This is how I feel with a lot of vices.

I think the worst part is when people don’t realize they’re addicted and have a lower-than-average life. Streamers normalizing things like peeing in bottles or living in a mess. Or just being addicted to doom scrolling and not going outside to interact with the real world.

And if the person doesn’t have the tools to reflect on their situation, they’re kind of screwed. They don’t know what to change.

When I was a teen, I believed in that too. The most strict parents had the most wild kids.

As an adult, it’s now verified.

I feel old because I remember when this conversation was happening with airbrushing photographs and then Photoshop.

And now these days, really good Photoshop is invisible. We can remove people from backgrounds. We can improve the lighting. Movie CGI is just photoshooting stills.

AI will reach that stage too, where it will be so good, it’s scary that you can’t tell.

And maybe we need that. We’ve been blessed with delicious bananas too easily for two long.

24 hour news is to blame.

You can’t have one story anymore. You need to turn it into like 20 stories. Which means that one story, but the perspective of every single other person. The CEO, the Janitor, Ja Rule, everyone.

I am currently stealing Amazon streaming from my neighbor, who let me use it. It’s full of ads now.

Can’t even watch Invincible without 8 minutes of ads.

Easier to just pirate.

But how will I know if I’m rich or poor without a nasdaq score telling me how the rich are feeling?

Pizza place near me has ranch pizza at discount for $1.

I thought I was getting a deal and then promptly threw it away.

I saw this at my local brewery.

A bunch of bachelorettes with their penis straws and hats with SLUT in LEDs were having a fun time in the corner while some parents with their 8yo kids running circles around their table were also at the same brewery. Random guy in a trench coat with his giant dog. Nerd on his apple laptop.

Nobody was acting a fool or making a scene. But it was a strange moment.

My apartment has motion censor faucets.

I live in a nightmare.

It’s all around us. Easier to remove the carbon based life forms.

Unless it was part of it, multiple levels of packaging.

Open up a bag of chips. It’s bag, then chips. Perfect world.

Open up a box of cookies from hell. Open up the box. Open up the freshness seal bag. Pull out the individually wrapped cookies, and open those too.

Straight to jail. No question.

Was a kid in the late 1980s. I never realized how bad smoking was.

My mom hated going out to dinner, so we never ever went. And when I took her to dinner to celebrate in the 2000s, she pulled me aside and cried about not wanting to smell like cigarettes, because her dad smoked and the smell would remind her of him/his abuse. Smoking was already banned and I had to make so many promises that we won’t go anywhere with smoking.

Dollar Tree/Family Dollar

From under-staffing, to threatening managers to do more with less, to refusing to allow resources for security. They treat people like shit, their customers like shit, and try to undercut their suppliers which leads to half ass quality goods.

I met a guy who really wanted to work at riot games and found no issue with their culture. And the longer I spent talking to him, the more I realize… Ah, you’re an edge lord. Of course you would like the company.

This is very much it.

I’m not trying to dismiss OP either. I’m glad they finally notice. But for a huge population of the world, it’s ALWAYS been there. There’s been a lot of evil shit. It’s just it was never on their doorstep until now.

But this isn’t a “The world is all doom and gloom”.

There is a significant amount of positive upswings. Looking in the past 10,000 years, we are absolutely in a better era. We can make jokes and shit post about it, but the average person’s quality of life back then no where matched what we are doing today. We tend to be relatively safe. We can get a variety of food anywhere.

Humans unfortunately only have a small window of time and don’t see it, but there’s a lot of good in the past hundred years.

Very cool. Now it just needs to drop in price.

I’m willing to wait for it to hit under $20