#brain rot brain rot brain rot neoliberal brain rot

[king-ludwig-ii]

in work drama updates: the person who outed me is the same person who’s been ratting people out to our supervisor.

This one guy joked about not working out his full two weeks bc he was so excited to leave so they went to management and told them that he straight up said he wasn’t going to show up on his last day so they sent him home half a week early.

Another coworker told them she was in the final round interviews for another job and they also went to management and they ended up firing her the same day

[nando161mando]

I'll take Skibidi toilet over this brainrot.

[yellow-yarrow]

im being so nice and normal considering everything

[left-reminders]

People who will be voting for Harris as a vote against Trump, people who will be voting third party (Green, Socialist, Communist, etc), and people who will not be voting for anti-hegemony philosophical reasons need to stop strawmanning each other. The case can be made for each of these, and I am not going to begrudge principled individuals who arrive at different conclusions from me.

I mostly wanted to make this post because I get annoyed when I see people in the first camp condemn people in the latter two camps — accusing them of "valuing their abstract moral purity over domestic lives" (because most actually-principled first-campers will concede that lives abroad are destroyed either way). There's always this strawman of a white, straight, middle-class brocialist/anarchist who refuses to vote for the establishment candidate out of some privileged crusade, rather than the reality of the situation (people of all demographics having valid and nuanced opinions on the topic of not voting or voting third party). In order for the strawman to work, you need to ignore the millions of people — of diverse backgrounds and identities — who don't fit the mold of a sheltered obstinate brocialist non-voter.

By the same token, most people in my life fall into the first camp and I'm not comfortable assuming that they (and everyone else doing the same) are just shills capitulating to imperialism. People are free to vote defensively (especially in a heavily-constrained "democratic" system where voting offensively so rarely bears fruit) and I don't think that compromises their anti-capitalist principles. So long as they're not spending their energy blasting people in the latter two camps, people in the first camp ought to be respected.

Whatever the case, I hope we can all recognize the flaws in the camp that enthusiastically votes for Harris and the Democratic Party. The camp that acts like they're The Resistance™ and yet can't be bothered to conceive of a world beyond the limits of the neoliberal imagination. The camp that will sweep genocide-enabling and corporatism and climate change acceleration under the rug if it means Their Team can win the next election. The camp that thinks Trump is some aberrant force outside of the American system, rather than a natural outgrowth of its injustices and imperial histories.

Let's all at least agree that that shit is worth condemning. This bullshit, and this bullshit, in other words.

This bullshit ☝️👆 is neoliberal brain rot

[schraubd]

There But For the Grace of God

Over at the bad place, Batya Ungar-Sargon is mainlining copium to explain Donald Trump's debate performance. My take on the debate is that Harris did well because she's a factory settings Democratic apparatchik, and the main skill for doing that well is one she's good at: acting, pretending the neoliberal (or now neoconservative!) agenda of the Democratic elite is your own,… — Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) September 11, 2024 Ah yes, that explains it. Donald Trump is just too pure authentic for this world. His raw untamable independent streak just couldn't be corralled to please "the elites" ("on either side"!). Harris gets "if anything, she was too prepared" version 2.0. It's amazing how hard one has to work to avoid the Occam's Razor explanation* that Trump sounded like a madman because he is one; that Trump's inability to articulate a concept of a plan for America beyond crude xenophobic nativism is because he lacks one. Batya's descent into utter madness brain worms territory (which has been ongoing for years, including being a key player making Newsweek the house journal for the alt-right and antisemitic White supremacists and parroting the crudest Putinist propaganda about how funding of "Zelensky's War" is why Americans don't have manufacturing jobs) legitimately frightens me, because I don't know what zombie bit her and so I don't know how to ensure it doesn't bite me too. My main inference right now is "don't become opinion editor for a Jewish media outlet", because it was her experience at the Forward that seemed to drive her into the arms of madness, but I'm terrified that if exposed to the wrong trauma I too might go from being a reasonable intelligent and thoughtful commentator to a true believer in every fever swamp inanity imaginable. I'm not really exposed to Batya these days, since she's not on BlueSky. There's a line on BlueSky that it's an echo chamber, and that's something I worry about too -- isn't it important that I be exposed to more views like Batya's, to ensure that I'm not cocooning myself in an epistemic bubble? The problem, though, is that while when I expose myself to the Batya's of the world I may pat myself on the back for being a good, virtuous epistemic citizen willing to challenge myself with views-not-my-own, in reality exposing myself to the likes of Batya feels less challenging than it is confirmatory. Reading her takes only makes me feel incredibly relieved that I don't have her takes. She is anti-persuasive.  If the point of reading diverse views is to have that "huh, I never thought of it that way" moment, reading these people makes me go "huh, turns out that the caricatured mental model I have of brain-rotted right-wingers isn't a caricature at all." They're saying exactly what I expect them to say; there are no surprises. I'm unconvinced that confirming that instinct is actually healthier, even along the axis of remaining open-minded to divergent opinions. * Of course, this circle also struggles mightily to understand what an "Occam's Razor" explanation is. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/juXKUBd

