End Times Internet Content

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I don't really know where else to put this, but I find the whole callous laugh-it-up coverage of the titanic sub weirdly disturbing. And tbc I have no special sympathy for the people, but there's still something horrific about joking about people being crushed to death at the bottom of the ocean, not to mention that the jokes were flying when people believed they were still alive (but certain to die). Feels about two steps removed from torture as entertainment.

I think it's inevitable that people would make bad taste jokes about something that is simultaneously so horrifying and so ridiculous, and I don't think it's a new thing, I remember people making bad taste 9/11 jokes in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. What makes it feel disturbing and like the end times is maybe that there's not as much of a clear demarcation between the public and private reaction anymore - i.e. people were making the 9/11 jokes to two or three other people in person, but gags about the sub appear next to tweets about the rescue attempt on twitter.

there's also a thing were some people seem unwilling to say 'yes, this joke is wrong and mean, but it's still funny' and back themselves into the position of arguing that it's actually good that these people died, this kind of totalitarian mindset where all of your thoughts and actions must be ideologically correct, I think it's healthier to just acknowledge that sometimes things are both indefensible and funny

Humor helps us bounce back. Rudy taught us that.

I know it's not a new phenomenon, you had stuff like the Darwin Awards - but I always hated the Darwin Awards because of this smug moralizing aspect - if you're going to get cheap laughs at other people's expense then whatever, it's pointless to be sanctimonious about this stuff, but don't pretend that you're the good person and they actually deserve it - this stuff is funny precisely *because* it's wrong to find it funny, but people want to have their cake and eat it.

"I remember people making bad taste 9/11 jokes in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. "

I don't? But also I don't remember people making 9/11 jokes while the towers were on fire, which is almost what this felt like.

I think your analysis is otm though.

I also think there's something to be said for moral habits, or moral negative habits, or maybe there's a better word for it, but basically the idea that even if it might actually be funny, it's better not to indulge the impulse, like it's ok to have some internal boundaries about what you're going to encourage yourself to laugh about?

I find it all a bit off putting as well, especially knowing that the 19 year old didn't really want to do it. but I also think that a lot has happened in the last decade to expose billionaires as terrible and hateful people, so maybe the average person's relationship to them has changed a bit. also hard to express sympathy given everything we've heard since about this thing being a death trap, plus there was probably like an 8-figure sum spent trying to find thes idiots, which we probably could've done something nice with

People also cheered on anti-vaxxers who died of covid (the herman cain awards). This is just what america is like. People’s suffering is an enjoyable spectacle so long as they “deserve” it.

The right wing has their own version of course. In fact, there was a study that found “just desserts” was a central part of conservative moral reasoning—for many, the punishment of the wicked was more important than mercy toward the unfortunate. You see this even in like rapture theology. It’s central to what the American right is all about.

But now the left is like this too! And the mainstream. There is not a vision of the common good just a constant paranoia that someone, somewhere is getting away with something.

"I remember people making bad taste 9/11 jokes in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. "

I don't? But also I don't remember people making 9/11 jokes while the towers were on fire, which is almost what this felt like.

this was in the UK so maybe the reaction was different here, also I was a 16 year old boy at the time so most of my peers were in the demographic most likely to be making edgelord jokes. It feels weird to think that younger generations have never experienced that gap between the 'official' response to an event (even in the UK the media after 9/11 was almost 100% solemn and earnest and following the party line with very few exceptions) and the reaction in real life where people were also making jokes, or making arguments about it being due to American foreign policy. I remember a similar thing when Princess Diana died died, but nowadays the jokes and the official media updates are both side by side on twitter or wherever.

it’s bizarre how it’s the number one news story, who actually gives a shit

(submarine farters)

"I know it's not a new phenomenon"

I think you might find people making disrespectful humour about death goes goes back further than the Darwin awards and the www

a friend of mine played "NYC''s Like A Graveyard' as part of his dj set on the very night of 9/11 (this was in the UK so he just got tutted and frowned at, not beaten up)

This isn’t gallows humor it’s gleeful blood lust because the victims are considered unworthy. It does nothing to mitigate the enormous damage done by billionaires, it just makes the world that much more hateful.

