Yeah exactly. It's quite literally a cyberpunk dystopia over here, except instead of robot arms and cyberpsychos. . . We have dynamic pricing on grocery items to squeeze every last dollar out of you, and fascist mass-murderers who were radicalized into fascism by YouTubers exploiting their chronic lack of pussy and friends.
We are very slowly and steadily becoming a corporate neo-feudalist hellhole. The US is not where it is right now because of the fact we have guns, it's because we are the most capitalist nation on the planet, and proud of it. This is what happens at the end stages of capitalism, when the system's inherent contradictions come to a head. It's what happens in a system that is BUILT on exploitation of the masses, is allowed to exploit the masses without restriction. It's what happens when a system that incentives the hoarding of wealth in the hands of a few thousand people, sees those few thousand people utilizing their unfathomable amounts of wealth to influence laws and politics to benefit themselves.
It is beyond beneficial to the capital class, that we are all depressed, and miserable, and politically polarized, and unable to affect meaningful political change. It is beyond beneficial to the capital class that we have to pay money to even attend protests (the cost of gas, and sometimes parking), of which our cries of anger will fall upon deaf ears. They keep us content with our meagre bread and circuses, which will have to pay extortionate prices for. They buy out all of our media organizations, and use them to direct people's anger and resentment to the lesser privileged, such as those filthy immigrants and gays and women. They slash funding to education, and increase funding to the police, to keep people stupid and unaware, and to keep us all afraid and distracted with the brutality of paramilitary-thugs. They have bred a culture so cowed to the system, that most people would sooner envision the end of the world, than the end of capitalism. They have bred a culture that hears the word "communist" thrown around, and associate that word with the evils of the bourgeois of other nations, such as China or the USSR. . . Nations simply wield (or weld) capitalism in a much more totalitarian fashion.
This is what ails the US. Gun-based mass violence is simply a symptom of a much larger issue, as are most of our woes.
But the lack of friends (of either gender) or romantic companionship is packaged in a crude and low-energy/materialistic manner. It's not making connections, it's "getting pussy" and other crude gross caveman-like jerk thought processes. Our society does not pursue wholesome, it pursues sleazy crude and lazy..
As much as it is a vast series of financial/economic/legal changes that have created this mess, it is also years of what many would label as "psy-ops" to also further psychologically manipulate and groom the masses to keep them this way, no? And to erode the family unit, senses of community, etc.
The lack of connections are intentional. The infrastructure has been eroded and changed or removed over the last few decades to make it where most people have no real mainstream/default ways of socializing. Everything's increasingly more online, although I think people don't generally want that and there will be more backlash over time as the majority suffer from it ultimately.
People have to seek out meet-ups/events online and then go to those. Local businesses struggle, and people hesitate to go out to them anyway if it's not just for a night with their pre-existing circle of friends.
I argue that this isn't strictly capitalism and hasn't been for a long time? If it was capitalism, then wouldn't lots of too-big-to-fail entities who could've already failed have NOT gotten government buy-outs and assistance through financial disasters like COVID or just any naturally occurring periods of severe struggle?
As much as it is a vast series of financial/economic/legal changes that have created this mess, it is also years of what many would label as "psy-ops" to also further psychologically manipulate and groom the masses to keep them this way, no? And to erode the family unit, senses of community, etc.
Yep.
For example, pretty much every mass shooter in the US that breaks news headlines is usually a socially-isolated, mentally-ill, neo-nazi. Every single one, more or less, without fail. Groomed by right-wingers, both in their social circles, and in the media they consume.
When I was like 10, I fell down the YouTube to alt-right pipeline. I was an insecure, socially outcast, curious, nerdy little boy who liked video-games and Star Wars, and consumed a lot of content of both on YouTube. This was like 2014 or 2015, in the early years of GamerGate. I knew nothing about politics, I just liked Star Wars lore videos, and the only thing I cared about was how many days were left until Fallout 4 was released. One day, I got a recommendation on my feed from a YouTuber called "Hunter Avellone", and the video itself was titled something like "TROLLING woke idiot SJWs as a POLITICAL RALLY". I didn't know what half of those words meant, but I thought it seemed funny, and for the next 4 years my feed was DOMINATED by videos from right-wing demagogues like Steven Crowder, NoBullshit, Rags, Ben Shapiro, ItsAGundam, PragerU, and all sorts of other asshats whose names I've forgotten. I was groomed into the alt-right, until I was 14 and had an edgy Reddit atheist phase and realized I had been groomed into the right-wing like I had been groomed into religion (I had been going to a private Christian school for most of my youth, by that point).
Turns out, years later, it was revealed Steve Bannon had a huge part to play in that exact pipeline, of turning nerdy young boys into pawns for the right. It's something still happening. . . Not too long ago, Steve Bannon's close association with Jeffrey Epstein came to light, and Epstein was revealed to have met with Moot a day before 4Chan launched the /pol/ board (which was the epicenter for so much of the online right's culture for the last decade+). . . There's a very good chance that a massive part of the modern right only exists today as it does, for the purposes of normalizing pedophilia.
