#anticapitalism rant

[smolspideyboi]

Writing when I was a teen was so much easier now. Back then I had the ability to focus on the things I love, but now as an adult I spend most of my time and energy working at a job to make minimum wage and still have trouble surviving, terrified each month if I can afford my rent, food, my phone bill. Terrified that it's never enough, and if I work more hours I will quite literally work myself to death.

My youth has been forcefully stolen by capitalism, and I know not if it can be returned in time.

[itsyaboibananaboi]

A question I hear a lot is "why are so many losers defending billionaires online?" and I realized why.

It's not because they think that they will be given money or get noticed, it's because they want to maintain the narrative of capitalism as a pure meritocracy. Capitalist theory tells us that hard work and risk is what will make you rich, and an incongruence between what rich people should be and what they are breaks this. To admit that someone like Elon Musk is an idiot who only got rich off generational wealth is to admit that capitalism is inherently flawed. That's why rich people are placed on this pedestal of perfection where they can do no wrong.

They aren't defending the individuals; they are defending the ideal of capitalism they have been taught all their lives.

[360degreesasthecrowflies]

Well...

Just as this year was going so well for me already with me losing my job after putting nearly 3 years into it...

I've now also been told I'm getting no-fault evicted from my house too.

Really great, really fucking wonderful news that. What did I do any of it for?

I gave 3 years of my life to developing my career and working for an employer, the NHS, the national health service of all things, after A PANDEMIC, only to be cut loose the second they needed to make CUTS.

And now the home that I spent 3 years making mine, I'm going to lose as well.

And because rent prices have shot up I'm probably not going to be able to afford to move into a similar one.

So here I am, an adult, 3 years deeper into my career, experience, and earning power, about to be functionally homeless and at the very best to be pushed into shared accommodation the likes of what I lived in as a student, probably having to get rid of or sell the furniture I bought and the possessions I've amassed as markers of my adulthood and my identity.

Why did I even bother? That's how I feel.

If you wanted to knock me down, society, you've fucking done it. Hope you feel good about yourself. What was any of it fucking for?

[solar-sunnyside-up]

this really cool article - https://www.bu.edu/bhr/2015/02/01/780/ talks about the history, particular England, and its grocery delivery system over the decades. How originally, you would send a list to a shop keeper for goods like Flour, sugar, milk, etc.. And have it delivered. Than the Cash and carry system, during the depression kicked off in order to save on delivery costs.  Basically putting all the work of Picking, sorting, loading, and transporting onto the individual rather than the business. But god, in a current system where you have something akin to a post officer do this?? It would really help decentralize cars as primary mode of transport if you didn't have to do all the work yourself. It's draining, its manual labor in its own right. Its not accessable. Its not efficient. It creates a competition on food that isnt necessary mostly for Perfect Produce. Lately we are starting to return to this threw delivery systems like Instacart (Gag) who exploit workers and customers for profit. But again, imagine for just a moment what this COULD look like. A neighborhood wide grocery drop off day like garbage pick up or the mail. Imagine having a day you knew was every week that you'd fill out a list and someone shows up with that sugar you where low on bc you wanted to make cookies. Imagine having the SAME rotation of ppl so you could know them. Imagine how different meal planning becomes, how communical it could be. How your neighbors might have over estimated how much tomatoes they go threw and ordered more so they brought you salsa.

[double-thinkaboutit]

I think it's kind of fucked up that as kids we don't get a warning about all that 'being kind to others' and 'sharing is caring' stuff they tell you.

Because like, that's literally the reason I struggle as much as I do. Because when I was a kid I was raised to help people in need and share when you can.

THAT IS LITERALLY ANTITHETICAL TO CAPITALISM.

Not that I would want to be a capitalist, but as an autistic person looking back I was literally taught all the ways that you fail within our current system because there are very few safety nets for poor people and basic human empathy demands that I still help people when I can. In my experience being kind to people keeps and makes you poor and becomes riskier the more empathy and less means you have.

Just saying you'd never catch a billionaire donating their last $10 to someone who needs it to pay for a spot at a shelter tonight. Even though they have beyond the means to do so without putting themselves in a precarious position.