[tianshiisdead]

MY TURN >:))) MANPAN...... I was curious on ur hksg thoughts. NICHU, korpan, indchu

Nichu, korpan, indchu: already answered!!! extra nichu thought: idol x oshi real

HKsg: NEOLIBERALISM SHIPPING!!!! FKLDGHF JOKES ASIDE yes I love them Im mainly just absorbing you and our hksg friend’s words but I think they’re so fascinating (derogatory) <33 I want sg Destroyed !! Also parallel themes of colonialism and modern neoliberal rot and prized ports with no control over their fates etc etc… fun ship for both degen and tragedy </3

Manpan: (Very Problematic Shipping Ahead. Many Disclaimers. Read at Your Own Risk)

Grape. Grape im literally clutching ur shoulders thank u for asking me LKJHFDGF embarrassing to main a non country OC x canon country ship BUT THATS MY LIFE I SUPPOSE… this is the only ship that ties with Nichu in my brain, my second top OTP, it haunts me. In terms of makes sense, although there’s historical context that i base it on, it is a fairly limited time period and it’s not enough for it to make a Huge amount of sense. Like… I don’t think they actually had Relations that way yk and I honestly think their views of each other had no way of meeting in the middle anyways… Also in modern day Japan has forgotten Manchuria exists so </33 and Manchuria is also too busy vibing and harassing Inner Mongolia in modern day to think about Japan much. BUT I do find it a compelling relationship!! It’s very good for jokes and I can’t even explain why I think it’s so fun. To focus in on the painful colonial era, I think the Manchuria who chases after the back of sensei who is quite unkind yet doting is very interesting. Manchuria is a figurehead after all, an ideal, but the reality is that the situation under the surface is rotting. To be honest I think Manchuria’s feelings towards Japan are stronger than vice versa, for Japan Manchuria was just a brief fad, an idealized settler colony who vanished from view when it was no longer useful, but Manchuria was restructured by Japan who promised him his empire back and made grand claims of leading him into paradise, held him up to the standard of a holy land… Like so much is going on !!! horrible unreasonable ship that only had potential for a few decades. I could talk about it for years

[bunni-bonez]

This might be the poli sci major brain rot but I fucking love misusing academic terms to sound pretentious. Like yass girl the neoliberal panopticon really is poisoning the dialectic from a Freudo-Marxist accelerationist perspective isn’t it

[libulanns]

If I may be critical of women for a moment... and as a disclaimer, I live in a highly neoliberal/liberal feminist city, and I am an older gen Z and am talking about women my age 21-27, but I am getting really tired of women who keep doubling down on horrible views and actions rather than to admit that they supported something that was wrong. It's something literally everyone, males and females do, but before moving to this area, I've never seen women do it to what feels like the same degree as men. Like women will literally start prostituting themselves than to admit that it was wrong of them to help normalize Onlyfans as a career option to middle and high school girls. They never admit it was wrong of them to help normalize hookup culture/"having a ho phase," they'll tell stories about how horrible it made them feel when they did it and imparted lasting psychological damage and issues with intimacy onto them, but they still won't call it a mistake and insist that they gained something valuable out of it and refuse to discourage others from going through the same, either out of an unwillingness to admit they were wrong, out of a fear of offending others, or both. Like can you please just admit you were wrong and the suffering that stemmed from it was actually just needless? Can we just be okay with saying, "hey, I made this decision and it was a horrible mistake, I really advise you don't do the same." to other women and especially girls? Why does everything have to come with a disclaimer of "I did this and I PERSONALLY as an INDIVIDUAL who is an OUTLIER did n ot have a good experience with this, but if that works for you/makes you happy, then go for it!" Individualism really rots the brain.

And I am not fully blaming women who do this here, because obviously these norms are prevailing in the culture right now, and because of the way we're socalized, a lot of us probably really do believe we're outliers and that this kind of thing really can and does work for others. But some are indeed capable of realizing that this isn't true, and still choose to keep it to themselves. We're all young adults here, and I'm moreso talking to the mid 20s crowd with this point, but, at some point we need to accountability for stuff, too.

I guess I'm complaining about several different but interconnecting things here. I'm just a little tired of it, it gets hard to work with women who have this mentality/take this approach to social issues. I just feel like this mentality is at the root of what will prevent us from truly gaining class consciousness. It is a brick wall I keep running into. I feel like we're so close, because even in a city like this, I still make connections with women from different backgrounds, who are still libfems, every day in the real world. We're almost there so it feels especially frustrating.

[tolstoys-nemesis]

tagged by @claraisms, thank you!

