that some things will get better, and others will be less bleak.
Climate change is occurring quicker than we had hoped, but we are making progress towards mitigating the worst effects, even of that progress is slower than we had hoped.
I dunno man, genocides and overtly fascist takeovers just have a shitty affect on the vibe.
The whole world is indeed in a bad mood and the reason is we’re all addicted to social media, which makes people miserable.
It’s impossible to fully patrol one’s territory in cyberspace. That means our hippocampus never sends the “all clear” signal which would allow us to relax from fight or flight mode.
As a result, the entire population of humanity is in an unprecedented state of hypervigilance.
Buddy, I don’t have territory to patrol IRL. That’s why I pay to exist (rent) everywhere I go. Everything is temporary.
Meet the neighbors? Who cares! I’m moving at the end of my lease because rent is going up.
Sense of community? The one that refuses to solve the housing crisis with council housing?
Be patriotic for our shared nation state? You mean the country that spies on me legally and illegally? The country that relentlessly attacks me and my people via the war on drugs? It hungers for what few civil liberties we have left.
Escaping into the net, substance abuse and enjoying art is the only thing that gives me relief from existing in the shitter multiverse. The only thing that stops me from counting the moments I have left until I am abused by my shitty jobs.
Go outside to touch grass? Sorry, I don’t own the grass and it has a “keep off the grass” sign. Trespassers will be shot on sight.
@UltraGiGaGigantic
“Everywhere I travel, tiny life. Single-serving sugar, single-serving cream, single pat of butter. The microwave Cordon Bleu hobby kit. Shampoo-conditioner combos, sample-packaged mouthwash, tiny bars of soap. The people I meet on each flight? They’re single-serving friends.”
Our wealth is taken, no one does anything.
Our health is taken, no one does anything.
Our privacy is taken, no one does anything.
Our voices are taken, no one does anything.
Our citizenships are taken, no one does anything.
The reason is apathy, which feeds inability, which feeds apathy, which feeds inability to do anything.
When our lives are taken, most people will be both ultimately unable and unwilling to do anything.
Even if people don’t know it outright, they feel it.
More than this, we feel a disappointment and a shame in our bones that can’t be shaken off because it is that outrageous and primal fear of losing anything more that drives our inaction, and so we feel ourselves to be cowards at our very core.
This is what grinds away at our souls daily.
When you eventually decide to do something, you will see you are no longer apathetic or unable. Your fears will begin to heal, and in this way it will save your soul. This is the power of courage. It is something you have to make for yourself, but hope is what drives it and hope is given.
I think apathy is a part of it, but its not that people shrug and arent moved by whats happening. They dont have anything meaningful or tolerable they can do about anything
Yes, I suppose I could have worded it better, but what I intend to say is that because people can do seemingly nothing (are prevented, or feel as though they will find no meaningful result from their effort), they figure there is no reason to try to do anything in the first place.
I don’t mean to say that they shrug anything off or are not moved. Quite the opposite actually.
Username checks out
You may be right, but I’m not sure which comparisons you are making specifically and am interested to hear what they are if you are interested in explaining them to me.
Honestly it was just a vibes thing. Golden because I agree with you and think it’s an important perspective, and zealot because of your almost religious manner of speaking. You’d make a good orator.
I see, thank you!
Chinese people seem pretty happy on Rednote.
They mostly empathize with us Americans for our life of economic struggle for our wealth class in exchange for nothing but Subsistence.
They’re confused as to how it’s allowed to happen. They thought a lot of true horror stories about our health insurance murder industry and living paycheck go paycheck statistically unlikely to be able to cover a 400 expense was their government’s propaganda, and are horrified it’s not.
It’s amazing how many protections non-wealthy people have there.
I now completely understand why our government doesn’t want us having casual conversations with actual societies of people, as opposed to capitalist slaughterhouses like we are here in the US. Mooooo…
Also their cars are so high tech ours are in the stone age by comparison. No wonder they can’t sell them here, they’d eat our lunch. App controlled call the car to pull up to you, captains chairs that power rotate into new configurations, on and on.
There was a soviet joke:
A refugee from the sovjet union was not surprised to learn that most of what his government had told him about his country was lies - it wasn’t that great.
However, he was shocked to learn that they were telling the truth about other countries.
