I started to type “western” and then used the word “developed” nation instead, and even then I realize that’s not entirely accurate. Places like Japan and New Zealand have public baths, often with little or no real separation between genders. There’s a famous pic out there of a yakuza woman bathing with her male compatriots. They have a stronger stigma about tattoos than boobs.

Conservatives would absolutely explosively shit themselves if they visited a bathing area in New Zealand, or for that matter any of the many, many nudist communities in the US. You know, those places where we hear about horrible sex crimes that happen every day?

Wait, I’m being told that’s actually churches where the horrible sex crimes happen. Churches where people wear clothes.

I fucking swear, the same people who scream about bathroom “safety” are the same people who think all men are rapists if they so much as see a woman’s ankle and blame victims of assault for what they were wearing.

It’s entirely a modern, “developed” world phenomenon where everything in the world is sexualized to the point that you can’t use the bathroom or shower around other people without feeling weird. That weird feeling is real, and you can’t just hand-wave it away, but it’s socially constructed. I think we should all remember that. There are currently and have been many times and places where people just don’t care nearly as much about each other’s bodies or being seen by others.

When you really think about it, it’s absolutely crazy. We have been wearing clothing for less than the last 100,000 years or so. A blink of an eye evolutionarily. And that was just cold environments. Before that, we had a 4.1-billion year unbroken chain of successful life that as far as we know, never wore clothes or felt shame going to the bathroom.

Most people don’t give a shit. Literally or figuratively.

30% of America represents the majority. Out of that 30%, most are just going along with whatever because they’re dumb and watch media that validates their fears but if the story changed tomorrow they would let it go.

The remaining sliver of this group are the true fucking nutcases who post this kind of stuff like in OP’s image because they really do believe it. Because they are dumber than shit, they don’t think with language, they react to feelings and let their autopilot fill in the blanks and appear functional in society.

They are the absolute loudest and most energetic of every segment, and as such they get seen the most and influence the most people.

This is a broken system and we need help.

While I hate the statues and flags and everything they stand for, how well did that fight help us? Where are we now?

The nation is falling because people can’t figure out where to focus efforts because you all get distracted by emotional appeals and straw tigers and little fiddly bullshit while in the background corporations empowered an army of ravaging orcs who are now in control of the mightiest nation on Earth, laughing at our failed efforts to mobilize towards policy, community and representation, the things that would have prevented this.

I mean, it doesn’t matter now. The whole thing is a footnote in America’s slide into fascism and eventual fall of democracy. But sure, at least we successfully fought a few symbols.

Any amount of time I spend arguing with hysterical leftists about this point just fuels the machine, so I’m not replying nor will I see replies.

This is all so stupid and tragic and you all need to actually do something instead of attacking some rando on Lemmy who thinks we’re not fighting the right fights. I mean, it’s pretty evident we’re not fighting the right fights BECAUSE WE FUCKING LOST EVERYTHING AND ARE STILL BICKERING ON SAFESPACE BUBBLES LIKE THIS.

Also, holy shit that moderation history LOL

You’re not getting well-received here, it’s worth thinking about. Part of growing up and affecting change is acknowledging that you’re also not perfect and you have your own biases that are going to prevent you from communicating your stances effectively and cause you to argue from a place of personal animosity than any wider social good.

When you learn how to argue against your own positions from someone else’s perspective, you will learn how to actually get people to listen to you.

If instead of that, you call anyone who has a different position a “sociopath” it just reeks of someone who can’t get out of their own traumas and emotional reactions enough to actually get people to empathize. Which is sad, but it’s not working.

Go work on yourself.

I am going to do just that, by blocking you and letting you not fume about one dude on the internet who thinks you’re kinda dumb.

I also appreciate the restoration of our ozone layer. I remember there was a time (when above a certain latitude at least) my skin would fucking burn in less than 5 minutes under direct sun, it’s a lot better now but it seems weird we all just kind of collectively forgot about that time when we all nearly ended the world to such a degree that we could feel it outside, then we all reversed course and fixed it mostly.

I wonder if we would be more motivated to fix our current issues if they caused skin burns.

GenX here… first time?

Foreign inflammation of existing sexism and gendered issues on social media has made it so men and women are afraid to be in the same room with each other, leaving behind only the absolute morons on both sides to represent gendered relationships broadly. People aren’t even dating anymore, loneliness on both sides is becoming a lethal epidemic, human relationships are falling and people are suffering for it on a huge scale.

