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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 12th, 2023

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  • darthelmet@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlAmazing app ideas
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    20 days ago

    It’s crazy that this is real. It looks like a comic someone would make to make fun of the idea. Like the fact that they’re watching some guy shoot someone, then the burger commercial comes on and the guy stands up and cheers “McDonalds!” Before sitting back down to watch more of guy shooting other guy.

    This is peak “dumb Americans” humor, and they’re using this unironically to describe their business idea.


  • Yeah. I don’t know what the % breakdown is, but I get the sense that while the general community is inherently anti-corporate/anti-commodification, there are some that view this in the left wing sense of communities supporting each other and some who view this more of as a consumption/voting with your wallet individualized choice. They recognize that some or even all corporations are bad, but think opting out of those structures without directly challenging them is all that they need.

    But like I said, idk what the actual distribution of these views are. It’s just the sense I get from seeing some of the comments.


  • Yeah. It’s more like:

    Researchers: “Look at our child crawl! This is a big milestone. We can’t wait to see what he’ll do in the future.

    CEOs: Give that baby a job!

    AI stuff was so cool to learn about in school, but it was also really clear how much further we had to go. I’m kind of worried. We already had one period of AI overhype lead to a crash in research funding for decades. I really hope this bubble doesn’t do the same thing.



  • Admittedly not much anymore. It’s hard organizing people in the face of systemic opposition under the best of circumstances, but I’m also incredibly unhealthy. Socially awkward and anxious is only the tip of the iceberg of the personal problems I have that make it hard for me to engage in real life activism anymore. I’ve tried, but it’s not really something I can do at the moment. I can barely do anything at the moment for that matter.

    That said, there is some small value in trying to convince others to think about these problems and develop class consciousness. I’m not claiming it’s much and it’s stressful/depressing knowing I’m not doing more, but at least I’m not trying to get people to stick their heads in the sand. I’m not actively making things worse.


  • Part of the problem is the atomization of society. We’ve have vanishingly few truly public spaces to build the kind of connections with people necessary to form shared political causes. People spend most of their lives either:

    • In their private homes, suspicious of anyone who tries to interact with them there.

    • In private workplaces where management surveils employees and tries to stop organized activity.

    • In private businesses where you are only welcome as individual consumers.

    • Online on platforms that are privately owned and designed to manipulate behavior and social interactions towards interacting with more advertising. Controversy is only allowed to the extent that it gets more eyeballs on ads and doesn’t upset advertisers.

    Back when I was more involved in electoral politics, I found it extraordinarily difficult to reach out to people to organize them, either because they were in spaces where political campaigning wasn’t allowed or because they have become distrustful of strangers.

    It’s suffocating any kind of broader public consciousness and I don’t really know what to do about it.










  • Nobody is saying it isn’t. But if you genuinely care about the harm it causes and don’t just want an excuse to throw political enemies in jail, then the solution is obviously not to criminalize its use. The correct thing to do is to provide social and health services to addicted people to get them off of it.

    All criminalization does is ruin the lives of the people it targets and enrich the prison industry.



  • Satisfaction that the rich are going to get fucked by climate catastrophe and ecosystem collapse just as much as everyone else. The climate change deniers will starve just like the rest of us.

    They will eventually… but in the mean time it definitely doesn’t affect them the same as the rest of us. When some places start becoming unlivable, they can just move to the ones that will last longer. When food and water becomes scarce they’ll hoard what’s left. When the air becomes unhealthy to breathe they’ll have filters. It’s gonna be a long time before they see any actual consequences they can’t buy their way out of.



  • Not that this has anything to do with Jan 6th since it was just right wingers throwing a hissy fit, but elections in America don’t work. People aren’t given real alternatives to the establishment through all sorts of structural barriers. The government doesn’t represent people’s interests to any statistically significant degree. When you consider the US’s efforts to coup left wing governments around the world, it’s easy to extrapolate that if we ever were to successfully elect someone who could enact real change, the military/intelligence agencies would step in to stop them.

    You don’t need to defend our broken system just to call right wingers fascists. If anything their prominence is an indictment of our system. That our government is more open to people who want to subjugate the majority of the country and violate our supposed constitutional rights than people who represent the majority of the country tells you all you need to know about American “democracy.” And before you say it, no, it’s not because a lot of people want fascism, they’re still in the minority by far, but our electoral process is set up to favor them over more majoritarian interests.