Lawns are ugly as fuck and an ecological atrocity
The absurdity of an outdoor carpet made of plants weekly denied the singular purpose they exist (bearing seeds) is enraging to me
Chat is a text only community for casual conversation, please keep shitposting to the absolute minimum. This is intended to be a separate space from c/chapotraphouse or the daily megathread. Chat does this by being a long-form community where topics will remain from day to day unlike the megathread, and it is distinct from c/chapotraphouse in that we ask you to engage in this community in a genuine way. Please keep shitposting, bits, and irony to a minimum.
As with all communities posts need to abide by the code of conduct, additionally moderators will remove any posts or comments deemed to be inappropriate.
Thank you and happy chatting!
Lawns are ugly as fuck and an ecological atrocity
The absurdity of an outdoor carpet made of plants weekly denied the singular purpose they exist (bearing seeds) is enraging to me
Green concrete. Not even plants, just one kind of plant with little diversity or any animal life.
When homeless, would look at open spaces, abandoned buildings, and think what a waste. I would understand about homeless encampment, more understanding, found self getting way more tolerant. More forgiving. I actually got excited when seeing homeless people on streets being resourceful, building communities.
This year, finally got an studio apt. Rent controlled, many people here, including me working to recover from homelessness.
My case manager came to my apt to fix my window. I'm on the back apt building. Love location cuz it looks onto a fenced in property, undeveloped, just trees.
He looked at the space. And said what a waste, so many homeless people could be housed there.
I said, no way, then it'd get crowded, filthy, crime. It'd ruin my peace. Then I stopped. Realized, how little it took for me to go to the darkside.
it's kinda scary honestly. we gotta be vigilant every day that our hearts don't harden against other human beings.
Happy for you that you're in a better position now.
Yeah, all the awful stuff I've been thru in recent years, overcrowded slums, surrounded by drug addicts, pedophiles, abusers. So much anger, misery, hatred, everyone tsking it out on each other. each time I got yelled at, swung at, bedroom door kicked in.... I could feel the hatred, anger building in me. The pressure, overwhelming desire for retribution. Wrestled with it a lot, had to actively work at not letting it consume. To retain open-mindedness, compassion, desire to be a better person.
I can see now how hard it is for people to escape poverty. It claws at you, surrounds, at times can seem inextricable.
The person who originally coined the concept of "alpha male" wolves eventually regretted coining the concept because they realized that the observations made of such wolves were in psychologically damaging and traumatizing captivity conditions, not a healthy wolf pack.
I never forget that when I see someone being violently "alpha" out there amid squalor and suffering.
Once I became a homeowner, I had to actively practice ongoing awareness of homeless people all around me. My comfort did nothing for them, and any superficial discomfort I felt seeing them was nothing compared to what they were going through every day.
Because of that, I started deliberately walking among them and volunteering to help them while acknowledging their ongoing existence. I even passed out food directly from my driveway until got the city on me for doing that.
I think it’s important in that narrative that you did stop and think about that impulse. Yes, we’re extremely sensitive to the means by which our needs are met. But we’re also sensitive to our own pasts, our cultures, our relationships, etc. There are good reasons class traitors existing. There are also many good reasons to remember to be kind. I feel like that gets left out of talks about how people’s ideology relates to their position.
we also don't need to sacrifice more undeveloped green spaces to house everyone. that lot should be expropriated into a public space and the "filth and crime" should be averted by meeting the material needs of people so they don't do antisocial things like litter or have to steal.
america has the disease of Jeffersonian individualism where the imagined ideal is a self-sufficient lord of the manor, the unexamined part of which is free land and enslaved labor
"noise pollution" is a thing. and yeah people shouldn't have to tiptoe around but I don't feel too friendly to people's "right to make noise" when I'm suffering from migraines. We need to work on finding solutions that make our world more peaceful and less noisy in general
get rid of lawn management and suburbs
First of all, it’s TikTok. 99% of the people there are unable to detect sarcasm and satire and believe in every outrageous thing related to sex and relationship some random girl says on a podcast and get angry. The entire thing is meant to piss you off so you talk about it.
Second of all, real life people do not like waking up to the sound of a lawn mower no matter how burbbrained they are.
Third of all, social media in general have a habit of taking something innocuous and interpreting it in the worst possible way. People are raising their heart rate for no reason other than to feel something. It’s essentially self harm in another way.
Burb brained?
Like damn she was just talking about how it would be nice to enjoy a peaceful morning and random commenters took it as a personal attack. Shit you not I truly believe some suburbanites would go to war over their lawn the way they treat it like a fortress to a castle.
I know from personal experience that if you ever, ever ask a pink-faced thumb-headed divorce dad to not blast out floorboard-shaking-loud max-bass buttrock or flaghumping yeehaw country after midnight while taking rant selfies in the cabin of his mobile suburban assault vehicle, he will never stop taking the opportunity to do it extra just to spite you.
Treatbrain is a progressively worsening condition that involves louder and more aggressively "DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DOOOOOOOO" spite over time.
The thought of being a bother to other people makes me feel sick and panicky. I cope with this by reassuring myself that I'm doing my best and they probably aren't that bothered anyway.
