I think it’s mass anxiety caused by uncertainty across the board.
Political uncertainty as far right and authoritarian movements pick up speed in various democracies.
Labor market uncertainties due to companies tightening their belts in the face of economic uncertainty, and trying to replace workers with AI.
Economic uncertainty due to wars disrupting energy and supply chains and the looming specter of recession/depression.
Geopolitical uncertainty due to several ongoing wars and several tense situations that could devolve into actual conflicts, not to mention the major paradigm shift happening where the US is actively ceding its position as a global leader to China.
Climate uncertainty as we refuse to address climate change and burn mountains of coal to power plagiarized chat bots.
The weirdest part is everybody is for the most part pretending everything is normal while silently being anxious on their own.
Honestly glad it not just me that realizes everyone is pretending
Honestly a lot of people around me are not pretending when you talk to them. They acknowledge it. They just dont know what to do on an individual level, trapped in their individual situations.
That’s been my experience as well. A lot of discussions that used to be an occasional hypothetical now happen more frequently and are a lot more brass tacky:
- what do we do if the federal government collapses / splits? Flee or hunker down? Either way, where?
- How are we going to get food and water over the next few years?
- how do we keep ourselves and our neighbors safe from the snatchers?
- how do we maintain supply lines for medications over the next few years?
We are all long on questions and short on answers. but the questions are bubbling up to the surface more quickly as more people catch on to the fact that the US is out of control. Donald Trump is literally building a bunker compound, or trying to anyway. He’s not leaving that office without a fight. The situation on the ground in the US is bad right now, but it’s going to get a lot uglier before it gets better.
I told my wife i was feeling really anxious today. I think that freaked her out more than anything. She was like, “but you dont get anxious!”
Well damn love, today I am.
It’s the opposite for me. If I told my spouse I was feeling relaxed and calm she’d start to get worried.
I’m seeing it. A lot of people are shutting down discussing it anything…usually with the line of …I don’t talk politics.
The best you can do is remind them that their voice counts. They count. That we are communities that outnumber the rich and oppressive. That they can take small protections with their privacy.
We are not powerless.
You live politcs whether you talk about it or not.
Those are symptoms not the problem.
The problem is we’re densely packed and scarce on resources. Humans adapted for that, because we populate insanely fast and would constantly hit the limit that land could support.
The downside is that adaptation was us killing each other in the absence of natural predators.
It’s all wired up inside of us, like the same neurochemical that causes group/family bonding making people (especially men) have very strong negative feelings about anyone they weren’t exposed to when young, because those groups didn’t make the cut for “in-group”.
None of this is new and it shouldn’t be shocking.
The oligarchs have been exploiting it for centuries. Everytime there’s one dude with everyone else’s money, he’s always pointing to an out-group member and blaming them.
We don’t have time to treat symptoms anymore, we need to fix the actual problem: oligarchs.
we need to fix the actual problem: oligarchs.
the problem is, nobody is angry enough yet to do what needs to be done.
there is no peaceful solution to this problem. as soon as the oligarchs stop deserving to live in houses with unbroken windows and unburnt lawns, we’ll be ready for the solution.
Correct
We have natural predators, they’re called billionaires. If your natural adaptation theory were true, we’d be instinctually wired to kill billionaires. But if we are, something is causing us to not.
The true problem is memetic. The billionaires and kings built memes to control us. Liberation will require a cultural shift. We need a culture of action and a culture of entitlement to what we deserve. We need to kill the neoliberal mind prison.
Bro we evolved to live in groups of a few dozen people and be hyper focused on physically present danger. How could an early human possibly conceive of billionaire; someone who personally holds more wealth that hundreds of millions of people.
There’s no neoliberal mind prison. People just focus on physical, tangible threats (a lack of healthcare, food prices) and not the vague concept of some guy with 9 zeros in a bank account who’s causing it (often indirectly with 2+ degrees of removal). We need to wake up to the fact that no shiny ideology will magically spawn cohesion among 8 billion people.
Republicans are defunding the schools so that people don’t have the intelligence to connect what they see and what they know. So they aren’t smart enough to see the connections.
