• vga@sopuli.xyz
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    2 months ago

    Everyone over 40: “Yup, social media has really fucked those kids’ brains up”

    • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Whereas the reality is that things are so fucked because these idiots get their news from Facebook. The Trump administration admitted to making a mistake deporting Kilmer Garcia - they’ll never find out because they’re too busy sharing OAN articles about that trans women they bullied out of fencing.

    • dustyData@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I have seen so many 50+ year olds that waste several hours a day doomscrolling Facebook say this unironically.

  • bremen15@feddit.org
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    2 months ago

    … and I can see how I contributed to things going to shit, too. And I did a lot of good things, too.

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    2 months ago

    I’m just really wondering… To the trump voters in the US, is this what you wanted? Do you really think and feel that things have improved? Do you really think the world is a better, safer, place now than it was 10 years ago?

    It’s like, we had issues for sure, but they were manageable. We had climate change at a critical level but we could still stave off the worst of it and now we’re speed running to something worse than the worst predictions that were made. At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if earth is like Venus not 200 years from now due to some runaway effect.

    I mean, we had a nice run but fuck you, you really really ruined the world for everyone including yourself. I sincerely hope you’re happy because then at least someone will before were all dead.

    Fuck you.

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Same age-ish, and I feel the same.

      The hard part is trying to figure out what part of that comes from societal collapse, and how much of that comes from just getting older and seeing more and more of how the world works… or doesn’t work.

      Despite all we see and hear, objectively the world is better than it’s ever been. We are at a shocking low level of international conflict, starvation, disease, crime, famine, even teen pregnancy has fallen to the lowest rates we’ve ever seen.

      But all of these gains have been made by people forming communities of various kinds, of linking up, sharing ideals and compiling resources. This “downturn” we’re feeling is a localized result of a lot of people turning their backs on community.

      We are incredibly communal animals, we need social identities to survive. This has been studied. When community abandons you, or when it feels like they have, people broadly stop caring about things and themselves and become selfish, bitter, cynical and hateful. We’re feeling this all around us, and inside us. And I don’t think it’s a natural phenomenon, there are active groups working to cause this, they want to undo all that progress and bypass war and pillaging and destruction and just rot out the world’s wealthiest countries from the inside out.

      I don’t know if these objective, global gains will continue for everyone. But I fully believe that the USA at least is in a nose-dive it won’t pull out of. Things are breaking as we speak, in ways we can’t repair.

    • HubertManne@piefed.social
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      2 months ago

      over 50 and felt this way for over half the millenia and before that felt it likely to be that way given how things were going.

  • ianhclark510@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 months ago

    I landed a job a job at a company that’s circling the drain, I feel like a parasite feeding off a host until it’s gone and I move to a new one

    • tacosanonymous@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      I’m a public librarian. Just dreading the day we are defunded. They’ve already attacked our national orgs.

        • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          In the US, I blame a lot of this in public education. So much American Exceptionalism hard coded into generations and if you question any of it, you get put down by the other students and teachers.

          I envied the education of developing nations because those school systems acted like they had something to prove with their students.

          • thefartographer@lemm.ee
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            2 months ago

            Please don’t blame this on public education, wholesale. I get that there are plenty of issues with public education, but there are teachers, departments, entire schools, and entire districts that put kids and their ability to realistically navigate the real world. I’ve worked with many teachers would would (and have) told politicians to fuck off than keep their teaching cert by abandoning their beliefs.

            I’m proud to have worked for years in a school where teachers were comfortable telling students that American exceptionalism is a lie and that blindly believing anything different is a quick way to fall behind.

            • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              What the hell does “realistically navigate the real world” mean anymore. I had teachers, therapists, and guidance counselors all working to make sure I had a safe and useful education. Meaning, because I was misdiagnosed, that they would never risk my unhappiness(or their metrics) by allowing me in classes there I might fail because, by their own words, “if you fail at that class, you may be unhappy”. Fuck that shit. I succeed at their goals, not mine and I’m miserable.

              I called up my old school recently to try and get them to send me a document stating that because I never fulfilled the basic state requirements, I did not actually graduate. They refused, but accidentally admired that I tested proficient in science, but was still placed in remedial classes. I doubt they think I remember those meetings in grade school, but I do. I remember being calmly explained that I would do better in this class or that class, but they never really explained what “practical” or “modified” or “academic” meant. I remember those meetings. When I talked to my school, I could tell they weren’t expecting me to remember the day we took the HSPA test and how I was pulled out of the regular students and placed in the remedial area despite being told I was declassified or how I shouldn’t have passed because I deliberately failed the writing section. It’s all fucking theater. They’ve been passing everyone for decades regardless of merit and now this country is a joke.

              • thefartographer@lemm.ee
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                2 months ago

                I’m so sorry to hear this and I’m really sad to hear how your “role models” failed you like that. It sounds like your school said that your diploma was proof that you’re ready to succeed in the world while merely trusting standardized tests to determine how successful you’d be.

                I hope you’ve since felt more proud in your daily life.