I'd someone actually told me I'm bothering them I'd consider jumping into traffic. Just put my head in the mower blades and fucking end it.
At least my electric mower is quiet. Much better.
I'm the exact same way. Almost went mute as a kid because I was so extremely socially anxious, the fear of doing or saying something wrong was absolutely paralyzing.
I’m all for hating boomers and their lawns, but tbh her argument sounds like those boomers complaining about kids playing outside or “my ethnic neighbors are playing loud music.”
There’s respect, but there’s also the recognition you live around other people and they’re allowed to live their lives too. A lawnmower is an extremely common sound in the suburban auditory landscape, it’s not like he’s shooting off guns at 6am.
just because something is common for a suburb doesn't make it acceptable. suburbs are horrible. you can commonly find monstrously sized trucks in suburbs, it doesn't mean that those vehicles aren't still horrible for the environment and people. extremely loud, unnecessary sounds like leaf blowers can lead to worse health.
Leaf blowers should bee fucking outlawed. The most pointless and obnoxious tool in existence which pump vast amounts of pollution into the atmosphere. I genuinely am bothered less by the people doing burnouts and shooting off guns at like 2 am in my neighborhood (equally productive activities to leaf blowing imo), because it may be louder but it's less annoying.
Death to lawn care. (Yes, I did formerly work for a landscaping company, how could you tell)
the peace? you mean the spooky silence? not even the forest is that quiet. suburbs are creepy as fuck. a lawn mower would be a relief from the oppressive deathly quiet.
i don't really get being so bothered by other people doing stuff. then again, i just expect outside to be kinda loud. sirens, fireworks, children screaming, birds chirping, &c. silence to me means bad stuff is happening.
have you heard how loud those ride-on mowers and leaf-blowers get? listening to some dude next door run one of those for 1-2 hours straight makes you go crazy
silence to me means bad stuff is happening
Rural person here. Same. Big same.
I agree, that woman has no respect for the desires of those early morning leafblowers
innocent tidy lawn enjoyers
permacultural* spoil sports
*latest fad
Honestly shocked to see so many people here demonizing people doing their outdoor physical labor in the summer during the coolest part of the day.
"They could just do it in the afternoon."
Motherfucker, we have released so much carbon into the atmosphere that it's 103 degrees with 75% humidity, at 3pm, I'm not getting a fucking heat stroke so that you can exist outside in perfect silence at 9 in the morning.
It's the idea that the labor is unnecessary. My mother loves staying with me because the elderly community she's in hires a landscaping crew that comes through at the crack of dawn and wake her up. When coupled with the fact that plants and grass do best when cut in the evening it really drives down the idea that suburban lawn people can be a nuisance and aren't considerate of anyone else.
What constitutes a "suburban lawn person," anyone with a lawn? So anyone with a house (i.e. almost every person close enough to hear another "suburban lawn person" mowing)? I don't want to mow my lawn it's a chore that I have to do to avoid having all my neighbors mad at me and to avoid fines from the city; I'm not a "lawn person."
I'm not sorry that the underpaid lawn servants who indirectly work for you mother do their physically intensive outdoor summer work when it's safest for them and not when it's most convenient for her.
I work in retail.
Most people are selfish and evil.
This is very silly but also a problem that central planning could totally solve. Imagine if every lawn used native plants that required minimal upkeep, and then there were specific times for caretaker tasks that create a lot of noise pollution (like mowing, preferably during a time when most people are at work). This is the sort of thing a HOA could conceivably do to make everyone's lives better, instead of colluding to keep black people out of the neighborhood.
i hate lawn mowing and i hate sundays because of that obnoxious ominous droneing humming buzz they make. i hate lawns. i hate suburbs. i hate the people who maintain and live in them. my deepest wish is for all suburbs to be ripped from the bosom of the earth and hurled into the sun. all cars and roads too. only trains and efficient high density affordable housing will be spared my cosmic wrath when i achieve apotheosis.
I disagree I think that restrictions and rules like that make you smaller if you never push back against them. People have a right to exist and make noise in their own homes
I grew up in a house where every noise I made was a cause of me being told off and I really hated it. If you let such people boss you about it's like you lose something of yourself it is deeply unpleasant to live under those confines
Being yelled at as a child for doing something inside your home is the same thing as pushing an 80 decibel machine outside for 2 hours at 7 am
it's the same arguments and I apologise but I reflexively react in this way to them
I have been bossed around and made to feel small my whole life with these talking points and so I find them more than a little upsetting
People have a right to exist and make noise in their own homes
Framing things in terms of rights and not outcomes is a silly exercise in personal incredulity.
There should just be designated windows for lawn care on the weekend, say 2 hours on saturday from 3-5, with weekdays being unrestricted. If they wanted they could even make battery powered equipment exempt. As someone else posted it’s way quieter. Small engines are also highly polluting.
We should just ban lawncare. Grass is only meant to be grazed once a season and most lawn grasses are invasive. Mandate native prariescapes
It's a systemic issue of having lawns and fining people for letting them become natural spaces instead, so I'm team "Complaining about it is fine and getting mad about the complaint is weird, but I'd rather get woken up than have less-than-minimum wage workers get more heat stroke."