#MORE CORPORATIZED BULLSHIT

[msclaritea]

Adobe Film And TV Fund To Support Underrepresented Creators And Filmmakers – Deadline

EXCEPT Adobe, highly corporatized, will be partnering w/other corporatized orgs, one of which is the Hollywood NAACP Bureau, run for a year by another Hollywood insider, Kyle Bowser, who among other things, worked for NBC FOX HBO and warner bros AND oversaw the Scientology-linked show In Living Colour. What's also interesting is how much the words 'diversity' and 'inclusion' are used by both Adobe and Bowser, but they never talk about what kind. I'm just going to say it. This is just another avenue for the Cult of Scientology and Hollywood Gay Mafia to add more people to their little army. Don't doubt for one minute that being QUEER is going to be the default. Might as well warn young heterosexual creatives not to bother with the Nuclear Family-hating Hollywood.

[kytsuine-blog]

...yes, I have, and I'm 24. And for some reason I just wrote an essay in the tags about it.

Tag your age if you wanna bc I was just thinking about how I have used floppy disks before (I'm 25 and used them in elementary computer lab) but my 22 y.o. brother hasn't which is so weird to me like 3 years isn't a long time at all to me

[artbyblastweave]

Question based on the fascinating Wild Talent's Axes post. Why do you think most adaptations of High Blue settings change them into lower Blue settings?

I think there's basically two reasons for that.

Reason one is that I think that on some level the executive-suite-level aversion to looking too silly or wacky and scaring off unfamiliar audiences was, at the time that it reigned supreme over all of these creative decisions, unfortunately just kind of correct. You're doing Spider-Man, alright, you can kind of bank on the audience's ambient knowledge of Spider-Man to buoy along the question of "How and why Spider-Man" and maybe "How and why Green Goblin." You bring in enemies outside of that paradigm, you bring in wizards, vampires, aliens, now you gotta explain those things too, you gotta spend bandwidth on that. There's a real murky middle ground here between a cynical fear of looking too silly, and a genuine scope and focus problem- how much value added is there in pulling away from the core mutant stuff to start mucking around with the Shi'ar or Cyttorak or Belasco or Dracula? I don't think it's a coincidence that I don't hear people bringing up the fact that there were aliens in Dark Phoenix.

The Suicide Squad(s) are actually a really good example of this issue. Suicide Squad, while very bad, was actually a very high blue movie, to the extent that it actually fucked with the pacing when they kept turning to the camera to introduce new origin stories, to the point of creating a tone-and-theme clash with the previous two movies where this stuff was mostly framed as much rarer and more disruptive. The Suicide Squad was equally high-blue, but also much more deliberate and naturalistic in conveying that this was a superhero setting rife with weirdos. Naturalism is a watchword with this kind of thing.

Which brings us around to issue two, right, which is that, as much as I love the high-blue bullshit of the golden and silver age, you're huffing glue if you think those settings became like that due to some deliberate creative ethos. They needed to meet monthly deadlines and they were writing for small children, it was the corporatized version of making up a bedtime story off the cuff, and over time the nonsense simply accumulated. Later writers take that precedent and run with it to do interesting and valuable things, but if you're creating a classic high-blue superhero setting from scratch these days it's almost always a form of emulation. Approached without clarity of purpose, it can make for weird or bad or messy writing!

Ultimate Spider-Man is an example of a comic adaptation that bleached the blue, and that decision- to tie all of Spidey's villains to a common origin- resulted in a really strong story. Stronger themes, stronger character dynamics, stronger worldbuilding and stronger, cohesive political messaging. Objectively the correct decision for the project they were going for. Tightening the blue can let you do things- it lets you sift through and find the strongest shared points between the disparate elements of the mythology, assemble them into something thoughtful and directed.

[max1461]

I had this realization the other day that we're living in an incredibly dynamic era. Ok, I'm not sure I really believe in that kind of thing—how do you determine the "dynamism" of an "era"?—but like, go with me on this. You see those pictures or whatever of Russian soldiers (I think?) with anime waifus on their tank, right. And it's like...

There's a couple parts to this. The first part is that, due to the internet I suppose, people from all parts of the world, from countries that used to be largely closed off from communication with one another, etc., are now sharing in one big cultural discourse. We're all talking to each other more than we ever have been. The second part is that this discourse is decentralized, right, it's not governments facilitating this communication and choosing the topics, and it's not big centralized media institutions, it's just whatever random pop culture stuff happens to catch people's fancy. And not even the most sanitized, corporatized, mass-market pop culture stuff either. It's anime girls! It's "cringe"! It's pulp! It's horny! How very human that that's the sort of media that unites us in conversation, right—stupid horny bullshit. It makes me kind of proud.