The world is fucked, so someone fucked it. Everyone in the world can figure that out on their own, the logic is inexorable. The question is how various ideologies deal with that truth. The Democrats lie to us and say things are fine actually. The Republicans say it’s the gays and the foreigners fault. The centrists say it’s just complicated.
But the fact that Fox News can blame it on immigrants? Yeah, people feel something wrong in the world and they’re looking for someone to blame. Ideology and culture are what’s stopping people from blaming the rich.
Who told you I would not eat one on the spot? Could do the blackout rage defence as well, and it would probably pass.
Well fuck me, that’ll do it
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Everything feels normal to me, is this a US specific thing? UK here.
Sure we have problems but nothing much worse than any other time in my life.
I’m sorry to say this as an outsider looking in, but from looking at the news coming out of the UK and listening to people talking, the UK has had it pretty rough for most of the last 2 decades, if not beyond that. That’s enough time for some adults to feel like it’s been bad for most, if not all of, their lives.
People always complain and want better. But look at the good sides and put it into perspective - we have one of the best minimum wages on the planet and healthcare is free.
UK standard of living has been declining for years.
Where isn’t?
I don’t think complaining and wanting better is a bad thing though. If anything, I often find that a society that doesn’t complain and say things like “it’s better than nothing” often ends up with something shitty and putting up with it for far too long. Sure, appreciate the fact that we have what we do, especially cuase there were people that fought really hard for it, but we mustn’t get complacent.
It’s been off since covid for me. 2020 is where I lost a lot of faith in humanity. Masks off (literally) on selfishness, greed, fascism, and anti-intellectualism. Corruption blatantly on display. Decorum and civility have taken a massive hit. It’s been downhill since.
2016 for me. The moment a person like Donald Trump can win a presidential election is the moment that decency was completely dead. The worst people were suddenly empowered to be as terrible as they want to be. They felt justified in their racism, bigotry, disrespect for others, and hatred. It’s only been stoked more and more since then. Then, yes, Covid was the gasoline on the fire.
whats funny is it happened close to brexit. I had a friend were I was making fun like but I will be sober in the morning thing because we would just have the term and be done with it but then I found out it was not so temporary.
Masks off (literally) on selfishness, greed, fascism, and anti-intellectualism.
If only there had been a higher delta in survivability between the vaxxed and unvaxxed, the pro-plague nutters could have removed themselves more thoroughly and effectively from existence.
Unfortunately far too many of them still walk among us.
The largest empire in the history of the world is in the middle stages of Mad King Disease, that sort of thing has ripple effects.
It’s not just the king, it’s ~50% of the population.
¯\(ツ)/¯
Madness isn’t a real disease. The reasons humans act the way they do that give rise to fascist takeovers are manifold and complex, and boiling them all down to “those people are just crazy” is tempting because it reduces an overwhelming and complex problem down to a diagnosis that we can wrap our little brains around, but it does nothing to explain or fix the problem. I think it actually makes the problem worse because it feels like a conclusive answer when it’s not. I get the impulse, I really do, but I wish we would stop.
We’re on the very edge of a new age of feudalism which, as we speak, is being ushered in by murderous fascists and their axiomatic drive to start civil wars.
A small cabal of billionaires totally stopped caring, or at least pretending to do so, about the common folks. They really want all the money and all the power in the world, and it’s now within their reach.
The “opposition” is either complacent or terrified.Yes I’ve been noticing that for years. Talking about it is always well received on social media.
I’ve also been noticing people’s attention spans and analytical skills deteriorating, as they take as little time as possible to process an item, make a superficial judgement that confirms what they already think, and continue scrolling. The goal of information consumption seems to be to process as many little items as fast as possible, spending as little time and brain power as possible on each one. But talking about that on social media isn’t usually as well received.
One thing that never changes is people’s selectivity about problems they’re willing to face vs ignore.
Also worth noting that this has happened throughout history many times.
What is new is the power a small group of people can truly have due to technology. The algorithms of social media and ai can now push the general populations opinions. Not unlike the propaganda of the past, but much stronger and more subtle. The surveillance of every citizen can be used to squeeze and silence the population on an individual level.
Throughout history, the level of wealth inequality and corruption we currently see often causes a revolt, usually followed by a dictator. But this may be the 1st time in human history that the technology enables a small group of people to prevent revolution essentially forever.
