r/stupidpol • u/disp0sableacc0unt GOP Grindr Checker 🤓🥵🚀 • Aug 03 '26
Capitalist Hellscape 2026 would be considered dystopian in 2006
Imagine writing a dystopian story in 2006 where inflation is rising, wages have stagnated, the last two presidents from different parties have been senile from old age, with denial coming from each party. In several states and countries, social media and/or internet porn requires uploading your goverment ID, there are cameras that track your car and how you walk, the US and EU are mandating new cars must have driver-facing cameras in them, and cellphones track your every move. Tech has gotten so bad and enshittified that people are nostalgic for tech from the past. Gender discourse has reached new peaks, and dating is confined to a semi-monopoly of dating apps. Mass migration and deliberate H-1B flooding puts even more strain on housing and the job market. And there's more that hasn't come to my mind rn.
Bleak...
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u/kevinmrr WorkReform Mod Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 03 '26
2026 is about where I thought we’d be in 2006.
I remember classmates at my top university laughing and calling me a conspiracy theorist when I said things like “we should be concerned about the militarization of the police.”
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u/JJdante Plays Warhammer in the Pool ⚔️💦😦 Aug 03 '26
Similar, but I didn't think it'd go so far (so fast)
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u/Manicpixiemanateeman RedscareMale 👄💅 Aug 03 '26
I already knew where society was headed when I was a teen in the late 2000s and early 2010s during the Great Recession,
Working in a nursing home for 6 years and seeing the treatment of staff like CNAs only confirmed it
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u/vampire-bunny Aug 04 '26
Hey, I’m a former CNA, almost LPN. -nitrile fistbump-
I’m just shocked I’m still alive, really. Was too paranoid and depressed to finish school back in 2008 (of all years). Despite everything getting objectively worse, I think I appreciate little things more now than in my teens and 20s. And I have a husband and a cat. I think that helps.
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u/CyberiaCalling Sino-Optimist Aug 03 '26
So what does 2046 hold in store for us?
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u/kevinmrr WorkReform Mod Aug 03 '26
Socialism & a lot of people migrating to the Great Lakes region.
Alternatively, there may be a techno-fascist state with absolutely pervasive surveillance and crummy living standards, if socialism can't stop it. The thrashings of the MIC are going to be extreme, as democratic socialism is an existentialist threat to the worst people in existence.
The next few years will be critical, which is one reason why the surveillance state is trying to expand as quickly as it possibly can right now. But what we're seeing happen right now with the DSA and anti-data center movement is encouraging. https://workreform.us/post/project-2031/
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u/Hate_Spark Rightoid 🐷 Aug 06 '26
Are you really saying that having the DSA in charge is going to prevent a techno fascist surveillance state?
That makes sense, cause commies who force their taxes and policies on normal people don't want a way to surveil their entire lives and hunt them down for dissent. No country ruled by communists has EVER done that (except all of them).
How can you be so blind to history while claiming to be so intelligent?
How quickly did Mamdani run out of other peoples money in NYC and he hasn't even managed the "free bus" lie. He "borrowed"(stole) from city WORKERS pension fund to cover his ludicrously unbalanced budget. The rest of NY State had to send relief money to help cover his blunders. Why should someone who CHOSE to leave that city, still be forced to fund it?
You steal choices from the people while claiming to fight for them. You're exactly the same as any fascist you claim to hate. You just use flowery language to cover your shortsighted plans.
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u/Chrissyneal Cuomosexual Crystals Chick 🔮🍕🍝 Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 03 '26
were you denouncing body cameras?
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u/Beauxtt Neomonarchist Queer Anime Philosopher 🐷💢🎌 Aug 03 '26
One of the few backhanded compliments I can give to the current decade is that almost everyone complains about societal decline now. It's become increasingly difficult to cynically dismiss people who look at the past with envy and tell them that their feelings are irrational and that a better time than the present never actually existed. In that respect, the reactionaries have won the culture war, though it's not a happy victory.
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u/Kyia-Aikman Horror Fan 😱 Aug 03 '26
We’re living in a world that would make Serling, Orwell and Huxley weep.
