It’s one of the many toxic byproducts of “journalism” as a for profit industry.

OP is from a country full of models.

SLAM! Da duh duh, da duh duh, let the boys be boys

If they’re are covered, why or how are they out of pocket?

Any item he sees in the news that doesn’t involve him, he’s like “but how can I make this about me, which is what everything should be about?”.

A country of 330+ million reduced down to one main character.

Woke SAMs

Finally a real crap out

Saw him live delivering his “fuck Tiger Woods” and “fuck Lance Armstrong” set a long time ago. It should be noted how prescient this was because neither of those celebrities had their fall from grace yet. He was ranting against the very idea of celebrity worship and being told who to admire.

Some people in the audience left after that and he responded by saying it was going to get a lot fucking worse so it’s good that you’re leaving.

Dude was a fucking legend, and I’m still happy that I saw him before he died. He ruled that room, and I’ve been to other comedy shows, but none in my experience captivated the crowd and spoke as much truth as he did.

It’s a big fucking club, and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the club.

I learned this true fact from watching Barry.

is it bad i’m just kinda glad they finally went completely masks-off?

I understand this take, but honestly, there are things missing from it.

I think, like Vonnegut wrote, that we are what we pretend to be, and when we let them as a society get away with not even pretending to be good people…we worsen society overall.

There is another element to this as well, IMO, which is that people are mostly animals: monkey see, monkey do. When people see these psychopaths in high-powered positions getting away with whatever they want, they are more likely to model that behavior as well.

I’d rather have a society where everyone is pretending to be nice over one where people feel free to be the absolute worst version of themselves. I also think that being who you are pretending to be has a good side. People can “pretend” to be good and become better because of it.

People think that the more these people are obviously evil, the less the public will agree with them and the more precarious they’ll make the entire escapade. I think that the 2024 election and all of the events of 2025 have proven that notion is a dangerous fiction.

Dude has been saying for 20 years that we should’ve stolen Iraq’s oil. Yet somehow everyone acts surprised when he does pretty predictable things like this.

Thanks Trump

This is America. We have no conscience left to shock.

Everyone is waiting for the aha moment where we’ll finally arouse the long dormant inner decency of the masses of this country and we’ll all rise up against the evil that has made its home here but it never comes.

War crimes (at best)

I read a margin breakdown on every big box store in consumer reports and Costco was the lowest margin store there was. They make most of their money on the subscriptions.

There are also some items (beer for instance) that are drastically lower in price versus the competition. So much so that you can make your membership fee back in a couple of trips.

But yes, admittedly they do not have 100% unbelievable deals.

It’s just that capitalism rewards the worst actions taken by the worst people.

Um, unregulated garbage late stage capitalism sure. Maybe that’s all capitalism, because it does seem like it degenerates to that in every case. 🤷

The only way to build a better one is by fighting for it.

That’s exactly what democratic socialism is. It’s the fight for a better world.

It’s funny to me that folks can easily see the flaws in “the other side” but never their own side. Like, pretty obviously communism sucks in reality (the theory is well meaning) because you “have” to go through single-party socialism first, and once people get power they’re unlikely to ever give it up, but just as obviously capitalism sucks in reality because if a business has too much money and no government is enforcing antitrust it can buy up all of the competition.

That’s why you’re better off with a compromise. That compromise, IMO, is democratic socialism.

J-Lo

It’s fitting for 2025 that the center for disease control has the position that diseases should be out of control.

I feel like streaming has led to things being more fragmented, both because you need to be subscribed to the one service that carries the show and because there’s so many more shows being made.

I’m not who you were originally replying to, but I think two seemingly contradictory things can be true at once.

Yes, there is definitely more content nowadays, and less people watching the same things at the same time because of all of the variety of services and content and platforms, etc.

But that content tends to still be homogenous. The settings and costumes of the shows might be different, but most content cannot pass, for instance, the bechdel test.

For all of the emphasis on “eradicating woke” in the last few years, there really isn’t a whole lot of actual diversity in most media. I could probably only name a single show that expresses, for instance, communist ideas, and I think it was cancelled in recent years alongside scores of lgbtq characters in shows.

Plotlines are typical, production values are stepped up but there’s a large amount of, for instance, ideological consistency among all media produced nowadays.

If you’re looking for a variety of typical genre shows, yes, you’re spoiled for choice. But when you’re looking for something that breaks the mold even slightly there are really only a handful of things from which to choose.

And that’s leaving out how much derivative media exists. Vince Gilligan in recent interviews even lamented how he was one of only a few people that could get a new show with a new concept even started in the industry. Many shows are set in “universes” that are decades old. A lot of “new” movies are reboots or sequels of old movies.

There’s a thread of choiceless variety that used to apply mainly to things like groceries that has now infected much of media as well. Whole political movements now push to eradicate the little diversity (ideological and character identity based) that exists.

All of this leaves out what happened to music btw, which is becoming so algorithm-driven that it’s hard for those using streaming services to even tell if it was produced by a person.

I’ll just leave this here as well:

https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-44/the-intellectual-situation/why-is-everything-so-ugly/

Edit: I realized after a while that the easiest way to summarize the homogeneity you see in modern media is that it is supply-side oriented. Shows, movies, and music are made (or not) primarily based upon how easily the corporate marketing apparatuses think they can shove it down the public’s throat.