        • Final Remix@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          I have 'iterally been saying to my classes (especially as my various NIH/NSF/.gov links are breaking during class) “pretend nothing is happening outside the walls of this school, just for a few minutes”.

      • IMALlama@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Maybe this varies geographically, but our town’s libraries are directly funded by the town. We recently improved a millage for renovations. I hope they would be pretty insulated from… sillyness.

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Most libraries also have significant federal funding, and rely on resources maintained with federal funding, even if state and local funding is higher

          • tacosanonymous@lemm.ee
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            2 months ago

            Absolutely this. Our federal money actually comes through the state org which takes care of a whole bunch of stuff like our inter library loans and access to Kanopy/Libby.

    • naeap@sopuli.xyz
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      2 months ago

      Absolutely know the feeling

      When I quit a few years ago are my last employer, I was thinking, I’m the rat leaving the sinking ship

      Fucking card house still hasn’t collapsed somehow and old employer is now my main customer.
      So…not much changed, besides that I don’t have much security anymore

      But hey! Illusion of freedom, when being self employed! ;⁠-⁠)

  • GluWu@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    My parents just stopped watching the news about anything and just sit thinking everything will be okay. Its starting to get difficult to have a relationship with them because they are so out of touch with reality. They even go to protests but for them its just a thing to go do because they’re not doing anything else. They have zero understanding of any of the reasons they’re happening other than trump bad.

    • Prehensile_cloaca @lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      lol, the other day my Boomer Dad said, “Everything will work out. You have to think positively.”

      Based on WHAT? Nothing has “just worked out” for at least 25 years.

      As a cohort, Boomers ushered in this paradigm, and remain completely oblivious to the world. I will probably never stop heaping culpability at their feet.

    • CH3DD4R_G0B-L1N@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      Idk man, I’d kill just to have mine agree on the trump bad part. You do you, but tuning out our shit news cycle is low on the offense scale for me. It can be much worse.

      • GluWu@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        I understand it could be way worse, that doesn’t mean this is good. I’m the one that told them about tariffs, I’m the one that told them about the market crash and how they just lost 20% of their retirement savings. I’m the one that just got laid off. They simply do not believe that things are so bad and going to get so much worse. And its only been 100 days. They think everything will be back to normal once the next Democrat is elected president. I told them I genuinely don’t know if the US in its current form is going to exist in 10 years and they didn’t even think about it, just said yes it will. There is so much I would have to explain to them for them to grasp the reality of our current situation, but they don’t care. When they stop getting their social security payments they’re going to be genuinely shocked because they haven’t paid a single clue into what the magat regime laid out in project 2025 and are carrying out without opposition.

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        My Mom is so disappointed that my kids are not active, do not goto protests. She wants to leave a better world for them but is no longer able to help make that happen, so needs to see her grandchildren turn the world around.

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      In effect the relative lack of news back in the day was how people could feel optimistic, at least in the US and Western Europe. We could be pretty oblivious and happy about USSR going away and all seemed just fine because the news barely covered the bad stuff and the Internet was barely a thing and we didn’t get a whole lot of global exposure.

      Things can get better and we have to work at it, but we don’t need to be hopeless. If we can’t believe good things can happen, then what would be the point anyway…

      • nickwitha_k (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.org
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        2 months ago

        If we can’t believe good things can happen, then what would be the point anyway…

        Two things:

        1. Being kind to others, making their lives a bit less painful and hopefully a bit more joyful.
        2. Spite. Opting out would be making the lives of the bastards who are inflicting the bullshit on the rest of us too easy.

        I don’t expect things to get better within my lifetime and I’m not yet 40. All that I’ve witnessed in my lifetime is an accelerating decline in financial stability for people who work for a living and continual degradation of the quality of basic goods that people are able to afford.

        I managed to not get totally fucked during the pandemic after having been set back probably about a decade and a half by The Recession. Now, my field is getting hit by regular layoffs that don’t actually benefit anyone but make the line go up. Shit is not looking good in the near future.

  • Jhex@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I’m over 40 and struggling not to conclude life on this planet peaked 30 years ago

    • rayyy@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Yep. It peaked right around Ronnie Reagan’s sell-out to the wealthy. If folks want a better quality of life they will have to take it back from the rich.

    • Psythik@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      Hey, at least you got to enjoy humanity’s peak as a teenager. I was a kid, so I never got the chance to fully appreciate the 90s. My memory of almost anything pre-1993 is incredibly hazy. My strongest childhood memories didn’t take hold until the decade was almost over.

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        If you were a kid in the 90s, sure. Your parents shielded you from all the chaos.

        The 90s also had terrorism (IRA, WTC bombing, German and French hijackings, Israeli settler massacre, sarin gas attack in Japan, Oklahoma City bombing, bombings of US service members in Saudi Arabia, PKK suicide bombers in Turkey, Dagestan bombing in Russia (possibly a Putin-orchestrated false flag)). It had the ongoing AIDS epidemic, which was terrifying. It had the first Gulf war. It had the LA riots of 1992. It had the columbine shooting.

        • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          At this point we can only hope the Matrix is real and they reset this simulation soon because what we’re seeing are the side effects from the uprising outside.