People also cheered on anti-vaxxers who died of covid (the herman cain awards)

well sure but this was a time when right-wing ideology was directly getting people killed and/or disabled for life so yes there is something cathartic about watching people who are actively trying to get people killed by Covid dying from it themselves

Yeah sure always an excuse

I’m sure that kind of attitude encouraged people to get vaccinated in order to protect their neighbors

it’s bizarre how it’s the number one news story, who actually gives a shit

I actually did mean to say tending their garments there and if you’re smart you will understand why

keep patting yourself on the back

lol sorry that was a totally out of line post directed at treeship

a big problem imo has been how unfunny so much of it is. in the olde days you merely had to have a Take. now you need to have a Joke, and so many ppl are terrible at it

and when it crosses the line from dry wit into mean-spirited har-har, well, therein lies the problem

there is literally nothing you could say, no attitude you could take, and no amount of hard evidence you could show to encourage these people to get vaccinated. the mindset that we can simply "educate" people out of their harmful views directly led to them transforming their entire personality among the most hateful and ignorant people on the planet. so yeah it's rude to make fun of these people but I wouldn't say it's exactly inappropriate.

ilx crossed this line around the time the second 'what's on your ipod' thread was started xp

ffs!

I also think there's something to be said for moral habits, or moral negative habits, or maybe there's a better word for it, but basically the idea that even if it might actually be funny, it's better not to indulge the impulse, like it's ok to have some internal boundaries about what you're going to encourage yourself to laugh about?

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Friday, 23 June 2023 20:25 (eighteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think there's something to be said for taboos where there are certain things it's wrong to say or do to someone no matter how bad a person they are, rather than the no bad tactics, only bad targets pov where it's ok to do anything to someone if they have it coming because everyone has it coming from someone's perspective, and if you have a community where instead of taboos that are generally observed you have every individual making their own subjective decisions about who has it coming then it's going to get unpleasant very quickly.

I can't read your dull hand-wringing bullshit posts any more, soref

I mean look I'm not gonna defend big pharma here but there really were a lot of very smart people working around the clock to develop and thoroughly test a vaccine which literally saved millions of lives, not to mention all the nurses and doctors who worked their asses off pulling double shifts for 2 straight years because you had so many sick people that you had to store the corpses in a meat truck. and for a lot of them their reward was to be harrassed by idiots who can't read a fucking chart. these are the people who, by the way, made fucking Kyle Rittenhouse into a hero. considering the fact that every fucking thing in America has revolved around these morons for the last 7 years is it really any surprise some of that has rubbed off on the rest of us?

re: 9/11 I do recall *some* people making fun of it in private, nobody really dared do it in public though. I remember David Cross getting some accolades for "daring" to put some 9/11 material into his standup act...three years after. but I definitely knew people who joked about it, and I think it was kind of understood that the jokes were more about the way our culture had suddenly made 9/11 the center of everything, how angry and bigoted and stupidly patriotic people got, when at the end of the day the death toll was about the same as a month's worth of traffic accidents, or now a day's worth of Covid in America at it's peak. and of course the sneaking suspicion that whatever America's response to this was, it was gonna be much much worse.

that's kind of the feeling I get from the sub thing, it's not that people are just that cruel but c'mon, *this* being the #1 story in the country for an entire week? give me a break.

I cannot speak for anyone else, but I used to have the idea that all life was sacrosanct and was to be valued at all costs, would even say it was a core moral value, and there was a point at which that changed - maybe a minor change, but an important one.

I think maybe the crunch point was when I realised that a million humans were dead in Iraq, and a hundred thousand dead in the UK from benefit cuts, and nobody in the government or the media, or even the majority of the public of the UK cared at all, even mentioning that our ruling class are in a very literal sense mass murderers was considered both insane and impolite. There was a drive to be kind and be nice to politicians and journalists. And now you see the same thing with the migrant boats, none of them give a shit about all of these people suffering and dying, and there's nothing I can do to make them ever care.

If I ever joke about billionaires dying, then this is the context. Billions of people are suffering and dying, often because of them, so what is the value of a human life, exactly? Am I breaking a moral principle by not worrying that whether I'm paying those five lives enough respect? I honestly don't know, but I certainly don't feel it as keenly as I did.

tbh I'm loath to generalise about these things. everything is way more case-by-case basis than is often made out. in this case...these people did include some very rich individuals - nobody should be that rich, we all know this - and they died through a clear and very public case of hubris, but there has been a notable rush to express gleeful and arguably cruel humour towards some people who, in quite a silly way, were simply seeking the limits of experience in a fairly non-horrible (except to themselves) way. not that it's bad to crack a joke if one affords itself, but there's been a real social media goldrush on this, just a bit unseemly idk

I sometimes lurk on far right twitter and you should see the absolute glee they take in hundreds of refugees dying.

