I feel like a water slapper sometimes in how pointless my job is
The entire marketing industry
The entire marketing industry is gross and needs to die.
But let's not act like it's pointless. Propaganda (advertising) works, and works well.
it works, but it only works because we're propping up capitalism with the bodies of workers. Marketing serves no fundamental purpose for society
Nah, it works because our understanding of human psychology is real, and lots of people are susceptible to the messaging of advertising.
Propaganda (what advertising is at its core) still works under communism, it doesn't suddenly stop working because capitalism no longer exists. If that was true, images like the one below wouldn't have needed to exist to help promote the communist message. (Propaganda isn't always inherently evil, sometimes it's purpose is to help spread a political message that can be positive.)
I agree, marketing serves no fundamental purpose for society, because it's essentially just lies to sell a product or service. However I vehemently disagree it only works because of capitalism.
Good framing of the issue. It is just strategic dissemination of information. That is morally neutral. The strategy, however, can be motivated by good or ill intentions. This is a good distinction to make.
My job is basically to do things to the pixels on my screen in a way that the pixels on your screen do something interesting/helpful/valuable.
Pixel Slapper.
Would you rather slap water?
Sit next to a pond and slap water? Hell yeah. Fresh air, nature, automation. What's not to love
Sore joints. Sitting on wet grass all night. Mosquitoes. It's cold.
This is not a time of leisure. That's a job and it comes with all of the negatives of one.
Slappin palm would get sore
I wonder if the ultra rich understand just how much genuine malice is directed at them.
People were cheering for the submarine to implode.
It really seems like the world is full of tinder, waiting for a spark.
Nah. People get really pissed when they're REALLY hungry.
We're kept at a perfect balance, we can't afford top shelf stuff, but most people have enough to get by.
Sure, it feels like everyone is a medium-sized misadventure away from financial collapse, but still, we get by. We have Internet, shows to stream, cheap shitty fast food next door.
No one can be bothered to go outside to chop heads demanding to redistribute wealth.
Especially considering that half the population has been talked into believing that by pulling your boot straps you can get as rich as Elon Musk, and Trump is literally Jesus.
There's no revolution incoming, just occasional angry tweets.
Revolutions are most closely correlated with food insecurity, yes.
But in today's JIT economy, and the vulnerability of our supply chains, it's not hard to imagine a set of circumstances where suddenly a huge swath of the population suddenly not knowing where their next three meals are coming from.
Good point. COVID exposed the weakness of the JIT model, and then we all went "huh, that's a funny noise for an engine to make" and kept using JIT.
What does JIT really mean though in the context of consumer goods? There's plenty of stores stocked full of stuff that will be on the shelves until the food expires. Sure some stuff like TP got wiped out but nobody was buying the random brand of wild rice I like. Does that mean we should have more regional stores of specific items that move quickly instead of trucking it all from Bentonville?
Climate change will push things at some point
Probably in our life time too
80% of Americans deal with precarity. Food precarity, rent precarity, job precarity, family precarity, health precarity.
So a lot of us are feeling the discontent.
But we lefties arent used to planning violent protest (say sabotage and mischief. We'd rather not actually kill anyone.)
One possibility is the right-wing doing some sparking. A group of militant extremist reactionaries might load up and massacre a venue to get the civil war started.
Or the government could pass some laws resulting in mass incarcerations of non-violent offenders (say abortion seekers or LGBT+). Once that starts turning into capital punishment of young women protests might turn into arson of police and state facilities. We saw a bit of this with Iran with the Mahsa Amini protests or in 2020 US with the George Floyd protests.
I'm unsure of the relevance of a gamepad
Nevertheless, the seeming absurdity is funny and I'm here for it
That's how they controlled the sub. You can buy one if you want.
Ohhh of course, you're right, that's why it looked familiar!
And the folks in the USA trying to make the rich richer have also hung their hat on arming the country. Interesting logic
I mean that IS the point of don't tread on me.
I don't think they talk to average humans much so they don't have much idea.
I've worked for a lot of super rich people over the years in high-end construction. Most (not all) of them are deeply un-self-aware and have no idea how they are seen by regular people because it would never occur to them to ever think about it. The lives of most people are like some strange and exotic foreign country that they're vaguely aware of but that they have no real interest in. They're aware of poverty as a concept, but that's as far as it goes; it's not something they actually understand or have any desire to understand or even think about.
A lot of this, I think, is somewhat deliberate in that it allows them to ignore how unjust their hoarding of wealth and resources is.
"Nobody wants to slap pond water anymore!"
I'd think the sounds of random pond slapping would be more annoying than frogs, but I guess I'm not rich enough to have the correct opinion on this
Midwife toads sound like a fire alarm when the battery is running down, get a bunch together and they're really fucking loud ... I imagine a bunch of frogs might be similar
I mean you don't have to slap it like it has slept with your wife.
Or you have yet to hear frogs during night.
Russia has been a horrible place to be a peasant for a long time. In most of Europe peasents gained a lot of freedoms after the black death. But in Russia peasents, or serfs as they were called, only suffered worse. The serfs in Russia couldn't even marry or move without the permission of their lord. The lord, or boyar as it was called locally, had pretty much full ownership over you. Russia pretty much enslaved their whole population until the mid 1800s. Complete disregard for the life of the commoner has been a constant theme of Russian life for a long time and it arguably continues to this day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom_in_Russia?wprov=sfla1 Some dark but enlightening reading about the historical situation of peasents in Russia. Peasents were de facto enslaved there for far longer than anywhere else in Europe. I can't imagine living through such a time. Dedicating your whole existence and work to serving some fat boyar who cares nothing about you. At any time you could get drafted for a deadly war which you probably are not going to be returning alive from. This arguably still happens there today.
Anyone knows which book they're referring to? It sounds a bit like Chekhov.
"Bro, bro, remember that gun I mentioned earlier, bro?"
– Checkov, probably
Dunno about Russian book but the same story is in Tale of Two Cities
‘You know, Doctor, that it is among the Rights of these Nobles to harness us common dogs to carts, and drive us. They so harnessed him and drove him. You know that it is among their Rights to keep us in their grounds all night, quieting the frogs, in order that their noble sleep may not be disturbed. They kept him out in the unwholesome mists at night, and ordered him back into his harness in the day.
Good book would recommend.
Apparently in the time of King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette had a play farm where servants would take, clean and replace chicken eggs under the hens so Marie Antoinette could gather them later. Many nobles in France had such play farms. The pond story reminds me of this tidbit.
We know the Qu'ils mangent de la brioche scandal was fabricated (though a lie used to turn opinions against the royal family). In truth it was the failure pf Church and King in the Estates-General to read the room and then the King's failed effort to escape France that sealed the Queen's fate in the Place de la Révolution.
Queen Marie Antoinette was by far not the worst of spoiled nobles, just in way over her head.
They also used to have professional hermits that had to stay in the woods so that they could show them to guests.
If I got paid to live in a cabin and act like a bigfoot that would be a dream.
We're trying to reduce the numbers of hours a person has to work.
We talk about the end of paid work being mandatory for survival.
Partnerships:
/join #antiwork)