They are desperate to be cool, it’s so cringe.
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I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this but everything seems to be going down the tubes quite fast.
Yeah like having to accept all cookies to read the article.
Block third-party scripts, no cookie popup.
Imagine if, when Facebook rolled out, people were just like “no thanks, I’m good” and it never took off.
I wanted to. I liked Myspace. It has character. Some of it was cringe. But you could at least customize it. Facebook seemed so bland. But I had an ex GF that insisted on it and I didn’t think it was worth breaking up over. I shouldn’t have been such a pushover.
I stayed on Myspace long past when the majority jumped ship. It eventually lost what made it special when the boy band guy bought it to twist it into something more music focused. But I still preferred it to the sterile, uniformity of Facebook.
You would break up over switching online platforms?
I’m assuming the GF would break up with OP over it. Which is itself a big red flag.
Edit: fwiw, it does seem like there is quite a bit of drama and bullshit over choice of phone (Android vs Apple)
I used to hate the Android vs Apple drama vis à vis romantic partner choice, but then I realized that it’s in itself a great filter of people I don’t want in my life
It sounds ridiculous now with everything that’s happened in social media in the meantime, but I can see that being a thing in 2006 when the vibe of social media was very different to what it’s become now. Back then it was just a tidy little PHP site for you to chat and share photos with friends and family on. Literally nothing appeared in your feed that wasn’t a post from a Friend. It was basically a Whatsapp group with a photo gallery feature.
Since Facebook didn’t have the baggage it has now, it’s much easier to read refusing to join your girlfriend’s circle of friends and family back then as a wider rejection of her as a person, same as if you refused to join her family Whatsapp/Telegram/whatever group chat.
I’m not taking her side here, but I wanted to give a bit of perspective for people looking at it through the lens of 2025.
Nothing like that. It was more like she was insistent and I didn’t feel like it was a hill to die on at the time.
when a guy that blocked her, she looked around as she thought people were listening to her.
That’s exactly what happens when a Facebook competitor (possibly an ethical one) rolls out these days. Which is part of the problem. Zuck poisoned the idea.
Friendica exists, and it’s part of the Fediverse. It’s not going anywhere.
I remember LiveJournal as something good. I wouldn’t use it, but felt a bit like Telegram today, except without Telegram, which is a good thing.
It was, until the events of the mid-2010s when most of the science fiction fandom community quit it and went over to Facebook, presumably because that was more convenient (i.e. on it already) than going to e.g. Dreamwidth (a LJ-alike that is still going). It operated in a very similar way to FB but somehow much more focussed maybe because it never got the ‘businesses having pages on there’ bit. Those of my friends who were on both, often used FB more as an events calendar than all-around social media.
No one seems to have read Machiavelli’s stuff these days. It explains so much. Also, just history in general will tell you all about today’s happenings.
The thing they all share is that they are deeply unloved. Trump, musk, bezos, zuck, none of them have healthy loving families. They have noons they can genuinely connect with. And they all think by having more money and being more popular will fulfill that human need. But it never does, so they just keep going not realizing the path they chose doesn’t end anywhere near what they desire. Money will never buy love and peace.
That’s a tired stereotype. Powerful people are unloved because they don’t need to be loved. They are psychopaths, they have all the love they need, they are bored with the world and have nothing more to want.
People around you are unloved because they have problems.
Also money can buy you a cottage surrounded by nice trees near a river, healthy food, more house animals than you could want, a fast PC, jasmine and lilac bushes outside your window.
I think it can go a long way.
My irritation from this stereotype is because it kinda says the opposite of what it says. It feels like sublimated envy, expressed by saying that you don’t envy them. Why talk about their money at all then.
I wouldn’t envy anyone’s money if that’s all the difference between us, unfortunately money buys power and power is used to impose one’s will upon me, and that I very much care about.
But your typical young Trotskyists in the Interwebs write whole articles consisting of Marxist vibes (a strong thing, especially in spring, but not enough) and envy to those having more. LOL, someone having more money is not our problem. Our problem is someone attacking us with it.
While this is a fresh perspective of the trope, there is very significant evidence that becoming rich is a predictor of early death and depression, presumably due to how hard it becomes to connect to people. Normal people need money to eat and live, and handle it like the privilege it is. It is synonymous with survival for most people. It’s no wonder at all to me why the oligarchs has been naturally selected to be psychopaths. All other people die. A select few give it away and devote themselves to reintegrate back to humanity but those are very few and far between.
And they all think by having more money and being more popular will fulfill that human need.