I agree up to “forever”. People with too much wealth and power tend to feel invulnerable until they find out they aren’t.
Yes, this is why the future is scary. In the past, no matter how much wealth or power you had, it was implemented through people. Your army, tax collectors etc. Those people understand the system and could overthrow the current system.
In the future, its algorithms and robots that are the source of the power. The robots and algorithms wont overthrow their masters. (And if they do, its probably the end of humanity altogether). And with the level of surveillance, any human that even thinks about revolution can be instantly discovered and dealt with immediately.
Feels like everyone I know, myself included, has had some kind of mental breakdown in the past few months. Life has become fucking crazy.
Yeah, since 2014 when they turned the algorithms on.
agreed. i remember when everyone wasn’t pigeon holed into their weird alternative realities and people thought you were crazy for believing crazy bullshit, but now they celebrate you for it as being heroic or something.
Which time was that?
Was that when all media was owned by a few corporations and had complete control of the narrative for decades?
ten years ago.
So when people lived in the oligarch funded alternate reality. Got it.
“look, things were so much better when this indiscriminate murder and surveillance by the police was limited to black and indigenous people, and the 3 television channels didn’t report 99% of it! I didn’t consent to get colonized!”
It is off. The US empire is falling, and falling fast. They are lashing out in all directions, and hurting almost everyone. People credit Trump too much for the chaos, that is really frustrating. Yes, he has a lot of power to do idiotic things, but there is an armada of people controlling things and contributing here. Trump is mostly the facade. Never forget that Americans wanted this. They knew what he was, but they still voted for the republican fascists.
The same authoritarian development is happening in a lot of democracies at the moment. It’s honestly very worrying. I also feel quite powerless.
I’ve been trying to grapple with this recently. And I always end up with " well, the macro level might be fucked, but I can still work on my house and enjoy small hobbies and focus on the micro level of existence."
Except the macro issues (higher gas, inflation, ice, climate change, etc) just completely dominates the micro level. What good will enjoying my hobbies do when I can’t get the materials for them and the world outside is burning? Feels too much like burying my head in the sand.
Yes I vote every election, state and federal. Maybe get off the internet? But again, feels like burying my head in the sand. Idk anymore really.
another virus is going around, people around me are getting sore throat, mildly painful, because people arnt vaccinating or isolating when they are sick, but not sick like flu, covid, or the cold. i do not want another covid infection, like i did last sept.
Husband had that 2 weeks ago. He said he felt like he was going to die. Couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, cold sweats, fever, etc. Took a COVID/flu AB test and negative.
So there’s something new going around…
someone at work mentioned they were getting slightly painful throat, multiple people did and some people started wear masks again this was around friday, i still have a very mild 1 side throat pain. apparently CPC mouthwash helps reduce the inflammation, people used it during covid(the blue mouthwash), it also works on mouth ulcers if its not too large.
RSV is was going around, but it appears to affect children more severely. and 50+yo can get the vaccine apparently.Oh yea and around feb i felt slightly under the weather, than suddenly i got 5 mouth ulcers at once on my left side. i do get allergies which can cause ulcers, but this pretty unusual to get this many at once.
Me with my wife got sick real bad in the end of March. Sore throat, coughing, blocked nose, no temperature but cold feeling, exaustion, headache. All these for 2 weeks for me and my wife and for some it went over 3 weeks. We spend 2 weeks at home barely going outside. This sickness was nothing I have experienced before. We didn’t test for corona but it also didn’t felt similar compared to our previous corona times.
We also know some people directly who got sick with a similar sicnkess (in our proximity and outstide of the city) and I also know from my friends and coworkers that some people they know got sick with similar sickness.
I am technically still recovering. My symptoms went away except coughing. I constantly feel snot in my throat and recently began to cough out fresh blood and not clots anymore. I been to doctors 4 times already and now am consuming double the does of some coughing pill that doc prescribed. I think it is helping but that is too early.
Surprisingly, we had guests at our home at exactly the days we got sick and none of them got sick in the end.
I may be an outlier. But this year it seemed that tons of people got sick with something they never been sick before which is not covid or anything simple as common cold or even bronchitis. Hope this is not pandemic 2.0
If US/China/Russia aren’t using gene-tailored bioweapons to reduce each other’s productivity I’ll eat my hat. They’ve discovered they can get away with it if it’s not too blatant.
