this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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Asklemmy

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[–] davemeech@lemmy.ca 94 points 1 year ago (4 children)

2016 US elections was a ridiculously sobering moment for realizing that we had not progressed nearly to the extent that I nievely thought.

[–] lollygagger@lemm.ee 35 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This one rings home pretty hard. I’ve definitely viewed the people around me differently since then. And especially since covid as well.

[–] davemeech@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 year ago

Agreed, Covid ties or is a close runner up for me as well in terms of people showing their true colors.

[–] Nonameuser678@aussie.zone 20 points 1 year ago

I'm not even from the US and honestly it was a sobering moment for me as well. I realised how people like Hitler get into power. Before 2016 I knew it was possible like cognitively but Trump being elected made it feel real in a way it never had before.

[–] PrivateNoob@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 year ago

Same for my country (Hungary). For the first time almost all off the opposition parties agreed to merge into eachother, then the chosen opposition president almost became the old corrupt guy's wife (old people voted for them), then the Ukraine már happened where everyone knew Orbán made a ton of contracts with Putin, LITERALLY disses Zelensky but never mentions Putin's name and Orbán won with a record 2/3 again.

Hungarian people literally can't remember about 1956, it seems.

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[–] pineapplelover@lemm.ee 36 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Snowden file leaks lead me down the path to privacy and to reading books like Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky. Lead me down the path to degoogling and linux and now decentralized services like Lemmy.

It seems like every week some article comes out with big tech abusing their rights. This week was Philips hue and last week or so it was a mom getting 2 years in jail because Facebook gave up information about her giving abortion pills to her daughter.

I am using all these foss services myself and making my friends and family use them and be aware of these events. It's a slow car crash and if people are apathetic and say "I have nothing to hide" and eventually "I have nothing to say", soon we'll be stripped of more rights until it's too late.

[–] centof@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

“The cells of death row are filled with guys who had nothing to hide.” - Kenneth Eade

[–] spauldo@lemmy.ml 36 points 1 year ago (1 children)

GWB publicly condoning torture.

I grew up during the tail end of the cold war. Torture was something the Soviets did. We were better than that.

And sure, I knew the CIA did stuff like that under the table, but it was never OK.

It's what got me interested in politics, and why I feel that we shouldn't try to hide the bad things we've done when we teach history. Knowing what we're capable of is necessary to keep ourselves from repeating the mistakes of the past.

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[–] kense@lmmy.dk 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Not how I view the world, but how I view USA and "citizens of the free world".

In 2016 my girlfriend and I visited New York - for me, first time visiting USA. I had a co-worker who lived in USA for most of her childhood, so I asked her if she had some advice for me to get along with people I met on my way.

"Never underestimate the stupidity of Americans".

I thought that to be rude as I had "talked" with many Americans on Reddit and sure, there were idiots, but that didn't define a person from USA for me.

We arrived in New York and took a cab to the hotel. The driver asked us "So, is Donald Trump making headlines in Europe?" (This was during the 2016 election).

I laughed and told him "Yeah, can you believe people will vote on such a moron"...

Oh no I didn't... He was furious, as Donald Trump was the Saviour of USA and he was singlehandedly going to "clean up the swamp" or whatever his catchphrase was.. and then he said one of the stupidest things I have ever heard.

"90% of Muslims are terrorists and if you don't kill them, they will kill you"..

I know not all Americans are this dumb, but I learned my lesson.... Never underestimate the stupidity of Americans.

[–] PrivateNoob@sopuli.xyz 11 points 1 year ago (4 children)

It can be applied elsewhere too. Whenever politics come up, it's wise to initally talk about it in a neutral state.

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[–] fubarx@lemmy.ml 32 points 1 year ago
  • 9/11
  • Bush v Gore
  • GWB re-election (despite war, recession, etc.)
  • Trump election
  • COVID

All chipped away at notions of stability, fairness, and sanity.

Still have hope, but tend not to believe the hype so much.

[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 32 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

I might not have been a raging, bleeding-heart, anti-capitalist liberal had Trump not gotten elected in November 2016. Until then I might have considered myself apolitical with no strong political ambitions. Seeing the post-election riots/protests opened up the world to me, his election wasn't a stupid joke but an injustice on all the people Trump essentially campaigned on fucking over.