So, then, the last part that really made this realization hit me is that the anime girls are on a tank. This is not good but it is important. It's not just that we're all having a big stupid conversation about stupid pulpy media. No, it's like... people who are fighting and killing and dying, doing real things in the world, making history in a very tangible way, are spending their time conversing on the internet about anime waifus. And presumably they're acquiring some portion of their motivation and sense of self from these conversations, as we all acquire from all our social interactions in at least some small part.

So that's really the crux of it, right. A few years ago I did kind of buy into this idea that, ok, "human history" is over. History is still going, but it's now the history of institutions, of complex economic agents, of math made flesh, human agents working for inhuman ends. And the time of human history, of diplomacy conducted via marriage and family ties, of blood feuds, of the personal loyalties between a lord and his vassals... I kind of thought all that was over.

But, for better or worse, these Russian guys with anime waifus on their tank made me realize that perspective is bullshit. The age of human history is not over. There are, you know, there are... young stupid angry horny men are out there, shifting international borders, shaping the world, because they are young and stupid and angry and horny. And this particular example is negative, but there are also young stupid angry horny men (and women, and others) out there doing good things, great things, because they are young and stupid and angry and horny. I thought that might be over, but it's not. Do you see? Human history lives!

[singsongraptor]

If liberals and white leftists were really about that master's tools, master's house bullshit, they could have and should have been gassing people up to vote third party. To organize and put forward candidates at all levels, to campaign and outreach.

A metric fuckton of people are so fucking tired of Dems and their cowardice, corporatism and impotence, so they sit out voting rather than voting for the nuclear waste on the other side of the aisle, but rather than saying "hey, there's more aisles, let me show you those" these weak-willed, lazy, privileged punk asses would rather scream for More Status Quo, because we all know they're just gonna sit back and refuse to "push them left" with the Dems.

It's not about making things better for them. It's not even about stopping the fascism. It's your classic "saying the right things is just like praxis" even though they're absolutely NOT saying the right shit either.

Of course third party "can't win" y'all make every effort possible to not only not try but actively sabotage the way out.

[tomsawyee]

the online left isn’t ready for it but at some point we should probably have that conversation about pathologizing the harms of our modern engagement-obsessed corporatized internet as “idk literally all of us have adhd”

we are already neck-deep into multiple generations being fed constant streams of infinite stimulation that only get less and less effective as our brains need more and more at every moment just to hold our attention. there’s scholarship on it, but it never gains traction because we’ve couched it as some kind of pseudo-partisan “The Olds want us off the damn phone” bullshit. it’s getting better, but it’s still not great.

infinite scrolling is rotting our brains. binge watching and algorithm slurry and FYP and buttery smooth “Convenience” and and and the monopoly of our attention is the greatest wrong of our digital age. while neurodivergence is poorly understood both medically and socially, it is our obligation to ourselves to take a step back when something (our ability to maintain focus) feels like it has drastically changed and find the common denominator. or just flick past this because it’s longer than three sentences.

[papirouge]

I think the Americans are scared deep down of protesting like the French because many are just lazy and don’t want to be too uncomfortable by protesting. The French are based in that despite the hard shit and the tragedies, shit gets done. The Americans push back a bit, get scared when getting pushback by the elites and cling to their guns without using them to go back to their homes to whine at how awful their country is. Their country is huge and and if millions can come together to protest they can do it but they just won’t. I see it as they are only looking out for themselves deep down. They don’t care about others. They aren’t and probably won’t ever be “United” and fight together. That country is doomed to collapse probably soon so if any Americans reading this want to leave, I don’t blame you. Just don’t infect other countries with your bullshit.

Americans should start protesting because walking for hours is good for health and they'd be less obese. Being regularly chased by the police is good exercise, you work your endurance AND cardio🏃🏃‍♀️🏃‍♂️💨🚓. Now you know why the french are so skinny🤍🇫🇷

Yeah I always clowned American conservative/libertarians flexing their guns and mUh fRrEdOm but ultimately still getting finessed by a geriatric man out of his mind lmao.

If those men were that courageous you'd think they already done yet another Capitol stunt but right now they're busy crying & shaking behind their computers, saying about how the Left™ is coming for them, how the Capitol was a pSyOp to get every pAtrIoT arrested......but ALSO, it wasn't no big deal because the Capitol doesn't represent the American people anymore - and other copium nonsense...

And yeah the problem of individualism is a huge problem preventing Americans to resist effectively against governments. The USA is a veery young country too so its people have yet to build a sense of community ship beside the flag and the Bible - who never stopped good White Americans from treating other people as second class citizens if not barely humans flr most of its History ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ I cringe big time whenever I see ppl fawn over the concept of the USA, the "land of the free".... when its own founders had slaves 🤡

Social class awareness is what makes people break free from the bondage of corporatism. The USA have yet to have an ideologue like Karl Marx or Jean Jacques Rousseau to peak the masses.