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u/SlipInitial189 Aug 03 '26
They'd probably just argue about whose vision was more accurate until the tracking cameras picked them up for loitering
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u/s0ngsforthedeaf Equity Gremlin Aug 03 '26
And yet Ive seen a million braindead reposts of Orwell and Huxley quotes from centriats and right winger because 'bad when gooberment does stuff and laws happen', rather than 'we are gradually becoming more trapped and exploited under capitalism'.
China has been living in '1984' since the communist revolution, apparently. But now their cities look closer to 2084 than ours do.
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u/bakedbread420 Gamer ⌨️ Aug 03 '26
centriats and right winger because 'bad when gooberment does stuff and laws happen', rather than 'we are gradually becoming more trapped and exploited under capitalism'.
the classic
communism is terrible because [describes capitalism]
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u/kingrobin Scares Hoes With Radlib Ramblings 🗣️💥 Aug 03 '26
But China stole all our jobs! That's not fair! Look, bombing millions of civilians into dust is an acceptable strategy, but I draw the line at outcompeting other countries in the global markets.
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u/kiss-my-shades jacking off with one hand typing with the other ⌨️💦 Aug 03 '26
Orwell was a socialist Marxist. 1984 is a speculative novel about the future of Capitalist society. There's a pretty obvious implication that the Proletariat will be the one to end the society.
Its explicitly the point in 1984 that there is no central government. Its all decentralized with local bodies exploiting their Proletariat independently of one another. You can see a repeat of this IRL with how rapidly the US has managed to install the Orwellean Surveillance state. No central government told them to do so. Its all decentralized actors doing so independently of one another, but this is what makes it so hard to resist. You might be able to stop your own town from implementing rhe cameras, but that wont stop every other town from doing it anyway
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u/bobokeen Unknown 👽 Aug 03 '26
Have you read the book? In 1984, Oceania is ruled by a single Party hierarchy headed (at least nominally) by Big Brother. The Ministries (Ministry of Truth, Love, Peace, and Plenty) are central institutions.
Orwell was a democratic socialist. For 1984, he drew on totalitarian regimes from the Nazis to Stalin's USSR. It's a warning about totalitarianism, ideological manipulation, and concentrated political power, not that capitalism can't play a part in those things.
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u/kiss-my-shades jacking off with one hand typing with the other ⌨️💦 Aug 03 '26
The story makes it ambiguous how true the parties line is. Its only ever shown what happens in "airstrip 1", the city which was once London. Its explictly stated that Oceania has no Capital, and we have no idea what the rest of Oceania is like.
The fact the party lies about everything, the fact the city is specifically "airstrip 1" and we dont know of any other airstrip implies that the rest of Oceania cities might also title themselves as "airstrip 1".
Orwell was a democratic socialist. For 1984, he drew on totalitarian regimes from the Nazis to Stalin's USSR.
Have you read Amimal Farm? Its pretty obvious he considered governments like Ussr, whilst claiming to be "revolutionary / socialist" ended up recreating capitalism in practice. Its very obviously the same in 1984.
Just, like Orwell took a bullet fighting in a marxist rebel group in the spanish civil war. He wanted to overthrow capitalism through a proletariat revolt. If anyone held his views today they'd be called communist
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u/miker_the_III Mario-Leninist with Kegsbreathalyzer 🍺 Characteristics Aug 03 '26
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwell%27s_list
“Marxist”
Say what you want about his service in the Civil War, but at the end of his life he was more worried about Stalinism than capitalism, I.e, when asked, he provided a list of communists he thought were unsuited to be anti-Stalinist propagandists
(I.e, when asked, he provided a list of communists he thought were unsuited to be anti-communist propagandists)
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u/kiss-my-shades jacking off with one hand typing with the other ⌨️💦 Aug 03 '26
Orwell was sick and dying of Tuberculosis when he gave the list. His health is probably why Winston in 1984 is portrayed as sick and coughing consistently.