I feel like you need to be honest with kids it's so evil to sell them this idea that you can be as successful as the richest people in the world without ignoring pleas for help and actively engaging in blatant cruelty.

It just sucks, I don't want a world where being honest with children about the world requires turning them into unempathetic monsters.

[wanderingmind867]

My mom never liked it when Canadian actors went to Hollywood and became (for all intents and purposes) American citizens. Just based on that alone, I think it's nice to see Hollywood getting uncomfortable. Maybe it'll encourage people to realize that there's more to films than just Hollywood. You shouldn't have to go to Hollywood or the US to become famous. It's something that should change.

[thesixthstar]

ok but once again. the small niche userbase needs to be loyal in a way that is profitable or else RadioShackTM goes away anyways in a few years when investors finally get bored of playing hot potato with the money pit. I agree they shouldn't pivot away from their roots and we should be very loud when we don't like the direction of shilling out and copying the Big Stores, but dear god we must understand that they cannot continue to give out capacitors for free

Does anyone remember what happened to Radio Shack?

They started out selling niche electronics supplies. Capacitors and transformers and shit. This was never the most popular thing, but they had an audience, one that they had a real lock on. No one else was doing that, so all the electronics geeks had to go to them, back in the days before online ordering. They branched out into other electronics too, but kept doing the electronic components.

Eventually they realize that they are making more money selling cell phones and remote control cars than they were with those electronic components. After all, everyone needs a cellphone and some electronic toys, but how many people need a multimeter and some resistors?

So they pivoted, and started only selling that stuff. All cellphones, all remote control cars, stop wasting store space on this niche shit.

And then Walmart and Target and Circuit City and Best Buy ate their lunch. Those companies were already running big stores that sold cellphones and remote control cars, and they had more leverage to get lower prices and selling more stuff meant they had more reasons to go in there, and they couldn't compete. Without the niche electronics stuff that had been their core brand, there was no reason to go to their stores. Everything they sold, you could get elsewhere, and almost always for cheaper, and probably you could buy 5 other things you needed while you were there, stuff Radio Shack didn't sell.

And Radio Shack is gone now. They had a small but loyal customer base that they were never going to lose, but they decided to switch to a bigger but more fickle customer base, one that would go somewhere else for convenience or a bargain. Rather than stick with what they were great at (and only they could do), they switched to something they were only okay at... putting them in a bigger pond with a lot of bigger fish who promptly out-competed them.

If Radio Shack had stayed with their core audience, who knows what would have happened? Maybe they wouldn't have made a billion dollars, but maybe they would still be around, still serving that community, still getting by. They may have had a small audience, but they had basically no competition for that audience. But yeah, we only know for sure what would happen if they decided to attempt to go more mainstream: They fail and die. We know for sure because that's what they did.

I don't know why I keep thinking about the story of what happened to Radio Shack. It just keeps feeling relevant for some reason.

[cheemy-creese-sauce]

unhinged vent post

idk if these are bad person thoughts or not so pls be nice to me if u see a bad person thought and politely let me know that it has bad person connotations without telling me i'm a villain pls thank you

anyways i know we all hate capitalism and voting w your dollar is the most important vote and you should never spend money on things that u like because somebody evil is using your money to be evil so u should only ever enjoy the things u like if they are free or can be stolen.

it's morally reprehensible to spend money on anything that wasn't a totally independent project and you still have to do a background check on all the indie creators u wanna buy from bc what if they're a bad person. i wanna make stuff and inspire others but if i make something through the help of a big business then everyone will steal my thing because the Big Business will make money, but if i make something independently (which is so taxing and soul crushing and draining) then i might see a cent of the thing i made but i had to do All the Work of Making, Advertising, Selling/Shipping, Presenting and i'm probably not getting fairly compensated for all the extra work bc no one will buy independently produced things if they cost the appropriate amount of money for an independently produced thing.

i have to be constantly aware of the Capitalism Rules and also the Anti-Capitalism Rules and they're both really fucking tiring and annoying and I just wanna be able to live.