Every french kid has to read "Le Contrat Social" of Rousseau during highschool ; that's why french citizens are wired to understand social class self awareness. Which ultimately make them more prone to fuck shit up when they feel their 'class' threatened.

I also always said that religion was relevant on that matter too. France is Catholic. I am not Catholic but I always said that Catholics knew how to do shit when it came to help the poor, organize mass scale social initiative, etc. Everytime I see Christians seething against giving money to the poor it's Protestants.

Here in France we have Caisses de Grèves (which can be translated as "Strike Pool") were ppl can donate money and then the money is distributed to all the people striking / missing days of work which take a tool on their finance. Lately, one donor gave 30 000€ !!! So even rich people have solidarity with strikers. Because social class awareness also helps rich people to be aware of their responsibility (use their privilege to help lower class people). OG Rousseau did the work centuries ago to slap some sense into the bourgeoisie, and now modern french citizens reap the benefits of his ideas. That's the perk of living in such an old country 🤍🇫🇷

....But when I look at American (Christians), they are often very contemptuous with this kind of initiative. Or they'll be like "I hope this money isn't going to lEftisTs !!" or even stupid shit like "handing stuff for free is the beginning of Communism"......but what they don't understand is that those leftist are socially closer to them than those millionaire they're white knighting online.

[poooooooooao3]

Hope you don't mind me piggy backing some very important information here.

Propaganda relies on the innate bias, & laziness of others to not fact check simple things just like those above. Everyone is susceptible to it if they choose not to critically think about what they're being told.

Remember Kony 2012? Yeah, ya do.

Though of course when you do look into things, there's a plan for that too.

Summary:

It’s so easy for propaganda to work and for dissent to be mocked.

–Harold Pinter, playwright and winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature

'There are a number of problems with propaganda prima facie, but I will contend that its right to exist is not one of them. Since propaganda is subjective, it cannot legally or practically be separated from the right to engage in free and open speech. Problems arise only when propaganda incites violence or hatred, or when the means of propaganda becomes concentrated in too few hands, so that free speech and discussion is subverted. Both of these characteristics lead inexorably towards a totalitarian state, as can be seen in Communism/Stalinism and Fascism/Corporatism (according to Mussolini, “Fascism should more properly be called Corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power”). Therefore, all speech inciting hatred/violence/intolerance must not be tolerated (as I discussed in a previous post called Karl Popper and the Paradox of Tolerance). Even more importantly, perhaps, there should be a highly diverse, independent, and critical media.'

Which is not the case, even with 'independent' University News Papers:

'In 2022, a report by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) identified Qatar as the most significant foreign donor to American universities. The research revealed that from 2001 to 2021, US higher education institutions received US$13 billion in funding from foreign sources, with Qatar contributing donations totaling $4.7 billion to universities in the United States. According to the report, the institutions did not disclose these donations as required by law.'

The report:

Foreign investment, foreign interests, foreign agendas. Everyone dances to the tune of whomever is signing the checks. Pulling up the ladder, if you will. 'I got mine.'

Also:

So the institutions and media outlet above is where most of the Netherbrain known as Tumblr is getting it's sources, without fact checking (difficult) or without critically thinking (apparently impossible, esp here.)

Also, there's the now infamous Wikipedia, and we all know about that, but if not:

'This latter point is important because the influence of propaganda can only be mitigated when there is ample information available in an open marketplace of ideas that can challenge the monopolization of propaganda by any particular interest group.'

https://tigerpapers.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/the-techniques-of-propaganda/

Hmmm? And what's happened?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/13/business/media/jeff-zucker-telegraph-delay.html

Oh but not the states? Wrong

If they have the money, and since we've already established that institutions of ANY kind do no always disclose the information they are required to by law, you can see how this could create the perfect storm of bullshit. It's a held open, unsecured backdoor to the cultural zeitgeist.

Ok, but propaganda?

Stop me if you've heard these ones before:

Ad hominem A Latin phrase that has come to mean attacking one’s opponent, as opposed to attacking their arguments.

e.g. I'm sure I don't have to provide Jumblr with examples of this one, but I know I certainly noticed an uptick in the liberal use of 'kike' for one.

Ad nauseam This argument approach uses tireless repetition of an idea. An idea, especially a simple slogan, that is repeated enough times, may begin to be taken as the truth. This approach works best when media sources are limited or controlled by the propagator.

e.g. 'Free Palestine' (from what?), 'From the River to the Sea'

Appeal to authority Appeals to authority cite prominent figures to support a position, idea, argument, or course of action.

e.g. remember when people were demanding from every prominent social media where they stood on the I/P conflict. Remember how vicious people were if they dared to public not have an opinion, had the audacity to be publically Jewish, or dare I say it, support Israel?