Another crazy moment was the second time I got high on weed. I was super panicked at first, but when I went to bed, all of a sudden abstract art made sense to me as I had visions and felt a connection to their work even if I didn't know their name. That high had residual effects the next day and I had felt changed somehow.

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[–] pinkdrunkenelephants@sopuli.xyz 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ohh, the lockdowns showed me how all of you motherfuckers really are. It was VERY enlightening.

[–] whoisearth@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 year ago

It really is interesting isn't it?

A lot of people are shitheels

A lot of people are ornery

A lot of people don't think for themselves

A lot of people are susceptible to conspiracy

A lot of people are followers by nature

I could go on and on.

[–] KidsTryThisAtHome@lemm.ee 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

COVID. Really never understood before how little of a shit the U.S. government has for its people. But they straight up let us fucking die while telling teenagers they needed to get back to work for minimum wage so they could get their shit Mcdildos and mochafuckaccinos and add gold spinning rims to their yachts. I can't wait until these old fucks start dying off, I don't care what political leanings they claim to have, we need a fuckin overhaul.

[–] stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca 15 points 1 year ago

Even more so I was shocked at how little care a lot of people have for others in general.

[–] YourFavouriteNPC@feddit.de 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The whole "the world will end in 2012" hysteria back then. It was my first glimpse into conspiracy theories, which I've spent a lot of time learning about ever since. It made me realize that nothing is ever too idiotic to not have an alarming number of people fall for it. It's why I wasn't surprised by the rise of the Q-movement or the resistance against the absolute bare minimum of COVID measures because of microchips in vaccines etc. All of that were just yet additional "of course people believe that shit"-moments for me.

Like Tommy Lee Jones said in Men in Black "A person is smart - people are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals."

I haven't been surprised by how stupid people can be in a long time.

[–] PrivateNoob@sopuli.xyz 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Actually, how did the 2012 thing became such a viral trend? Literally even news sites aired it SEVERAL times here, and I already thought that's it was a dumb conteo story. (I was 11 then)

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 1 year ago

As someone who was in his late teens then, I don't think many people really seriously believed that the world was going to end in 2012. It was more of a running joke. I remember that a few days before the 21st of December, someone posted on a forum for students of the university I was then attending that exam results were going to be posted on the 21st; someone else responded "oh, so for some who took this course the world will actually end on that day".

[–] DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 year ago

It was the end of a ~5,000 year cycle in a mayan calendar or something.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_phenomenon

[–] centof@lemm.ee 28 points 1 year ago

For me it was when I was watching Soul with some friends and eventually came to some emotional realizations. I realized that I only had a superficial understanding of how to communicate. I could discuss ideas in the abstract, but I had trouble with expressing myself emotionally and personally because I was always conditioned to repress how I feel. I guess like 22 in the movie I only saw myself as a casual observer. It took a couple rewatches for me to process the difficult emotions I was feeling into something I could explain but when I did it really helped my overall mental outlook on life.

[–] DirigibleProtein@aussie.zone 27 points 1 year ago

Being treated for cancer in hospital (in remission now, thank you) during COVID lockdowns gave me lots of time to reflect on my life. Realised that probably I was the asshole all these years; and also came to the realisation that I’m autistic and socially awkward. Reading David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs helped me to understand all the corporate games and garbage that I’d been part of for most of my career.

When I think about my life, it’s divided into pre-cancer diagnosis, selfish workaholic and part of corporate life; and post-cancer remission, unemployed, living off my savings, kinder to the people and the world, but unable to find a job that resonates with the new me.

[–] lolola@lemmy.blahaj.zone 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I'll throw one out for COVID, but not just the lockdowns or the immediate work changes. It was more about how the deaths kept happening. And happening. And happening. Yet people still failed to take it seriously, even to the point of rebelling against seemingly common-sense safeguards like vaccines, masking, and staying the fuck home.

In the US, we lived through about 4 years of shenanigans and bullshit and lies from an incompetent federal government leading up to the pandemic. But surely that wouldn't fly for long. You can lie about the number of people at a rally (because who the fuck cares), you can apparently lie about where a hurricane is projected to go (because it's jUsT a PrOjEcTiOn or something), but surely you can't bullshit your way out of a pandemic. Hospitals at capacity. Bodies piling up. Loved ones lost. Visible, real, tangible impacts of poor leadership and poor decisionmaking.

