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submitted 22 hours ago by theHRguy@lemmy.world to c/til@lemmy.world
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[-] Mulligrubs@lemmy.world 3 points 2 hours ago

We weren't evolved for this.

For thousands of years we were hunters and farmers and such, working hard in the summer and hibernating in the winter, saving night time for relaxation and fun (yes I am vastly simplifying and am aware of the exceptions).

So of course people are freaking miserable as drones for the 24-365 corporate hive.

BUT PROFITS ARE UP, UP, UP! STOCK MARKET 50k BABY

[-] Wilco@lemmy.zip 25 points 4 hours ago

Human beings are social animals. Most of us are disconnected from our "tribe" or "herd". We aren't meant to exist like this. The oligarchs have designed a system to make everyone hate each other ... its working as intended.

[-] ChadGPT2@lemmy.world 4 points 2 hours ago

Everyone is isolated watching corporate propaganda on magic boxes. No safety net, no community. Move from wage slavery location to propaganda consumption location in an enclosed box.

Human beings aren’t built for this lifestyle.

[-] andros_rex@lemmy.world 4 points 2 hours ago

Something critical to note is that help is not really out there. This is the kind of news article that usually gets people to post 988, but if you’ve called 988 you know how much of a joke it is. They will “triage” you, where you either get the cops called to take you to hell/inpatient or you spend half an hour plus on hold for someone to say “sorry that sucks :(“

Inpatient institutionalize increase suicide rates after release. You get maybe fifteen minutes of actual “treatment” while the rest of it is being treated like a criminal. Good luck keeping your job after disappearing three days without being allowed to access your phone!

It amazes me when I see TikToks and videos from patients in inpatient facilities in other countries. In the US, wanting to kill yourself means that you are a horrible criminal and you will be punished for it.

[-] FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.io 3 points 6 hours ago

Are we great again yet?

[-] lastlybutfirstly@lemmy.world 28 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

I blame commercials and PSAs. I stopped watching TV in the mid-2000s and have ad blocker online. Watching TV today is like stepping back into Plato's Cave. You don't realize how psychologically damaging commercials are.

As an example, a few years ago I watched a live stream of the local news during a weather event with ads that couldn't be blocked. Four hours later, I had seen the same commercial for an HIV drug at least 8 times. I had the thing memorized and I was very, very aware of HIV all day as it replayed in my brain. I don't ever think about HIV. But I was forced to. I'm usually happy go lucky but after that ad, and other ads for a myriad of other drugs for diseases, plus PSAs reminding me how my life is a vicious jungle with death just a step away, I felt pretty bummed. Some of those PSAs are down right mean spirited.

Without ads, I can control my exposure to the horrors of the world. With ads, you're at the mercy of the station or website drowning you in human misery. There probably needs to be a law to limit those kind of commercials. Like one PSA a week and one pharmaceutical commercial a day.

[-] EightBitBlood@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago

That's part of it. Never earning enough to live is the other. The economic disparity in the US is greater than it was before the French Revolution. No matter how hard younger generations work, they can't earn money at a rate that exceeds price inflation and experience. 60% of this country is doomed to never get ahead and the other 40% just don't realize it's so bad for everyone else they're killing themselves.

[-] jpreston2005@lemmy.world 5 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Agree, but I don't think it's limited to ads or PSAs, I think everyone with empathy is having a real hard time, because the news and the internet is constantly making them aware of, just, awful things. War and famine abroad and at home, all while like, 800 people in the world sit atop mountains of gold, doing absolutely everything in their power to destroy the planet and subvert democracy. We've been past the climate change "tipping point" for YEARS, and we're still growing our oil and gas consumption. Anybody that cares about peoples suffering, is going to suffer, because we can't empathise with everyone, everywhere, all at once. And yet, that's what we're asked to do, everytime we see the news. We're still trying to play todays game by yesterdays rules.