Pepperidge farm sure as fuck remembers.

Appeal to fear Appeals to fear and seeks to build support by instilling anxieties and panic in the general population, for example (mine) the replacement theory, <-Nakba misinformation, non existent apartheid, fabricated famines, blood libel (organ harvesting was the earliest one i heard this time round) etc.

Appeal to prejudice Using loaded or emotive terms to attach value or moral goodness to believing the proposition. Used in biased or misleading ways.

e.g. ye olde "antizionism, not antisemitismTM" as a dogwhistle

Bandwagon Bandwagon and “inevitable-victory” appeals attempt to persuade the target audience to join in and take the course of action that “everyone else is taking”.

e.g. *gestures broadly at secular tumblr, tiktok, reddit, instagram, facebook* Need I go on?

Big Lie The repeated articulation of a complex of events that justify subsequent action. The descriptions of these events have elements of truth, and the “big lie” generalizations merge and eventually supplant the public’s accurate perception of the underlying events. After World War I the German Stab in the Back explanation of the cause of their defeat became a justification for Nazi re-militarization and revanchist aggression.

e.g. Palestine reliquaries claiming that land belonged to the Palestinians before modern man even existed was my most recent favourite, but I know a meme for this occasion.

Black-and-white fallacy Presenting only two choices, with the product or idea being propagated as the better choice. For example: “You’re either with us, or against us….”'

this goes in with the bandwagon one. You're either propally or someone is asking you if you're Jewish. Not to difficult to see what they were really getting at the entire time after that, innit?

Classical conditioning All vertebrates, including humans, respond to classical conditioning. That is, if object A is always present when object B is present and object B causes a negative physical reaction (e.g., disgust, pleasure) then we will when presented with object A when object B is not present, we will experience the same feelings.

e.g. Watermelon emojis everywhere, always forcing you to think about it from that perspective, social influence of not wanting to step away from the crowd. If there's a lull in topical discussion, it will be re inflamed with with visceral imagery, like the 'starving Gazan children' that were actually Syrians.

Cognitive dissonance People desire to be consistent. Suppose a pollster finds that a certain group of people hates his candidate for senator but love actor A. They use actor A’s endorsement of their candidate to change people’s minds because people cannot tolerate inconsistency. They are forced to either dislike the actor or like the candidate.

e.g. OMG where do I start with this one? How about the chickens for KFC crowd, or the radical feminists unless the victim is a Jew? Human rights activists in general that turn a blind eye to Gazans being shot in the legs BY HAMAS because the aid they're being sent for free is being sold back to them at outrageous prices, to say nothing of where that aid comes from? Or 'I have empathy' argument, until they're Jewish. Ok I could go on forever here.

There's so much more and I, like you Jumblr, (NOT YOU, Hamasnik. Sit the fuck down) could come up with numerous examples for every single one listed (once again) from this link

Dear rest of tumblr, please learn to use that wet cornflake you call a brain cell and get it to-fucking-gether.

You're embarrassing yourselves.

you can’t make this shit up

[rametarin]

Paying someone's bill is nice, but

The REAL trick is to uncover the science behind manufacturing or synthesizing things in a way which is incredibly cheap, incredibly accessible (like turning common universal dirt into cancer medicine) and incredibly common (like, again. common dirt.)

The reason some things cost so much is because of either the specialist skilled labor, amount of energy and complexity required for the industry and machines to be able to manufacture it at scale, and how hard the raw materials are to acquire. If you could own your own little open source machine and didn't need to utilize any patents to create proprietary processes of your own to do things, we wouldn't need to rely on the government subsidizing megacorps just for the existence of this scarce product or resource.

It is in fact MORE capitalist to have more small companies that can turn dirt into higher value products, than it is to have bigger corporations that are only so large because the government mandates the necessity of a resource only accessible at cost and size because of the magic of mass manufacturing and borderline nationalized interest in the company that makes things.

And when those products are essential to continued existence, and can only be created by a very expensive centralized company, it's in everybody's interests to make these products at as small a scale as possible with a little technical skill and technological overhead as possible.

This is why end-user manufacturing and professional stuff is going to be such a game changer. And after that, reformation to the entire regulatory system on how medicines and other products are tested and proven.

"But patents, Ram! Copyrights! Trademarks!"

Patents do not allow someone to legally own the concept of 2+2=4, or the concept of zero, or the chemical process of turning sugar into alcohol. It can only meticulously own processes on how. Alter any step of the process even slightly and you've created a new process that can be patented for the same outcome. You cannot copyright the idea of baking dough, and not just because it has been around so long it's a public domain recipe. You can own one very specific way to formulate the chemical for pain killers. You cannot prevent other people from also patenting pain killers from the same ingredients.