The Rules: tag (5) people you want to know better and or catch up with, then answer the following:

Four ships:

rhaenyra targaryen/alicent hightower. actual otp idc they rot my brain with the kind of intensity i haven't felt since i was twelve years old. kinda wish i could actually pronounce their shipname though every time i try and say it i just land on "renaissance"

willow rosenberg/tara maclay. they are in fact the intensity that rotted my brain when i was twelve years old

cassandra/andromache (yes that would be the trojan prophetess and her "archetype of the dutiful woman" sister-in-law). i am the only person who ships this, i only ship them because of a throwaway line from a middlegrade retelling of cassandra's shit life about her being vaguely annoyed by andromache and i have thought about them every day for the past four years. i am absolutely in the wrong for this and i have no desire to be right.

cersei lannister/margaery tyrell. i have not watched got in years, but this was a lane i was willing to die on when i was 13, and i was in rarepair HELL. in many ways i like to think of them as foreshadowing the rhaenicent truthing we're seeing now, and i like to think of all the rhaenicent content as my positive karma for my unwavering devotion to my silly silly adolescent ship

Last song: "missus piano" by rio romeo!

Currently reading: very offensive of you to assume i can read smh. uhh last book i finished was king lear.

i currently have just about 30 books i need to read for my degree, including a chapter called "criticism and attachment in the neoliberal university" by mir ali hosseini, (which is a very disheartening essay about the crisis in the practice of humanities/literary studies at a university level. the prose is engaging but it's not one of these critical essays that has artistic value in its own right (think "the death of the author", "visual pleasure and narrative cinema", "the laugh of the medusa", eve kosofsky sedgwick, &c) and frankly it does not make enough of a contribution to literary discourse to warrant reading for anyone outside of The Academy (tm))

Last movie: the princess and the frog :D

Craving: some kind of juice. orange or pineapple or something

tagging: @book--wyrm @fifteen-flowers @queenofthewaste @wakesirens @sovesmeleys (absolultely no pressure to any of you, it's all in good fun!!)

[angelic-bug]

i hate that it takes basically nothing to ruin my entire day 😭😭😭 i was listening to a podcast of 2 authors discussing a simone de beauvoir novel & the interviewer asked what they think the patriarchy is today vs what it was in de beauvoir’s day & one of the authors was like “well here in France it’s much the same, they’re trying to keep prostitution illegal, surrogacy is illegal, etc.” babe….what? prostitution isn’t even illegal in France! but she received zero pushback. but anyway it ruined my day because i sometimes forget how absolutely rotted most people’s brains are by neoliberalism. like so many people have such a shallow neoliberal understanding of things like the sex industry & the surrogacy industry & it’s just so depressing idk. i always say there’s no hope for women but i genuinely mean it we’re waaaaaaayyyy too far down the rabbit hole.

[harrowitzer]

the silence of the lambs and the ring

The Silence of the Lambs: What was something that you used to be afraid of that you aren’t afraid of anymore?

I'm still working on it, but I'm getting better at not being afraid to talk about mental health struggles. I firmly believe they should be destigmatized but it's hard. I'm less afraid to talk about it with family than I used to be.

The Ring: What’s your favorite tv show? What do you think about the effect of media on people? 

If I'm reccing a show it's probably 6 Feet Under. I've watched it at several different points in life and there's a different message in it each time. It's so true and honest about family and relationships while being quirky and weird. Very human.

But if I'm comfort watching, Red Dwarf is way up there. Along with STNG.

I think media (by which I mean art and stories) is crucial to our humanity. Stories are how we understand the world. And therefore they have incredible power to help us shape our world, for better or worse.

That being said, I think Media (by which I mean that which is sold to us) can be addictive brain rot not dissimilar to high fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated oil. There's a Marxist concept called The Circus, which is the show that capitalists and neoliberals put on while they continue to extract resources and wealth from the rest of the world. That's pretty much what I think of national politics and the MCU combined. When I'm not being a marvel fan.

So I think media literacy is important, but also a class-based analysis of power dynamics 😆

[unoisveimved-un-proffesional]

ughhhgguuuuuhhhhhhhh half-awake rant pooooossstt to calm my nervvssss...

Saw a mutual on my dash today reblogged by another mutual who are, definitely not on the same side of an argument, and I definitely find myself on one side.

All I gotta say is, if you stake your rights and safety on a system you want to dismantle, you're already fucking up. You will lose those rights and protections once it's gone, that's the dilemma facing Jewish citizens in Israel currently, Israel's existence (arguably) protects them and so it can continue to do whatever it wants, and because it's in the interests of imperial powers that Israel continue to operate, they are deincentivized to provide protections to Jewish people themselves, globally or locally, just to continue justifying Israel's existence and their investments in it.