Had it more times than I can remember at this point
Same. At least a dozen.
Is anyone testing for new variants in the H5N1 family?
i dont think you have to worry about h5n1 if you havnt been in a farm, or wild birds that were sick.
are you noticing the enshitifaction of everything ?
Not everything, internet search is the main one I notice but not much else by just not really using much that could be enshitified.
It’s hard to enshitify outdoor hobbies that only require very simple tools or equipment and have plenty of alternatives you could go for instead.
I feel okay, personally (other than being horrified by the polycrisis taking place in the world), but share your sense that we’re in the middle of a tectonic shift. Multiple friends, usually talkative, usually stable, have gone silent, and I know several people who seem to be having low level mental health crises.
i have stopped talking to friends because they became insane people and they think i’m an ignorant fool for not sharing in their addiction to paranoia and fear.
It’s not just you. In my area people are driving worse, people are being less patient, and folks seem to be getting weirder. Hell, I just had to delete an article about skinning a cat from a vegan discord group. I have no idea what’s going on, but I’d guess it’s stress, weather, and endless conflict weighing on people.
I’ve been vegan since 2019 and it’s hitting me lately that in those days things were looking bright for veganism. Now a lot of vegan restaurants are turning their backs on animals by serving meat then closing up shop a few months later after alienating their customers. It’s getting more difficult to find vegan options and it just breaks my heart.
(There’s also like 10,000 other problems I’m going through too.)
Inflation and restraunts generally struggling are the causes
Easier to not go to restaurants than deal with their shit. I don’t really mind if they die.
Before you buy food and it’s the price listed. Now there is a chance you will have to argue with someone to have a surprise service charge removed from the bill.
It kinda sounds like they started serving meat because they realized they were circling the drain and tried something desperate.
I mean they were always packed when I went. But one (Sage Bistro in Pasadena, CA) was hard to get into without a reservation. The owner just decided she suddenly believed in “regenerative farming” for whatever fucking reason.
probably veganism, vegatarian food isnt really profitable compared to meat based, eggs, milk products. its only a subset of people that will willingly go to these, perhaps. i think they are better selling vegan products to chain store.
How would animal products be more profitable if they cost more? Veggies are cheap so the potential profit margin is much higher no?
Probably making up the difference in the number of customers. Veganism is still a minority, depending on sources 1-3%(highest in inda up to 9%) of the population.
So running a restaurant and focusing only on a small minority might not be that sustainable if there aren’t enough people on the area or there is too high competition.
Adding in the general cost of life increases over the last few years reducing the number of potential customers as well.
And it kinda makes sense why restaurants are moving away from exclusively serving some specific group.
Government handouts for grain and meat production.
Eat the grain?
Yes livestock in US eats mostly corn and soy
But people could eat the corn instead
Most corn grown in the US goes to either animal feed or ethanol for gasoline. It takes so much more corn to feed cattle and then feed the human, and the corn lobby loves that.
A vegan restaurant is not selling simple vegetables. Its like how vegan burgers cost more than normal burgers. Its mostly because we subsidize meat.
Would you pay $5 for a green pepper when you could get one for $.99 at the store? I think because the cost of veggies is so low, there’s not much room to raise prices before customers think they’re better off just cooking themselves. My $.02
Everyone seems scared to talk about what they’re scared of even though we all know. Even around the like-minded. It’s like saying it out loud makes it real and worse.
we are living in a panopticon and people know anything they do or say can and will be used against them, no matter how harmless or obvious.
Oh yeah. Not sure how much is a us in particular thing. I think the last thing I complained about here is paper towels but I really feel like everything. Absolutely everything is just not working as well as it used to. I blame worker reductions and things just not being maintained as well. I think they are requiring folk to do more such that they can’t do it as well and they have lost knowledge on how things work but penny pinching on maintenance. Combined with little to no real oversight and by and large inspection is done internally and that is a good place to pinch pennies. I sorta feel like the country is going like the soviet union. Its like we talked about how inefficiently they ran but they still had cities and people working their jobs and going about life. Similarly we do and people are like see its fine because things are still happening. Its such a slow degredation.
