Posts you had second thought about and decided not to post - put them here

good grief, people, are you still talking about driving

THAT’S WHERE YOU BELONG
IN MY ARMS, MOTHERFUCKER

I don't think I've ever wished death on as many people as I do now.

how many people are we talkin here

i din't mean it man

i feel like 0 is understandable, 1-4 is common, 5-20 is relatable, 21-100 is kind of a lot though but 101-999 if you really think about who fucking sucks and 1000-9999 well you and 10K- well it's not really like that though but 100K i didn't realize that and 1M i'm actually asleep stop texting me now though

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/565c1ab5e4b05079e4bfa169/1598944177906-1O35CG21OOBXZAK2QJDM/Metallica+Kill+%27Em+All+Vinyl+Album+Cover.jpg

kill some of 'em al

l

You can kill me, Al

A+

oh c'mon like y'all have never wished for the total extinction of the human race

except me.. I still have 'last human' fantasies from childhood, where I alone would have the run of the place

...maybe add 1 (one) optometrist to your fantasy... (just thinkin' baout old Twilight Zone...)

... maybe a doctor too... and a couple of farmers...

fantasy's getting crowded now...

The one where you get to go to the car yard and drive all the cars and the videogame shop and get all the consoles and the McDonald’s and get all the burgers? That was my favourite 8yo fantasy. But it was never solo, me and the street mates knew we’d be in this situation together

...maybe add 1 (one) optometrist to your fantasy... (just thinkin' baout old Twilight Zone...)

― m0stly clean (Slowsquatch)

i love burgess meredith, but the premise kind of falls apart if you look at it sideways.

so let me get this right. it's a story about a man who is apparently legally blind in a world where reading is taboo, despite there being writing everywhere and the continued publication of periodicals. his boss yells at him for being bad at his job, but his boss doesn't yell at him for not being able to make change right, his boss yells at him for _reading on his lunch break_. and not just, like, books. it's not like "what you readin' for?" kind of stuff. no, he gets yelled at for _reading the labels_. so what the fuck do they do instead? do they just not do anything for entertainment? they have to do _something_. we don't see it. it's probably the most weaksauce dystopia ever. that's it? that's the whole dystopia? it's like our world except everyone thinks _reading is bad_?

maybe i'm indulging in presentism. writing from 2023, i can see what a post-literate society would look like, and there's nothing really dystopian about it. it's just, like, there are other ways of communicating information, communications media that have both advantages and disadvantages compared to the written word.

i mean, am i missing something here? there's some genuinely good twilight zone episodes, but i don't get how _this_ is considered one of the greats.

oh c'mon like y'all have never wished for the total extinction of the human race

When I was younger, I thought Smith's monologue in The Matrix about humanity being a virus was uncomfortably close to the truth.

Come to think of it, I still do.

But in terms of identifiable individuals, I think pretty much everyone in Trump's orbit would be doing humanity a service by kicking off.

The thing that keeps me from misanthropy is knowing that all the ppl I think most epitomize what's wrong with humanity would also think Agent Smith's speech is otm.

Yeah, but those people typically exempt themselves from the description.

Eh, best to be like Reagan: love people in the aggregate, act politely frosty one-on-one.

I think most people are actually quite amazing, but that hegemonic systems prevent them from showing themselves and realizing their potential. I include myself in this. Misanthropy of any sort forms the beginning of the slide to the worst impulses that humans can harbor.

The biggest obstacle, I think, is, from the MAGA cousin who insists on courtesy when you hang out to the most insouciant social media addict, how rarely we realize the consequences of our actions.

i cant decide whether reagan approach or the opposite is better i think i lean towards the latter tho

Misanthropy absolute dud. Recent update in the Calvin and Hobbes thread says everything that needs to be said about it

Save you a click

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GBeIDqtXwAAf_3u?format=jpg&name=medium

TBC, I do not actively wish for the destruction of humanity. But, I often despair at our seemingly endless ability to destroy our own habitat, and think that the Earth as a whole would be better off without us.

