this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2025
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A Boring Dystopia
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Honestly sometimes I wonder if some form of Solipsism is true and the reason the world isn't bright and colorful anymore is because I'm no longer a kid.
Now do I genuinely believe I'm the only one who really exists and the world around me is a reflection of my mental state? No, but sometimes it's fun to think "What if?"
But yeah the only fast food joint in my town with any color or a play place is a single chic-fil-a, and it's always overly crowded, so clearly customers respond to this stuff.
Don't eat at Chic-Fil-A btw, the profits go to passing Anti-LGBT legislation.
Look at fashion. There were huge changes from 1960s to 1970s to 1980s. The last wild change to clothes I can remember is pump basketball shoes. Cars used to come in dozens of wild colors; now everything is a generic neutral tone. BJork's swan suit is the last really outrageous fashion statement I can recall [I know someone showed up naked recently, but dozens of folks have worn equally revealing outfits over the years] Almost all the new movies coming out are re-makes.
Look at James Bond. Amazon acquired the studio that owns Bond and pushed out the producers who'd helmed the character for decades. The creative process is in the hands of MBAs who only care about the bottom line. I can spend hours talking about how bad Henry Ford the man was, but I give him credit for truly loving cars and driving. I'll bet 99% of the car executives today don't drive themselves, so why would they care about the rest of us?
I hear you but I have to disagree on fashion. Check out what the teenagers and 20 somethings are wearing in cities. There was also a racial divide in fashion and music when I was growing up that seems to be gone. Today you can spot a white kid wearing an ODB shirt and a black kid wearing a Nirvana shirt. Most of the "rules" are gone outside of work. I'm in my 40s and one day I might dress punk and the next I might have a more hip hop look. I can wear things that would have someone questioning my sexuality a decade ago and now it's normal for a straight person. It's fun and freeing.
I tried to phrase that last bit so I didn't come off as a homophobe but I'm done messing with it.
I live in NYC. Guys here have been wearing the same belt below the ass style since 1996.
If you're in your 40s think of it this way. Remember Spice Girl mania? Even if you never picked up a CD, you'd hear them on the radio, in stores, all over the place. Whenever I hear the radio these days I hear an oldies station.
Compare fashion from 1960 with 1985, and then do the same with 2000 and 2025.
Interesting. I stayed in Brooklyn for four months a few years ago for work, and spent time in Manhattan and Queens. I saw far fewer people saggin there than in the small city in a red state I come from. I do agree the differences are smaller in the latter of the two timeframes you mention.
What did you (I) do to deserve Donald Trump? Is this a punishment for misandry?
Yes. Unironically, yes. Young men have swung right in a way that the youth usually doesn't and it is in a meaningful way because Dems and progressives offer them little, blame them for much and the right welcomes them in with open arms.
Oh, progressives offer them plenty, just not on social issues (and that's the only type of change on the table)
To put it another way, anxiety is preparing for a fight. It destroys you spending all your life looking for an enemy you can't see. But we all feel it
The right offers them an enemy, and a way to fight for something better. It's a bald faced lie, but the need for something to change is overwhelming for a lot of people
More than that, it's the need for community.
We are social creatures to the degree that we literally can die without a social identity.
The missing sense of community in the developed world is part of the many reasons so many young men are lonely and don't know how to talk to girls anymore making them seek out incels and andrew tates, but it also community is supposed to help you feel purpose, identity and belonging. Your community is who (traditionally) helped you find a job, make friends and establish your traditions and ways of thinking.
When you don't have these things around you, you will seek it out and yep, the right certainly has a open-door policy, they don't care HOW fucked you are in the head or how ignorant you are, they welcome everyone with open arms, give them a target and reward you when you lie to the enemy and cheat them. This gives a sense of accomplishment and belonging to something greater than yourself. It's addicting.
We don't have community anymore, we have unwalkable neighborhoods and delivery services and social media and a general sense of apathy and cynicism that often results in violent pushback against ANY form of genuine emotional expression between peers. Is it any wonder young, dumb, desperately lonely men are reverting to dark-age attitudes?
This has all been designed. A population at odds with each other will never unify and cripple institutions of power with combined effort.
