I was not prepared for how utterly over engineered it was, but I kind of want to build a cheap knock off version myself. I have this feeling deep in my bones that I could build the actually useful parts in prettier packaging. Make it look like it was designed in 20's or 50's and shit.

Lmao

I'm gonna be honest, the excitement of Obama being elected was real. I understood at the time that the racial aspect was just symbolic, but the symbolism was nonetheless hopeful and felt real. There was a sense that good things could keep piling up. 2008-2011 was a bloomer period despite the recession to me.

About the 10's social justice movement I feel much more ambivalent about. It was too scoldy and moralistic. I actually like and appreciate representation, but now I'm pretty sure is not a viable path of political change. I appreciated MeToo in concept and as something sorely needed, but I definitely felt the gains could have been more solid and I'm not sure if the social media logic of it turned out well. 2017-2020 of BLM was great stuff but in a difficult period. Getting Trump to back down into hiding in a bunker was a sign of something going right. Biden downturn in activism was depressing. I didn't participate in the Palestine movement after Oct 7th but that was too big of a bite to succeed, doesn't mean it wasn't worth a try.

The one thing that feels weird is how sexual politics opened up a lot until the pandemic when transphobic reaction, kinkphobia and tradwifery really kicked up.

P.S. Also, let this be a remembrance of old Reddit of late aughts. The original iteration before gamergate and other reactionary campaigns, it was a nice if techie biased place online. I remember the hacktivists, the Anonymous, Occupy Wall Street, Aaron Swartz, the left libertarians, leftists and progressive circles being quite active on the site during the great recession. It was not a reactionary dump back then. It offered a good exposure to lots of new movements brewing. The internet becoming an outrage machine and Obama leading into reaction was not foreseeable. It's kind of wild how we used to follow authors en masse online. Now we have influencers and the internet is mostly AI slop and the information is becoming enclosed.

Once upon a time, a blogger or am obscure academic could go (relatively) viral and that was cool. The internet used to be a place you could go for an escape instead of being the mainway for interfacing with the society and becoming upset.

Parking reform, open borders, drug legalization and /r/ShitRedditSays were pretty good political influences for the time period. Later /r/chapotraphouse was great not because it was free of bad actors but because it did have a bunch of great posters I've followed elsewhere and it could laught at itself on occasion.

Oh it was just a joke version of Rick and Morty.

I haven't seen it but what's up with the tendency to make quasi franchises out of animated sitcoms? Like making that show look similar to Rizz and Martin or Futurama to The Simpsons.

Not yet, but its hegemony is definitely weakening. No one else is there to step up either. Russia has had its set backs in Ukraine and Syria. China is suffering from an economic bubble of its own and soon will have a declining population. India will be fucked by climate change sooner rather than later. Europe is mostly a threat to itself and migrants.

Anyways rightoids today are much too clownish to run a hegemony properly. Like Elon thinks developmental aid to neighbors of China from the US is DEI and not hegemonic bribes.

It could be that you'd benefit from something more vigorous or frankly stressful. I had a period where I didn't do much besides very leisurely activities - was injured and had to stay in bed, recovered. Not just physically but also had no external demands. My stress tolerance went down and I was hyper all the time, but I started literally playing fps games and high intensity cardio (the kind of where you go hard for a minute or two and have to take a break) to get adrenaline flowing in my body and get used to it again.

Lmao it's still so good