If that was all it was, then I’d feel sorry for them. No, they’re trying to fulfill that need by being Great Men of History with Mighty Plans, but their Mighty Plans are all terrible, because they’re horrible people.
Yeah, I think it’s a mistake to imagine that these are good people who just need a little love. There are literally hundreds of millions of people who aren’t getting enough love for proper human flourishing and it’s not like that turned them all into fascists. The kind of evil exhibited by these people must be attributed to a fundamental enjoyment of the suffering of others.
Well statistically about 30% of people worldwide don’t mind fascism so that’s hundreds of millions of people too. I’m not sure I’d be willing to say a lack of loving relationships is the primary cause of that but I doubt solving that problem would hurt.
Where are you getting that statistic from?
I don’t recall if this is where I originally heard it but it gives you a place to start: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/28/who-likes-authoritarianism-and-how-do-they-want-to-change-their-government/
There are different studies which show a shockingly high percent of the population are fools but the most compelling is the one by Cambridge Analytica which found a population cluster in Facebook’s massive amount of user data. They called this the average cluster.
The Republicans targeted this group in the 2016 election. Around 30 percent of the b population fall into this group.
I wouldn’t challenge this view for Musk, Bezos, Trump. But Zuck gives me more of a “reformed (now married) incel that comes from an otherwise normal family environment vibe”. His marriage seems at least typical, likely loving etc.
His product happens to be the most harmful for democracy and I consider him equal for worst of the bunch as a result, but I think it’s explained by corporate/personal greed and being out of touch with reality.
He wants to be Augustus Caesar. That’s not “normal loving relationship” behavior.
No amount of money and power will ever scratch their itch
not realizing the path they chose doesn’t end anywhere near what they desire
It’ll end where they deserve though. Alone, despised and empty. No amount of money or stupid blue checkmarks will ever change that.
It might end with them realizing the truth, but it’ll be as they’re surrounded by the ashes of our civilizations and bodies.
I read some books by Alice Miller that discussed some childhoods of authoritarian rulers and they were all of unloved. They had not one adult stick up for them, be their advocate or helper, during their childhood years.
Many of us as children have been unwanted or unloved by our caregivers. Most of us had at least one adult: an uncle, grandmother, teacher etc, who truly tried to help at least once.
What the monsters in history had in common is an absence of evidence of even that happening for them. And their revenge as adults was terrible.
Man, I should have became an authoritarian ruler.
Instead I became isolated and I haven’t had a visitor in over a decade.
Fuck it. Vote for theangryseal!
For real though, maybe if I hadn’t ever used drugs haha. I had a lot of “friends” when I was living in that world. Might have stopped me. :p
Money will never buy love and peace.
True enough.
But, in the broken psyches of the ones you’ve mentioned, it buys perfectly serviceable alternatives which they can convince themselves actually does make them happy.
They are so broken that broken solutions actually work for them…
🤷♂️ 🤡 🖕
Looks like autocorrect did ya dirty.
No one >> noons
Don’t try and downplay the affect of connecting with noons on the human psyche. They are an evil scourge and should be eradicated. This is exactly the kind of thing a noon would post.
What’s wrong with Zuck’s family?
I will be happy if Zuck is Luigi’d before my death. Also Musk and Bozo.
I have been prepared for evil, for greed, for cruelty, for injustice – but I did not anticipate that the people in power would also be such huge losers.
This. This is what I feel like
I felt like this in January when this was first published and I still feel like it today. I’m not really sure what it will take for things to change but I get the feeling that powerful and wealthy people do not want things to change.
I just started reading this book about Facebook and I am amazed how little they cared about how much power they had, and how oblivious they were of it.
These are companies that rule the world, but don’t know what they want with it, other than for it to generate profit
If I had as much power as them I’d at least make dogs that can speak esperanto.
bojo
Bowjow
Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos-- you can tell they are insecure. They became rich and powerful and now want to stomp on people.
It’s like the meme of the nerd.
Who did Zuck stomp on?
The world? Dudes done more harm than any of the other two.
He’s been implicated in the recent genocide in Myanmar. Facebook cultivated the spread of the racist lies, allowed it to proliferate, spread in the region and then shorted companies operating there. If you know there’s going to be ethnic cleansing in the region, causing outrage and destabilisation, business takes a hit and the options pay off massively. All it takes was the deaths of thousands, but hey Mark has the capital to burn on his AR pet project that nobody wants.
Zuckerburg and Facebook enable lies to spread because that’s how he makes money.