Then I think of Negronis and Bryan Ferry's hair and all is well again

Call it pride, but I can’t seperate the earth and our lives on it; till the day eventually comes

Geez that is a great mop ain’t it?

love you jimboo but can’t agree

I'm glad you can't, I don't particularly like feeling this way.

Optimism vs pessimism is the easiest of binaries, right? And so capitalist. Best to go on with your day extending kindnesses where you can and being grateful that you wake up at all.

Without question, and in my little orbit, that's what I strive to do every day.

xp as a depressive I have to ask, are you ok?

that was to Jim

Yeah, and thank you for asking. I have four kids, I worry about the world they will be living in after I'm gone. I know it weighs on them too. I suppose it's an anxiety that has replaced my childhood anxiety about nuclear war.

Understandable <3

True and prognosis isn’t great but I’d argue too that it’s never been good. Many of our ancestors lived with vastly more uncertainty than us - they just weren’t aware of the exact scope and scale like we were. I was looking at some of the old census records of part of my family a few years back and fifty years after the Famine, there is a household of my ancestors where the oldest of them would have been adults during that time. They would have survived seeing people dig in the dirt for roots to eat, possibly may have been those people themselves. Unimaginable to me, their modern descendant , a period of human suffering so profound that we don’t even really talk about it even today. Yet here on paper they were, a flourishing household, and enough context clues to suggest a happy one. The human suffering of their lifetimes didn’t exist in their actions: they still wanted love and families and to continue. Nothing is guaranteed in life, not security or happiness for any of us, and it’s cliche thinking but it is so for a reason: we could all be dead tomorrow, so exist in the moment.

Otm

jimbeaux, you don't have to agree with what I'm going to post, but here are a few remarks:

A far from hirstute fella with two nieces and a godson, all of whom I adore to distraction, I try to leave a world better for them and me. I work in local politics. I try to write beautiful things. I try to translate the beautiful things to them and readers. But I think of Eliot:

Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it.

and I've realized I can't chew my nails in worry about the world I might leave them! They must make their own way. All I can do is teach them to shun complacency, do good, and revel in beautiful things. I have to have faith that they can do it.

Thank you all <3

I think what (sometimes) causes me to despair is the sheer unnecessariness of so much of the destruction we visit upon ourselves and the world. It's history's biggest own goal.

Maybe that sounds cliché, but it sometimes drives me to distraction, especially as I get older.

People are people, so why should it be?
You and I should get along so awwww-fuhlee

I think there's more misanthropy in that cartoon than in the most nihilistic music you could imagine.

My wife and children are the duct tape holding me together. Myself? Meh. I am a barely-organized pile of former groceries.

When I kissed that girl, and wed my unutterable visions to her perishable breath, I knew my mind would never romp again like the mind of God.

part of my reticence is rooted in a fear of a lack of control over how i'm being perceived, and maybe more specifically fear of the possibility that everyone else will see something obvious that i'm missing about myself, thereby exposing myself as a fraud/idiot.

i'm not sure when, or why, i stopped caring about this, or if it's for the better. but you're right about not being able to control how you're perceived. if it matters, the flipside is you're probably just as oblivious to the things people appreciate about you. ime, at least.

But, I often despair at our seemingly endless ability to destroy our own habitat, and think that the Earth as a whole would be better off without us.

this stuff weighs on me a lot too. humanocentrism bugs me a lot. watching videos about the solar system and things like that makes me feel a little better, and also worse. I mean to know that Earth is not just the place to be, it's the time and place. There's no reason to feel FOMO ever because you are at the epicenter of space time just by virtue of existing. the stars have aligned - quite literally - for all this to happen. And it's for now, not forever.

Going to message that to my mates next they post on social media doing anything without me

probably because ILE more or less operates squarely in that ballpark nowadays

And it's for now, not forever.

And "now" is already "then."

not even past

once you get stuck with a reputation it's hard to shake it off