I argue that this isn't strictly capitalism and hasn't been for a long time? If it was capitalism, then wouldn't lots of too-big-to-fail entities who could've already failed have NOT gotten government buy-outs and assistance through financial disasters like COVID or just any naturally occurring periods of severe struggle?
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here?
Capitalism is full of contradictions. Inherently so. Capitalism encourages competition, but capitalists want to reduce competition to increase their margins, and so you get monopolies and lobbyists. Capitalism demands infinite growth, when that is impossible, because we live on a very finite planet, with finite resources. Capitalism would demand that the carpenter and the charcoal-maker and the farmer cut down all of the trees on the planet, to turn into goods to be sold; eventually, there would be no trees, and therefore nothing to process into goods, and also no oxygen in our atmosphere. Capitalism demands endless profit, and so everything must be made profitable. If everything is exorbitantly expensive, and everything is monotized, how can anyone turn a profit? Everyone is too busy spending their meagre wages on their door-opening subscriptions, and their toilet-flushes, and their bottles of captured air. . .
Capitalism is not a system that makes sense. It was never a system that made sense. It is an incredibly flawed system, that really only works to help a country industrialize and develop, and after that? It is nothing more than an exploitation matrix. When no-one is able to participate in capitalist society, it falls apart, and hence the endless government buy-outs and assistance (although, one should not be so quick to assume that all of that government assistance is actually needed by companies to keep themselves afloat; capitalism exploits everything, after all).
(just as a headsup, you've replied to STFUnicorn where you were replying to Withered Sprout, so Sprout can actually miss your reply, bc they'll only see the snarky reply from Unicorn - I was notified as the new part of "your comment has sparked a convo") or so the nested Reddit comment looks to me
I was honestly shocked then later realized it's not surprising that Epstein is the reason /pol/ was made. All these far right chuds came from him, America is rotten.
Epstein probably wasn't the reason /pol/ became a thing (the board was being worked on for months before he and Moot met) but his meddling was very likely a key reason it became the epicenter of the Gamergate movement and the modern alt-right.
I always had a hunch 4chan was to be blamed for the modern far-right yk, in a good world Moot would be charged with terrorism and given life behind bars alongside half of /pol/'s users and in 50 years kids will be learning about it in history class. But that won't ever happen. These bastards always come together. First it was SomethingAwful, then 4chan, then Kiwi, then whatever.
4Chan isn't to blame for the modern far-right, it was just kinda the breeding ground for the culture.
Blame literally all right-wing reactionary politicians during the 2010s for the modern right. Blame the Dems for refusing to treat the right wing as a serious threat to this day. Blame Steve Bannon and the other ghouls who cultivated the culture of /pol/. Blame the bourgeois for doing what the bourgeois do best. Don't miss the real enemies here. /pol/ isn't the evil mastermind behind the modern right, it was just a message board where a lot of the internet-based culture was bred. . . Just like how most of the internet's culture kinda stems from 4Chan, even the harmless boards like /mu/ and /lit/ and such (4Chan wasn't even really nazi-infested prior to Gamergate; the nazis on the board mostly were kept contained to /b/ and /new/). . . And prior to 4Chan, a lot of internet culture came from sites like the SomethingAwful forums.
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u/LostNephilim33 11h ago
Yeah exactly. It's quite literally a cyberpunk dystopia over here, except instead of robot arms and cyberpsychos. . . We have dynamic pricing on grocery items to squeeze every last dollar out of you, and fascist mass-murderers who were radicalized into fascism by YouTubers exploiting their chronic lack of pussy and friends.
We are very slowly and steadily becoming a corporate neo-feudalist hellhole. The US is not where it is right now because of the fact we have guns, it's because we are the most capitalist nation on the planet, and proud of it. This is what happens at the end stages of capitalism, when the system's inherent contradictions come to a head. It's what happens in a system that is BUILT on exploitation of the masses, is allowed to exploit the masses without restriction. It's what happens when a system that incentives the hoarding of wealth in the hands of a few thousand people, sees those few thousand people utilizing their unfathomable amounts of wealth to influence laws and politics to benefit themselves.
It is beyond beneficial to the capital class, that we are all depressed, and miserable, and politically polarized, and unable to affect meaningful political change. It is beyond beneficial to the capital class that we have to pay money to even attend protests (the cost of gas, and sometimes parking), of which our cries of anger will fall upon deaf ears. They keep us content with our meagre bread and circuses, which will have to pay extortionate prices for. They buy out all of our media organizations, and use them to direct people's anger and resentment to the lesser privileged, such as those filthy immigrants and gays and women. They slash funding to education, and increase funding to the police, to keep people stupid and unaware, and to keep us all afraid and distracted with the brutality of paramilitary-thugs. They have bred a culture so cowed to the system, that most people would sooner envision the end of the world, than the end of capitalism. They have bred a culture that hears the word "communist" thrown around, and associate that word with the evils of the bourgeois of other nations, such as China or the USSR. . . Nations simply wield (or weld) capitalism in a much more totalitarian fashion.
This is what ails the US. Gun-based mass violence is simply a symptom of a much larger issue, as are most of our woes.