Very, very true. And I mean honestly, the fact we no longer have third spaces and our communities have moved online have given an insane boost to the most extreme voices. Groups based on location and hobbies might lean to one side, but there's going to be moderating voices
But in a right wing echo chamber, you just have to listen to people attacking others. The left is plenty welcoming, but there's these people who are just sitting there to attack any perceived bigotry or ideology - like once I got called out for using the wrong pronouns in a new voice chat because I had the wrong name... And it was just this one drunk girl and we just moved on and someone else privately apologized for her, but that injustice just feels terrible
It's not that left spaces aren't welcoming, it's just that it takes one person to make you feel constantly on edge and sour you on anything like it
And it's not like the right doesn't do the same - they ban people left and right for perceived purity tests and label you a far left instigator, but pound for pound they need less people because they're more organized than we are
They have leaders at every level and every checkpoint from general dissatisfaction to rabid Fascism to feed you the next level of hate you need to repeat
We have liberals who hate the left more than they hate fascism and constant infighting between what few communities we do have
We really need to set a set of next step goal posts, like universal healthcare, worker protections, and forcing corporations in line
We need to be able to talk to tankies and just avoid geopolitics, we need vegans to be able to talk about reducing meat consumption instead of all or nothing, we even need to be able to talk to bigots and focus on why they actually agree with our next step goalposts once they understand them
We need to provide a ramp to leftism, even if we have to hold our noses at some of it. We can still have our safe spaces and leftist spaces, but we need to do outreach and give people stepping stones and middle grounds so people can slowly learn, where we're lazer focused on key subjects and let the rest slide
We also need places where we can organize around issues we all agree on so we can organize and make actual progress, where we don't talk about end goals, ideals, and values - just on the next step
The truth is, most everyone wants a lot of the same things, and they'd support it if they understood it - we need to be able to teach them issue by issue what we want to do, no matter what baggage they haven't yet overcome.
I'm saying this all over Lemmy, I was saying it all over reddit until they banned me with an aggression I never saw from that site's administration in over 14 years of using it regularly.
Which is that if we wish to save the human species, much less progressivism, we need better stories.
Trump won because he exploited the human need to simplify complex ideas into 2-dimensional narratives that even the most cracked-up yokels in the backwaters of the southern swamps could understand. Instead of the leftist need to educate, to inform, to give people all manner of rights to self-actualization that most people will NEVER exercise, he just plowed through all social decorum and started telling people how to feel and who's to blame and what they need to do. Simple, direct, effective.
Abhorrent sure, and may yet lead to end of us all, but if you cannot understand the effectiveness of the tactics he used you're blinded by emotion. Instead of being blinded by feelings, we need to start working together to craft new narratives for the results we actually want. It's not even that hard to do.
On an interpersonal level, we share more with each other than what separates us. I grew up in the boonies surrounded by the most racist hicks and rednecks you can imagine. I was one of them for a spell until I grew up, but a lot of people never grow up. They're all scared children who cling to their guns and bibles but when they're not trying to act boisterous and macho, they want the same things and can be shaped. The large majority of them don't actually want harm to come to LGTBQ+ people or people of color. They may be scared of these folks but if you just managed to expose enough of them to the right stories about these people, they would care a lot less. Their hate is largely manufactured because... and I don't say this lightly, they are fucking dumb.
We need to start accepting people are dumb and need fairy tales and exaggerated WWE wrestling theater productions to keep their interest. We have to stop pretending people care about principles. No, they care about how they feel right now. People don't care about values, about the constitution, they certainly don't care about what's real or not, they just care about how their leadership is making them feel at this moment. The left is TERRIBLE at managing other people's feelings, but the right doesn't care, they don't mind stepping on people's rights to think for themselves if it spreads the word. Why can't we do that? Why can't we start new stories to get the best results? Where is our up and coming generation of inspired grifters who can cold-read a room? We need them, but we need them harnessed for good.
Is it time to bust out the crime statistics?
I'm sorry, I just have so much negative life experience exclusively caused by men. My heart tells me that these are just damaged boys that are too scared to heal but my brain says 'dont get assaulted again'.
What is it you'd call someone who said exactly this but was talking about crime statistics broken down by race rather than sex, again?
Not analogous in any meaningful way. Unless you want to argue that men are underprivileged in society.
Continuing Feminism instead of switching to Egalitarianism was a mistake
Feminism has always been egalitarianism. There will always be people co-opting terms and movements for negative reasons. If men see feminism as something different that's on them to educate themselves. Women never achieved equity and now (in the US) we are backsliding as a country.
And.... that's part of the problem,
Women haven't achieved equity, this is true, and we ARE backsliding as a country.
But at the same time saying "Could people be co-opting Feminism for Misandrist and Transphobic purposes? No, it's the men who are to blame!" that pushed young men to the Right to begin with. It's time to take some responsibility, and say "Not my circus, not my monkeys"
Another reason why this can't be Solipsism, Donald Trump is too horrible to be true, if the world was I see it, he would be a plot point in a really shitty movie panned for how unrealistic it is despite playing things so seriously.
Misandry or misanthropy?
Pretty amazing to see some stuff about Solipsism and of the idea of what-you-see-is-what-you-are here.