I’ll make it. I won’t be well off, but I’ll make it.

My kids probably won’t unless something changes soon. That fucks with my head a lot. How did we fuck this up so bad?

What’s the quote about virgins from that vampire show? Something like: If you’re going to eat a sandwich, wouldn’t your prefer if no one had fucked it first?

This seems similar.

Something a lot of people ignore or claim is irrelevant is the individual’s situation before joining and it bugs me. I could be talking out of my ass here, because I don’t know your nephew, but this kid sounds as if he could be pretty desperate for a way out of his situation. Could just be a jackass, but even jackasses usually show up for gran’s funeral and they give those tests every week.

It’s not that he’s utterly blameless, but why would we heap all the blame on him and not acknowledge the system that made/keeps him desperate? Influence from his girlfriend probably contributed, but he’s in a bad financial situation and joining offers an escape, a chance to be with his girl, and a shortcut to getting established on his own. But sure, the only thing he thought about was getting to kill in the next war for oil and he obviously has no misgivings about anything the government will ask him to do. It’s not like anyone is ever forced to choose between two bad options in life. /s

How many kids like your nephew get an education in geopolitical issues and colonialism before they make a similar decision? How many chose the military over seeking work in a failing economy, remaining in an abusive home, or getting trapped with a mountain of debt and a useless degree? How many grew up in a home with Fox news playing 24/7 and just never had a chance to learn the truth?

Having raised two kids and been one myself, I can tell you with certainty that critical thinking isn’t an 18 year old’s greatest skill. Everything the recruiter says will sound great, or at least reasonable. He’s a real friendly guy, not like those hard-asses you see in the movies about boot camp…

And once you’re in, you stay in until your contract is up or risk severe consequences. You can’t just quit. There’s massive cultural and peer pressure involved. 6 year enlistments are standard for the “free college”. Someone who enlisted under Biden’s admin, mistakenly thinking things would be okay, and now wants to leave might be in until 2028 or face some nasty legal and financial consequences, not to mention losing most of their current social circle. Do people think hanging the sins of the nation around their necks is going to entice them to leave? Have we learned nothing of the backlash effect while dealing with MAGA cultists? How many times have people won converts solely by preaching about the evils of the other side?

This isn’t a clean and tidy philosophical thought experiment, it’s a goddamn moral labyrinth built in an active landfill. They can’t undo their decision, some folks love them, some people hate them, and who’s going to help them out if they do the right thing and go CO? So, what are they most likely to do until their enlistment is up? Just wait and hope they can avoid being directly involved.

Are there utter shitbags and rascists in the military who joined to hurt PoC and own the libs? Yes. But it’s not the monolithic block people make it out to be during these discussions and I’m so very tired of the lack of nuance.

Sorry if I hijacked your comment but damn, check in on the kid from time to time, make sure he’s alright. Even if he’s a jackass.

It’s a very, very common mistake, especially with the “teen” fighters. The fact that movies and TV often get it wrong by inserting a model of one aircraft and claiming it’s another doesn’t help.

The phrase “you can tell that’s not an F-18 because it’s shaped exactly like an F-16” has been said more than once at my house.

Two things would happen.

1. They’d justify the ICE goon’s behavior by claiming the embassy was enabling terrorism or drug trafficking.

2. They would pitch a huge fit, take some sort of extreme action, and claim they’re in the right because US diplomats are good guys.

They don’t care about rules, ethics, or even having a consistent system of values. They only care about punishing people, power, and getting what they want when they want it. If they pull back at all, it’s only because they fear their support (and with it their immunity from consequences) is slipping. They’re just bullies and cowards.

This was years ago, IIRC.

They’ve always known their shit was fucking with people’s heads. They’ve always known it causes problems. They don’t care. They just want their money so they can buy more politicians and make more money.

Everything is about money, except money, which is about power.

A lot of people who could do more are still doing the math between being complicit in this and ruining their lives, which is a real possibility if they act before securing some kind of support from the opposition or a resistance movement gets more organized. They’ll have to be convinced the risk is worth it and action could result real change before they go for it.

The problem isn’t necessarily finding people opposed to what’s happening, but making them believe that change can happen and they’ll be alright in the end if they join the resistance.

He’s enabled by some very wealthy people. And in the US wealth is more than just money, it’s often the most important factor in status, popularity, and social and political power.