The weird incongruous part is that the people on Rednote (up until recently) thought the average American has over a million dollars (due to a weird mistranslation of something our embassy said about the average income from all Americans being over a million dollars), have a house (due to television shows), have free healthcare, and generally live a carefree life. Many people are questioning why there’s been such a push to work over here by their friends and family who visit.
Not trying to be an ass but American cars havent been great since forever.
Certainly, there is a grim atmosphere across many social platforms. Mainly, the last few days from my anecdotal experience.
Agreed. IRL things seem the same as always.
The world may be ending, but I’ve still got work to do.
Now playing Nine Inch Nails - Every Day Is Exactly The Same
New NIN tour coming. Not much but its something
For me, the grim outlook began when studios kept trying to cash in on the stories I loved, and continually ruined them. Games, TV, Movies. Enshittification started there, imo. It makes sense, really, for the product to be mediocre or even bad. And it makess sense why conservatives are so obsessed about efficiency. An efficiently made product is the worst possible version of the product that the market continues to accept.
conservatives are so obsessed about efficiency
They say they are, but their actions are the opposite.
I have such low standards for media these days that it doesn’t really phase me, and I get to be pleasantly surprised when something is good. I don’t really watch much TV outside of a few select shows that I throw on in the background, I’ve never been much of a gamer so I’m kinda glad I’m not really clued in to how bad it’s gotten, and with movies I’ll wait for a recommendation or just work through my server library of old and new. I think I’ve just kind of accepted media enshittification at this point and there’s already several lifetimes of great movies and books I’ve yet to experience that it’s no big loss, and anything truly awesome that comes along in the interim is a welcome light.
All honesty, I tend to be optimistic to a fault and try really hard to be cheerful.
Everything starts to crack once socioeconomics comes up. The news lately is all about how everything is about to get worse. “This is collapsing, that’s more expensive, getting a slice of diminishing wages is going to be even harder now! They’re cracking down here and forcing ads there.” Etc etc.
When I’m knee-deep in fixing up my servers or making art or being with my people, everything is just peachy!
But yeah, “How next money tho?” Usually starts the mental downward spiral.
I love living, can do a ton of things, love learning, but I don’t get along with churning out a repetitive task for increasingly worthless currency.
The world outside of what I’m choosing to do feels entirely impossibly out of our control. So I try to balance being informed with staying sane.
Like damn I don’t need much, can’t folk just be left alone? Lol
Wonder if a lot of people feel like I do?
oh yeah I certainly do. I mean even the churning would not be so bad if there was any indication it would end.
I feel this. Though I don’t tend to be optimistic in general about the state of my little place in the world , it definitely gets worse when I think of the big picture stuff that I have even less control over. I really wish I knew how to help, but I guess all I can do is relate and hope that you’re doing okay. At the risk of sounding insincere and acting weirdly intimate to a stranger online, we might never see each other in our lives, but we are fighting and suffering a reality that was forced upon us together. Hopefully things get better, but even if it doesn’t, we aren’t alone in this.
Hey friend, I really appreciate it. :)
That sincerity and love can change the world, and you’re all the more courageous for it. Even if things suck, I’m glad we’re not alone and there’s people like you here by our side, figuratively or otherwise. :)
I always come back to a few sources of timeless wisdom in the face of all this nonsense. A lot of it found in the Bible, which I know won’t get great reactions thanks to current events.
As a Christian anarchist, I’m also trying to do what I can to combat against the most evil cult of greed, hate, bloodshed, and misery that has become the American state-sponsored religion. It’s a lot of grief and pain to watch the Gospel of selfless love be trampled and peddled by fascists, and the reactionary hatred of it from the oppressed in turn, who’ve only ever known its perversion against themselves.
But I digress. Here’s a some wisdom I keep returning to, etched in my soul. Perhaps it will empower you as well. :)
I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1)
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
-Ephesians 6:12
“Do not pray for an easy life; pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.”
-Bruce Lee
And lastly , I’ve posted it many times before but damnit if this doesn’t remind us why we’re still here in the face of all this madness:
FRODO: I can’t do this, Sam.
SAM: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy. How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened. But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something.
FRODO: What are we holding on to, Sam?
SAM: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.
