Is the US a dystopia?

it should just be open to drawing on a lot more truth in order to create it.

otm

As someone who went to parks a couple times a year with family in my adolescence and with my nieces up until the pandemic began, I got to watch a lot of the reality cosplay at the parks. My experience is that even those wackadoodle parents who put $8000 on their AmEx don't believe Disney's fantasies. Even the slightly older kids know perfectly well they're not taking pictures with Goofy and Stitch or whoever: they're taking pictures with people in Goofy and Stitch costumes. This is especially so in the Instagram/TikTok age. The cool photo at Disney with your favorite character is the point; most people are aware the quotation marks, maybe more than our generation was.

Speaking just for myself: I never gave a damn about Disney characters as a kid (I was a total Bugs Bunny/Loony Tunes smartass). The way WDW created this, yes, simulacrum four hours away from me fascinated me, though. Here's a Polynesian resort that looks like photos of Polynesian resorts, not Polynesia itself. When I started traveling to Europe and around the States I compared what I saw to pictures I'd seen. My experience with travel is not dissimilar to how I experience(d) Disney: a lot of walking, a lot of mental notes, a lot of comparisons.

So, no, I don't regard Disney visits as any more or less harmful than visiting idk NYC too often -- a city that already looks as if it absorbed the Disney ethos 25 years ago. But then my secret theory about travel is....it's not edifying in and of itself. I know too many people who've been to Europe way oftener than I have who don't return like Lucy Honeychurch in A Room with a View. Maybe it's better these people stick to yearly trips to the Magic Kingdom instead of crowding me at the Tate Gallery.

i always like reading alfred's thoughts about disney parks, it's a nice window into them without having to actually go there.

the other thing it occurs to me to say about the world of disney is how sexless it is overall. if i'm going to enjoy fantasy it's gotta have a generous smut factor involved.

now that is certainly true, though my young cousin's staring at Snow White's generous cleavage suggests Disney knows what it's tapping into hormonally.

Let's pay whiney weingarten and Walter Benjamin to Substack about their WDW experiences.

NYC is a huge city, there’s a lot out there that hasn’t been gentrified, it’s just visitors don’t hang out in Canarsie or Jamaica.

Yeah, I should've written "Manhattan" or "Times Square." When I visit I'm usually in Ridgewood.

i'll go on the L.A. reddit and every day someone is showing up asking advice about their itinerary, which invariably involves wanting to see Beverly Hills, the Walk of Fame, Universal Studios, Disney, etc. Those kinds of vacations just seem like hell to me, idk.

when I travel I prefer to travel alone. mostly because...I am very spur of the moment and hate to plan my trips down to the minute. but worse...what I can't stand more than hyper-planning a trip is indecisiveness. if a conversation about what we want to do lasts more than 5 minutes, with endless options being suggested, but no actual decisions being made, that is my personal hell.

Example:

"We could go to this bar at 2, maybe?

"sounds great, I'll get c-"

"there's also this other pub in the East village"

"I mean if you prefer that, that's fine t-"

"hmm, but i don't know, maybe I want to stay in until the show we have tickets to later"

"I mean if you want to do that, I can go do some things by my-"

"no hold on - just give me a bit to think about it...there's also this wine tasting that I'm reading about"

*30 minutes later, we're still talking about it, wasting time in a hotel*

in 2018, I showed up to NY to see the Decibel Magazine tour at Irving Plaza, and pretty much left everything else open and just happened to notice John Mulaney was taping his Kid Gorgeous special at Radio City Music Hall, and just impulsively bought a ticket and went. I never have a hard time entertaining myself.

In big groups we always separate and agree to meet for dinner or drinks. It's the only way.

And I always arrive a day earlier to be alone lol

separating is the best way! I always get annoyed when people get offended at the idea that you want to do something on your own.

last visit to NYC though I wasn't really able to do that much solo as my mother and my brother's mother-in-law could not navigate Manhattan without my brother or I helping escort them.

meeting up like that is the best, trade adventure stories.

