I remember growing up watching PBS and actually thinking the world I would grow up in would surely be better than the world before, especially with so many people watching people like Mr Rogers and Sesame Street and the slew of educational programs like NOVA.

I realize now that I was a shut-in nerd without involved parents and PBS was one of the only channels I could tune in on my little black-and-white television set.

Nobody else watched this stuff. If they did, they didn’t internalize it, and if they did, they took all the wrong lessons from it. (“I AM special just the way I am, that means I deserve to have anything I want! yaaah white power!”)

I appreciate that at least someone read it. I feel bad for people trying to do right and just find some decent, non-hateful place to socialize online, but we all gotta remember there’s no such thing as a safe space online. It’s all going to alter your brain in some way. It’s like how there’s no such thing as a “healthy” amount of alcohol, even nice, decent spaces online are not necessarily good for you if you’re not limited your time and not maintaining healthy distance from other people’s thoughts.

It’s hard because we all want to connect, but our brains aren’t wired to absorb the thoughts of so many other people… especially how we read them in our own voices inside our head. It confuses the many, many sub-layers of your consciousness. (Neurology is a bitch to learn about because you realize all at once how complex we are, but also how vulnerable.)

nearly a quarter of US adults are functionally illiterate.

Possessives and contractions are barely a snowflake on the iceberg of problems our civilization has with knowledge and education.

This lemmy forum is far more about kids crying about authority existing than it is about actual structured critique of the business world and processes. It is absolutely exhausting hiring, and sadly most of the people here will never know that stress, and will hold onto these cartoonish notions that only elite, wealthy, privileged cartoon villains are the ones who make decisions who to hire and how.

Meanwhile, people like us have to somehow dance around pleasing both bosses and employees and potential employees without making mistakes that everyone seems to be looking for you to make with a hunger.

Says the link in the chain.

All you have to do, as hard as it is, is compartmentalize your mind a little better.

When you read menslib-super-academic, everyone-is-a-gender-philosopher and everyone scores points for being better and more progressive than everyone else, you need to be able to read that with an understanding that some of it is has value in terms of understanding the world and how arguments work, but you can cut it off there. You go back to outside-land and look around at your life and understand that it’s not related to two strangers online yelling at each other about different brands of socialism versus how problematic Brad Pitt’s performance is.

If you then left all that baggage BACK at menslib, and then enjoyed your movies and media and talked like a grown up to other people about the media you like, you will find that MOST people will share your interests or at least give it a shot. It’s about having some level of sovereignty and not letting the internet infect your mind with nonsense. And it is. I don’t care if there are actual protests on campuses from people screaming how evil Fight Club is, it doesn’t matter. You can still like it and not feed the chain. Have some shred of pride in yourself and the things you like.

Because the next step after feeling ashamed to like what you like, is feeling angry at the world for “not letting you” like them, and then starts the slippery slide into being hateful and angry and suspicious of everyone and everything. To say nothing of how you will want to spread how frustrated you are more and more, inflaming an already degrading situation.

Okay i’m done, I just had to address this because it sounded wrong in so many ways. We’re all getting our heads yanked up our own asses by reading the voices of too many other people.

As someone who knows far more about Menslib than I should probably say in the open, I can safely tell you that you need to get off the internet and not read gender-oriented material at all. Podcasts too. This is media, it’s meant to create conversations and most people don’t take it seriously. Or at least they shouldn’t.

The internet has this way of seeping into your head and making you think the constant barrage of sensationalism, of intrusive thoughts-turned-posts, of fake people pretending to be outraged, it makes you think all of this is any way how people actually view the world and it programs you to do the same.

I lived in the before-times, I know how people thought before. It wasn’t like this. When you’re not infected with the aimless thoughts of thousands of faceless voices in space, you can just enjoy what you enjoy and nobody cares. And if someone does care and not like a thing you like, you say “oh that’s too bad, I like it though.” And that was it. End of story. Those two people would then go on to like, get married and have a pile of kids because back then, we weren’t always looking for contention. That’s the other thing these spaces do, is make you aware of contention that doesn’t impact you and only serves to clutter up your mind.

