namaste
― loudmouth darraghmac ween (darraghmac), Thursday, 29 December 2016 12:57 (seven years ago) link
yeah i pondered some sort of discrepancy argument, i'm not sure i buy it.
we could use some objective measurements - mortality, life expectancy, hunger, disease - and they'd almost all point to "we've never had it so good" - for certain functions of "we", which i'd happily accept broadly covers the posting population of ilx
it gets harder if you factor in less measurable but no doubt life-affecting experiences such as sense of purpose, sense of community, sense of hope etc. but intuitively it feels to me that an individual's sense of happiness at any given moment is a product of the objective measurements and that second category of stuff interacting in some complicated way - obv for somebody like Maslow it's simply hierarchical but i'm not so sure
before we even get to individuals as consistent narrative units that are always in the same relationship to the world they think is around them which, well, i'm not touching that, i don't believe it, and i've wandered a ways off track
i have this intuition that for any individual human being happiness contentment misery and all that stuff are in a set of interrelated sliding scales that are kind of outside your immediate station in history - so like "fuck Year X" is partly "'twas ever thus" but also not unreasonable depending on the context that the sentiment is uttered from inside
or something something telling people their moaning is unfounded/unreasonable is of a piece with affirming that their moaning is founded/reasonable, you can't argue one without allowing the other argument maybe
― Rock Wokeman (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 29 December 2016 13:01 (seven years ago) link
agreed but with the proviso that id think it merits further over a pint
― loudmouth darraghmac ween (darraghmac), Thursday, 29 December 2016 13:03 (seven years ago) link
this is the only truly bad year because it contains this shitty meme tbh
― forgive me fader for I have sinned (wins), Thursday, 29 December 2016 13:04 (seven years ago) link
I couldn't care less about famous people dying but trump + what.cd shutdown were the WORST things ever
― Dinsdale, Thursday, 29 December 2016 13:05 (seven years ago) link
some kind of pint-related summit meeting would get half this board sorted over a weekend, i'm sure of it
― Rock Wokeman (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 29 December 2016 13:06 (seven years ago) link
summit summit pint
― loudmouth darraghmac ween (darraghmac), Thursday, 29 December 2016 13:07 (seven years ago) link
this probably being the legit answer
― Rock Wokeman (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 29 December 2016 13:07 (seven years ago) link
if I were a notable person the best I could hope for would be that news of my passing be pulled into the slipstream of the most woeful schtick since whatever cunt came up with no cash no hope and no jobs
― forgive me fader for I have sinned (wins), Thursday, 29 December 2016 13:09 (seven years ago) link
Nobody remembers to prepare an agenda. And here's why
― The beaver is not the bad guy (El Tomboto), Thursday, 29 December 2016 13:16 (seven years ago) link
At least people have stopped saying that celebrities die in threes. Now it's like 30s.
― Jeff, Thursday, 29 December 2016 14:26 (seven years ago) link
it'll be great if Sgt Pepper bloke has shopped himself into his own shitty collage and posts it prior to cutting his own throat at five to midnight on Saturday
― Rock Wokeman (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 29 December 2016 14:30 (seven years ago) link
http://i.imgur.com/IAm9Tgn.png
― pplains, Thursday, 29 December 2016 16:11 (seven years ago) link
on the plus side, my second cousin is pregnant with twins, first ones in my family in my lifetime
― “a tub of horses” (Myonga Vön Bontee), Thursday, 29 December 2016 16:27 (seven years ago) link
feel like everything is fine and has always been fine and always will be fine tbh
― forgive me fader for I have sinned (wins), Thursday, December 29, 2016 12:52 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
we've all felt the "pang" of "loss" in 2016 amirite
superb work
― ogmor, Thursday, 29 December 2016 16:33 (seven years ago) link
took me way too long to get that
― The beaver is not the bad guy (El Tomboto), Thursday, 29 December 2016 16:37 (seven years ago) link
I was minutes away from saying so myself xp
― forgive me fader for I have sinned (wins), Thursday, 29 December 2016 16:48 (seven years ago) link
elaborate pls
― loudmouth darraghmac ween (darraghmac), Thursday, 29 December 2016 16:49 (seven years ago) link
anything pre internet ... was so demonstrably worse that anybody claiming otherwise is suffering delusions