why do we have to spend every single day grappling with the moral consequences of being alive. my being alive requires that i participate in harmful systems that perpetuate hate and poverty and death and oppression but it's a requirement that i patronize the walmart bc there are no small markets near me with the specific shit i need. it's a requirement that i buy fast fashion bc all the thrift stores near me increased their prices due to the latest "thrifty trends" so i can't afford anything else. it's a requirement that i have a stupid cell phone that actual literal children Died to make because if i don't have one of these, i can't have a job or regular contact with my loved ones.

anyways i'm sad that i have to engage in systems and behaviors that i know are bad. it makes me want to throw myself off the roof of the empire state building.

[systemserendipity]

New video, y'all! Chatting about the woes of capitalism and more, so come hang out with us! Comment or something if you relate to anything we discuss. :] No pressure obviously.

[disgustingposer]

your grades also arent a conscious being that determines your worth as a human being, rember that defining yourself by ur productivity just makes life suck more

study motiv my ass bite me

(read bob black)

Reminder that your grades don't care that you're tired. Your grades don't care that you would rather be slacking off. Your grades don't care that you're feeling lazy.

[itsyaboibananaboi]

Remember: Never let anybody talk shit about the working class or the poor

Be mindful of anti-proletariat rhetoric.

Don't tolerate bullshit ideas like "unskilled labor", all labor is skilled, and capitalists want you to believe in it so they can justify paying hard working people practically nothing. If someone is giving their time and energy to someone else, they deserve respect no matter what.

Don't tolerate parents teaching their children to look down upon common laborers as "trashy work".

Don't tolerate this idea that poor people are lazy, most are poor for a variety of reasons: poor mental health, no generational wealth, bad investments, drug addiction, disability, unwanted children; but none of them are just laziness. If you know any poor people, you know they bust their ass every day to get a fraction of what their bosses have.

Don't tolerate people who say you should vote for a party that doesn't give a shit about the real workers.

Don't tolerate divisive ideas meant to distract the common man from getting back the surplus value stolen from him.

Don't tolerate propagandic opinion pieces from rich folk who want to keep you ignorant.

Love the working class, and eat the rich!

[solar-sunnyside-up]

There is no phrase that grinds my gears more than "Survival of the fittest" coming out of a middle class abled person mouth.

You realize we have proof everywhere that the 'weakest' wherent abandoned right? We mark a level of coniousness to healing breaks that would end someones life or caring for one another or repsecting their dead.

We have taken care of ppl who should have died if not for consitant care that are buried like warriors and leaders. We have ppl who where well known to their tribes or towns who are disabled from early childhood who lived full lives. Not until there is a class system starts to determine the defination of "Person" does this mentality start. Pisses me off. We've had maybe a few thousand years with this mentality behind it. Thats it a drop in the bucket of humans being around. Humans have existed making art, songs, and inventions for at least double the amount of time we've settled in places.

// But sure Human nature is greedy we super arent programed for scarcity on a biological level bc if takes thousands of year to rework something like a nervious sytem or metabloisms. We super evolved with machines and mass agircutlure in mind // sarcastic

[bandomfandombeyond]

😭😭😭 hypercapitalism really out here turning fandom into the kind of place where people take COMMISSIONS to make covers for fanfic????

*old man voice* back in my day (aka the Wattpad era of 2010-12) you just had to hope your fic caught the attention of someone who liked making manips and then hope they liked it enough to message you about it 💔

[victorlincolnpine]

I've been thinking about the absurdity of the sentence "we need money".

In reality for something like a large project, you don't need money for it. You need time, resources and an assurance that your life won't fall apart because you spent time on the project rather than the hellscape that is capitalism.

But, because of capitalism, you have to get those things with money. You must have this ephemeral concept embodied in some form or another (often literally intangible) to trade for those resources, time and upkeep of your standard of living.

Yet we don't say that, even to ourselves.

Instead we say "I need money". As if the money itself was the resource. As if money was in a very literal way the things you need.