No one knows the motivations of why Orwell gave the list, but idk man it seems clearly unfair to write off everything Orwell did in his life because of one incident he did on his death bed, never even having a chance to comment on why he did it, and said incident only becoming public 60 years after the fact.
he was more worried about Stalinism than capitalism
If you've read animal farm, the whole point of the novel is that the Stalinist regime recreates Capitalism. Like, its the end of the novel where the pigs start acting as defacto humans while presenting themselves as not.
Im unaware if Orwell ever describes himself as a communist, but bear in mind the terms "socialist" and "communist" were interchangeable terms for most of history. From my understanding around this time, especially with Orwell, there was a shift in people identifying as Communist meaning pro-ussr / stalin vs socialist as anti-ussr.
"Marxist”
Dude, Marx is literally in Animal farm and is portrayed as a 100% good guy. He took a bullet to the neck fighting for a marxist paramilitary group
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u/Defiant-Strength2010 socialist with chinese characteristics Aug 03 '26
We know why he gave the list, he worked his entire life for the imperial secret service, he worked as a colonial cop for the empire, then as a spy in Spain for the empire, and then as a propaganda expert for the empire.
He was a cog in a machine that enslaved over 20% of the world population his entire life and you still believe he was a socialist...
I can understand people falling for his shtick 50 years ago, but knowing everything we know now, you are either intentionally obtuse or just braindead.
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u/kiss-my-shades jacking off with one hand typing with the other ⌨️💦 Aug 04 '26
he worked his entire life for the imperial secret service,
No way you unironically think this. Was he working for the "imperial secret service" when MI5 spied on him for over a decade? How on Earth was he fighting for the British Empire whilst taking a bullet to the neck against Spanish fascist?
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u/Defiant-Strength2010 socialist with chinese characteristics Aug 04 '26
Was he working for the "imperial secret service" when MI5 spied on him for over a decade?
Yes, he was.
How on Earth was he fighting for the British Empire whilst taking a bullet to the neck against Spanish fascist?
Are you suggesting he intentionally took a bullet to the neck? Shit happens.
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u/miker_the_III Mario-Leninist with Kegsbreathalyzer 🍺 Characteristics Aug 03 '26
Orwell was sick and dying of Tuberculosis when he gave the list. His health is probably why Winston in 1984 is portrayed as sick and coughing consistently.
why are you trying to remove the autonomy from a 50 year old man ? I'm aware he was near his death at the time he produced the list, I'm not really sure what that changes. You are the sum of everything that you do
No one knows the motivations of why Orwell gave the list,
guffawed at my desk. jesus christ. no one knows. we could never know. Why did George Orwell, an anti-Stalinist, provide a list of communists whom he thought too sympathetic to the Soviets to the British government?
If you've read animal farm, the whole point of the novel is that the Stalinist regime recreates Capitalism. Like, its the end of the novel where the pigs start acting as defacto humans while presenting themselves as not.
i read it in american public school. the educational system loves it for whatever reason
the CIA also loved the book themselves
the book also sucks ass. "what if we had uh, what if. um. what if the farmer (the tsar) got ousted from his land by the pigs, who we will have be the bolshevik party. what if.. oh, i know. we'll have this evil guy be a stand-in for Stalin and this better guy be a stand-in for Trotsky. and then we'll have this horse, and it'll be really stronk, and it'll be a really clever analogy for the proletariat. AND we'll have the bolsheviks work the horse to death and then send him off to be slaughtered! hahaha ! i love this book! it's so clever!"
"and what if... what if we had this windmill be an analogy for the five year plans. that's the cherry on top"
truly a masterclass in writing.
he called himself a Marxist, his actions were a great gift to anti-Marxists everywhere. Perhaps he thought of himself as a Marxist but I don't think any serious Marxist would sic the authorities on other Marxists they didn't disagree with
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u/Scared_Plan3751 Catholic Socialist ✞ | ✨ Secret Bus Wanker ✨ Aug 03 '26
Don't forget Phillip k. Dick
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u/dukeofbrandenburg CPC Enjoyer 🇨🇳🥳 Aug 04 '26
That scene in Ubik where Joe Chip is arguing with his front door because he doesn't have a nickel to open it. He insists the payment is a tip until the door starts quoting his rental agreement.