I remember once getting in a HUGE fight with a friend who was just toxic and abusive to everyone (including his girlfriend) in NY and him pissily going to bed early so I went out exploring Times Square until 4 am by myself, it was dope. then I stopped hanging out w/ that dude.

Let's pay whiney weingarten and Walter Benjamin to Substack about their WDW experiences.

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

there's this lady named jenny nicholson who makes these insane four-hour video essays about theme parks... i haven't been able to watch a whole one but people i know speak highly of them.

like, for me, my fantasy is to be a Big Strong Capable Man. can i live that fantasy by pretending to be the Brawny Man all the time? no, that shit is unsustainable not to mention corny. i can make my fantasy my truth but i have to draw on the rich messy stuff i have in order to do it. how i process vulnerabilty and my inner child is paramount, if i ignore that i won't achieve it. disney ignores a lot of fundamental stuff and is pernicious because of it imho.

the other thing it occurs to me to say about the world of disney is how sexless it is overall. if i'm going to enjoy fantasy it's gotta have a generous smut factor involved.

― he/him hoo-hah (map)

oh, i absolutely agree. i went to disney world once, when i lived in florida, and i found it a fascinating experience. the ideas disney peddles are crap. walt wanted to be fucking bob moses or some shit, and disney since, i don't believe they've ever truly strayed from that legacy. let's all go to the world's fair. let's go to george romero's amusement park. let's visit the world of the future. i think we're all bozos on this bus.

yeah i got my own fantasies. rich and messy and with generous smut factors involved. shit, i wish there could be a theme park like disney world for my fantasies. there aren't. there are bdsm dungeons. there's a lot to love about bdsm dungeons - and they're corny, for the record, they're corny just like disney world is corny, i embrace that cringe - but damn that shit gets complicated.

that's what i like about mimesis, i like leaning into that complicatedness. kink isn't just fun and games for me. i get involved with this one particular fetish-adjacent community and pretty much everybody there is a trans woman who was sexually assaulted by an intimate partner. and here i'm like oh jeez, i thought this was just hot and sexy fetish art. well, shit.

the disney rabbithole - and there is one, all "hidden mickeys" - it is a false consciousness, a pseudo-gnosis. Operating Thetan. that's the people i feel for, the people who make their lives about disney. my girlfriend, most of her life, the only two things that ever made her happy were disneyland and meth. when she found a life that didn't involve the latter, well, the former went out the window as well.

in conclusion: we don't just need more bdsm dungeons. we need _better_ bdsm sex dungeons, sex dungeons that aren't just about furniture but offer people opportunities to genuinely heal from trauma, rather than recapitulate trauma. even the dungeons we have, though, even with all the problems, they're still better than the Disney experience, a "pleasure island" that refuses to engage with the psychological reality underlying its existence.

I grew up two miles from OG Six Flags but it was too close to care about - a place you went on field trips every so often and eventually worked at for a summer or two.

The theme park I'd go back in time to visit (and see if it's as shitty as I assume) is a Flintstones village where my grandparents stopped on the way back from Canada when we went to meet my grandmother's birth mom.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedrock_City_(South_Dakota)

in conclusion: we don't just need more bdsm dungeons. we need _better_ bdsm sex dungeons

kate for president 2024

I don't even own a Disney

I went to wdw as a 10 y/o and it was fine but mainly remember intermittent joys and endless fascination of seeing how funny and odd the other visitors were to me. i especially recall how much i enjoyed seeing how my fancy grandmother and her dear friend tackled eating their ice cream cones, which was hilariously funny, and we ALL discussed the best and/or proper way one should eat an ice cream cone in the heat.

and so I cannot imagine going to such a place without the objective being to provide a 6-12 y/o absolute joy and otheriness. As an adult, we didn’t do too much amusement park stuff at all, we’re more outdoors-y. still, my visit to Legoland in San Diego with my then 8 and 10 y/os, and the accompanying photo captures, were/are a real source of delight. They are adult now. I have not asked them how they remember it.

i am very glad for those memories, but I am quite sure I would not advise others try for it. no guarantees, high expense. and without any kids along? for adult satisfaction? that is utterly mad. but I’m not everyone.