You know what is a bigger obstruction to new pain killers, more drug companies to compete with the megacops? Not having the resources or education and skilled people to operate in these competing companies, taking a loss the same as any company does when they can't monopolize control of a service. What causes that is the equipment being so expensive. What causes THAT is less efficient or traveled exploration into making less expensive machines and equipment for smaller scale production, because the industry is built around a few big megacorps since that is all that can feasibly produce at scale or at cost.

So if machines are made that can be run by fewer, more distributed professionals and competing companies, suddenly the necessity of these massive, government subsidized megacorps dries up. And so does their nobles oblige of regulators and the rest of civilization and the legal system putting up with their carte blanche bullshit. That means non-corporatized accountability, rather than treating corporations like a statesman's precious heir and baby boy, but any common company that can be torn apart and replaced for fucking up.

This is where I think pharmacology is headed. And for that matter, both industry regulation for medical grade equipment, as well as this disgusting, incestous relationship between the federal government and healthcare, giving healthcare a blank check to overvalue itself, then crying about profiteering by "capitalists" as an excuse to give itself further centralization and monopoly directly over medicine and healthcare. Which increases price, which individuals can't pay, which necessitates demanding that the bill be distributed across all of society.

It is in fact in the interests of the capitalists to lower the price of healthcare from the absolute ridiculous heights it exists in today. It serves only the interests of fabian centralization and the desire for healthcare to be the monopoly of the federal government. It is unsustainable and being deliberately wielded not just to bankrupt people, but blame private enterprise for it and argue the cause is private profit and the solution is somehow more of the hair of the dog that bit you.

The law is not the opponent of private enterprise and capitalism. The use of the law and the state to apprehend this relationship in the interests of the state, to the effectively just gig the business and make them a defacto state entity, is. And it is this relationship, allegedly caused by the necessity of the desired outcomes of production of quality and scale, that is the supposed necessity for this.

Well these strings need cutting and the justifications need unfucking. To live in a world where the creation of a medicine, no matter how life saving, is a matter of dollars to tens of dollars, simply because the production is tried, known, and well trod, and not dependent on singular owned processes legally obliged to be obeyed because no one else is allowed to operate in that system, so sayeth the kingmakers of government regulations, regulators and legislation designed to keep it privileged enterprise.

Not where insurance or artificial programs designed to suck up absurd amounts of private wealth in order to afford pie-in-the-sky programs designed to produce results with as many hands in a bucket brigade, all writing their own checks and the only game in town by law, as possible. The idea that centralizing these systems is a solution is like marrying a robber to keep them from stealing from you; you're only going to give them legal unfettered access to your bank account, and the pain will not stop. They'll just have more control over you, and what you do.

If the best scenario pans out, healthcare costs are going to start to plummet with reform that makes it so financially expedient that centralizing it would actually be detrimental to service and care. It's in the interest of industry to break away from a system that ultimately wants to get rid of the actual business side and just move on to being a fourth ring of government, where abuse, monopoly and laziness will mean stagnation and ownership for the sake of ownership.

But all of this hinges on making those pharmacological, technological, scientific and biological discoveries. Largess must be defeated with decentralization- save, obviously, a sturdy and good faith regulatory system in charge of monitoring business violations and quality controls. Of course.

I hope to see the day when everything from lice shampoo to antibiotics and anti-cancer theraputics can be bought from a drug store for about five dollars, requiring no insurance or government subsidization program.

[libertarian-druid-ny-separatist]

Eh, calling bullshit on your ideology. I get if you think that Bushnell's supporters are huffing "copium" but, sadly, well, your ideology has done more to obliterate the environment than any other. And no, no amount of Bwut the USSR!!! copium isn't going to really cover for that. They industrialized with less waste than the West. Sorry, man, druids and dollars are incompatible. I get if you need to make up shit about 'corporatism' and other no true scotsman stuff in order to stay sane, but, well... lol.

My dude, do you think the government just invented solar and wind power on their own? Yeah, completely unregulated markets have done damage in the past, the free market has advanced green tech immensely farther than governments could, otherwise we'd be seeing green innovation out of China, who still uses mostly coal power.

Glad you at least recognize that Bushnell threw his life away. If you'd like to talk more, my anons are open as are my dms since clearly you don't want to say this publicly.

S'all good, no judgement. But at the end of the day, no socialist nation can exist without at least having capitalist elements. The more that exist in it, the more you see a chance at success, whereas under a pure socialist economy, everyone struggles equally except those at the top who don't struggle.

