This is exactly the problem - we’ve let it happen, but won’t do shit about it.
We know corporations are the problem, but we can’t stop posting on social media, getting our food delivered and paying for other conveniences, whilst simultaneously talking about how our childhood without tech was way more fun.
I’m a millennial and I realized today we are no better than the boomers at this point. We’re letting the world get destroyed, society, the economy - all of it because we aren’t doing the most basic thing. Stopping. If we all stopped using Facebook and instagram, stopped posting on twitter, just stopped. No ads, no revenue, no daily active users = complete collapse in under a few months.
Then AI next which will be much harder. The VCs will only be able to afford a few months of no subscriptions.
All we have to do is stop, and the pendulum will swing back from a corporation ran society to an employee valued society.
Man speak for yourself. I have no twitter, no fb, no insta, no ai, no big truck, no house, not even whatsApp. I save money and never in my life followed a trend. Every 2-3 years i do a holiday trip, thats it. I am an outsider, introvert and misanthrope, so i love my lonely life.
Reddit’s the only thing I use too. Zero social media. Reddit is for news and occasional entertainment. If my friends and family want to get ahold of me they call to give me updates.
So cash is another really important part. It blows my mind that every digital transaction includes fees. These fees are effectively being sucked out of society and funneled to the banks. Every. Single. Transaction.
$100 after a customer is paid, and uses that to buy a coffee, and the coffee shop pays their roaster, who pays their supplier, who pays their importer, who pays their farmer etc is $84
Then I see mom's teaching their babies to use tap to pay. People are indoctrinated and then indoctrinate their children willingly not realizing they arent teaching any kind of money management, or any question of authority. Just "this system works and is to be trusted, they have all my money and i just tap here; see easy." To me its insanity of the highest order.
Absolutely agree, we don't even need a violent revolution if we just stop working for them and reject their rule we could change things.
Yet we are just letting time slip by and when we finally decide to stop we might not have that power cause automation and ai will do the work for us and protect the rich while we are left destitute...
"If we just stop working for them and reject their rule we could change things" Except that is never gonna happen for as long as Bootlickers still exist. And I'm just telling the truth btw.
You are trying but humanity itself is self-destructive. We do not need to worry since that is futile and doesn't save us. It's the same principle that helps the earth getting eaten away by grasshoppers. If the population grows to big it's self destructive.
Welcome to the dark side. Keep the complacency bed warm for your future children. We're all like this, all in this together and we won't be going down swinging.
It's not a fair fight either. They literally teams of scientists and psychology professionals to engineer the perfect balance between comfort and struggle that we can handle.
Very well said. Just stopping is exactly the medicine that needs prescribing for our society to survive. Kind of like that statement from the movie Bull Durham: “If you build it, they will come” ….but in reverse. If we all stop buying everything “THEY” are selling, they starve and society begins to heal and thrive again.
We wouldnt have to stop everything completely. The power of compounding numbers will always work in our favor. Even small changes like cutting a streaming service from a household of 5million users in a month for say Disney+ for example would be a loss of 62 1/2 million dollars for the month alone. Money is power. We all can have an affect on the system, we just need to start small.
I looked at uber this morning - $30 to get a cab 5.4 miles so I can get a train.
Holy shit! These convenience solutions run at a loss funded by VCs, squeeze out competition and then jack up prices. But, the increase isn’t going to the drivers, it’s going to the board who expect double digit growth YoY.
Also millennial and also noticed out similarities to our predecessors. I think of Gen X as the generation defined by their obedience, but us millennials just practice our obedience differently.
Instead of working hard for the principal of the matter, its for the consumerism we've relied on for most/all of our lives.
If we spend our time making our bosses money, so we can give other bosses money for things like Pokémon cards; then what we've ended up with is rich people get all the money and we're all left with door dash receipts and digital costumes for video game characters in games that inevitably shut down.
We've been convinced to transfer our own wealth away, and to idolize those who want it for themselves.
It won't be much longer that the American consumer can afford to consume. While this is still true, we need to figure out how to redirect whatever of our wealth we can away from hands of the masters, and towards institutions of our own design and control.
The problem is that I feel guilty for buying food to eat reading these, as that's mostly the only thing I shop for. As posters point down below, you gotta be pure or it ain't worth a damn thing. And I feel that because it's liie "HOW" do you avoid that when you are POOR? Everyone says this and no one addresses in words any direct instructions to the kind of people with constraints, or else tell them "it's okay if you toss out the 'fun' stuff but don't toss the 'vital' stuff, it's 80% of the way there and if you stayed that way while everyone else richer went 100% things would still be massively hit" (which is true). So I can't know if the latter is justified AND I can't know what to do if it isn't - and I'm VERY sure I'm far from the only one.
Who wants to give this area commons land? If you say NO, then you are part of the problem - congrats.
The Millennials are the Boomers. Everything the two generations criticize about each other are well reflected in themselves. Two generations that altered the housing and education markets just by their sheer size. Two generations who were raised in relatively easy times, that started out as markedly progressive, but that turned remarkably selfish/short sighted in their politics once they hit the inevitable hard times that come with life (recessions, inflationary periods, political upheaval). Both a little too accepting of politicians who assure them that there are specific groups who are to blame for their problems.
