A certain percentage of comments I write on social networks end up being deleted before even clicking post. Sometimes after spending 10 or 15 minutes writing it.
The reasons are many, and I've long suspected I shouldn't feel like I'm throwing my time away when this happens.
Sure, and this 70% of Americans bullshit is propaganda by that measure. It is frequently trotted out on HN and is met with enthusiastic belief despite being total ass pull. There are US Senators pushing this propaganda and people enthusiastically agreeing.
Uh, what? People don't "agree" with stats. They either believe it at face value, or they fact check the stats and find, oh, this is actually true but the study was limited, or they find that it is indeed just bullshit. No agreement necessary.
Politicians taking advantage of the fact that their constituents will not fact check them is propaganda 101.
Well, the annual death rate is roughly 1 in every 100 and paychecks are every 2 weeks, the death rate every 2 weeks is 4 bps. So 99.96% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
But otherwise I think Matt Darling has a piece on Slow Boring that should help inform you as to the state of the US.
The phrase "live paycheck to paycheck" means "To spend all that one earns without saving anything", not the literal interpretation of "failing to die between paychecks" that you seem to be using here.
(IIRC, 60-70% is based on surveys, that percentage of people feel they're living like that, but actual stats are much lower, like 25% or so, but it's important to make sure the same thing is being discussed when having conversations like this).
The version I know is a little different: A Russian visits America and meets an American at a bar and they get talking about life in Russia. "How is the propaganda?" says the American. "It's everywhere, but it's easy to ignore it" says the Russian. "Yours is much better." "But we don't have propaganda here" says the American. "Exactly" says the Russian.
idk how a person can be forced to pledge allegiance to the flag every morning and not think that's some North Korean style shit.
When I was in kindergarten, I refused to do the pledge one day. My teacher was livid. "Are you American or not?"
Being 5, I didn't know the difference between ethnicity and nationality (I'm Asian but I was born here and didn't know any life outside of America). So I was afraid that my teacher would not let me be American anymore if I didn't say the pledge. So I said it and never refused to say it in school again.
It wasn't til I was well into my adulthood that I realize how absurd that situation sounds.
I'm gonna try to remember this comment for the next time someone brings up the boiling frog analogy.
Which is usually back to back with the thought that in bygone times "the human mind used to be cleaner / healthier / smarter and it was slowly destroyed by modern living"
There's not that much difference between our behavior and that of a chicken fixated on the chalk line in front of it.
This. What really happened is that someone figured out what makes people give something their undivided attention and is profiting handsomely off of this finding.
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
Highly recommend reading Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death.
in the 80's, he wrote about how shift from print media to TV has caused us to trade critical thinking for a 'numbing' addiction to constant amusement. Little did he know about social media..
The hardest part of a 2026 reading of Amusing Ourselves is that nothing within the pages is extraordinary anymore — the book is plainly boring once you know about the internets... definitely groundbreaking, for its time.
Fair point. However, books like these show where society is heading and what values we are promoting as a society.
As an aside, what was really interesting to me was learning that in 1850s white Americans had a 95% literacy rate (highest globally) and were able to easily follow debates between presidential candidates that lasted 3+ hours, and ask relevant questions.
I doubt even the most educated people would be able to do that today. Certainly, I would find it extremely difficult to do so.
>I doubt even the most educated people would be able to do that today.
Certainly this is a valid point.
>able to easily follow debates between presidential candidates that lasted 3+ hours, and ask relevant questions
This is likely one reason for keeping the masses month-to-month (~70% in US, 2024~). I hate to quote this madman, but Father Jones once said (before flavor-aide-ing his entire congregation):
>>~"Keep them poor and tired. If they're poor they won't have time to organize; if they're tired they won't have energy to fight back"~
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>1850s white Americans had a 95% literacy rate (highest globally)
Working in construction these past few decades, some of my favorite co-workers have barely been able to read — yet are brilliant field electricians (that often can read blueprints — but fuck this engineer they'll proudly mumble, often ["what the hell was he thinking, here?! wuz he thinkin'?!"]).
fuck this guy . laughter
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I fully support returning to a time when countries had smaller populations and embraced technologies in running themselves, their more-isolated population's needs.
As an older millenial american, I fully support the breakdown of USA into smaller territories (too large to reasonably rule, IMHO).
>some sort of dick measuring competition like some stupid 20 y/o over enthusiastic frat boys.
From my privileged perspective (as brother to a state-level politician, up for re-election this year) this isn't too far from his truth. I love him in the brotherly-required manner — but do not understand his ivory towered viewpoints. I've only ever seen him humbled, twice: after crashing his first motorcycle; getting arrested with him in 2003, no mercy to those officers.
All my brothers are very successful — making me blacksheep (along with a mentally-deficient step-brother == "doesn't count") — they'll often pull the "I grew up poor" punchline... my retort is that I'm the only one that got poorer. Through fault of my own, admittedly.
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None have outside "real world" perspective, having spent their entire lives in the educational _e_-daycares which can extend up to entire bayarea tech campus cafeteriæ. Surprising, moron-bro actually "served" 2003-2006, and even with a seventy-something IQ still knows a few things that 130+ IQ-bro-bros DON'T.
Definitely I'm proud of my brothers, but none of them are in the 70% of household that live month-to-month... while I've spent decades of adultlife struggling (willingly) so.
> I wonder if this is how the clergy felt once the vulgar were...
You meant the "vulgus". "Vulgar" has the same root, but a very different meaning.
This random thought is kinda disconnected from actual human history. "Not allowed to study Scripture" was not a thing: Illiteracy was. There were people that knew how to read and people who didn't, that's it.
I'm trying hard (and failing) to visualize your mental image.
"Dear Father: it looks like the Bible has been translated to English by my dear brothers up at the monastery. I'm sure you understand why I can no longer be a priest"
Remember that you're living in the actual earth timeline, not the 40k one.
So many words and you missed the most important one: "netiquette"
That's the whole point: the word exists precisely as a testament to something that used to exist but now doesn't.
Anybody old enough to remember the word when it was common use should realize that it would have been impossible for the term to be coined in 2026.
If you missed that part of the Internet (maybe you were too young or maybe you were focused on other things, like the vast majority of people in the 90s), that's totally fine, but plenty of us did experience it and remember it pretty clearly.
> Usenet, forums, Reddit, comment sections, and every other social part of the internet have been full of bad behavior long before Facebook came along.
You can tell approximately how old someone is by whether they have reached the "everything sucks" part of life yet or not.
That way Han Solo can make sense in the infamous quote.
EDIT: even Gemini gets this wrong:
> In Star Wars, a parsec is a unit of distance, not time, representing approximately 3.26 light-years
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