> Greentext

Hot take: corporatism and infotainment. You control money and information, you control the world.

The question "Where did we go wrong?" being asked on 4chan in /b/ is funny to me.

Don't vote Conservative

I wonder if it has anything to do with the system we've built to buy and sell products, owning, trading and hoarding capital? No, that can't be it...

Eat the rich

Somewhere around 20 years ago/b/ was one of the first aggressively "us vs them" communities I was ever exposed to, and it only got worse from there.

Where did we go wrong? We stopped killing fascists. Appeasement never works when one party has no interest in concession.

Everything is about money, not about having an actual human experience.

Human experience is still there, everywhere. You have to make the effort to get out of your burrow and do things outside with physical people.

Welcome to being poor .... I mean poor poor ... not the kind of poor where you can't afford a Lamborghini ... the kind of poor where you no longer have any luxuries like being able to go to the movies.

Where life is a constant hassle and struggle to survive. And where you constantly have to fight to stay above water. A kind of life where someone is constantly either trying to screw you, is screwing you or has screwed you. A kind of life where you no longer trust the people you see, the people you meet, or the people you live with. A kind of life where you know from the time you are born that everything and everyone will be hard.

I grew up like that and it became a normal part of life.

I learned to make a bit of money and survive and I've done good but not great ... good enough to travel the world. It gave me the insight that the majority of the world is poor ... I thought that before but after traveling, I realized just how true that really is.

The world we're complaining about now is the world that most of the world already knows.

Welcome to being poor and hopeless.

Of course, the big question with the line "I'm tired of being told to hate my fellow man" is whether they're referring to the constant fearmongering being pushed by conservative news and politicians against everyone who isn't in their in-group.

Or are they referring to non-conservatives calling out the bigotry being pushed by conservatives and doing that calling out is "pushing hatred on your fellow man" in this person's eyes?

Since a lot of 4chan is the latter while actively being a part of the former.

And then there's the idiots who try to use this reasoning to glorify a nonexistent nostalgia based version of "the good old times" when really capitalism is the problem

I've found that disconnecting helps. Leave your phone at home and go out. Chat with the guy you see every day at the grocery store. Go play chess or pétanque in the park with a friend. You don't have to do this too often, and you'll feel less like a product yourself.

Is this supposed to be a "the world has turned into shit" take, even though it's been like this for ages (way before the 4chan poster, or anyone alive for that matter, was born)?

I’ve gone through a lot of crap to learn and really believe that happiness and contentment can only come from within. The outside world has a lot to offer, but it will never give you that.

Unfortunately the outside world and circumstances CAN make it pretty damn difficult or impossible.

It’s a cliche to think of a monk or philosopher saying stuff like “if you want to be happy, be happy,” but that’s a lot of how I I’ve come to see it. And obviously it’s not that simple, we are pretty damn complicated, but that’s the spirit behind it.

It was leaving the trees that did it, really.

My family wasn't rich and I didn't have many luxuries, but I still claim to have been much happier than many children who live in this hectic world where everything is so superficial. 90% of ordinary people don't even dare to have an opinion anymore if it's not exactly what the mainstream represents.

It's been far too long since the sociopaths were put in their place. Now they have all the money in the world and can hire sycophants to be their personal armies.

We consume pseudo-food, watch pseudo movies and participate in pseudo sports, heck even pseudo politics. Why pseudo? Because everything is made as cheap as possible and to distract us from the suffering that capitalism brings us so that we won't rise up.

Examples:

• Our vegetables are genetically modified so that they grow bigger but they can't reproduce anymore and the seeds are copyrighted.
• The movies that are watching are catered to the mainstream and don't even really get a message across. Marvel movies try to tell us that rich people with power will save the world
• Football games are there to distract people "give them bread and games and they will never revolt"
• The people at power, through massive propaganda, seperate our people into left and right. These two parties will then fight eachother instead of realizing who is really opressing us

Hmm.

I think capitalism isn't the problem nor is liking and consuming a product or experience. We have great products turned into entire experiences here in the US, and I'm not terribly upset anymore about it.

The problem is the late stage unchecked capitalism running rampant. I think allowing individuals the freedom to pursue their ideas and allow others to even build livelihoods from it works great. But there's gotta be checks and balances, its what the USA was founded on.

Turn off the news, and stay away from anything online that lets you or other people comment.

Lose Twitter, Facebook, reddit (or reddit alternatives) and the world will look like a much different place.

Comments like this always make me think of this film. One of my favorites.

https://youtu.be/cCeeTfsm8bk?si=Dn8CwEEMV9Lpt27u