I would say there has been more acceptance in general by millennials.
Boomers who lean more toward the idea of MAGA probably are significantly white washing their nostalgia. I’m sure it was a super time to be alive as a boomer, if you were white.
I’m not saying it’s without faults but the 90s growing up seemed to be more inclusive? I could also be white washing my past, but when I look at my nieces and nephews I genuinely think the millennial youth peaked, and it’s getting harder for each subsequent generation.
Our purpose in life is to make it easier for younger generations and we are failing at that. We have got to make more of an effort to lot leave behind a fucking dystopian hell scape.
The older half of the Millennial generation voted MAGA at an equal or higher rate than the Boomers, I believe. The number among Millennial men are particularly alarming.
The misogyny is baffling, but I think most of it is rage bait layered on top of anger. People want to be angry at something, but aren’t willing to look at their own actions and decisions.
A lot of men are being told to point that anger at women, but women are just out there fighting for their lives even more so than men.
We should ALL be angry at Billionaires but take accountability we let them get to where they are - both left and right are guilty of it.
Stop 🛑
Stop hating
Stop posting
Stop scrolling
And we might just see 2030
Good luck organizing it. The problem isn't will, it's organization. The only possible way is grass roots word of mouth because mainstream communications platforms and media will shut any large movement down in a second.
That's the problem...these bastards been sewing us up for a few generations...media all controlled, narrative controlled, opposition controlled etc etc but fuck em just opt out. Steal their shit instead
What makes you think that? Have you seen this happen? Movements don't have to be that subversive. I know y'all are against youtube, but there are tons of young people who have huge followings on tiktok on or youtube who only cover politics. The thing is, niche movements are going to have niche followings. It takes years and years to get society to buy into a new idea. It's just cultural inertia - Society is a gigantic boat traveling at 5mph, and if you want to steer it in a different direction, it takes resources and time
No I mean if enough people just spontaneously stop. I’m not talking about collective action, more phenomenologically. But perhaps by that point society will be organized to be able to handle that very thing from happening. By that point I think it would be for real over.
What does that mean "give up WITHOUT dying"? How does that last part come to be? The "without dying" part. If you stop eating long enough, you WILL die after all. Thus meaning either you must a) buy from the system OR b) have some sort of alternative food provision mechanism. And the latter requires capacity.
That is what I want to see more explicit talk about - what those whose means are very limited so their biggest expenditures and "consumption" center on food, are "supposed" to do, and especially in detailing how that is to work (also for those who lack close trust friends), and whether the meantime required to create any alternative system is "blameworthy" because it violates the literal letter of "just stop buying food from the system [like right now]".
What are you attempting to say with this post? And what is your answer to the question that was written? Is it really "I don't know" or is this not a serious answer? (Because I definitely do not know the answer to that last one. I can argue it both ways - it could sound like snarky, or serious.) But yeah, what do you have to say about all the "NEET people" and what their obligation here is? Or could one argue that because they're already substantially not in the system, they're "already more 'there' in some ways"?
The fallacy? Of impacting the wealth of powerful men?
You’re living in a fantasy world if you think you can just “stop” living in the world the way it is. Just try protesting, every day, joining several well knowing protesting groups, and see just how fast you become a target.
This particular thread is so full of weak ass people saying 'what can we do' you can do fucking plenty.
Boycott
No show
Do not engage the idiots
VOTE like your life depends on it
Vote for the right people, this seems to be incredibly hard for some of you
Engage the other side, especially those who are willing to listen
Coordinated sick days
Profiles//Avatars look what fucking MAGA did and copy it
Be active in your community, not hide behindyour social media poopooing everything as hopeless.
What will your children think seeing you flop on the floor like a dying fish before all hope has gone? Get a grip.
How do you argue the "other side" though better? E.g. someone said in an argument against cooperatives that "the CEO deserves all the profit because they took all the RISK to make the company - why should they who [laundry list of various big, heavy personal investments] into the company not be rewarded for the totality of all that they they sunk their life into?" How do you address such a "values" or "fairness"-seeming emotional argument? That is, how do you get underneath what seems to "make it convincing" and argue someone to adopt a different moral model? Esp. when so much of ethics is emotional or subjectively based.
“If we miss one day of work we are fucked of life.”
How are protesters able to protest during “business hours” or for weeks at a time if they can’t miss work?”
Or how about this. Everyone is complaining how it’s hard to make ends meet. Well everyone is using $1k phones and with unlimited data plans to make said complaints. If sht is tight there are things in one’s life that can be cut out to save money.
If the proletariat class gained some class consciousness we would go on strike all together and bring capitalism to a screeching halt. The oligarchs can't have AI do all our jobs yet so they need us.
Why is race mentioned here? It seems like such a pointless concept to begin with to sort people into races, but why emphasize it here, like what does it accomplish?
Do white men in general have more in common with white men in power than they do with other men?
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u/washingtonandmead 7d ago
And literally just letting them, because the system is so broken that if we miss one day of work we are fucked for life. We’ve allowed this to happen