I've heard people say the left shouldn't stoop to that kind of thing, "they go low, we go high" sort of thing. But there's no referee and we are being kicked in the balls.

I don't really understand that take, it's not like laughing at rich people die on a submarine is a political tactic, it's just pure schadenfreude. Nothing to do with going low/high.

my primary was looking for information on shelf-stable food, and it turns out the best resources for that information on the internet are prepper sites. they got a video she can watch which will tell her the exact date the coming race war will begin. so that's a good sign.

The far right’s worldview is rooted in hatred, exclusion, and ressentiment.

Hopefully liberals and the left can do better than that.

xp

everything is way more case-by-case basis than is often made out.

you were otm with this imago. most of the comparisons moral objectors have brought up in various threads have been patently ludicrous (torture, capital punishment). I know soref wasn't really comparing this event to 9/11, but even broaching it in this context is kind of ridiculous.

it is amusing that there's this prevailing narrative that comedy is now too timid & woke but it used to be dangerous and taboo-busting and therefore funnier

the submarine stuff is on a different plane of absurdity. It's not even taboo or schadenfreude. Just ridiculous on its face.

I saw someone on twitter compare it to the segway owner dying after accidently driving his segway over a cliff, which feels like an apt comparison, it's an inherently comic situation

I mean 'segway owner' as in the owner of the company that made segways, in the unlikely event anyone here wasn't familiar with this event, not just a guy who owned a segway

idk treesh it seems to me that liberals and the left actually advocate policies that will genuinely help people, not to mention the future of the planet itself, while the right has spent 3 years trying to get as many people killed from Covid as possible and has now pivoted to a political ideology which revolves around crying about trans people and getting mad at beer companies. maybe once the left actually introduces legislation to force billionaires into metal death traps we can talk

there is literally nothing you could say, no attitude you could take, and no amount of hard evidence you could show to encourage these people to get vaccinated. the mindset that we can simply "educate" people out of their harmful views directly led to them transforming their entire personality among the most hateful and ignorant people on the planet. so yeah it's rude to make fun of these people but I wouldn't say it's exactly inappropriate.

― frogbs

frogbs i think we're on the same page here but i think we gotta clarify but what you mean by "these people". like, in terms of herman cain? i think you right, he was actively disseminating false propaganda that left those who believed it at a much greater risk of dying from a preventible disease. is his dying of that same disease _justice_? no, absolutely not, that's not what "justice" looks like. does it help mitigate the risk caused by the propaganda cain and others promoted? yes, it does. again, we're talking about, just like in the other thread, how we assess risk. herman cain is visible, and the people who died for no reason other than that they _believed the lies the republicans told them_ are largely invisible. i had a former co-worker who died of covid, i heard. she was right-wing, fundamentalist, kind of a shitty human being. she didn't deserve to die. she's not responsible for the lies people like herman cain told her. people like herman cain are responsible. they have the power, and it's other people who pay the price.

and if you look at the data, the people who _do_ pay the price, who suffer and die from covid, are disproportionately members of marginalized and subaltern group. funnily enough, even though he was politically powerful, so was herman cain. and for that reason alone, you know, i guess i'm more sympathetic regarding his death than i would be to a lot of other propagandists' deaths. i mean a lot of times the victims and abusers are the same people, right?

yeah thinking about it, herman cain's death is a tragedy, he is a victim. he was also an abuser, he hurt a lot of people in his life, he's not someone i think of as a "good person", but he was a victim. a complicated man, i guess.