The food you need instead being the money you "need" to buy food. Likewise with resources and time. They get conceptually replaced by a "need" for money. Despite the fact that you only need money for it because otherwise the system will starve you for what you need on purpose.

The system will kill you if you do not have money. And that's not an exaggeration. But rather than looking at this disturbing ultimatum held over us like a sword of Damocles, we act as though it is a universal fact of life like the need for oxygen to breathe.

Imagine getting threatened with stabbing by somebody and then thinking "I need to just not get stabbed" rather than "holy fuck, this fucker is gonna stab me!" Pretending the knife is a fact of life you cannot fully avoid and can only ever stave off.

Sounds fucking silly don't it?

That's what we all look like when we go "I need money" instead of "I am being threatened with starvation if I don't participate in an abusive system to earn tokens of that system that will allow me to eat".

But then we get the other half of this coin of abuse. The fact that money is also used to coax us to abuse our neighbors through the same system. We're told to value such unrepentant inhuman moral precepts as "if you do not eat, you starve", such that we become the callous enforcers of someone else's death if they meet the disturbingly "acceptable" terms for that death.

Consider for a moment that you yourself have been put into that situation. You're now poor, you have no chance of getting money, your clothes are dirty and you smell. Your standard of living has been brought low enough that your death is considered "acceptable" at that point.

Do you think that would be fair to you? Would you willingly let yourself die of starvation, one of the most painful and horrifying ways possible, simply because your society deems you worthless?

Save for a few sad edge cases, I know for a fact that you fucking wouldn't.

So why the fuck would you allow someone else to die like that? And more presciently, why would you put up with a social structure that marks people for death like that?

[coringetorix]

Like, don't we all just want to be understood?

I want to be able to distill my personality into something legible, something sharable, and find connections through my own forms of communication.

It's art. It's pictures, words, games, video, music.

We have the previously incomprehensible means of sharing art with basically anyone around the world; and yet in the internet's lifetime it feels like it's never been harder to be understood. To communicate in a uniquely human fashion.

I get that this is kinda hippy bullshit.

But fuck me, is this really the internet we envisioned in the 90s? Increasingly rabid and polarized commoners with the privilege to post on some billionaire's blackboard?

No. Very few things feel good on the internet any more.

But one thing that does feel good is being myself.

One way or another, I will continue to do that.

For a while I've been ruminating about "social media" sites and their place in my life.

I grew up on the internet for pretty much as long as I can remember, and I'm 25 now. I just about remember dial-up, neopets, the abundance of forums - the "old" internet. Web 1.0. Times New Roman on a plain colour background.

I moved with the times, went on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc, even 4chan. Until relatively recently, never Tumblr.

As the years have gone by, I've found myself drawn to Tumblr for a few reasons, but one of the key features of this site is how much it's based around people's personalities.

Reddit is super useful for a shit ton of information, but I don't want followers on it.

Twitter was good for news, and now it's good for watching a multi-billion dollar corporation kill itself in real time.

Tumblr, though? I'm here for what people have to say. How they go through their lives, and the thought processes that drive them.

And so while I've been thinking about "social media", I've come back to the main question: What do I want out of a social media site?

The answer? I want to talk. I want to get my thoughts into the digital ether and not give a shit whether it's popular or not. I don't wanna talk in specific communities, I don't wanna limit myself to 280 characters, I don't want to do it completely anonymously, but I don't want to reveal myself either (pseudonymity is fine).

Tumblr is the only good "social media" site left.

But since it's not profitable, I don't expect it to last.

[boiboiperson]

I have not posted in a while so here's a rant.

I think most people hate gorillaz tiktok. There's a sort of disconnect between the messages in the music vs the art/story stuff, like the songs in the newest album are all about anti consumerism, anticapitalism, political stuff, I'm a cartoon not a person etc. etc. Meanwhile, gorillaz tiktok exists.

What if instead of it being whatever the hell it is, it sort of makes a mockery of tiktok. Like whenever Noodle rates something she rates the most bizarre shit idk guys I dont use tiktok. Or if they do a trend and make fun of it. That way they have a platform while still 'rejecting false icons'.

Idk it would have been fun to see.