This entire fetid mess is screwing up our minds, and then you take this screwed-up vision of the world and post it somewhere else, so the thousands hundreds of super-sensitive, sheltered Lemmy users read it and now all the tender boys here are wringing their hands over a non-issue as well and absolute nonsense spreads and spreads and spreads.

You like something? Like it. Stop trying to please people while at the same time stay respectful and kind and just get on with your day and life without excuses or hand-wringing about things that aren’t real.

Which people and where? I am dead serious, there is reason why I want to know.

what the… then, how could you possibly be attacked for liking them?

Are you just creating things in your mind to feel bad about???

He listed the highly inappropriate and unpopular movies that nobody ever heard of Full Metal Jacket and Fight Club.

I think someone spends too much time reading posts on the internet.

edit: i was right, yep, menslib subreddit reader.

Those are insanely popular movies.

I’ve only seen academic critique and of course more cerebral criticisms because of how they were reflections of their time, like many movies.

If you had actual people in real life attack you for liking these movies, either you were being weird about them and not listening to someone’s academic takes because you don’t understand them or you met a nut. Otherwise I think it’s bullshit and you just wanna be oppressed for liking [POPULAR THING]

When people online are this vague and hand-wavy, you know 99% of the time they’re downplaying some really stupid stand they took about that something a date or friend didn’t like one fucking time and they can’t let it go.

Or they don’t have friends at all, and just read all the manosphere self-victimization forums.

Edit: he got lost down the menslib rabbit hole of over analyzing everything until reality itself loses meaning and you begin to think breathing is problematic to someone, somewhere.

That sounds exactly like what someone who once faced consequences for one particular thing would say.

To bother you in particular.

China, now the leading global super-power, took drastic measures decades ago to make sure their population wasn’t getting indoctrinated by outside influences.

They also used this power to cover up genocides and such, but I feel like a healthier balance could be maintained if we could just get our population to understand that their unfettered access to literally anything is like opening up a wound to the world’s bacteria.

Christ they know how to play this population.

Every time we all breath a sigh of relief that some new policy to force toddlers to work in slaughterhouses got shot down in court, we’re likely missing the 30 odd, convoluted deregulation policies that slip right past the new cycle because they’re written in legalese and seem abstract to 99% of non-wealthy Americans.

They’re fully aware most of their policies are going to get shot down in court, that’s why they’re carpet bombing the US with bullshit right now.

If we all breath a sigh of relief that some new policy to force toddlers to work in slaughterhouses got shot down, we’re likely missing the 30 odd, convoluted deregulation policies that slip right past the new cycle because they’re written in legalese and seem abstract to 99% of non-wealthy Americans.

I don’t know how many times I can scream that they’re robbing us blind while distracting us with stupid cultural nonsense.

civil war

Okay Tim, what exactly are the battle-lines going to look like in this civil war?

this is a sign that the military is concerned with honoring their oaths to uphold our Constitution

They want meat for the meat-wall. Let’s not get too optimistic.

No, really, the world’s largest volunteer fighting force, and we also have the distinction of the world’s biggest and most powerful military, so the brass had to do everything and anything to keep the ranks open wide for anyone who wants to go get themselves killed while burning brown kids in far away lands.

The slightly less cynical take is that we absolutely cannot diminish our enlisted forces any more. We have growing threats from Russia, an unstable president who may start a war with Iran for fun, instability between China, Taiwan and Philippines, just to name a couple of hotspots. If we get in a large-scale fight and don’t have every advantage we’re very likely to lose all status in the world.

The administration knows this. They are distracting you all with these culture-war bullshit fights knowing full well that most of them will either get shot down in court or overridden at some point. While we’re all focused on trying to stop the latest bill to force toddlers to work in kitten slaughterhouses, they’re passing 30 new policies that deregulate the financial sector and repeal laws that limit corporate power, which our illiterate population ignores because it’s boring.

I love me a really well-made grilled-cheese sandwich, like with all the fixings and fancy bread. Truly one of life’s pleasures.

But if gets moldy, even if it’s no fault of my own, I will probably throw that shit away and pick another option. (This also kills the spread of the mold.)

Ngl, this post really doesn’t send a good message.

Have you like… seen the internet broadly in the last 20 years?