Where once people would have compromised and men and women would have formed relationships understanding each other, we’re now so high-strung that any slight is considered “harassment” or “feminist woke ideology” (whatever they call it on the other side) and everyone is starting to hate each other just for being different from themselves.

Welcome to part of that machine, you’re a member of the club destroying us all, just as bad as the orcs on the right who think you’re trying to take something away from them. Screeching in all caps about being harassed by some general “male presence” just paints a stereotype that I really wish advocates would abandon because all it’s doing is making the division worse and creating harder lines that people won’t cross to understand each other.

It’s more like the wealthy leveraged the poorly educated and mentally deficient segment of society and pit them against everyone else.

It’s not like the left was getting provoked to pass legislation to like, “end redneck culture” or anything (not counting the places they fell for bait like the southern flag and statue distractions) But the the left broadly has been pushing back against capital for decades and making progress, why should we be at all surprised they raised an army in self-defense?

The conservative right is not an even split in this country, there are far less of them than leftists or liberals. They do NOT represent the majority, but again, they leveraged the decency, complacency and naivety of the left to get a foothold into american discourse that will never dislodged because now most people do think the right is some giant monolith. They’re like, less than 20% of the population, and out of that 20% most of them are literally so dim that they would change flags and banners to some new issue tomorrow if led properly. They’re a small band of orcs and we’ve been treating them like a mighty empire of intellectual elves.

Wat

it’s not longer a culture war, but an actual war.

Literally how every war ever started.

I never had a microwave magnetron give out, they last far longer than the plastic housing, plastic handles, hollow frames and thin plastic films over the buttons. I’ve also lost five vacuum cleaners of various brands in the last decade, full on smoke and melted plastic. Only Dyson has lasted more than a decade.

And I also realized that by discussing the durability of branded houseware, I am absolutely too old to be on the internet anymore.

And it all starts from people reading the endless, pointless, contention-filled threads like this, where two sides are arguing bitterly about nonsense, not giving in an inch, and not resolving anything.

What do you mindless drones out there think this is doing to your brain? Has anyone of any gender been helped by reading any of these stupid arguments about sharks and bears?

The answer is no. The younger generation who was raised by these terrible posts and terrible, wastes-of-time arguments and persecution olympics is desperately, chronically ALONE.

So yah, lets all just keep stirring this soup of loneliness as we all train ourselves to stop socializing like humans and view everything through the lense of internet arguments. I’m sure it will start to show positive impact annnnny day now.

What pushes people to grifters is reading endless, pointless internet arguments where neither side is compromising.

This is how we all learned to socialize, in bullshit threads like this, and this is why all you young people are so fucking lonely.

deleted by creator

biblical torture, not medieval!

So like, the same but also involving incest or donkey semen or something?

I answer all unknown callers with “Thank you for calling State Department of Telephone Fraud Investigations, how may I direct your call?” and they tend to hang up lightning fast and not call back for some reason

I was speaking generally of most consumer goods that have cheapened on design and materials, but to address phones…

While the material of the shell was plastic, there were huge differences in both shape, density (bakelite has different compressive properties than polyurethane) as well as engineering.

IE, the shells of lets say, and old 1985 motel phone, were made of pretty thick bakelite or poly plastic, and the insides were made of very simple metal and copper wiring, there were no integrated circuits, there were no moving parts, no computers, no video screens, no charging ports, no boards with parts, they were almost entirely mechanical, the function of the keys only served to send signal tones and didn’t connect to anything more advanced than a switchboard somewhere. That’s why they could withstand a lot of abuse.

Modern electronics, including the rare home landline phones we have now, are made of much thinner polyurethane or styrene shells, they have almost entirely solid-state parts inside, chips and boards that capacitors can come loose from, charging ports that can break off the housing and make shorts in connections, wiring isn’t designed to withstand someone accidentally yanking the whole thing, they have LCD screens and are basically just more fragile in all regards.

The issue has a lot more to do with the wider array of consumer goods though, like vacuum cleaners or microwave ovens and home goods that are supposed to last for years and years, but tend to break after only a couple years, and this is now by design.

Condolences, you will be missed.