I just think people should be nice and not callous assholes

Seems like people use politics as an excuse

I just think people should be nice and not callous assholes

― treeship.

treesh i love you but if i had a sig file this would be in it. it's... seriously, "people should be nice" is not an adequate response to the shit the right is doing right now. we need a little more than "people should be nice" right now.

treeship bawled throughout the opening of Magnolia

I just don’t think laughing at people suffocating to death is meaningfully confronting “the right.” just bc they are rich—doesn’t really seem like it follows

my wife (who for context is not a westerner) often laughs at me for being moralistic (in a progressive way) - she thinks it's down to my Catholic education,

Perhaps this is my hangup. I grew up in a deeply Catholic household but one that was not *at all* conservative. My mom works with migrants helping them prepare their asylum applications. I am not a churchgoer today but growing up my experience of Christianity was, I think, just super different from that of most Americans.

xxp it would have been kind of funny if they still had internet access on the sub and were all sitting there sadly scrolling through the mean tweets as the oxygen ran out

xp the death pool is fucked and ilx is fucked

I "won" the death pool a couple of year ago and felt bad about it, won't play again. think nobody started the thread this year, and no great loss afaic

hi-fives on growing up in a culturally Catholic politically progressive household treesh, I always thank it for making me a "good person" but have to admit it also fucked me up in a load of ways I'm only just becoming aware of.

I was raised Catholic as well, I don't know if that's where this squeamishness come from - the idea that you can judge particular acts as wrong, but to judge a person in total as good or bad is presumptuous and something only God can do? If there's no God then there's no higher authority than us, so it makes no sense to say you're not qualified to judge someone

You don’t judge, just say things like “bless his heart,” or “the Lord loves us all.”

While saying something negative, to sugar the pill, to deflect from the negativity.

no see that's the conservative way, progressive catholics are not allowed to have any bad feelings about anyone, let alone express them

I was raised Catholic as well, I don't know if that's where this squeamishness come from - the idea that you can judge particular acts as wrong, but to judge a person in total as good or bad is presumptuous and something only God can do? If there's no God then there's no higher authority than us, so it makes no sense to say you're not qualified to judge someone

― he thinks it's chinese money (soref)

i think judgement should come from knowledge and experience. for instance i don't really have the knowledge or experience to say whether a submersible design is fundamentally safe or not, so i wouldn't make that judgement!

no see that's the conservative way, progressive catholics are not allowed to have any bad feelings about anyone, let alone express them

― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Friday, June 23, 2023 5:53 PM (thirty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yes! Love the sinner, hate the sin… but mostly love the sinner. This is how I was raised. I still think this is a good perspective.

Love loves to love love — james joyce. A fellow heretic raised in the jesuit tradition

I understand this makes people cringe uncontrollably.

just imagine ned flanders but into feminism instead of the bible

Ok. No

I do love everyone but I prefer lofi house music and confessional poetry

I do think that pushing all negative thoughts down is probably not a good long term strategy for life, and it's also conditioned me to avoid conflict even if that means fucking things up. so I'm not going to celebrate it.

Hm

you don't push them down, you reify them as confessional poetry, duh

I think it would be somewhat different if, like, the guy used slave labor to build the components for the sub and the laborers killed him in an uprising, or even like deliberately sabotaged the sub so he would die. I'm definitely not saying "they go low we go high," I just don't see any actual political content here. This seems like just enjoying the absurd death of someone we don't like (but let's be honest had never heard of a few weeks ago) for that internet dopamine hit of the moment. Not saying any of you are terrible people if you did that, it just makes me uneasy to indulge in, like maybe I'd just rather not train by brain to seek pleasure from that kind of thing. That's all.

I rejoiced when Scalia died because I thought it meant we'd get a liberal justice on the court (obviously it didn't but that's another matter). I was happy because he had effectively oppressed people and it meant a chance for people to be less oppressed. I don't think there's anything wrong with that type of "enjoyment of death."

And I'll admit it, the segway creator segwaying into death by literally segwaying off a cliff was funny.

I don't think the LOLs came from people wanting to be 'political', but laughing at the absurdism of the situation and the hubris of the founder/most of the passengers.

the only reason people keep pointing out "hey, seriously, fuck this guy!" is in response to the "guys, we should be better than this" self-serving piety that emerged all over the web a few days ago.

I mean, I do think there is value in pointing out "hey guys, this is the type of person who gets hard-working civilians killed on a daily basis, and usually there's no repercussions for their regulation-defying, cost-cutting measures, but hey, this time - there were!"

Anyway.

