The worshipping of the self-made man and entrepreneurship in popular American culture
I think I was just too young and fashionable, maybe I was one of those guys that saw themselves as a “temporarily embarrassed billionaire”… then got old enough to see through the nonsense
Google. It was once a good search engine. Now I find myself getting only the most irrelevant results based on my keywords and more often than not an advanced search turns up nothing of value
It went downhill when they got rid of search within results, I don’t know why they did that
Me neither! Really frustrates me when companies remove good features for no apparent reason
They had a reason; money. It’s always about money. The worse the results, the more time you have to spend searching for what you want, the more revenue they can generate.
You can usually trace all decisions a company makes, good or bad, back to money.
Corey Doctorow’s podcast Understood: Who broke the internet? does an amazing job of explaining this. It’s only like 5 episodes and worth everyone’s time.
The United States government and the United States citizens.
Growing up I was taught about all these checks and balances. How the government is slow and that’s good because it makes sure people get what they really want. Come to find out in just one presidential term, this one guy just executes executive orders left and right and just gets things done.
I thought U.S citizens would vote in their best interests but they would glady vote for a facist who’s against their best wishes.
Google. Do no evil
Republicans. When I was a child, slogans like “fiscally responsible”, “family values”, “smaller government “ sounded like good things. Republicans always claimed the moral high ground. But they’ve spent my entire adult life proving it as manipulative bullshit for personal greed and power, holding themselves above the law, the worst in humanity, rising to our current flirt with fascism.
vaguely gesturing at everything
Nintendo.
Things got worse once Bowser got ahold of the American castle.
The fun dissolved with Iwata and Reggie gone.
The line to far for me was their retroactive bs patents used to attack Palworld. It’s one thing to be strict on your own systems, but another to do it to others. 80s Nintendo is back and possibly worse than before.
It wasn’t Bowser, it was the finance guys that were placed at the head of the company after Satoru Iwata’s death.
I haven’t played with a switch very much but I think the joysticks are worse than what they made for GameCube. I am under the impression that switch has what amounts to a directional pad underneath a joystick. Like that Gameboy peripheral with the lights, magnifier, and joystick that clips over the D pad. The joystick is there on the switch but output is only an analog 8 directions.
Pardon me if I’m wrong here but what I see with Nintendo is them making bad hardware. I know it’s made for kids but even they deserve better. The switch version of any big AAA game that got a switch port is generally really really dumbed down and looks and runs like garbage. I can’t wait to hear about Cyberpunk 2077 looking and running like garbage again. 5 years after it came out.
The joy cons are legitimately awful to use. The buttons are like needles after a while and the sticks just feel weird on my thumbs. What’s weird is that the switch lite fixed both of those problems. (None of this is about drift lol which is awful and another problem)
None of this is about switch 2. Idk anything about it.
Grown ups.
America.
And my dad.
Elon. Turns out he was always a conman and liar.
At one point, between 2021-2022 I had thought absolutely nothing of him and just thought of him as an eccentric rich person. Even wanted one of his “The Boring Company” flamethrowers because who wouldn’t want a flamethrower? Then comes the election and out comes his true colours. Now there’s no change in hell I’d support him.
So many people sabotage themselves by being bad people and going mask off.
I thought he was a great guy when he loaned those solar panels to the hospital in Puerto Rico. Then he bought Twitter and started firing employees, banning reporters, blocking the api so researchers couldn’t have access. This was the start for me. Jerk has only gotten worse.
Western psychology, and I say this as a former psychologist.
Like so much else, any potential at being a science was bastardized long ago in order to make it an industry focused on getting people productive again instead of focusing on their wellbeing which usually has an inverse relationship to getting them back to work in the short and medium term.
Meanwhile the small population of people that can afford actual psychoanalytic therapy that isn’t throwing pills at them and teaching them coping strategies within 3 covered sessions tend to be the reason so many others are miserable.
For the non-wealthy, mental healthcare in the US is a complete and utter scam that is geared to serve others at your expense and shoehorn you right back into the stressors that got you into therapy. If you need help, you’re out of luck.
Neil Gaiman. He poisoned so much…
In 1994 Neil was at a signing at my university campus. It was a big to-do. My friend, a big fan, came for a signing and whispered a few words.
Suddenly Neil is vaulting the table trying to choke the living shit out of my friend. Friend’s backpedaling, eyes wide, Gaiman’s face a rictus of rage and fury, and then many people jump in and slow it down
Friendo booted, things calm down, minimal mention in the uni rag. Never learned what was said, but now I suspect it was a pretty badly-kept secret for a long time.
You friend didn’t tell you about what was said?
Hu? Oh No, do I want to know?
Predator.
:( - I’m super sorry for the women. Thanks
Humanity.
Hey, I was a fucking kid, OK. I eventually learned.
Law. I was pretty hyped up when i went to university to study it, but the more i learnt on the foundations of it and discovered the people it created, the more i hated it. Now I’m doing completely different things, and i’m glad my parents didn’t force me to keep doing it.
Religion