The coming years are undoubtedly going to be a dangerous time for marginalized groups in America, but taking the democrats as a way to hold the line is just making a deal with the devil to hide from demons, at the cost of the lives of so many innocents. Even if the US ceased to send weapons to Israel, which they won't, they'll still continue to exploit and rape the lands and labor abroad and look for another small scale war to start, maybe escalate tensions with an isolated poor country they bombed out decades ago and left to rot, it's just what she does, those are her special interests.

In my opinion, the hard and dangerous way is the only genuine way, and it's been made hard and dangerous on purpose to keep people from taking it, but no other option can be made genuine. It's better to admit you can't make the right choice in this moment than commit yourself to one that'll prevent you from taking the chance for genuine change when it presents itself, this is especially the case for people who are powerless and like the feeling of being in control that being dedicated to a figure who is in control and having faith in them provides, I consider this weakness, but I don't let that gut reaction I have influence my opinion of people who pray for safety, but I will speak out against those who falsely believe moderate imperialists will protect them for the active harm such a belief will do, and how it will personally fail those who cling to the idea that, just for now, you'll hold the line and keep the fascists at bay, when in reality all you're doing is siding with one imperialist neoliberal over the other in the hopes they might leave you alone. All the democrats will do is keep the fascists at bay, because without the fascists, you won't vote for them.

The only guaranteed way to safety is through community, and the only guaranteed way to change is through organized action, and the two go hand in hand. That's not always an option for some people, but it's the only right one to me. I know, hypocritical for me, an isolated cowardly little person, to preach the good word of community and organized action, but I don't claim to always do what I think is the the right thing, but I at least know what is. I'm a weak individual, and whatever part of the brain that gives people the ability to reach out for help has been beaten inactive by the life I live, but I still gotta try what I can, at least try to approach the best option, and if trying for the best is good enough for me I think it should be good enough for anyone. There's always a better way, and just in my opinion, I don't consider personal danger a factor in what is the best way. It's tragic when the only way to leave an abusive relationship or be yourself or honestly help someone comes at the risk of if not your life, your stability, housing, health, or public perception and personal relationships, but there is still only one right way, and you will feel wrong for not doing it. Any amount of stress, danger, and sustained mental or physical damage suffered by an individual for the consequences of doing the right thing is worth it to me, and if you don't think it is, then just don't do anything please, for your own health and safety.

[athena5898]

....the brain rot is real. To reblog the orginal with this.

I have worked in politics for years, and neolibs never understand why they we are treding towards fascism. They are just as much to blame as the right.

Lets brake it down here, this person is first undermining Biden and the rest of the Democrats active part in the genocide. Second, they also claim that American lives are more important then any others. Finally, despite my lack of faith in national shit at this point (I have followed Robert Evans saying "I vote in case it does something" ) but like, the issue is here is the statment that there "isn't any other options" there have been options, but the Democrats torpedo them, because ultimately, they serve the ruling class and hate the poor. (Except like a handful). This is just facts. To my understanding there is literally a third party candidate right now that supports Palestine.

I warn anyone who sees this type of liberal (and oh boy will they come out in droves now that it's election time, since they ignore politics and the issues of the oppressed till it suits them). There is a saying I've seen around and it speaks to this type of thinking clearly "It doesn't matter if a killer uses a silk scarf to strangle you or their bare hands, you still end up dead".

We have to organize, build communities, kill the oppressor in our head, and save ourselves. Cause our salvation will not come from the empire that inspired Hitler. (That's America btw)

(Disclaimer that some people need that I don't like Republicans either and fuck trump, but when your only option is people who use your rights for randsom and love Republicans more then they like their constituents...maybe don't get mad when they get criticize and help us "push them left" like yall claimed would happen or at least have the courage to admit that yall never cared about that and just want your lives to go on smoothly as long as the rest of us get the boot. Your comfort is more important than other people's oppression but you coat yourself in mock conern and I'm fucking sick of pretending other wise as someone who'd be dead if it wasn't for my luck and privilege of having loved ones who support me. Yall coat yourself in liberation asthetics but kiss the boot when you encounter any resistance...this turned back into a rant then a disclaimer...just really can't stand these cowards especially since they also use marginalized people and then get on to them/us if they don't kiss their ass.)

[nightimefairy]

Neoliberal "choice feminism" is rotting people's brains bc whenever you say a character's design is sexualised, all the replies say "let women wear what they want"

Babygirl she's not real, a man put her in those clothes

[lackadaisical-lesbian]

Please. Please realize that a twitter thread is not a credible source. Please. Gossip magazines, social media post, and YouTube videos. Are. Not. Credible. Sources.

[tawnygrisette]

western c*mmunists know that it’s possible for both am*rica and r*ssia to be bad right. Like just because you hate one doesn’t mean the other is better. You wouldn’t catch me wanting to live under either regime looooool