Even some the people screaming for empathy, understanding, and improved social programs often look down upon the poor and homeless, they just hide it behind a veneer of doing good. They want to rid the nation of poverty not because it’s the right thing to do, but so that they aren’t confronted with the reality of what causes poverty and the guilt they feel when they pass by someone who’s panhandling.

Our nation’s version of original sin is productivity. If you’re alive, you must feed into the economic system, you must support yourself and not be a burden to others. If you’re successful and wealthy enough, it means all lesser sins (getting bailed out with tax money, wage theft and fraud, destroying the environment, prejudice, sexual predation, etc.) will be forgiven by at least half the nation. This effect is more profound for celebrity performers.

So, if you’re stable financially and not under a direct threat from the administration, you’re probably upset, but your focus is going to be on finding a way to get rid of Trump and get out of this mess without winding up POOR.

You want to know why so many federal workers are still doing their jobs despite being complicit in many of the awful things that are happening? Because they don’t have a way to pay the rent if they walk off the job. The job market is awful. The economy is in the shitter. Everything is super expensive, and they don’t want to let their families down. Want the military and federal agents to quit? Give them a guaranteed way to pay their mortgages. Find them another job.

It’s not just about luxuries and standards of living. It’s about social acceptance and beloning. People will go to insane lengths to feel like an accepted member of a group. So these workers may be unhappy, even deeply upset about the direction the country is headed in, but it’ll have to get worse before the sacrifice is worth it, because being in jail or being dead is only a little bit worse than being a poor person.

Same holds true for much of the rest of the nation. It’s hard to risk belonging, to risk being part of our society, when there’s no guarantee you won’t wind up homeless and a pariah because of it.

Not exactly sure what you missed or what your point is supposed to be.

The same would be true of any ad platform. I hate Facebook for all the ills it’s caused society and it pisses me off that my breakfast cereal is slightly more expensive because of Zuckerberg’s compensation package too.

But Facebook, et al. aren’t being discussed here. Reddit is.

Even if I stay off the internet completely, a portion of the money I spend STILL goes in their pocket, and the only way to prevent it is to spend hours exhaustively researching every product I buy to find the one or two alternatives out of hundreds of others that don’t feed into the system somehow. And even if product A doesn’t buy ads on these platforms, the place I shop for it probably does. If I can’t buy direct, as is the case with so many purchases, all that time and research are robbed of any real impact by the fact that my closest retail outlet spends millions on targeted Internet ads.

But it’s not really about the money though, it’s about where it’s going.

In an alternate timeline, Spez, Zuck, and the rest are decent human beings with a functioning conscience and use their platforms for the common good. I don’t mind those versions of them getting a piece of my alternate self’s dollar. But I don’t live in that universe.

So, because I’m stuck here, every single one of these modern-day Prometheus wannabe, god-complex, techbro shitheads can kiss my hairy ass.

Don’t they teach them anything before they let them out on the street.

Possibly not. If feel like that’s been brought up in the news before.

Or maybe it’s just a one time class or a video, and people do get complacent. Or maybe he’s just a fucking dumbass and a bully. There’s a clear pattern of highschool bully-style confrontation and escalation in many of the videos we’re seeing, and standing there is as good a way as any to do just that.

These goons want people to be afraid of them, and act as if they believe that intimidation is a forcefield of some sort, like if they’re enough of a threatening asshole that it’ll mean they never get hurt.

The whole “act like a scary hardass and people will comply” strategy relies on shock and the tendency for people to freeze up and get rattled when suddenly confronted with a threat from authority or power. They want people to go all deer in the headlights when they get in their face and comply without a fight, or if you fight you’re off guard and rattled and there’s less of risk to them so they just get to wail on you for a while. It’s gratifying for bullies when things are one-sided like that, it makes them feel powerful and righteous. In terms of getting what you want from people, it works well… up to the point that it doesn’t.

After that point it’s one type of catastrophe or another.

I gotta unpack this a little…

Reddit’s main source of revenue is advertising. Other companies pay Reddit to shove ads in your face. You probably buy products from at least some of those companies, and while market forces and consumer perceptions have large influence, operating costs are still a factor in setting those prices. Just like everyone else, Reddit sets the prices of its advertising services based in part on its operating costs, which includes Spez’s salary.

Even if you avoid Reddit, things you buy are more expensive because this fucking toolshed gets paid $193 million a year just to be a sociopathic jackoff with a popular website.