lol
― difficult listening hour, Thursday, 29 December 2016 16:55 (seven years ago) link
before the internet, it was difficult to expose ourselves to alarmed dumbasses in sufficient quantity to induce the reassuring feeling that alarm is for dumbasses
― difficult listening hour, Thursday, 29 December 2016 17:05 (seven years ago) link
back then you were ostracized for being a little shit, now you can just join subreddits full of people who think just like you and convince yourself that nah, it's everyone else who's deluded
― frogbs, Thursday, 29 December 2016 17:07 (seven years ago) link
but yeah just thinking about stuff like dental care pre-1940 (or whatever) makes me feel queasy, I never want to travel back in time
― frogbs, Thursday, 29 December 2016 17:08 (seven years ago) link
just access to information via the internet makes recent years worthwhile than stuck in some pre or colonial times
like woman putting urine and egg in their hair and consuming arsenic because it supposedly cured acne or put all sorts of shit on their faces and bodies is not nor ever will be cool henceforth
― F♯ A♯ (∞), Thursday, 29 December 2016 17:16 (seven years ago) link
TS: you must find a man, crack this egg on your head VS you must find a man, shoot this paralytic neurotoxin directly into yr face
― difficult listening hour, Thursday, 29 December 2016 17:23 (seven years ago) link
(women's experience in general not exactly the hardest lens thru which to argue for our own time but that particular example surprised me)
― difficult listening hour, Thursday, 29 December 2016 17:25 (seven years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS74e-4dQLU
― forgive me fader for I have sinned (wins), Thursday, 29 December 2016 17:26 (seven years ago) link
waiting for a 538 article on whether or not 2016 really had more celebrity deaths than one could expect
― frogbs, Thursday, 29 December 2016 17:28 (seven years ago) link
been shared around a fair bit
― forgive me fader for I have sinned (wins), Thursday, 29 December 2016 17:35 (seven years ago) link
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08504ln
― forgive me fader for I have sinned (wins), Thursday, 29 December 2016 17:36 (seven years ago) link
unable to play that, what's it say?
― frogbs, Thursday, 29 December 2016 17:43 (seven years ago) link
no iirc
― forgive me fader for I have sinned (wins), Thursday, 29 December 2016 17:46 (seven years ago) link
up from last year but well within expectations (haha listening again their "method" is complete bollocks though, based entirely on the number of pre-written BBC obituaries deployed)
― forgive me fader for I have sinned (wins), Thursday, 29 December 2016 17:52 (seven years ago) link
it was just the huge glut at the beginning of the year. "2016 omg wtf bbq" already under way by the end of january. Prince died in April and even at that point it was like "when is this going to end"
― flappy bird, Thursday, 29 December 2016 18:08 (seven years ago) link
2016 baconed, but when will Bacon 2016?
― illbient microtonal poetry Surbiton (imago), Thursday, 29 December 2016 18:17 (seven years ago) link
Post-truth is the Oxford word of this year - 2016 definitely a prime year for insulting ones intelligence.
― Everything Moves Towards The Sun (Ross), Thursday, 29 December 2016 18:19 (seven years ago) link
Some perspectives
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/12/29/stop-saying-that-2016-was-the-worst-year/?utm_term=.a16cb4d355f7
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2016/12/29/_2016_was_the_year_white_liberals_learned_about_disillusionment.html
As a group, white liberals seem particularly prone to declaring 2016's worstness (as opposed to the many many horrible years that preceded it). I will readily admit that I am a white liberal with gobs of privilege. Further, like many people, I know I'm in a bubbly echo chamber of like-minded people. This functions as an amplifier.
I also want to note that white liberals tend to love us some vicarious traumatization ("I'm just SO SAD about what's happening in East Timor!"). So bad things happening to other people can often be counted up as yet more bad things that are happening to us.
Okay so the Venn diagram of mega-grieving populations is not strictly white and liberal, but there will be a lot of overlap. White liberals aged 35-50 are culturally well positioned to have enjoyed the music of Bowie, Prince, and Cohen. We're very well positioned to have been into Star Wars. Add the election and particularly its gut-punching surprise and the recipe is complete. Almost everybody thought it was in the bag, and that the country was more woke than it really is. (This mostly only surprised white people.)