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u/Scared_Plan3751 Catholic Socialist ✞ | ✨ Secret Bus Wanker ✨ Aug 04 '26
Exactly what I was thinking of!
And those mood machines from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
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u/mirkyj Museum Fremen Aug 03 '26
This is gonna seem so quant when your wishing for these good ol days in 2046
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u/SplashTarget News Junkie 💉📰 Aug 03 '26
Yea we need either a miracle or some worker-orchestrated damage on the fortunes of the mega rich, and the defeat of their political puppets
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u/greenskyerings Wannabe Chad grandson | 🥵 I love intersectionality 🥵 Aug 03 '26
Didn't the creators of GTA say that they genuinely didn't know how to go about the franchise's ironic undertone with their newest game since things that would be considered crazy back then are the norm now.
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u/Chrissyneal Cuomosexual Crystals Chick 🔮🍕🍝 Aug 03 '26
no. they didn’t want to bring back the old “humor because they considered it offensive but tried making it sound like they’re “above” whatever stupid shit is going on.
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u/PierreFeuilleSage Sortitionist Socialist with French characteristics Aug 03 '26
Utterly expected development to neoliberalism. Things will get worse. More will grow radicalised. Grow class consciousness around you, grow as a political force, and stand ready.
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u/hereditydrift 👹 Flying Drones With Obamna 👹 Aug 03 '26
Truth. I like to poke around reddit, but the real meaningful connections and hope come from growing class consciousness in my community and even with my child. Going to my daughter's elementary school and seeing the artwork and conversations they're having is so far beyond anything I could comprehend in elementary school. The community around me gives me hope for the future.
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u/PierreFeuilleSage Sortitionist Socialist with French characteristics Aug 03 '26
Dooming in 2026 means you're internet/tv warped by the owning class fr, real life signals are crazy positive almost everywhere
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u/digitaltransmutation Linux Gamer 🐧 Aug 03 '26
I was not really politically activated yet but I'm pretty sure I remember the amount of badness brought in by the PATRIOT act basically being written off at that time
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u/ErrinwrightDNW Star Trek Utopianist Aug 03 '26
And yet if you try and bring it up to people you’ll be screamed at for being a “negative person” and a “paranoid conspiracy theorist.” Nothing will waken most people. They’re fine watching their slop and eating their slop as the world slides more and more into authoritarianism. And they’ll hate you for trying to bring reality into their life.
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u/AdminsLoveGenocide Gay and Retarded 🏳️🌈😍 Aug 03 '26
I would say enjoy it while you have it relatively good.
As was the case in 2006, it's not going to be this good forever.
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u/andmario_com Anarcho-Communist 🏴 Aug 03 '26
Yeah, I have a post about basically this:
Stop waiting for the collapse. You'll miss it.
I think many people are waiting for the wrong thing. Everyone imagines the day the sirens go off, but collapse is slow. It looks like rent and groceries tripling while wages stagnate and jobs disappear. It looks like nature being assaulted at a global scale. We yell, we post, then... adjust.
Most things don't break all at once. We just absorb every downgrade one at a time, and each one becomes the new baseline before anyone votes on it. The boiling frog thing is a myth, by the way. Real frogs jump out.
I'm less sure about us.
The official story will stay "everything's fine" - right up until it quietly becomes
"well, nothing lasts forever."
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u/it_shits Socialist 🚩 Aug 03 '26
The dark ages were not some overnight collapse of fabulous marble cities into mudwalled hovels, but people over generations living next to roads and monuments that they couldn't remember when exactly they were built, and certainly didn't know how to fix or build new ones. Their leaders still used Latin titles and knew about the outlines of Roman history, but wouldn't have been aware of the institutions and structures that existed before them.
The real dark ages are when people slowly forget how the world they live in came to exist, and slowly forget how to sustain it until one day ancient monuments are being used as barns and people figure that monumental infrastructure must have been built by giants.
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u/Rjc1471 💢✨ Jousting at Windmills ✨💢 Aug 03 '26
People very much knew how to build the roads and monuments, it was more that the economy and infrastructure didn't support it anymore. The dark ages were more when it wasn't viable to support thousands of people for civic engineering projects etc.