They were roasting the shit out of the Titanic in the newspaper right after it sank, man. This is not a new development, or a chance to stroke your chin about the dangers of social media. https://t.co/1BjP73SMJZ pic.twitter.com/wpZGmw7Hmk

— Cooper Lund (@cooperlund) June 23, 2023

it's hard for me to avoid a chuckle when the oligarchy ever so briefly eats itself

lock thread

My view is this is bad if the joke is not funny, good if the joke is funny. Also, I get to decide which is which, thanks.

I don't think the LOLs came from people wanting to be 'political', but laughing at the absurdism of the situation and the hubris of the founder/most of the passengers.

the only reason people keep pointing out "hey, seriously, fuck this guy!" is in response to the "guys, we should be better than this" self-serving piety that emerged all over the web a few days ago.

I mean, I do think there is value in pointing out "hey guys, this is the type of person who gets hard-working civilians killed on a daily basis, and usually there's no repercussions for their regulation-defying, cost-cutting measures, but hey, this time - there were!"

― sad Mings of dynasty (Neanderthal), Saturday, 24 June 2023 14:22 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

think this is otm really

Yes! Love the sinner, hate the sin… but mostly love the sinner. This is how I was raised. I still think this is a good perspective.

Love loves to love love — james joyce. A fellow heretic raised in the jesuit tradition

I understand this makes people cringe uncontrollably.

― treeship., Friday, June 23, 2023 3:38 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

cringe is fine! i'm basically pro-cringe

i came from a similar background as you, honestly. my grandfather was a lawyer who graduated from a jesuit law college. it case kind of a long shadow over our family.

i don't have a problem with jesuit ideals. what i do have a problem with is the way i've seen catholic ideals play out in practice. frankly seeing people do moral philosophy while looking the other way at child abuse has made me very skeptical of principled people their principles.

it's something i've struggled with for a long time. i've had a long, i don't know, i guess you might call it a "spiritual journey" if you were so inclined.

and where i wound up, is in 2016, i was an episcopalian, and a lot of my approach to, i don't know, ethics, morality, whatever, is shaped by that experience and seeing how that played out in practice. their philosophy, their approach towards things, was very similar to what you are espousing here. i liked them, really. they were kind, compassionate, their intentions were good.

in practice, though... i mean, when you want to love everybody, you wind up making a lot of compromises. so one of the clergy at the church was a lesbian, and she wasn't exactly _closeted_, but she was very careful about the circumstances in which she talked about that. because, you know, some people at the church weren't really cool with the homosexuals, and you don't want to cause friction, you don't want to cause controversy. i mean most of the people there were older people, younger people tend not to... find a home in organized religion.

and that's the thing, you can "welcome everybody" but that doesn't mean everybody will show up. and to me, particularly when you're dealing with mainline protestantism which is, you know, clearly dying, i was interested in... i mean i had no scope, i thought _everything_ was within my sphere of interest and influence. so it was a concern for me, why is mainline protestantism dying? these are good people! they have good values! they preach and practice love! why is the face of christianity hatred and bigotry rather than love and kindness?

and ultimately i decided the flaw was that, like. they were trying to build a community that consisted of both queer people and people who wanted queer people dead. even when i was just a "really good ally", to me, that seemed like a problem. i'm a data analyst and to me things like boundaries, scope, are really relevant, but they're also relevant in my personal life. i was raised in a sort of universalist belief system, everything was my responsibility, everything was my _business_, that was the liberalism i learned and embraced, even though i wouldn't have named it as such.

another thing i was taught was that, you know, the community of christians, we are the body of christ. it's no use sitting around waiting for miracles, _we_ are the miracle, _we_ are the love of jesus christ, with _us_, all things are possible.

in retrospect, it's really obvious to me that i was playing god. there are a _hell of a lot of things_ that aren't possible. and one of those things, one of those things is having a community of _everyone_. as humans, we need boundaries. we need to understand what we can do, whose lives we can ultimately transform.

i've touched a lot of lives, like, i don't know how many people there are out there who believe that i literally changed their life. and i understand that in theory but in practice, i'm just out here being me. that's all i can really do, i've worked in ways that are obvious and perhaps less obvious to transform myself, and if other people see that and transform themselves, that brings me joy. yeah, i am being the change i want to see in the world, sure, but at the same time i'm not out to change the world. i've tried taking that on and it fucked me up and it hurt me. science won't change them, looks like i can't change them.

loving other people, i did that in a way that hurt me and didn't help them. and so i had to change how i loved. i don't love everybody equally. i don't feel like i can do that. i don't have infinite love. i'm not god. and even those people i love most, if they do things that are wrong, well, i have to let them do that _and_ let them face the consequences.

and that's what love looks like to me. maybe that's horrifying to you, but i think... in the long run, it's helpful to understand that we all have limits, even our love, it has to have limits or it's not love, it's poison.

