Decline

[luka]

its always there this idea, that things are worse, it's always there but post 2008 it's pervasive in a new way. Global financial crash and Brexit and Trump and so on. I might start owning it. Take it in. These are the bad days, the downward trajectory. All the YouTube nostalgia for any time but this one. The eighties. The nineties. Anywhere but here.

 

[woops]

u ok luke? there's about to be a load of posts here from serious posters explaining that this or that period was much more fucked

 

[woops]

or just as bad or worse but different

 

[woops]

can be hard to convince yourself that's true though when you're neck deep in 2020 or any other period

 

[sus]

When the stock is lowest, that's when you buy. Selling now is going about it all wrong.

 

[pattycakes_]

the difference between now and all those other times is the internet

 

[woops]

this did it for me the other day, i was genuinely thinking what if 1988 actually was a/the high mark of western culture and we will never again know such opulence? while enjoying it

 

[woops]

maybe we can also post a shit load of evidence that 2008 was when the new phase of the conspiracy kicked in. but for once i don't think this is what luke means

 

[entertainment]

people are really leaning into this thing of lamenting each year. "can 2020 be over soon?" feel like we've it's been like that each year since 2016 with Trump and Brexit and all those great people dying.

there's a smell of looking for excuses to those appeals, ways to distance yourself from your life, to acquiesce, find rest. find a bit of comfort in shared lament. how can anyone be happy in these times anyways?

 

[entertainment]

question is what's making people seek refuge in lament. something pervasive, great and terrible, omniscient threat in the air.

 

[luka]

I'm not saying things are worse than ever, of course not.

 

[sus]

This is the healthiest culture has ever been.

 

[luka]

This is the healthiest culture has ever been.

You're 15 and you like Miley Cyrus you don't get an opinion yet.

 

[sus]

Inject the future into my arm like Clorox.

 

[sus]

I predict a wave of cultural ubermensches riding the information overload to a new golden age of writing, music, & art.

 

[luka]

You shouldn't judge the world by YouTube comments of course but it's notable how fixated they are on nostalgia and regret and the sense that things will never be good again. There's no hope. I mean, YouTube is a nostalgia machine, so it's weighted in that sense of course, and I've built that into my equations.

 

[woops]

one of the most common ones i see on youtube is "who's still listening in 2020?"

 

[woops]

I predict a wave of cultural ubermensches riding the information overload to a new golden age of writing, music, & art.

do you mean yourself though or do you mean the mafia

 

[boxedjoy]

one of the most common ones i see on youtube is "who's still listening in 2020?"

who's listening in quarantine xoxo

 

[shiels]

There’s the line that this is a quantitative thing. Core function of thought and information processing being awareness of threat. Excess info meaning constant sense of doom despite relatively great living conditions. The pinker argument I think, maybe