Spent a morning out on the town on my day off, and everyone is just fucking buried in their phones 24/7. This realization was so absurd to me
Of course I’m not exempt from this shit, but no wonder people are having so much trouble making friends and creating meaningful relationships in this day and age. So fucking bleak
I used to comfort myself by saying that I watched a lot of TV when I was a kid and I grew up okay, but TV wasn’t available anywhere on demand.
Also, at least TV tends to have a narrative that’s supposed to hold a kid’s attention and might be educational. YouTube is just nonsense lights and sounds for 60 seconds at a time.
I know the usual take is “they said the same thing about radio before TV, too,” as if there’s no material or for that matter consequential difference between tuning in for something and doing something else until that something is on and having curating algorithms constantly shoveling targeted slop the consumer’s way.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that screen time and internet access restrictions on minors like China is imposing are probably the way forward, but they’ll never happen in the West because the social media oligarchs control the government.
Some of it is ground level “DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DOOOOOOOOOOOO”
from Burgerlander parents too. Another example of that in action was when even mild social distancing and mask requests made a lot of Burgerlanders storm government buildings and blockade hospitals.
IMO this kind of reflexive and unconditional individualism is one of the core causes of Western social rot.
Yup turns out having a majority of your population think “it’s me verses society” isn’t great for that society.
Extra hilarious how Americans will tell you about how it’s a part of Chinese culture to fuck other people over to get ahead as they raise millions of people out of poverty every year.
Meanwhile in America people don’t support universal Healthcare because other people might benefit from it.
I think so too, and judging by the “no veggies at dinner, no bedtimes” outbursts that blow up around here sometimes, Hexbear isn’t immune to it either.
Do people on Hexbear post that stuff unironically? I think I’ve only seen it dunked on.
Not in those exact words, no, but one example I can immediately think of was the cairn struggle session where some contrarians said they’d be pleased to stack rocks (at the expense of local environments and their ecosystems) just to stick it to the “scolds” was in the same spirit, just spiteful petty bullshit for freedom’s sake.
The “homework is slavery” struggle session was particularly embaressing.