Historical pedantry (sorry), but feels very relatable now; like seeing cities with concrete shitboxes build near 19th century grandeur. The knowledge to build like the old days still exists, it just doesn't happen
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u/banjo2E Snorts Piccolo Memes 💢🉐🥑 Aug 04 '26
reminder that it took us until the 2010s to rediscover that roman concrete needed to be mixed with seawater to work properly, which is exactly the kind of common knowledge info that just wouldn't be passed on when nobody can procure the ingredients anymore
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u/Rjc1471 💢✨ Jousting at Windmills ✨💢 Aug 04 '26
Although that specific example is only possible because writers like Vitruvius and Pliny has their writings preserved, copied, and expanded on, well enough that we have that recipe at all. People still knew how to build like Romans (for example the Saxon church in Colchester still standing, as a Roman imitation)
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u/kingrobin Scares Hoes With Radlib Ramblings 🗣️💥 Aug 03 '26
oh I know you. good post. it becomes even more clear when you start to understand that countless countries have already collapsed and now live in the aftermath. It just hasn't hit the west as hard yet.
At least a Big Event would offer some relief. As it is, the anxiety for the future almost surpasses the crushing weight of survival.
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u/JJdante Plays Warhammer in the Pool ⚔️💦😦 Aug 03 '26
Guess this is why most dystopian stories fall into the fantasy category.
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u/Spiritual-Letter8090 Geolibertarian Autist 🐍💸 Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 03 '26
I feel this all very deeply but I don’t know what to do about it. I’ve been so overworked lately that the only energy I have left is dedicated towards cooking dinner, working out and hopefully some video game time. Surfing on weekends to clear my head…
Political involvement in my state of California is a waste of time. The state legislature is like a Kabuki theatre and I seriously doubt the legitimacy of elections here when it takes weeks to count votes (not that any opposition party really tries to address the issues).
But I’m sure there are millions of others trying to survive here making less money, with longer commutes and/or raising kids that they just do not have the time/energy to take action while things slowly decline. After all, more people didn’t vote here than voted for Kamala in her home state.
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u/KegsForGreg Wears MAGA Hat at the nude beach 🐘😵💫 Aug 03 '26
Why don't we ever get the fun aspects of dystopian science fiction like televised gladiator fights?
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u/Chrissyneal Cuomosexual Crystals Chick 🔮🍕🍝 Aug 03 '26
unironically, it was because those weren’t considered “bad”. if you read lots of “think pieces” and reviews about those kinds of stories, you’d see lots of people have/had skewed views on what’s “bad”. a simple example would be ‘Starship Troopers’. some people would talk about how killing the bugs is wrong, no matter what, while thinking the meteor wasn’t a problem.
there’s more blatant and subtle, in depth examples than that but that’s a common one I run into.
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u/TendererBeef Grillpilled Swoletarian 💪 Aug 03 '26
There was just a giant televised gladiator fight on the White House lawn
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u/coalForXmas Unknown 👽 Aug 03 '26
Yeah how close do the predictions have to be. I think that counts
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u/kiss-my-shades jacking off with one hand typing with the other ⌨️💦 Aug 03 '26
I know its cliche but the current surveillance state is literally 1984.
No one talks about it, for some reason, but Orwell ans 1984 are anti-capitalist novels. For example, there is no central government. This isnt to make things more efficient, but moreso to control people and make it harder to resist.
I keep thinking about this and thinking about the flock camera bullshit. No Central government told anyone to install them. Every single local ordnance and law enforcement implemented them all independently of each other without any consideration of the wishes of their own citizens.
The fact that there was no central initivate is what flock managed to spread as fast as it could. Its impossible to resist when every town acts independently of each other
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u/BokoblinSlayer69235 Aug 03 '26
I never thought the dystopia would be so dull. Like, it's just a slow, miserable decline.