I don't even own a Disney

― Jedi, I've got your number (Ye Mad Puffin)

i think it's the other way around

kate for president 2024

― he/him hoo-hah (map)

can i be vice president instead? i've been feeling pretty subby for a while now

jfc this story is bleak:

A woman working for Wells Fargo in Arizona died at work and was found four days later, authorities have confirmed.

Denise Prudhomme, 60, last clocked in at the Wells Fargo in Tempe at 7 a.m. on Aug. 16, the Tempe Police Department confirmed to USA TODAY on Thursday. She was found at a third-floor desk in the office on Aug. 20, leading on-site security to call police.

Firefighters also responded and pronounced the woman dead at 4:55 p.m., police said.

Prudhomme's cause and manner of death were pending as of Thursday morning, according to the Office of Medical Examiner.

According to police, an initial investigation found no obvious signs of foul play. An investigation is ongoing and authorities are interviewing employees at the Wells Fargo location to get more information.

Wells Fargo workers reported smelling a foul odor but thought it was an issue with the plumbing, local television station KPNX reported citing an unnamed employee.

The outlet reported that Prudhomme's cubicle was on the third floor and wasn’t near the main aisle. Most Wells Fargo employees in the office work remotely but the building has 24/7 security, per KPNX.

I bolded the bleakest part

wow that is grim.. but also very sad

Yup, being the last one to leave the office, a mistake!

The real dystopia comes when Wells Fargo tries to determine her exact time of death to clock her out, gotta make sure that last paycheck doesn't overpay the heirs by a few hours.

but then we all learn our lesson when a24 releases a pitch-black comedy about it in 2027.

I get the UK magazine Fortean Times and they routinely have a roundup of deaths gone unnoticed, sometimes for months or even years.. with the utilities paid by auto-debit. Feel likes it happens a lot in Japan

xp - map, you forgot the part where it is later revealed that Wells Fargo funded the flick, but the heirs don't see a dime because of the release they shoved in the heirs' nose for signature in the immediate minutes after learning of their loved one's death

Damn -- there's a roundup of unnoticed deaths in a magazine? When we visited Paris, we went to the catacombs and I was already thinking about dead bodies while we waited in line when there was a hubbub under a tree. They pulled out the body of a dead woman and I started bawling :( All I could think about was the song "Poor Murdered Woman" ;_;

Imagine finding out that the smell was Denise.

And no one expected her at home or was looking for her :( i can't take it!

Happens quite a bit in the UK and in the West. A product of the callous, cruel societies we live in.

this is what i get for reading the dystopia thread. i thought i could take it but maybe it's 2 much dystopia 4 me

xp yeah, and the isolation that some people find themselves in after their working lives are over

Sorry to all, please don't read if its too much.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65055405

This is the case that killed me a bit.

And look at this detail:

"After Sheila died, her rent stopped being paid, so Peabody sent letters, emails and left voicemails. But in the following year, no-one visited to check up on her. This is despite her always paying her rent on time since she'd moved into the flat in 2014.

Instead, without having spoken to Sheila, Peabody applied for universal credit to be paid directly to it on her behalf. It did this via a government scheme called Alternative Payment Arrangements, which is intended for tenants struggling to pay their bills."

i clicked and then felt like i owed it to sheila to keep reading. i'm glad her unfortunate situation led to reducing the number of properties managers have to manage by 50%.

doesn't anyone clean the offices at night at Wells Fargo???