–Samwise Gamgee, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (film version)
My coworker said to me today that all the news outside of the US is calling us Nazi America and this goes hand in hand with my own international news reading experience in the last day. I think everyone is acknowledging how dumb we look and how it affects them?
As someone from “outside the US”: It isn’t much better elsewhere. Italy has a fascist government, France is fucking up everything, Sweden has a governemnt depending on a borderline fascist party, the Netherlands has borderline fascists as part of the government, in Germany open fascists poll at 20% as the 2nd most popular party (elections are next month), Georgia is on the brink of civil war, Korea is in a utterly weird crisis/coup mode, in the middle east we are having a genocide happening, Sudan is in chaos, and so on and on.
On the bright side: Things appear to be somewhat okay in Spain and Belgium seems to have a somewhat half-working government.
Spain’s unemployment rate is 12.29% so not that great there.
Belgian here, we have a working Flemish and Wallon regional governement, as well as for the Flemish (is same as régional) and French and German speaking communities’ governements, but the Brussels region and federal aren’t getting anywhere. It’s only been 227 days tho… ETA: radical right was almost largest party in Flanders, and the ´libéral’ party in Wallonia won with a radical right agenda
Ah okay, I thought this Caretaker government turned into a somehat working stopgap. Okay, so, everyone, ignore my comment on Belgium. :)
Sounds about right. My wife has friends abroad that have been calling and asking if everything is alright, then start the questions of how we let this happen, why don’t we do anything about it, etc. And I’ll be honest, I do feel pretty helpless at the moment and very uneasy about the next period of time. I’ve been reading quite a bit about WWII and how Germany got into their situation, and almost too much if it parallels. Most of the population was sick of the status quo and wanted change, those who spoke up and tried pointing certain things out were labeled as worrying lunatics, and most of society was too ignorant to care until it was too late. I mean, what the hell is an individual to do? I could grab my rifle and take to the streets, and immediately get gunned down by cops, or start writing letters that will pretty just get me added to a list at this point.
Well they didn’t have any past government examples to use as a warning. News and communication back then was also much more limited.
I could grab my rifle and take to the streets
They literally had street battles with armed communists and ww1 veterans fighting each other. The average person was so horrified of living in a war zone that they voted for any party who could stop it.
Considering most other countries are voting in right-wing governments, sounds like they’re in the process of “letting it happen” as well.
No doubt there’s a major push globally to descend into authoritarianism, arguably under the auspice that people are fed up with capitalism and voting for something different. But it’s hard to convince billions of people that the real root is a handful of billionaires playing Pinky and the Brain. We’ll just have to see, unfortunately.
You’d think the three billionaires standing behind Trump at his inauguration would be a bit of a clue.
I’m reading about the Nicaraguan fascist takeover because I already know enough about WW2 that I wanted to extend from the data I already get. I recommend Victoria Gonzalez’s “Before the Revolution” - https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-latin-american-studies/article/abs/victoria-gonzalezrivera-before-the-revolution-womens-rights-and-rightwing-politics-in-nicaragua-18211979-university-park-pa-penn-state-university-press-2011-pp-xxviii224-6495-hb/D8272AB5737CA6237F2A67CD5B4EC444
Delete Facebook and hit the gym
Leave your phone at home.
deleted by creator
I keep having this and similar conversations with my wife and my friends and family …
The majority of the world has always been in a bad mood because 90% of planet has always been poor, struggling, doesn’t have enough, live in poverty, are hungry and are generally not happy.
The only difference is that us in the rich west have been recently affected and are facing a near future where our comfort and freedoms are going to be affected. We are starting to feel what the rest of the world has been feeling for a long, long time.
I say all this from the perspective of an Indigenous Canadian because I grew up poor and in a circumstance where me and my family were always made to feel less than the rest of the Canada.
The majority of the world has always been in a bad mood because 90% of planet has always been poor, struggling, doesn’t have enough, live in poverty, are hungry and are generally not happy.
On one hand, there is absolutely harsh struggle around the world for the vast majority of the world.
On the other hand, it’s not as if most people are never in a good mood. Australia’s state broadcaster (ABC) had a show where people in small or disadvantaged groups answer anonymous questions, and when it came to Sudanese Australian refugees, a few were saying that life in Sudan was often happier despite their material struggles. IIRC a main part was that they had a collective culture, in some places outside of the cities even a communal village culture, and where good fortune was cause for celebration. Some contrasted that with our largely individualist, money-centric culture here.