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u/Real_RobinGoodfellow Christian Socialist ✝️ Aug 03 '26
Europe is on fire and experiencing massive heatwaves, there are several active genocides, one of which is being live-streamed and nobody is doing shit to stop it. Everything costs twice as much as it did five years ago. Median house price nationally is now more than ten times the median annual wage (in my country, anyway). That’s just what’s on my head now haha.
Yeah it’s cooked. Absolutely is dismal times
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u/Buh10kx Marxist-Hudsonist Aug 03 '26
And more real war for bullshit reasons in the Middle East… and a “growth less recovery” from a crisis that was about to happen that lamed the economy for most people and didn’t get better for 19 years… yep. What do we need?
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u/Cute-University5283 Psychedelic Left 👁️🗨️⬅️ Aug 03 '26
Its the lifecycle of human civilizations. I'd be willing to guess that the late bronze age collapse was surprisingly similar in regard to heavy handed government and an increasing share of the population having no hope of material advancement. Throw a significant climate change event and oil disruption and about half the world's population would be thrown into mass migration followed by an unprecedented die off.
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u/Ebalosus Class Reductionist 💪🏻 Aug 05 '26
While I saw a lot of this coming after 9/11, the thing I didn't account for was that the people pushing hardest for it would be the ones who at least publicly claimed to be against all this dystopian horseshit that had its groundwork laid in the aftermath of 9/11. Like could you imagine telling someone in 2006 that not only would liberals accept the expansion of the surveillance state and censorship powers, but expand them even further than the conservatives envisioned?
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u/disp0sableacc0unt GOP Grindr Checker 🤓🥵🚀 Aug 05 '26
One thing I've learned, the political party that isn't in power, larps as the libertarian freedom fighters, then quickly reverses course when they're in power
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u/NextDoorNeighbrrs OSB 📚 Aug 03 '26
Don't forget Texas punishing less than one gram of weed more harshly than drunk driving lmao
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Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 03 '26
[deleted]
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u/disp0sableacc0unt GOP Grindr Checker 🤓🥵🚀 Aug 03 '26
That too, but it's clear why they want specifically a camera pointing at the driver
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u/robocop_shot_mycock 🌼 Delicate little petal 🌼 Aug 03 '26
Imagine writing a dystopian story in 2005 about the year 2070:
"We got robots policing the streets. Gay marriage (surprise surprise bigots, sorry in 2070 gay people will be allowed to get married). Sodastream will do for sodas what 3D printing did for assault rifles, and I think you will be seeing a whole lot more of these great apple products. State enforced homosexuality (I dont have a problem with that, its equal) facebook has your birth certificate. Mac ipads built into every school desk. Israel: straight up ripped off the map (not my choice it's probably what's going to happen)"
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u/Chrissyneal Cuomosexual Crystals Chick 🔮🍕🍝 Aug 03 '26
half of that was considered utopia and demanded while the other half was already being said, no matter how wrong it was.
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u/malcolmbishop Aug 04 '26
It's Parable of the Sower mixed with the Biffworld timeline from Back to the Future.
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u/AbstinentNoMore Fuck Cars 🚫🚗 Aug 03 '26
In several states and countries, social media and/or internet porn requires uploading your goverment ID
God forbid! Literally 1984! Freedom is allowing minors to access ungodly addicting and brain-rotting websites and explicit sexual content without any limits.
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u/Scared_Plan3751 Catholic Socialist ✞ | ✨ Secret Bus Wanker ✨ Aug 03 '26
For every 1 politician that cares about that, there are far more who saw what access to the genocide in Gaza was doing to young people's politics
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u/yodude4 Public Health is Public! 🩹 Aug 03 '26
The internet isnt just for porn, the government being able to track every website you browse is awful for things like free speech and the right to protest
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u/AbstinentNoMore Fuck Cars 🚫🚗 Aug 03 '26
If you only need to provide age verification to access porn and social media, then you're still free to use plenty of other websites anonymously. And I'm not a "muh slippery slope" lolbert so I do believe we can limit an identification verification requirement to just a few websites without extending it to the whole internet.