Denise used to

The one bright side of the story is that apparently Wells Fargo doesn't conduct surveillance on their workers at their desks...?

sweaty trump in an empty barn rambling incoherently is the very definition of dystopia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXqKtmU1ieM

I thought about this thread the other day when I saw a police SUV driving down a highway that was fully covered in a "Now Hiring!" advertisement

2 much dystopia 4 me

a discarded track from Newpower Soul, surely

if i died in my apartment i think it would be quite some time before my beautiful corpse was discovered. like, weeks. good chance to test the whole 'will a starving cat eat a dead human' concept tho

also my door opens outward (?!) and i'm pretty sure the landlady has lost the key, so it's gonna take a little extra effort to get in

just cause they're dead doesn't mean they don't have company

A Russian mother-of-four slept with the mummified corpse of her husband for nearly four years – and performed occult rituals inspired by an ancient Egyptian god, police said.

The woman, identified only as 50-year-old Svetlana, shared a bed with her husband Vladimir’s desiccated remains and had forbidden her children from telling anyone about him on pain of being shipped off to an orphanage or a mental health facility, according to reporting by the news site 78.ru.

The 49-year-old husband collapsed and died after a domestic dispute in December 2020, during which the wife reportedly yelled at the man and wished him death.

If I ever have another dog a doggy door is an absolute necessity for these situations.

Speaking of which.. a cautionary tale of an aging population and virtually no immigration

Nearly 40,000 people died home alone in Japan this year, report says

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyx6wwp5d5o

i used to be really afraid of dying alone. i'm less afraid now. the value of my life isn't determined by the manner and circumstances of my death. i stuck with my ex-wife for a long time because she was the person i wanted to grow old and die with. i left her because i couldn't think of anything else to do while i was with her but grow old and die. so maybe i grow old and die alone. i don't regret abandoning a stable, middle-class life, even though my life is now precarious, terrifying, and shitty.

my main memory of Disney is waiting in line for 45 minutes to take my two small kids on the tea cup ride, while in front of us was a guy in his 60s, on his own, who took up four tea cups and filmed himself the whole time on a i-Pad.

Nearly 40,000 people died home alone in Japan this year, report says

(We can be like they are) Come one, baby.

actually dying at home alone isn't what bothers me -- that seems inevitable. it's the 'nobody missed you and you rotted and maggots ate your corpse' part (RIP Sheila)

and Denise

my main memory of Disney is waiting in line for 45 minutes to take my two small kids on the tea cup ride, while in front of us was a guy in his 60s, on his own, who took up four tea cups and filmed himself the whole time on a i-Pad.

― fetter, Friday, August 30, 2024 5:11 PM

living his best life

Goodyear HOA fines homeowner for providing free water to neighbors

David Martin works out of his garage, making “one-of-a-kind” sneakers, but what he’s doing on his driveway is creating a bit of controversy in his Goodyear neighborhood.

“I don’t feel like I am doing anything wrong,” said Martin. “I think I am doing what we’re supposed to do, which is taking care of the people around us.”

Four years ago, during the COVID crisis, Martin and his wife set up a free water stand in front of their house as a goodwill gesture, inviting neighbors, kids, and delivery drivers to stop by daily to grab a cold one.

“I figured, what better way to be an asset to community than cold water,” said Martin.

The free water stand was such a hit that the Martins kept it going, stocking up on water while paying for most of it out of their own pocket.

Some neighbors have also stepped up to help out.

“Every year, I am sure I get about 30-40 flats of water,” said Martin. “Water sometimes appears at the front door, and there are two flats. I don’t know who dropped them off. It’s just a surprise, it’s fun.”

But the goodwill gesture appears to have hit a snag.

Back in May, the Martins received a notice from FS Residential, the management company that oversees the Canyon Trails Homeowners’ Association. They were cited for storing items in plain view and were fined $50.

The fines were increased to $100 monthly for non-compliance in June, July, and August.

“It’s absolutely asinine; I don’t understand,” said Martin. “I’m sorry. I don’t care that it’s blue and gray, and my house is tan and brown; it’s a water cooler with cold water for the community.”