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Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
The worshipping of the self-made man and entrepreneurship in popular American culture
I think I was just too young and fashionable, maybe I was one of those guys that saw themselves as a "temporarily embarrassed billionaire"... then got old enough to see through the nonsense
The United States government and the United States citizens.
Growing up I was taught about all these checks and balances. How the government is slow and that's good because it makes sure people get what they really want. Come to find out in just one presidential term, this one guy just executes executive orders left and right and just gets things done.
I thought U.S citizens would vote in their best interests but they would glady vote for a facist who's against their best wishes.
Republicans. When I was a child, slogans like “fiscally responsible”, “family values”, “smaller government “ sounded like good things. Republicans always claimed the moral high ground. But they’ve spent my entire adult life proving it as manipulative bullshit for personal greed and power, holding themselves above the law, the worst in humanity, rising to our current flirt with fascism.
Grown ups.
Liberalism
I took to kindly, although I was not entirely onboard with, the idea of American exceptionalism.
Google. It was once a good search engine. Now I find myself getting only the most irrelevant results based on my keywords and more often than not an advanced search turns up nothing of value
Corey Doctorow's podcast Understood: Who broke the internet? does an amazing job of explaining this. It's only like 5 episodes and worth everyone's time.
It went downhill when they got rid of search within results, I don't know why they did that
Me neither! Really frustrates me when companies remove good features for no apparent reason
They had a reason; money. It's always about money. The worse the results, the more time you have to spend searching for what you want, the more revenue they can generate.
You can usually trace all decisions a company makes, good or bad, back to money.
Elon. Turns out he was always a conman and liar.
Google. Do no evil
Nintendo.
Things got worse once Bowser got ahold of the American castle.
The fun dissolved with Iwata and Reggie gone.
The line to far for me was their retroactive bs patents used to attack Palworld. It's one thing to be strict on your own systems, but another to do it to others. 80s Nintendo is back and possibly worse than before.
I haven't played with a switch very much but I think the joysticks are worse than what they made for GameCube. I am under the impression that switch has what amounts to a directional pad underneath a joystick. Like that Gameboy peripheral with the lights, magnifier, and joystick that clips over the D pad. The joystick is there on the switch but output is only an analog 8 directions.
Pardon me if I'm wrong here but what I see with Nintendo is them making bad hardware. I know it's made for kids but even they deserve better. The switch version of any big AAA game that got a switch port is generally really really dumbed down and looks and runs like garbage. I can't wait to hear about Cyberpunk 2077 looking and running like garbage again. 5 years after it came out.
It wasn't Bowser, it was the finance guys that were placed at the head of the company after Satoru Iwata's death.
Humanity.
Hey, I was a fucking kid, OK. I eventually learned.
Neil Gaiman. He poisoned so much...
In 1994 Neil was at a signing at my university campus. It was a big to-do. My friend, a big fan, came for a signing and whispered a few words.
Suddenly Neil is vaulting the table trying to choke the living shit out of my friend. Friend's backpedaling, eyes wide, Gaimancs face a rictus of rage and fury, and the many people jump in and slow it down
Friendo booted, things fall down, minimal mention in the uni rag. Never learned what was said, but now I suspect it was a pretty badly-kept secret for a long time.
You friend didn't tell you about what was said?
Religion
USA.
You used to be so cool
A butterfly complaining about change is low key really funny
Haha good point
Jk Rowling. She was (I think) the only billionaire to ever debillonaire themselves without dying (i.e., she donated so much wealth to charity that she was no longer a billionaire).
But then she decided to dedicate herself to making trans people's lives miserable...
I'm curious which charities she was donating to before she turned into a massive cunt. Cause all she donates to now are hate groups.
Good question, I never actually looked into it. According to her Wikipedia page:
She established the Volant Charitable Trust in 2000, and co-founded the charity Lumos in 2005. Rowling's philanthropy centres on medical causes and supporting at-risk women and children. In 2025, Forbes estimated that Rowling's charitable giving exceeded US$200 million. She has also donated to Britain's Labour Party, and opposed Scottish independence and Brexit.
Parents (my own)
This was my first thought as soon as I read the question.
A certain elongated muskrat comes to mind. I love space so the thought of a reusable rocket to make space affordable was awesome. I also believe that electric cars are the future, and tesla did make pretty good charging standard and help to "prove" the concept. But now I just hope he somehow winds up dirt poor, and irrelevant. Just oh, my, god