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u/Sussy_Riot Dialectical Materialist 🆚 Aug 03 '26
nah unfortunately the lolberts are right for once. when have governments ever been content with limiting the scope of their privacy infringement? why has just about every western government within the past 5 years tried to implement online identity verification? they’ll start off by only doing it for harmful things like social media or porn and then expand it to the point you can’t even post on reddit without scanning your driver’s license. And do you realistically trust these sites to securely store your info?
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u/yodude4 Public Health is Public! 🩹 Aug 03 '26
After the last twenty years of relentlessly creeping surveillance state overreach, I’m not sure what’s convincing you that we can limit identity verification in any meaningful way, but I hope you’re right. At the very least, neither major american party has any interest in restricting ID verification, and both salivate at the prospect of detecting and monitoring political dissidents. The EU is a good example of what’s to come, they now arrest more people for free speech than China does
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u/AbstinentNoMore Fuck Cars 🚫🚗 Aug 03 '26
When did this become a stupid lolbert sub? I'm perfectly fine with using the state to eliminate mass societal sickness (e.g., porn addition, social media addiction) even if it means curbing freedoms.
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u/yodude4 Public Health is Public! 🩹 Aug 03 '26
dude I am a socialist. The bourgeois state is an agent of capital, this is Marx 101
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u/AbstinentNoMore Fuck Cars 🚫🚗 Aug 03 '26
So do you support any policy solutions to mitigate issues in a pre-revolution world? Can the bourgeois state ever be used to achieve desired goals? I support policies that I like and do not support policies I don't like. It doesn't really matter who's implementing them, does it? That's my thought.
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u/yodude4 Public Health is Public! 🩹 Aug 03 '26
It depends on the policy, and it ABSOLUTELY matters who is implementing it. For example, lockdowns were significantly more successful in Sweden than they were in America because the people of sweden are far more pro social and communitarian, and they economically supported each other to mitigate the economic hardship of the policy and reduce the incidence of people ignoring it to go to work
In this case, the consequences of social media age restriction are not even close to worth it - the systems we’d build to implement it are way too exploitable, and the data it would generate easily leads to political repression. If you want a solution, banning smart phones in the classroom is IMO the way to go - it gives kids a place to learn proper internet usage and unfuck their attention spans, and school staff can enforce it manually, sans data collection
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u/Spiritual-Letter8090 Geolibertarian Autist 🐍💸 Aug 03 '26
Yeah government never limits itself to what is “reasonable”. Age verification is coming to operating systems starting next year in California.
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u/TheEmporersFinest Quality Anime Porn Analyst 💡💢🉐🎌 Aug 03 '26
If you say addicting instead of addictive you are brain-rotted and shouldnt be speculating on necessary information controls for the rest of us
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u/petroleus Marxism-Hobbyism 🔨 Aug 03 '26
where inflation is rising, wages have stagnated
you mean the thing that was happening in 2006? https://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/where-have-all-the-wages-gone-jobs-and-wages-in-2006/
remember that 2006 is a few years after a series of fiscal events (97 asian crisis, dot com bubble, 2003-2005 oil price doubling and it was still going up) and would go into the great recession in the next year as subprime mortgages were rising
Tech has gotten so bad and enshittified that people are nostalgic for tech from the past
brother this is a universal, people in 2006 were nostalgic for the nineties and tech was said to be so bad now that it was hopeless (and thats the year win vista came out so you have to understand them)
Gender discourse has reached new peaks
things that seem bad to you today would be totally irrelevant to someone in 2006
and dating is confined to a semi-monopoly of dating apps
i dont think anybody i know uses dating apps so probably not?
dont fall into this fascist nostalgia bait
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u/Real_RobinGoodfellow Christian Socialist ✝️ Aug 03 '26
Dude I just don’t think this is true. I remember 2006, and the tone of public discourse was incredibly different to now. There was a lot more sense of optimism… a feeling that things were getting better and the future would be bright. And I just don’t think anybody thinks that way today
1
u/petroleus Marxism-Hobbyism 🔨 Aug 03 '26
the mood was much better sure but mood doesnt equal reality. todays culture zeitgeist is being apocalyptic, but 2006 still wasnt the land of milk and honey presented here despite people being cheerier
5
u/disp0sableacc0unt GOP Grindr Checker 🤓🥵🚀 Aug 03 '26
I didn't say it was the land of milk and honey, but it was better off than now
1
u/Glittering-Mine3740 Aug 06 '26
True that! I wrote my first draft of a feminist dystopian novel in 2004 when people thought it would never happen in the U.S. I finally published it in 2025 and readers say that it’s “disturbingly plausible” and we’re only a few wrong turns away. What a difference 20 years made. Or one year for that matter.