The reality of the situation is that in the lifetime of your child, they will see complete economic and agricultural collapse. Why do you think that syphilitic pedo rapist wants Greenland so bad? Because projections show that giant iceball is going to be our best farmland in 60 years. Meanwhile any nations near the equator will be absolutely fucked. Chemical manufacturers in the US have so captured the government, that they've been poisoning all your water and food for decades without as much as a peep from regulators. Gotta get that new glyphosate weed and bug killer! nevermind it's been banned by almost every country except our dumbasses.

if this were minecraft, I'd say that all we really need to do to save our species, is kill about 3-400 billionaires, redistribute their wealth, put a blanket moratorium on oil and gas usage, transitioning the worlds fleet of cars to electric (or just abandoning them all together in favor of trains), and establishing a one world government. Just think of the amount of artistic and scientific endeavors we could achieve if man were allowed the freedom to breathe and live. Imagine if you had universal healthcare, universal pre-k and daycare, imagine if you were given a 4 year college education just as a matter of course. Imagine if rent control existed, and a universal basic income to allow you a basic standard of living. Imagine how much happier you would be.

Hey, we're only like 3-400 billionaires deaths away from achieving it.

...in minecraft

[-] TaeKwonDoh@lemmy.world 8 points 10 hours ago

Frankly, I'm just glad that there may be a tax on advertisin (and other things) to try and shore up health care costs in Michigan.

Source: https://www.mlive.com/politics/2026/02/whitmer-wants-new-taxes-on-tobacco-sports-betting-to-keep-health-spending-stable.html

[-] yabbadabaddon@lemmy.zip 14 points 12 hours ago

Blame social media. We have studies that show direct correlation between suicide rate and instagram, for example. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1461444819850106

[-] lastlybutfirstly@lemmy.world 7 points 11 hours ago

Do they take into account the ads that are run on those sites?

I mean, everybody talks about how YT is killing everyone but I don't get it. Unless... There was one day I sat down for breakfast, feeling great and started to play a light hearted review of a movie from Red Letter Media, about to eat a spoon full of Cheerios when an ad snuck past my ad blocker. It started off with "Cancer is different when it happens to a child." I immediately closed my browser and sat there in stunned silence for five minutes with my chin on my lap. That ad just shat all over my day before it even began. When I got back to watching RLM, I was still thinking about kids with cancer for five minutes while Mike and Jay made jokes.

If people are bombarded by that kind of bipolar stream of videos while watching YT, I can see how it can ruin your life.

[-] Draedron@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 9 hours ago

In the past when you were bullied it usually was contained to school. Now with social media, it continues in the safety of your home as well.

[-] lastlybutfirstly@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

People, super especially kids, should not have social media with their real name. No one should use social media or the Internet in general with their real name unless they have bodyguards, a PR team and plan each post like a mission to Mars. There's literally billions of people who can see you, and one of them is definitely going to be lunatic who can find out where you live and murder you in your sleep.

[-] Soggy@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

Eh, I refuse to be that scared.

[-] lastlybutfirstly@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

Then you can't blame social media if it goes south. You know the risks.

[-] Soggy@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

Beats the hell out of existing in a state of constant anxiety, of second-guessing every decision, of looking suspiciously at every stranger I pass.

[-] redhorsejacket@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

I get it, context and all, but it's very funny to me that you say you got bummed out by couple seconds of advertising for a cancer drug or treatment interrupting your video of bumbling hack frauds shouting about AIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDS. Hell, Mike literally can't help but laugh at geriatric women describing their health problems.

[-] lastlybutfirstly@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

Like I said, it's like stepping back into Plato's Cave. It's almost impossible to explain what it's like.

It not so much the context. There's no build up to "children with cancer". Whether it's about that or not, a block of advertising is a string of shitty short films specifically designed to be like a tear jerker to get a reaction out of you within 30 seconds or less. If you're not used to that psychological tug of war, it almost physically hurts.

I have diabetes and the vascular disease that comes with it. If Mike and Jay make jokes about it, it makes it easier to live with. But if a commercial starts with a deep booming voice dripping with dread exclaiming "Diabetes". Oh yeah, I forgot for a second that it's a deadly serious disease that will probably kill me. Thanks commercial. I was living my life for a second.