But, turns out you can. Even in the most dire of circumstances, you can still convince people that reality isn't real. Or even if it is, it doesn't really matter and it's not their problem. And there are enough people out there who will buy into that message that it will ruin things for everyone else.

Edit: To the original point of the question... I guess I had a little more faith in humanity before all that happened. More faith that real-world consequences would win out against rhetorical bullshit and tribalism.

[–] centof@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

reality isn’t real

It is worth keeping in mind Hanlon's Razor with this. "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by neglect." They are running on emotions and accepting being wrong hurts so they simply don't accept their emotions.

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[–] Damage@slrpnk.net 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Losing everything. My family wasn't rich but it was well off, and in my young stupidity I thought we deserved to live better than others did because we worked hard (had a family business).
Turns out hard work means almost jack shit. I mean, I'm good now because I have very marketable skills and I do work hard at a job not many want to do, but it takes me around the world and I can tell you, fucking everything in life depends on luck, starting from where you are born.

[–] ursakhiin 13 points 1 year ago

This is the biggest difference between myself and my brother.

My dad is fairly well off having run a company for decades at this point and I knew I didn't want to lean on that. So I went on my own career path.

My brother decided to join the family company. Over the past 20 years he was gifted 50 percent of the company as a bonus. He didn't understand that he's only in that situation because the owner was his dad. He's never understood how big of a safety net the two of us had growing up. He genuinely thinks that his hard work is the sole reason for his position in life and that anybody that's willing to work as hard as he did (and he did, I won't deny it) would be on a similar situation as himself.

The luck factor is also called opportunity. People succeed financially because they had some opportunity arise that enabled the success to be a possibility. Be it a random chance that they were given a job interview, that their dad owns a company they can start at, or they happened to grow up in an area with good education options they could lean on to develop skills, or just a serious safety-net.

I had option 2 and 4, but used option 3 to eventually get option 1. I'm mostly unsatisfied with the world because I wish everybody had option 3 and 4 to start with regardless of family.

[–] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Trump ~~winning~~ getting carried by the EVs made me a bitter, jaded, hopeless husk. I lost faith in the republic, in america, in people, in common sense...

I don't know if I ever truly recovered.

Come to think of it, i've lived through at least two instances where the direct opposition of the public's will have lead to death, suffering, and the collapse of represenative democracy: Bush v Gore, and the Trump Presidency. Odd how that's a common trend.

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[–] SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

In retrospect, was probably the Battle of Seattle in 1999. Not that I wasn't aware of the issues before, but that really ripped off the mask to show me that the U.S. is fundamentally rotten at its core: The police are not the good guys, they don't serve and protect, they are there to visit violence on the enemies of capital. And if innocent people in their homes or going to work get caught up and harmed, fuck 'em, they're not wealthy enough to matter. The media will flat-out lie to maintain the good-cops-vs.-evil-protesters narrative. Our leaders will eagerly sell out American citizens to the interests of global capital, with only lip service to democratic traditions. And Americans are too disengaged to really question any of it.

For me, it provided the keys to understanding the events since, from Bush v. Gore to today. At least now the rot has become so obvious that the younger generations are forced to notice.

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[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 22 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I think the closest is when i discovered Not Just Bikes, that unlocked the whole "people are affected by how their environment is designed" thing in my brain and since then i've just kept on down that road and now i'm a turbosocialist who thinks 95% of cars should be immediately scrapped.

[–] rmuk@feddit.uk 5 points 1 year ago

You took the orange pill 🟠 we are brothers.

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[–] hamid@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 1 year ago

Being an adult in 2003 and being forced to pay taxes to destroy the country my family comes from for no fucking reason

[–] Anissem@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Once computers went online. It was fascinating to experience in real time.

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[–] orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

For me it was an array of events.

The war in Afghanistan (I was a kid but this was one of the tipping points that sent me down a hard leftist path).

GWB… just collectively. Freezing when told the towers were hit; lying about WMDs so he could start an illegal war.

Watching Obama get elected and then turning out to be a fucking fraud that built the drone program and carried on the US legacy of being the worldwide terrorist organization.

A big one though was watching the police continue to terrorize the Black community over and over. Years ago on Facebook I had a couple of old high school friends that argued with me that you should do whatever a cop tells you. My response was to tell them how utterly fucking idiotic that was and that cops will violate your rights if it means they don’t have to do any paperwork. They’ll illegally search your vehicle (like they did mine one time), harass you (like they did to my friends and I when we were skateboarding), and if you’re Black, they’ll shoot you in the back if you run.