[wheretheeternalare]

with the heavy caveat that it is slightly soulless (though really most corporate jobs are) - amazon corporate pretty much has what you’re describing. i’ve been with them about 3 years and right now i’m working hybrid out of one of the corp offices, M-F 8 hr shifts, 2 days in office and 3 days at home, with the ability to come in more as wanted or needed. Depending on the team or role you still have to talk to people but because it’s all regional it’s over slack/email, never really face to face or over phone, and with a lot of free time for personal projects (or slacking off). on slower days i’ll usually bring my knitting to work and stick on an audiobook which is pretty common. def not perfect but it fits the bill for what i need (e.g. ‘leave me alone with my spreadsheets and music and i’ll get back to you when my project’s done’)

oh interesting! that definitely does sound like the kind of structure I want, although I have to say that I have also found that I need to at least somewhat agree with the mission of my workplace to really get along. not saying this to shame you because yeah all corporate jobs are pretty much equally soulless, just that I definitely had a better time working at a library and a museum than I’m having working for a university, which is ostensibly something I agree with principles-wise but is actually hugely corporatized/tied up in bureaucratic bullshit. but I will keep this in mind bc I also like to get paid a living wage and libraries and museums aren’t known for that lmao

[vvatchword]

I don't want to minimize what happened to the previous commenter here. I was also made aware of "earring-on-the-wrong-side" by elementary school (mid-90s).

However, I also feel like these are both good perspectives for this concept alone: the Internet made all information pass faster, and the Internet broke down barriers for the transference of that information. I cannot stress this concept enough. We want to judge past cultures for behaving in very specific ways, but for information to shape a culture en masse, that meant it had to have a large reach. Pre-Internet, what you knew could be limited by geological location alone.

There was a point we were all always offline. Our perspectives were shaped by our immediate surroundings. Family, friends, and religious spaces taught us cultural expectations and shared information from the outside world. So for information about "wrong-side earrings" to pass to a young person like me in the middle of homophobic Texas, it had to be passed by word of mouth. And for information to pass by word of mouth, it had to be perceived as important and proper enough to share between parties. I wasn't going to hear about sexual peccadilloes from adults--they didn't want me to know those things, so I just went blissfully unaware of them. Kids liked to whisper those things on the bus, but that didn't mean I could ask an adult and get a straight answer. That meant I was getting borked information from borked sources and I often didn't even know why it was salacious to begin with--just that it was. And the weird-ass conclusions you could come to, holy shit.

Information could also be passed by media, but media had "watchers at the gates." It had standards and expectations for proper behavior. Information was far more censored, limited, and suspect than it is today--yeah, I said "suspect." Because what were the media's standards? In the same way that sometimes you got your info from your friend's Uncle Tony, who got it from who-knew-whom, who might also have an axe to grind, who might also be dumber than a box of hammers--well, the media was full of people who were just as limited as you were, and they would only express what was deemed acceptable between strangers (read: watered down, edges sanded off, certain elements carefully alluded to and never spoken outright). And Uncle Tony might be the only source you got for that piece of information ever. And as half of the way you develop opinions and belief systems is by testing them against the world at large, and your circumstances might never demand you use that information...

In other words: information was passed much slower, and when you got a perspective on rare information, it was often the only perspective you'd ever receive, and you could only receive singular viewpoints that rarely had to be tested and thus never flourished.

oh, man, I can't stress enough how weird and solipsistic the world was for me. Maybe half of it was that I was a child, and at least a third of it was autism, but damn. What a time to be alive.

Pre-Internet, there was far more of a sensation of out-groups and in-groups. Half of the reason the Internet was exciting was because suddenly I could talk to people in groups I'd never even known existed before, and with the veil of anonymity, I could learn all kinds of bullshit that I had never been intended to touch. I could see a subject in its full spectrum of colors and light.

The Internet may have been corporatized all to hell and back, but at least you can still find pockets of real humanity and weird fuckery. At least you can learn about all kinds of viewpoints and it doesn't really take you that long to dig. You don't have to dig through a card catalog only to discover yet more information that's only alluded to and not discussed outright. You don't have to fuck up by asking the wrong authority figures and get bad reputations in-town or whatever the fuck I was doing (I was doing very badly). Anyway, just my two cents.

Listen.

The average American in the early 90s did not have the context to see Earring Magic Ken as gay.

And there was no internet to spread the idea.

Sure, gay people and gay adjacent people saw it, but most people--and especially kids--just saw it as Cool Guy Like On MTV, with a necklace that could hold charms like Earring Magic Barbie (and Midge) earrings

and yeah, those Cool Guys On MTV may very well have been gay, but, again, the average American did not have the context to see that.

(I was in college at the time and did not have the context to see it, and I saw nothing indicating any outrage over the doll, and I was very actively a Doll Person then, too)

When people don't know what they don't see, they don't get outraged, y'know?

[rametarin]

please stop doing this

Some Dude: “American Liberals and conservatives are the exact same thing.”