I quit Reddit years ago, but I’m still fucking pissed about this shit and I have every right to be.

Well, if you take good old-fashioned violence out of the picture, money. Or specifically a lack of it.

Sanctions, selling off US debt, more retaliatory tariffs, blacklisting US investors and companies, anything that pulls cash out of the US economy and puts it somewhere else. Turn off the money tap, make the mega-donors hurt bad enough and the dystopia machine will eventually grind to a halt. Don’t think for a moment that the current squad of high-functioning sociopaths that are enabling this are principled enough to stay the course after a few of their mega-yachts are repossessed. They’ll flip sides again and again just to try and keep that horde they’ve built up. Someone just has to prove to them that the threat is serious, because right now, they think everyone else is helpless against them.

Additionally, the majority of Trump voters cited the economy as a primary reason for voting for him. A good portion of them were probably lying to cover for being racist and just wanted to see POC and the LGBTQ+ community suffer, but if you crash the US economy hard enough, you can still hijack a big chunk of Trump’s public support. It’s the same as with mega-yachts, but here we’re talking pickup trucks, ATVs, and rent-to-own furniture.

Few problems with this. 1. It’s slow. 2. It’ll hurt everyone else economically because US businesses have hooks set real deep in a lot of places. 3. Other nations have a wealthy elite with similar sway who want Trump in power for various reasons and might not play along. & 4. Whoever replaces the US might turn out to be just as big as bully in a few years if we’re not careful.

Still, it needs to be done.

EDIT: It’s like the old saying goes, everything is about money, except money, which is about power.

As others have said, I use a client that doesn’t display them, so it never dawned on me. And in general, profile pics have never been a big deal for me. So if the app or site doesn’t make me do it as part of the account set up, my profile pic just stays as the default.

You can set profile pictures on Lemmy?

You’re when it comes to finding affection. Which is precisely why my approach fell flat.

While the environmental problems and the market bubble eventually bursting are bigger issues that will harm everyone, I see the beginnings of what could be a problem of equal significance concerning the exploitation of lonely and vulnerable people for profit with AI romance/sexbot apps. I don’t want to fully buy into the more sensationalist headlines surrounding AI safety without more information, but I strongly suspect that we’ll see a rise in isolated persons with aggravated mental health issues due to this kind of LLM use. Not necessarily hundreds of people with full-blown psychosis, but an overall increase in self-isolation coupled with depression and other more common mental health issues.

The way social media has shaped our public discourse has shown that like it or not, we’re all vulnerable to being emotionally manipulated by electronic platforms. AI is absolutely being used in the same way and while more tech savvy persons are likely to be less vulnerable, no one is going to be completely immune. When you consider AI powered romance and sex apps, ask yourself if there’s a better way to get under someone’s skin than by simulating the most intimate relationships in the human experience?

So, old fashioned or not, I’m not going to be supportive of lonely people turning to LLMs as a substitute for romance in the near future. It’s less about their individual freedoms, and more about not wanting to see them fed into the next Torment Nexus.

Edits: several words.

Well, that’s certainly not the direction I expected this conversation to go.

I apologize to the necro community for the hurtful and ignorant comments I’ve made in the past. They aren’t reflective of who I am as a person and I’ll strive to improve myself in the future.

For a while I was telling people “don’t fall in love with anything that doesn’t have a pulse.” Which I still believe is good advice concerning AI companion apps.

But someone reminded me of that humans will pack-bond with anything meme that featured a toaster or something like that, and I realized it was probably a futile effort and gave it up.

Yeah, no one would have even blinked at that from what I recall. Unless you tried to take it onto a plane or into someplace high security like a courtroom it was something so mundane that it wouldn’t have been brought up.

Making an issue out of it would have been akin to saying “Did you hear about Bob? He always has his car keys with him. Watch out for that guy…”

Honestly, after scrolling through this thread, I gotta wonder when carrying a pocket knife became something abnormal to a decent percentage of the population.

It was never universal, but as young lad in the late 1900’s it was unremarkable for most people to have at least a little pocket knife with a nail file on them most of the time and never anything sinister. There were places you couldn’t take them, but for the most part we lived our lives surrounded by people with concealed knives and never thought twice about it.

Never tied an onion to my belt though.

EDIT: If it’s mostly a backlash against the EDC crowd, I kinda get it, but still it seems pretty harmless in moderation.

It’s how my wife and I proposed!