Needless to say, I am not friends with either of them anymore. I think that’s when I really started to solidify who I was and have rejected absolutely everything that America is and does on the world stage. I’ve become known as the white guy that hates cops. I’ve worked with Black revolutionary groups, activist groups, written articles and tons of thoughts on police violence in America, and have marched against the police on multiple occasions. Hell, the police have surveilled me for who knows how long a few years ago, and I know people that have been under surveillance by the FBI. As an aside, you’d be amazed at the lengths this country will go to to keep eyes on peace activists.

Everything America does as a collective has brought me to the conclusion that we are in a failed state, capitalism-in-decay freefall that I’m afraid we will never recover from. We no longer innovate; we continue to loot other countries; we are all a captive audience hitched to whatever whims the capitalists and other ghouls want.

I’ve been laid off, had companies fuck me over for money and control, harassed by cops (all the way back to when I was 15 in the 90s), tracked by my own government for having a voice… there is nothing anyone can say that will convince me that the United States isn’t the enemy of the world and it’s citizens are nothing more than a disposable capitalist resource.

I hate to be a downer but my view of this country is a product of what it has done to both its own people and people around the world. I feel like a prisoner in the US.

[–] SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social 10 points 1 year ago

Dubya and his crew were something else, weren’t they? I knew right from the get-go that the whole Iraq thing was a lie. It was just so obvious from their demeanor and body language, and the talking points they chose. Their goofy “evidence,” and the way they got offended when questioned about it. Like, how did everybody not see that?

[–] kugel7c@feddit.de 19 points 1 year ago

2016 Brexit referendum -> Turkish coup-> trump presidential win

It reinforced all my feelings about what was important in this world and simultaneously made very clear we are actually living in an age of sliding back, not of Progress. I was already very interested in politics by that point but with just about the knowledge to grab the weight but no proper explanation this summer half of 2016 felt like falling into chaos and uncertainty 3 times. In retrospect the outer two likely had much more influence on my life thereafter, but the middle one was the more jarring to watch unfold at the time.

[–] ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The left wing party of Australian federal politics decided that treating refugees inhumanly was acceptable.

That moment changed how I view politics and how I view people. It made me realise just how irrelevant empathy for others was in most public and political discourse. It made me more cynical about "the system", changed the way I voted, and transformed the face of my own advocacy to put empathy for others at the forefront.

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[–] Nobsi@feddit.de 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

2016 elections and then covid. Now nazis rising to power again.

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[–] all-knight-party@kbin.run 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Tripping too hard on mushrooms. I realized that the mind is powerful, and under the right conditions, can show you and make you believe that reality is absolutely anything. And I mean anything. You could be anywhere, anyone, become an inanimate object, have your world become pure geometry and sensation, completely lose sense of the scale and passage of time. There are almost no limits.

[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago

Yep, it’s they key lesson of psychedelics: reality is an illusion, never underestimate the power of the mind and how much it lives literally in its own world. Be mindful of biases and prejudices corrupting the very notion of truth, be sympathetic to those with mental health issues and trauma and be mindful of just how ubiquitous a problem mental health is and how important working on yourself is.

[–] Extrasvhx9he@lemmy.today 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The damn toilet paper crisis

[–] leftzero@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago

I got glasses. That definitely changed the way I saw things. Everything suddenly became more focused.

[–] solidneutral@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago

When I was a child I had a neighbor who was a mentally challenged adult woman. I learned how cruel life can be. I didn't understand why some have it worst than others. But I also learn to appreciate and be grateful for what I have.

[–] kglitch@kglitch.social 8 points 1 year ago

That week recently when there were floods in every country except where there were fires in every country. That was wild.

[–] MoonRaven@feddit.nl 8 points 1 year ago

Finding out in primary school that other kids weren't poor and had all the shit they wanted while we sometimes had issues getting food.

[–] shinigamiookamiryuu@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Does it have to be an event in our lifetime (and not a historical event we learned about)?

[–] rufus@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If some historic event changed your life so much, we probably also like to read about it.

[–] populustree@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 year ago

the whole kerfluffle about the stupid wizard game. folks like me actively dying while some stupid people with nothing better to do think that it's worth any fighting whatsoever. it's a damn game, who cares.

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