Also, in honor of this revive, I have had ChatGPT write an op-ed in the style of William F. Buckley, Jr. on this topic:

The Coarsening of Society: A Harbinger of the End Times

By William F. Buckley, Jr.

In the annals of human history, there have always been moments that reflect the moral decay and decline of a civilization. These moments serve as stark reminders that we are inching closer to the precipice of societal collapse. One such moment, tragically highlighted recently, is the callous and tasteless jesting surrounding the deaths of billionaires in the Titan submarine implosion.

We find ourselves living in an era where mockery and derision have become tools of amusement and entertainment. The boundaries of decency and respect have been eroded, making way for a culture that revels in the misfortune of others, particularly those who have achieved great success. It is a sad commentary on our times when the demise of human beings is met with jeering laughter and gleeful celebration.

The billionaire victims of the Titan submarine implosion were not just individuals who amassed vast fortunes; they were human beings with families, friends, and aspirations. They were pioneers who, through their ingenuity and hard work, contributed to the betterment of society in various ways. To reduce their deaths to a punchline is a grave disservice to their legacies and an affront to the very principles upon which our civilization was built.

The crux of the matter lies not solely in the jokes themselves, but rather in what they signify—a coarsening of our collective moral fiber. We have become desensitized to the suffering of others, finding amusement in their pain, regardless of their station in life. This is indicative of a society teetering on the precipice of its own demise. When empathy and compassion are supplanted by cruelty and indifference, we risk losing our humanity and the values that have sustained us for centuries.

Moreover, the jests about the billionaire deaths in the Titan submarine implosion reveal a deeper malaise—the growing resentment and envy towards those who have achieved extraordinary success. Rather than celebrating their accomplishments, we have succumbed to a toxic narrative that vilifies wealth and denigrates success. This divisive rhetoric only serves to exacerbate the fractures within our society, pitting us against each other and sowing the seeds of discontent and discord.

It is essential to remember that a society's strength lies in its ability to foster a spirit of aspiration and achievement, not in tearing down those who have succeeded. Mocking the deaths of billionaires, or anyone for that matter, undermines the very fabric of our civilization. It is a testament to our moral bankruptcy and our inability to appreciate the virtues of dignity, empathy, and respect.

The jokes about the tragic deaths of billionaires in the Titan submarine implosion should be seen as a wake-up call, a warning sign that we are drifting perilously close to the edge. As conservatives, we must be the custodians of our cultural values and defend the principles that have made our civilization great. We must reject the corrosive forces of cynicism and degradation, replacing them with a renewed commitment to decency, compassion, and intellectual rigor.

Let us stand against the coarsening of our society and resist the temptation to revel in the misfortune of others. We must strive for a higher standard, one that upholds the dignity and worth of every human life. For if we fail to do so, we risk consigning ourselves to the depths of our own demise—the end times of a civilization that lost sight of its own humanity.

Just here to pop in and say that by virtue of their wealth and hubris, the imploded submarine people were actually committing violence— their wealth came only at the suffering of others, and any other way of looking at it is completely off-the-charts bullshit

it’s end times internet content not because people are being “mean” but because how did so many people get “hypnotized” into caring about this shit??????

compulsive opinion having and sharing

xp many people have retirement funds and things wrapped up in all kinds of unethical businesses. Few are not implicated in the violence of wealth extraction. Where is the line where people become “responsible” for it to the point where we dehumanize them?

I mean, whatever. Absent an actual movement for socialism throwing stones at rich people seems useless and not even political.

Sorry our memes didn't amount to Tiananmen Square.