Also Some Dude: “I am so tired of people conflating socialists with communists! They’re not even remotely similar!”

wish even half of you that felt like they were the exact same would stop platforming the democrats/democrat party, and grow some gonads to actually A.) have some integrity and join the actual pro-socialism parties B.) actually join the American communist parties C.) go green, where the other people that are actually crypto-socialists/communists can continue pretending to be ecologists in the interest of ecology and not advancing policy, are living.

But I understand. Being what you are is, “bad optics right now,” probably due to, “CIA propaganda,” or whatever bullshit that takes the onus of responsibility from being associated with a violent, conspiratorial and totalitarian culture of usurpers away from defeating your own arguments.

Since a great deal of you unironically use the fact the US has HAD slavery and concentration camps historically as a reason why things can’t be fixed or modified to be better, they HAVE to be destroyed and replaced in order to not have the stigma or guilt of a thing anymore, it’d make sense you don’t want to speak up and declare what you really are and vote in the appropriate parties. You whom fly the god damned red and black and yellows would have to willingly associate with every bit of imperialism-in-all-but-name that was the Soviet Union, and any Socialist Republic that bore those colors, used those symbols and spoke those memes and slokans. So, given actual history, the famines, the pogroms of the supposed “anti-classist, anti-discrimination, anti-barbarism” parties and movements that turned into piles of pestilence, famine and pyramids of dead skulls don’t want your symbols associated with that.

And yet many of you that’d openly wave a hammer and sickle flag, think a statue of Lincoln erected and financed by freed slaves is too spicy to have without declaring, “LINCOLN WAS A WHITE SUPREMACIST” everywhere. That the United States can never clean the blemishes of its history and that that’s an argument as to why it needs to be snuffed out as a concept and paved over with a Year Zero and something else in its place.

Instead, you spineless fucking interlopers continue to commandeer the democrats. There’s been some headway by the russo-supremacists to commandeer the republicans by tricking some of them into thinking Putin is the cure to the worst of your shit, but by and large the republicans remain more entrenched in religious moralism or plutocratic corporatism and “small government statism,” which one way or another prevents the worst of your intrusions. Yes, the republicans and them doing that present their own sets of problems. They’re different problems from the ones you represent.

You know it suits you better to pretend to be liberals when it suits you, using the term and stretching it, hoping to make it synonymous with you- and you’ve managed to succeed, for the most part. Except; you that aren’t liberal, but pretend to be liberal for ideological convenience sake; the mask has been slipping, of late. You’ve seen that this vessel has taken you as far as it can go.

And I’ve been enjoying seeing this. The holes opening up, exposing the parasite or predatory mimic pretending to be the real deal. You are not liberal. You are anti-private property and pro government (”society,” that you dub a government declaring itself to be the voice of society) control over natural resources and employment opportunities.

I look forwards to seeing some of you actually arguing openly and honestly from the actual parties and stop trying to railroad another party towards your values and goals by pretending to be liberals. And you’d best do it quickly, because between liberal ownership of self, free market capitalism and the advancement of science and technology from both private and public outlets hurriedly bringing us towards an era of affordable miracles and quality of life improvements that just 30-40 years ago WOULD have required megawealth to even imagine, there’s not going to be much of a difference between the opportunities for a wealthy person and a middle classed one, much longer.

Then you’ll be back to trying to rally ‘comrades’ with bluster and insistence that everybody stop imagining the situation just between what’s fair for individuals and instead demanding we imagine some game rules where the rich are a nefarious and inherently evil force unto themselves while ‘the poor’ (those that aren’t rich) are inherently victims of their exploitation and oppression. Assigning malice to things not on the basis of the actual malice of actual assholes doing actual asshole things, but characterizing people as assholes because they have things, and someone whom has poor is automatically a victim because he’s not rich.

When stripped of your cover, and no longer given the benefit of the doubt, and denied the ability to play off peoples unfamilarity of your snake oil, you’ll eventually have to argue for what you really believe. And what you really believe is shit. Even the parts that sound good, are mere cover used to declare would be the positive outcome of your shit systems.

That’s why people will conflate the two systems and not care about the difference. One system will see the crimes of another, and alchemically transmute itself to claim it’s not affiliated with the other, that that behavior is characteristic only of the other guy, and they must be mistaken for presuming you the same. While you in fact engage in the same crimes.

Meanwhile, you cannot argue a secular liberal constitutionalist republic that can and has historically been a limit to social hegemony of religious authority, a federated and regulated secular system has been essential in filing down the much of the worst kinds of trade abuses by cartels and organizations, isn’t worlds different from a fucking religiously fascist ethnostate. American liberalism bears little resemblance to American conservatism outside the fact both to varying degrees and populations have and respect the right to private property, and use capitalism. When those are the only things you care about, your ideology may as well be the only religion you see as valid, and everything that is not your faith may as well be paganism when it’s not the antithetical Satanism to your beliefs.

