U.S. Politics

[Ru1977]

Go into the woods and build a hut and shit with the bears. Nobody is stopping you if you want to live like a bronze-age fuckhead

I wonder if that's part of the appeal of things like Walking Dead. Life is simpler when all you really need to worry about is finding shelter and figuring out who you're gonna eat.

 

[jonaskane]

Again, the whole administration are nothing but 12 year old trolls in decrepit bodies. Trump's little AI videos of sombreros and poop bombs. Press secretaries literally responding to questions with 'Your mom'. It's fucking revolting and exhausting.

 

[altcunningham]

We're raising such good slaves. They're imprisoned in their own minds so thoroughly they don't even need shackles.

I'm really curious where that comes from for those age brackets. Is it really because they were iPad kids? Do we really blame PewDiePie and twitch and CoD?

It's also a thing that there is a wave of conservatism and sex shaming/sex embarrassment in those crowds. I see it at school. Even kissing in a movie is considered too much and offensive to some people. Some of this I believe just from my own conversations comes from the need to immediately label yourself as some sort of demisexual asexual, pick a label, and then just go really hard on policing that expectation for everyone else. Which clearly that comes from another place of trauma.

Y'all are learnt. Some of y'all are parents. Where does this come from, do you think?

Is it just the natural generational urge to lash back against the older people and whatever they were about?

Is this a thing in Europe? Asia?

 

[docsilence]

Me too! A university library and the admin and some librarians here talk about AI like they just fell off the turnip truck. It's bananas.

Some of my colleagues on a library writers committee are some of the least capable people I've met at grasping and understanding how gen AI works. When I explain it to them it's like cavemen learning "oh fire hot" after sticking their dick in it. And I have an author friend who works at a major Boston higher ed institute and the leadership and professors are absolute morons about it.

Hey hey hey... leave room for the atrocity that is the Texas school system (says the 42 yr old Texan whose entire family has worked in and around education). We are neck and neck with Florida in the race to the bottom and I'll not have besmirch our deserved reputation.

Ever since learning that any textbook in America has to get past the censorship of the Texas education system I've wanted to burn our entire education system to the ground and start over again. Always being held back by the lowest common denominator.

I wonder if that's part of the appeal of things like Walking Dead. Life is simpler when all you really need to worry about is finding shelter and figuring out who you're gonna eat.

It is fucking insane to me that when I watched TWD for the first time even back THEN I was like "to be fair, running from zombies in a place where you can just END someone who threatens your family is really appealing compared to America right now." Or how the end game nightmare of TWD was people trying to re-institute the American class system.

 

[Ru1977]

It is fucking insane to me that when I watched TWD for the first time even back THEN I was like "to be fair, running from zombies in a place where you can just END someone who threatens your family is really appealing compared to America right now." Or how the end game nightmare of TWD was people trying to re-institute the American class system.

It really cultivated the demonizing of the other. Not talking about the zombies, but every group they ran into were people they'd just have to kill off.

 

[docsilence]

And from a different point of view, Rick's people just left a trail of bodies and blood behind them. The zombies were a backdrop for how people will act toward each other if consequences aren't a thing. For a while I thought it was too pessimistic, but look at what a couple dozen people with too much power are doing.

Speaking of, part of my work this week was helping polish website copy for folks looking for food or heating assistance help this winter but explaining that due to federal cuts, the organizations only have enough money to help the most emergency-based cases. I hope there's a Hell and it has to build a new fucking wing named after this fucking guy.

 

[yojoebro82]

For reasons too silly to go into I'm on the AI steering committee at the library where I work and it is SUCH a lousy tool and it's wild to me that everyone keeps talking in breathless tones about how it's 'going to change everything'. The BEST apps people have shown as part of our steering initiative are basically "google, but you talk to it and sometimes it lies" and "it summarizes papers I don't really want to read, but I still need to sort of read because I can't trust the summary actually". Like, there is NO killer app to this thing. It's bananas. A multi-trillion dollar solution in search of a problem.

But, dude, how else will I get my 5 POA 1977 Han Solo action figure to perfectly choreograph every motion he makes during the Mos Eisley escape? This technology is of vital importance to the mid-40s figure collector. It gives us the warm-fuzzies.

Is Skynet does happen, surely, SURELY it will have been worth it.

 

[altcunningham]

But, dude, how else will I get my 5 POA 1977 Han Solo action figure to perfectly choreograph every motion he makes during the Mos Eisley escape? This technology is of vital importance to the mid-40s figure collector. It gives us the warm-fuzzies.

Is Skynet does happen, surely, SURELY it will have been worth it.

Every new wave toy tuber and insta guy has to be able to make sexy videos of their female characters.

Even in my comic art groups, people use them to animate covers and s***. This at least the majority of reaction to any of that is "just leave the group".

 

[Chooch555]

Is it just the natural generational urge to lash back against the older people and whatever they were about?

I think kids are smart enough to look at older generations, see that shit didn't work, and then try out the first new thing their peers come up with. And by kids I mean all kids since the dawn of time. Their kids will probably be hosting orgies in grade school.

 

[Damien]

I wonder if that's part of the appeal of things like Walking Dead. Life is simpler when all you really need to worry about is finding shelter and figuring out who you're gonna eat.

I'd argue 90% of the appeal of things like Walking Dead is the power fantasy by a bunch of men that view themselves as 'alphas' and literally see themselves as the guy that's going to walk around making everyone shit themselves with how AWESOME they are, telling people what to do, and killing people that don't listen.
It's poor people that think like Trump; they would rather be king of corpses than a regular person among regular people.

I'm really curious where that comes from for those age brackets. Is it really because they were iPad kids? Do we really blame PewDiePie and twitch and CoD?