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[-] unphazed@lemmy.world 66 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

My daughter is 15. She hates guns. Hates being around them, the sound, the idea of harm, etc. 4 weeks ago she came crying afraid for her friends and ICE. Last week she told me she wanted to learn to shoot. (I inherited a lot of guns. I bought a few myself. I come from a conservative family and I am the black sheep, the one that "changed".) Still trying to get ahold of someone from Blazing Sword as an instructor. I want her to learn from someone with actual teaching instruction, rather than backwoods learning that I got.

Kids are terrified. Schools are scary, the law is scary, the dungeon dwelling creeps are now villified. I can see why suicide is increasing.

[-] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 26 points 9 hours ago

My teenage daughter and her friends were planning a walk out at school to protest ICE. She texted me that the school administrators and "resource officers" (aka cops in schools) physically blocked all the exits so nobody could leave.

[-] andros_rex@lemmy.world 6 points 3 hours ago

The superintendent in Mustang Oklahoma suspended all of the kids who walked out.

[-] mc900ftJesus@lemy.lol 4 points 2 hours ago

As a kid I would have loved the free vacay from that.

[-] Doomsider@lemmy.world 0 points 4 hours ago

Cool story about your daughter being radicalized.

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[-] FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world 153 points 22 hours ago

Can you blame them?

The US is a fucking hellscape

I spend quite a bit of time there. I'm over several times a year and I genuinely don't know how people can live like that

There's a constant thin thread of fear, wrapped around everything, running through everything

People are afraid of the people around them. They're afraid of their government, they're afraid of the people who are supposed to be there to protect them, they're afraid of their employers, they're afraid of the unknown

I'm very careful not to take my charmed life for granted

[-] just_ducky_in_NH@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago

You mean it’s not like that everywhere? Seriously, are there still countries where you can feel safe in your day-to-day life?

[-] FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago

I seldom lock my doors, and even if I lock the front door, the back door is always open for my dog to go in and out as he pleases

I never worry about being hit, and firearm crime here is vanishingly rare

Nowhere is perfect. My nearest pub isn't the sort of place if ever go because the regulars are morons, but I live somewhere peaceful and serene

[-] floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 hours ago

Yes, and it's kinda worrying to me you have to ask. But there are absolutely places where you don't live in the fear the next person is trying to fuck you over or harm you

[-] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 15 points 12 hours ago

the most thing i noticed that both parties are afraid of is giving free or extremely cheap healthcare to everyone, mainly because keeping it private helps keep the parties into gop/dem.

[-] FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world 22 points 12 hours ago

For-profit healthcare is beyond disgusting

Slavery never went away in the US. It was rebranded, encompassing all but the ruling classes, with people's health tied to their employment

All so some people who were already rich could get richer, and the cost to the American public is a fucking disgrace

Long live Luigi!

[-] MagicShel@lemmy.zip 57 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Having Trump as President is how I imagine it's like living with an abuser. A constant state of anxiety — never knowing when or where the next blow will come, but knowing it's coming. You stop planning for the future or enjoying the now and just focus on keeping your head above water one more day. The constant stress actually creates knots in my back that sometimes put me down for days.

And when he's finally out of office you didn't notice you've been holding your breath for four years and you just want to weep with relief at surviving and escaping.

[-] Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 3 points 10 hours ago

when he’s finally out of office

Thats the problem; that was the reaction after Bush, meanwhile Obama continues and expands all of Bush's policies. Under Biden, the libs go back to brunch while concentration camps are expanded and ICE agents start showing up at immigration court hearings.

[-] Draedron@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 9 hours ago

I agree in spirit but hate the "Biden expanded the camps" thing. Sure, ideally the camps are disbanded and the people released with no person ever being deported anymore.

Sadly thats unrealistic in the US with the way people there are. Expanding them was better than letting them stay overcrowded as they were, which is how most of the deaths were happening.

[-] Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 3 points 9 hours ago

How about sending fewer people to the camps?

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this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2026
514 points (98.7% liked)

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