[pakeithpsy]

How about you use that ad money to fix your barely functional mobile site? Or maybe not cover up the content I'm trying to look at with shitty messages begging me to re-enable ads that cover up the content I'm trying to look at?

I can't take this fucking bullshit anymore, every single website is impossible to use now because these incompetent greedy asshats care more about money than having a functional, user-friendly layout. This shit is exactly why people use adblockers and instead of actually putting in the effort to make your site better so people would actually be willing to monetarily support your site, you make everyone's life a living hell because your billionaire CEO can't stand the thought of being ten cents poorer from ads that are obnoxious at best and outright harmful at worst. Capitalism and corporatism were goddamn mistakes.

[leviathan-supersystem]

just gonna copy-paste my previous response to this talking point to save myself some time- but you're gonna get a special little post-script, just for you, for being such a Special Little Guy

hey, fun fact! did you know that the bullshit definition of capitalism you’re using was invented about a century after the term was invented, and that the correct definition of the term that i’m using was both how the term was invented and how it has been used by most people the entire time it has existed? we can even pinpoint the exact moment when the bullshit definition you’re using started emerging! here’s the essay where Murray Rothbard coined the bullshit definition, and it’s Very Interesting for a few reasons [x]:

In order to discuss the “future of capitalism,” we must first decide what the meaning of the term “capitalism” really is. Unfortunately, the term “capitalism” was coined by its greatest and most famous enemy, Karl Marx. We really can’t rely upon him for correct and subtle usage. And, in fact, what Marx and later writers have done is to lump together two extremely different and even contradictory concepts and actions under the same portmanteau term. These two contradictory concepts are what I would call “free-market capitalism” on the one hand, and “state capitalism” on the other.

a few interesting points here! first off, way back then ancap charlatans hadn’t started misappropriating the word “corporatism” yet, and were instead trying to distinguish between “free market cspitalism” and “state capitalism”- the concept of calling the latter “corporatism” instead in an attempt to fully exonerate capitalism hadn’t yet entered the conversation. second, he acknowledges, right at the beginning of the essay, that the term capitalism was, in fact, invented by anti-capitalists! (not Marx, to be clear, it was Louis Blanc, another socialist theorist from around the same time, though Marx did expand on the concept greatly- Rothbard got this wrong because he is stupid)

obviously, Rothbard deciding a century after the fact that the word “capitalism” doesn’t mean what it was invented to mean is utter nonsense on his part, an obvious attempt to obfuscate and distract from Marx’s critique of capitalism critique of capitalism by re-defining words on a whim. moreover, his attempt to delineate between “free market capitalism” and “state capitalism” (or as his ideological descendants would put it capitalism vs corporatism) ignores that large-scale land ownership, which is key to many of the relations that Marx analyzed and critiqued, (relation between landlord and tenant, relation between farm owner and farm worker, relation between factory owner and factory worker, etc) depend on state violence to enforce that claim on land in the first place. in other words, the two cannot be so easily separated.

i’m sure, of course, you will freely acknowledge that you were in error, and will edit your post to reflect this.

/alright, that's the end of the pre-written segment, now on to the epilogue:

but the working class are capitalists, black Rock is not.

lmaoooooooooooo hooooly shit

alright, so the term "capitalist" as meaning someone who makes their money primarily off of their ownership of capital rather than their labor (larger business owners, landlords, etc) actually pre-dates the use of the term "capitalism", it's earliest use being in the mid 1600's in the Hollantse Mercurius. this is both how the term was coined, and the definition that is still commonly used today:

that said, let's be charitable here- sure, you're absolutely wrong about black rock not being capitalists, but the term "capitalist" as a noun is sometimes also used to refer people who advocate for capitalism, and not just for the owners of capital. so perhaps advocacy for capitalism is especially widespread among working class people?

no, wrong again. as you can see here, the working class overwhelmingly is more likely to oppose capitalism- and support socialism- than the wealthy. so unfortunately it would seem your argument is completely wrong even by the most charitable possible interpretation.

(please accuse me of using source with a pro-socialist bias for that last chart, it would be really funny if you did.)

i know the entire point of the media is to turn working class people against each other and protect ruling class capitalists, but this is a little on the nose

[rotationalsymmetry]

I’m trying to come up with fake pride discourse and all I’m coming up with is real bullshit (ie bullshit discourse that people actually argue) and real things worth worrying about. Like how language tends to center western concepts of sexual orientation and gender, and how pride isn’t necessarily accessible to people who have issues with mobility and/or crowds and loud noises, and the perennial corporatization and cops thing.

Ok lemme try one more time: clothes should be banned at Pride because historically clothing is used to signify cultural and class distinctions, so a truly egalitarian society requires abolishing clothes.

How’s that?