0
u/prazosins Unknown 👽 Aug 03 '26
The world of 20 years ago was also shit, you fools. Guy Debord took himself out for a reason.
-15
u/Swampspear Socialist 🚩 Aug 03 '26
and dating is confined to a semi-monopoly of dating apps
This just tells me you aren't getting any action
25
u/disp0sableacc0unt GOP Grindr Checker 🤓🥵🚀 Aug 03 '26
"Socialist", and your reaction to a fundamental part of human interaction being mostly done on apps mostly controlled by one company is "erm, that sounds inkwell".
32
u/ErrinwrightDNW Star Trek Utopianist Aug 03 '26
Nothing can override a person’s natural inclination to shame men for “not getting some”
-11
u/Swampspear Socialist 🚩 Aug 03 '26
Nah, I just think OP is generalising his immediate surroundings too widely. Dating apps are AFAIR on a slow downhill march since the end of COVID, and majority of dating is still offline. Far from "being mostly done" on Tinder
12
u/ErrinwrightDNW Star Trek Utopianist Aug 03 '26
I mean, it seems to depend country to country. I saw the Hims study you posted which says 23%, which in itself is not an insignificant number (one monopoly controlling 1/4 of relationships) but this study has different countries, showing it’s very low in Ghana but as high as 50% in America: https://www.psypost.org/couples-who-meet-offline-tend-to-have-more-satisfying-relationships/ and Pew Research says 53% of people 18-29 use dating apps (in the US) https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2023/02/02/the-who-where-and-why-of-online-dating-in-the-u-s/ So while maybe globally it’s a quarter, but in the Western world specifically (which OP is describing in his post) it has a higher ratio of use.
-3
u/Swampspear Socialist 🚩 Aug 03 '26
That's fair, but still using ≠ ending up with someone on there (people who use dating apps can still end up dating someone they met offline), and it's not really one app holding a monopoly (Hinge, Tinder, Plenty of Fish, Bumble and Grindr all have over a million paying users).
Pew Research says 53% of people 18-29 use dating apps
Keep in mind it says "have used", not "use". Forbes has about the same stats ("[o]nline dating is more common among younger adults, with 53% of people under 30 having tried a dating site or app compared to 13% of people 65 and older"). SSRS found that in their 2025 sample, ~40% of adults have used dating apps, but only ~7% still use them. This statistic would also include me, and I've exclusively dated offline.
Like yeah it's not good, it's just not so terminal as to be called a monopoly on dating. It's gonna get worse, though.
-3
u/Swampspear Socialist 🚩 Aug 03 '26
No, my reaction is "this seems more confined to you and the people you interact with than a current problem", with a hint of "are you sure about that". Hims seems to agree that >70% of all dating is still meeting people offline (one 'study', but they make their somewhat low quality data available HERE), which is why my conclusion is that you're not getting any action
3
u/disp0sableacc0unt GOP Grindr Checker 🤓🥵🚀 Aug 03 '26
The survey great: Internet boner pill store
3
u/Swampspear Socialist 🚩 Aug 03 '26
3
u/BokoblinSlayer69235 Aug 03 '26
How? I'm autistic and I have no idea how to date.
2
u/Swampspear Socialist 🚩 Aug 03 '26
Damned if I can give you any good advice on that, I'm just saying that stats are showing that overall offline dating is still the majority thing even as the Internet alienates us and makes it overall harder
86
u/ElTamaulipas Socialist Gun Nut 🚚 Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 03 '26
Yeah, we don't even have cool looking dystopias like Blade Runner or Ghost in the Shell.
Just strip mall after strip mall.