If the American election already had you primed to think everything is going to shit, it's easier to see every celebrity death as yet another ingredient for your Sorrow Soup. And if you had a couple bad things happen in your life (personally, my mom died, my cat died, and my son was diagnosed with a rare genetic intellectual disability).
― troops in djibouti (Ye Mad Puffin), Thursday, 29 December 2016 18:20 (seven years ago) link
I don't think the "fuck 2016" sentiment is a white thing.
― Treeship, Thursday, 29 December 2016 18:23 (seven years ago) link
We get a leap second this year, it would be great if a mass extinction happened in that final second. Then there should be no more debate.
― Jeff, Thursday, 29 December 2016 18:26 (seven years ago) link
We're very well positioned to have been into Star Wars.
― illbient microtonal poetry Surbiton (imago), Thursday, 29 December 2016 18:28 (seven years ago) link
Also it wasn't just white people shocked by the election, despite what the Dave Chappelle skit depicted. The problem with this website and many other spaces in American life is that it is too white and people end up hand wringing over whether certain opinions are "white opinions." Even more problematic, people end up imagining what the "other" believes, as if nonwhite people were a homogenous bloc. In reality "they" think all kinds of things. Nonwhites are not the other of whites. We're all just people. Xp
Identity politics is good when it's anout fighting inequality but it's bad when it's about generalizing the perspective of enormous, diverse groups.
― Treeship, Thursday, 29 December 2016 18:31 (seven years ago) link
That wasnt intended as an attack on you ye mad puffin
― Treeship, Thursday, 29 December 2016 18:32 (seven years ago) link
Treesh otm
― illbient microtonal poetry Surbiton (imago), Thursday, 29 December 2016 18:34 (seven years ago) link
It's cool Treesh - honestly this isn't meant to be blankety but.
Can one say it's not exclusively white, while also saying that it's been noticed among yr white liberal types pretty prominently of late (acknowledging that if you're in a white liberal bubble you're going to see a lot more of it than otherwise)?
― troops in djibouti (Ye Mad Puffin), Thursday, 29 December 2016 18:46 (seven years ago) link
I'm as dismayed and worried by trump, brexit and the CONTINUED inroads of extreme right-wing ideology into mainstream political discourse as anyone and if you've had a bad year of course I sympathise, but that isn't quite what's happening in a terrible internet meme that needs to fold in things like mass killings in the United States (as dependable as hangovers) and a slight statistical blip in celebrity deaths (maybe correspondent with an increase in celebrities over the course of the 20th century? I wonder) in order to make its case
― forgive me fader for I have sinned (wins), Thursday, 29 December 2016 18:52 (seven years ago) link
Almost everybody thought it was in the bag, and that the country was more woke than it really is
don't forget "America is Already Great". the people that did think the above were also convinced "almost everybody" thought the same.
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, 29 December 2016 19:15 (seven years ago) link
im watching platoon what year is that set in that seems pretty shit nb theres some black guys and some lads i think maybe vietnamese they would appear to concur so thats a strong suite for the current argument
― loudmouth darraghmac ween (darraghmac), Thursday, 29 December 2016 19:29 (seven years ago) link
Platoon is set in 1986
― forgive me fader for I have sinned (wins), Thursday, 29 December 2016 19:31 (seven years ago) link
maybe correspondent with an increase in celebrities over the course of the 20th century?
Absolutely; if you trace the commoditization of celebrity qua celebrity along with the mid-20th c. nexus of technology e.g. television with specific cultural figures e.g. beatles, elvis, you get a lot more people who were famous 25-50 years ago than people who were famous 125-150 years ago. And people 25 or 50 years past the peak of their fame are both more likely to be beloved and more likely to die soon, ergo more beloved dead celebrities.
― troops in djibouti (Ye Mad Puffin), Thursday, 29 December 2016 19:37 (seven years ago) link
true but it still is a shock that nearly all the mega-selling blockbuster artists of the 80's are dead (besides Janet?) while the Townshends, McCartneys, and Rolling Stones are all still alive
― frogbs, Thursday, 29 December 2016 19:54 (seven years ago) link
famous 60s band The Townshends and The McCartneys
― forgive me fader for I have sinned (wins), Thursday, 29 December 2016 19:59 (seven years ago) link