…um, I’m not sure about that
You’re right. Meet me at The Old Ship Saloon in SF ive got a business propsition for ya
Because it’s so much better when they’re charismatic assholes?
I think it’s much sadder (more sad? saddest) that people fall for such absurd douche bags. If they would at least be sexy and seem smart you could understand how people could be fooled but this is just too hard to watch.
Yeah like, they have negative charisma, so it’s extra baffling. I cannot imagine a world in which I’d support Donald Trump, but definitely not in this one where he routinely shits his own diaper. If he was only disgusting mentally but was a good speaker or handsome or whatever, it would make at least a little more sense
I think they relate better to douchey, stupid people which allows them to more easily imagine themselves being rich one day.
Negative charisma means they can’t be the anti-christ! So we’re golden! Tada!
So like, if instead of musk and zuckerburg, it were a 1990s George Clooney? The smug bastard…
I’ll hate him just as much… but damn does he look good doing it.
Propoganda fucking works, simple as that
Billionaires just buy good press and publicists to manage their image, it’s so effective they believe it themselves
People will kiss anyone’s ass for enough money.
A charismatic tyrant at least provides SOME excuse. People aren’t necessarily monsters, they are just gullible.
When you have someone as decrepit and incompetent as trump who ALSO has a visible diaper bulge at his hips and who can’t speak a coherent sentence? There is no argument other than people truly choosing hate above all else.
It would make more sense.
Yeah, I don’t get this. If it was George Clooney or some other charismatic/likeable person, they’d still be fucking us over.
Yeah but at least they’d have style. Their popularity would at least make sense. It would feel a little less horrifyingly alienating.
The sad thing is that the bar is so low. If it was a once in a century charismatic leader you could say “I get how people fell for this!”. But the fact it’s Trump and Musk just exposes how utterly flawed human society is, and how easy it is to slide backwards. Humanity has no excuse for this one.
I don’t know about Clooney. His wife is one of the good eggs in this world and I’d think she would kick him in the grapes if he was a shithead loser like these fucks.
Agreed. Tom Brady being the football goat doesn’t make him being MAGA any more palatable.
The smug bastard…
Great to find a like minded tribe. How about getting decentralised ?
Huh, it’s almost like people who try to destroy the world are weird and shitty. I’m mostly surprised that anyone else is surprised.
Seriously, it’s like nobody else ever had to deal with a pathological narcissist or someone with BPD before in their lives.
People expect the villains to be cool, because that’s how they’re portrayed in movies.
It is indeed pathetic how Musk, Zuckerberg and even Trump don’t actually have any friends.
zuckerberg is prefer android friends.
Little Dick Energy. That’s what I think every single time I see any of these folks in the news. But apparently there are enough weird little aspirants out there that they do alright?
Fuck 90% of this species. 👍
We really gotta stop shaming people with little dicks like this. They’ve done nothing to deserve to be compared to these clowns.
Most people with little dicks are decent people and aren’t sadistic and evil cunts, so the little dick isn’t the issue.
Well we know elons is really small, every kids been IVF
Not just small. Mutilated because of lengthening surgery gone wrong, allegedly.
Why wouldn’t you? Only losers seek power, and only losers could and would fuck up this badly.
Living your life to impress other men by hating women is one of the most embarrassing things I can imagine. Looking up to any of these men for how to live your life is even sadder.
I’ve worked hard to keep these kinds of men out of my personal life, to keep them away from me, out of my goddamn sight. Now they are in my face daily, not only influencing the world for the worse but making me nauseous at how uncool and pathetic they are, on top of their other sins. It’s too much, I can’t take it, there needs to be a change.
It’s time for us to start getting revenge on the nerds.
Sounds to me like they crave attention more than anything, poor insecure past-neglected angsty man-agers they are. Depopulating their various platforms and reducing their viewership would be nice. Sucks that anyone at all would feel inclined to lend them their ears and eyes when there are far better alternatives out there.
Man when I think of living it up with wealth and power I think of Sal Maroni in The Dark Knight.
These guys don’t need a criminal underworld to have a cigar, dress in a tailored designer suit, get a drink and a couple of girls to pretend to like you while you drown your thoughts in excessively loud music and exotic dancers on stage.
I think these elite are afraid of what they are: flawed humans. They can’t get everything they demand, and they’d rather destroy humanity than admit they were wrong or made a mistake, or felt bad about something. So they have to pump the fascists up and make damn sure the people have someone other that just you to get angry about.