We tried

xp many people have retirement funds and things wrapped up in all kinds of unethical businesses. Few are not implicated in the violence of wealth extraction. Where is the line where people become “responsible” for it to the point where we dehumanize them?

i mean there isn't a _line_, why do you need there to be a _line_? are you worried that you'll end up on the wrong side of it? i mean i can understand the base fear here. first they came for the billionaires, then they came for the millionaires, then they came for me and there were no billionaires to speak for me or whatever. you're not, though, a temporarily embarrassed billionaire. you're not. i'm just going to assume that everybody here is part of the oppressed underclass and people who think spending $250 million dollars to go underwater in an incredibly poorly designed submersible are not.

i'm not saying that to dehumanize the dead people. they're human beings. i mean what i'm getting here is that you have a hard time thinking of yourself as being fundamentally in solidarity with people who openly celebrate the deaths of other human beings. is that a fair way of putting it?

i think that's a valid concern and a concern worth dealing with. i mean that's what part of an "actual movement for socialism" looks like, it does require _sides_. you gotta be able to advocate for _us_ versus _them_. and yeah that's uncomfortable, that's uncomfortable for me. i'd prefer to think that there is no "us" and "them", but when it comes to issues of systemic justice, i just don't think the evidence supports that. and you can say, you know, a plague on both your houses, and stand where? stand with who? by myself i'm very weak. very vulnerable. i need people i trust.

memes aren't a revolution. memes aren't a substitute for justice, schadenfreude isn't a substitute for justice, but i think memes have a better chance of getting us there than trying to treat everybody equally. someone like, say, f.d. signifier, his voice isn't as powerful as jeff bezos, and to me that's a perversion of justice, his voice should be _more_ powerful than bezos.

i mean in some sense memes are the voice of the unheard. and if wishing violence on billionaires leads to violence against billionaires... to be blunt i'm basically ok with that. because right now, systems of power and the people who control them are inflicting a lot of violence on a lot of people i care about. getting people like, well, not to point fingers but people like _you_ to recognize that is important and it's frustrating and it's really, really hard. and it's not something i have any control over, ultimately. i recognize that. you have control over your own life. i think it would be nice, though, for us to be on the same side, despite any differences we have. because socialist revolution needs a _lot of people_ to support it, it's not something i'm personally going to lead. it's not _my_ revolution.

Kate otm

compared to the condescending platitudes of "thoughts and prayers", to me a lot of the ribbing is the opposite of de-humanizing -- pointing out someone's incongruously absurd cartoon-like behavior doesn't really work without the base assumption that that person is a human being.

and in terms of having a meaningful effect on the world, I'm pretty convinced whatever twitter warriors kept Trump's thumbs busy bloviating instead of on some nuclear football is pretty meaningful!

in line with that, for me the humanizing thing about cracking jokes in this situation is that it highlights the law that "actions matter," a law that many people are flouting today, causing very real damage to a great number of people, species, etc. sure most of us are complicit to an extremely small degree or whatever, but we're all going to need to believe in "actions matter" if we want to believe in ourselves and our future here imo. a billionare paying 250 million to go undersea in a broken tin can is funny, their death is funny, and it feels good to joke about it because the balance there is sooo far off of "actions matter" that it feels good to see the pendulum swing the other way for once, because there is a great amount of energy in the world today being dedicated to making it seem like actions don't matter, that only the market matters. the cynical side here is the one that begs us to keep suspending our belief in actions mattering, to deny the material reality and limits and wealth we all share together.

Good discussion. I am also starting to remember something else I take issue with, a certain prominent strain of religious opinion that it is just as bad to think something or by extension to say something as to do it, and it fact is worse if one is not right with the man upstairs as who among us etc.

And so making fun of the arrogant I Know Better Than the Experts sunk CEO is in fact even more arrogant, DO U SEE?

Every day as Warren G

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0LeL9BUPtA

We might need a thread devoted to making fun of billionaires killed doing risky/dumb shit:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/26/business/james-crown-obit/index.html

Is this a trend? Let's hope so.

Among his many roles, Crown was chairman and CEO of his family business, the investment firm Henry Crown and Company. In addition to serving on the JPMorgan board, he was also a board director at General Dynamics. Crown had served on JPMorgan’s board since the early 1990s.

The longer I ponder this trend, the more I find that I'm agin' it. Billionaires stupidly killing themselves en masse seems like a net positive on the face of it until you consider the billions that will then be siphoned to their Blink*182 fail(step)sons. It's an imperfect world but it can always be imperfect-er.