All that to say, money doesn’t buy happiness, poverty doesn’t guarantee sadness. Money and other resources really really help, but it’s far from the whole picture.
True there are different types of poor and different types of people that see life as completely normal in any circumstances. We are all very adaptable creatures in whatever situation you place us in.
I grew up poor and I didn’t know it for about the first 10/15 years of my life. We had enough food but it was just that … enough … we never had extras, no snacks, no guilty pleasures. I have good teeth because I didn’t have the opportunity to eat a lot of junk food when I was younger which then led me to not really want it when I got older.
A lot of people around me were the same or similar … it was just the way things were and we were more or less just happy and content with it all. It was normal so there was nothing too upsetting about it. Unfortunately, not all families were as capable as ours. In a community full of people in the same boat, about half couldn’t do it and they fell into extreme poverty, addictions, bad health and just generally miserable lives. Then in my life, I started venturing out into the world and saw how wealthy everyone else was and I wanted to do the same but as a brown skinned Native person, the entire game was rigged against me … I couldn’t get schooling, I couldn’t find work, I wasn’t wanted, I wasn’t needed and I was just different. I had to work really hard to get anything. People also claim that my school could have been paid for but it only works when you work the system and are connected to everyone and everything in that system … I wasn’t and I had to fight my own leadership, my own community and the non-Native government about everything in order to get anything done. I barely scraped by and found work on my own, made a bit of money and barely made it to become an adult. Of all the family and friends I grew up that were like me … I think only about a quarter of us made it to something, a handful got post secondary and became lawyers and doctors or something important and the majority of the rest just ended up at home in varying levels of poverty from just getting by to literally living on the streets with small children. All in a situation where it is believed that we Native people get free money and have the world handed to us.
Money may not buy happiness but it sure helps and no matter how you frame it, poverty makes everything harder to do.
I mean, our new Dear Leader’s best oligarch buddy threw two very unambiguous Nazi salutes inside of five seconds during a nationally televised speech, and the vast majority of our media establishment is simply bending over backwards to give him the benefit of the doubt over his “awkward hand motion”. So yeah I’m in a bad fucking mood, because this shit is going to become de rigueur.
His salute does not affect your life in any meaningful way unless you let it do so.
If the spread of open nazism doesn’t affect you, congrats, but sone of us have pattern recognition and know we’ll be on the chopping block
You recognize patterns by observing long-term trends, not by overreacting to whatever most outrageous news headline you see right now
Hey what happened last time nazis got big
Why don’t you tell me what the long-term trend from 2015 until now has yielded?
Spoiler alert: it’s fascism.
I’ve spent an astronomical amount of effort trying to remove as much depressing and outrage content from my feeds as possible. It’s a sisyphian task with new things constantly slipping through the cracks. Which has made me mostly check out of all but a very small list of online spaces (and even then ads and other impossible to turn off ‘recommendations’ show up).
Outrage and depressing content fuels the web and it’s best to recognize that. I’ve been a lot happier in my ignorance so far and would recommend it to anyone who’s privileged enough to get away with it. It’s not like being informed and engaged did fuck all for me in the last decade except give me a variety of mental issues.
It helps me to remember that informed voters 50-70 years ago were people who read the papers. Not even regularly, just those who knew what was going on in the world on a regular basis. It is not normal or healthy to have a constant barrage of news and input - and more than that it’s not wrong to take a break from it. I had to learn that the hard way, that it’s okay to take a break, it doesn’t make you a bad person, that online is making you anxious. I folded in on myself, I had panic attacks, I couldn’t function - and I got help. That help helped me realize that I don’t have to shoulder this alone, I do not have to keep watching and listening. I’m informed, I know what’s going on, I know what happened today - but that doesn’t mean I’m going to turn my filters off either.
Yeah this is pretty much what I’m doing. My subscriptions are pretty much spaces about my interests that post positive content, and even then I filter out keywords for the bullshit that leaks in. Trying to spend more time reading books and unplugging from the internet. It still feels so hard to avoid the depressing bullshit though.