I can tell you pretty confidently that it's the parents. When you raise your kids to believe lies, they believe lies. When you raise your kids to think everyone is out to get them and the whole world is just a big joke because 'actually, we're going to bodily ascend to heaven at some point ANY DAY NOW' - then the world is a big joke.

Y'all are learnt. Some of y'all are parents. Where does this come from, do you think?

I've had the misfortune of dealing with a lot of kids and parents since becoming a parent. The best kids, literally 100% of the time, come from families like people here would raise. The hyper conservative and hyper religious households are the ones whose kids are clearly fucking damaged in a way there may be no coming back from.

My daughter recently had a huge problem with a kid in her school on a group project. He kept deleting her slides and presentation stuff from the school app they have to use, because her slides were critical of The Catholic Spanish role in the destruction of native peoples in the 'New World.' The kid is, of course, very Christian, raised by Christians. And he's been raised, according to his own very words, to believe that ANY criticism of anything even touching on Christianity is 'offensive and evil.'

Kids don't come up with that shit on their own. It's drilled into them and takes SO MUCH to ever overcome. Which is why most don't ever un-indoctrinate themselves.

 

[JakeEkiss]

I'm really curious where that comes from for those age brackets. Is it really because they were iPad kids? Do we really blame PewDiePie and twitch and CoD?

It's also a thing that there is a wave of conservatism and sex shaming/sex embarrassment in those crowds. I see it at school. Even kissing in a movie is considered too much and offensive to some people. Some of this I believe just from my own conversations comes from the need to immediately label yourself as some sort of demisexual asexual, pick a label, and then just go really hard on policing that expectation for everyone else. Which clearly that comes from another place of trauma.

No, it's mostly the parents. When I was working int he dorms I met loads of good kids, and then some others. Some of the good kids had good parents, some were good in spite of shitty parents. Most of the shitty kids had shitty parents. Stephen Miller is my age. And there are plenty of soul-sucking vampire motherfuckers out there just like him raising little tiny soul-suckers of their own.

The sex thing I think is a little more complex. One thing is our mass media (blockbusters and such) has passively become very de-sexed so it can be sold to China past the censors. That's why they only time you ever see anybody fuck in the Marvel universe it's in Eternals. It's the movie franchise with the most entries featuring the hottest people alive and yet somehow basically non of them ever show physical affection except off camera.

I also think some of it is a bit of generational backlash towards a previous generation that spent so much time and effort trying to be allowed to say who they were sexually openly, that there became a lot of new social complexities and expectations there.

Is this a thing in Europe? Asia?

Some of it, yes. We are definitely in an era of rising puritanical thinking, right wing demagogs, and so on.

Some of my colleagues on a library writers committee are some of the least capable people I've met at grasping and understanding how gen AI works. When I explain it to them it's like cavemen learning "oh fire hot" after sticking their dick in it. And I have an author friend who works at a major Boston higher ed institute and the leadership and professors are absolute morons about it.

It's so tiring. And every time I tell anyone who knows me I'm on the AI steering committee they start laughing their asses off. And I'm like "look, if you're not in the room, you can't influence the decisions, it's steering, and I'm aiming it for the ditch."

Ever since learning that any textbook in America has to get past the censorship of the Texas education system I've wanted to burn our entire education system to the ground and start over again. Always being held back by the lowest common denominator.

That's my state! We're the best there is at what we do. And what we do is make your kids as ignorant as ours!

I'd argue 90% of the appeal of things like Walking Dead is the power fantasy by a bunch of men that view themselves as 'alphas' and literally see themselves as the guy that's going to walk around making everyone shit themselves with how AWESOME they are, telling people what to do, and killing people that don't listen.
It's poor people that think like Trump; they would rather be king of corpses than a regular person among regular people.

100% this.

 

[SDcomics]

Again, the whole administration are nothing but 12 year old trolls in decrepit bodies. Trump's little AI videos of sombreros and poop bombs. Press secretaries literally responding to questions with 'Your mom'. It's fucking revolting and exhausting.

My girl friend says it may be time for her and her people to bring back collecting scalps.

It's hard to argue with that.

 

[docsilence]

I forget what I was watching the other day, which old movie, but I had the thought "I kinda miss just... randomly horny movies" and realized how long it had been since we had that sort of vibe. I mean there was a whole fuckton of toxic stuff that went with it, but also just the playfulness of thinking with your hormones in stories seems to be gone. Unless it's about big dicked fairies in the single genre of novels that sells well right now. Which is probably a whole other commentary on the state of horniness and media consumption in this era.

 

[jonaskane]

I keep telling my wife to write some fantasy porn for mommies and make us rich but she's resistant.

 

[TheSameIdiot]

Again, the whole administration are nothing but 12 year old trolls in decrepit bodies. Trump's little AI videos of sombreros and poop bombs. Press secretaries literally responding to questions with 'Your mom'. It's fucking revolting and exhausting.

I wish we had a functioning press. I think the "your mom" thing would really turn off normies if they ever heard it. Of course, the 38% of the country who worship at the altar of Donald J. Trump would love it, but everyone else tries to be an adult.

And every time I tell anyone who knows me I'm on the AI steering committee they start laughing their asses off. And I'm like "look, if you're not in the room, you can't influence the decisions, it's steering, and I'm aiming it for the ditch."

Great perspective. You gotta be inside the room to influence change.

I forget what I was watching the other day, which old movie, but I had the thought "I kinda miss just... randomly horny movies"

Fuck yeah. Don't Look Now—a psychological ghost story—features one of the hottest scenes on film. Look at what they've taken from us.