Have we always lived in clownworld? - aka 'where did everything go wrong'

[Randall Fragg]

I have a proposal to make.
Look at the news and you'll see see evidence that we are living in Clownworld. A world where every bizarre, fucked up meme is slowly coming true.
Some people point to the beginning of Clownworld as 2016. That seems to be the point where everything really started going wrong. However, I have another suggestion.
We've always been in Clownworld. We just didn't noticed it until recently.
Take a brief look into historical events over the last few hundred years and you find some really fucking stupid shit.
For example:

• The War of Jenkins Ear, a major conflict between England and Spain that started in 1739, where the excuse was that a British captain got his ear cut off in 1731.
• The War of the Golden Stool, a conflict between the Ashanti people and the British, which started because a colonial administrator wanted to sit on the Ashanti's magic chair.
• The Tokyo War Crimes trial, in which one of the defendants, Shumei Okawa, arrived dressed in pajamas and slapped Hideki Tojo's head. There is video footage of this.
• The fact that one of the bloodiest wars in human history was started by a guy claiming to be Jesus's brother.
• Pretty much everything about World War 1, from the murder of Archduke Ferdinand being due to the driver fucking up, to the 12 battles of the Isonzo, to Germany using a British-held telegram cable to try to get the (civil war ravaged) Mexico to attack the United States because they might join the war (and then go 'yeah, come at me bro' when it got leaked).
• Tulip Mania. An economic bubble caused by fucking Tulips.

We've always been living in Clownworld. It's just that only recently have we had the technology to archive and disseminate the stupidity. In previous ages stupid shit would be written out or downplayed, because it wasn't 'dignified'.

 

[BScCollateral]

The stupid of the past is forgotten, as will the stupid of the present.

 

[Bionicle of War]

Have we always been living in clown world?

Yes. It's just gotten even clownier as time's gone on.

 

[ClownBrew]

As a non-millennial (and I thank the gods for it daily) I've seen both the old world and the new. I can tell you firsthand that Clown World began around 1990. Came on gradually but grew worse and worse with each passing year.The world was a far-- and I mean FAR-- saner and happier place in every way before that decade reared its ugly head.

I could rant about this subject all night but will spare you the powerlevelling.

 

[Odnovo]

As a non-millennial (and I thank the gods for it daily) I've seen both the old world and the new. I can tell you firsthand that Clown World began around 1990. Came on gradually but grew worse and worse with each passing year.The world was a far-- and I mean FAR-- saner and happier place in every way before that decade reared its ugly head.

I could rant about this subject all night but will spare you the powerlevelling.

No, go ahead. It would be interesting to hear about it. This is interesting to me because I'm old enough to remember 1990, albeit barely.

 

[The Last Stand]

Humans are predictably unpredictable.

 

[PaleTay]

I noticed around 2014 is when women started to go completely clown world, a lot of guys my age have commented on that irl. That seems to coincide with the start of the "everything in games and media is sexist" movement becoming mainstream and the Tumblrisms bleeding out into the world.

 

[ArnoldPalmer]

That's both true and untrue. Crazy shit has happened in the past, but we're about to near-literally stupid ourselves to extinction. Current Year Clown World isn't just "Oh look this country went to war with a bunch of giant birds and lost". It's an attempt at inverting an entire hemisphere's culture, value systems, and way of life into a near-complete generation of poisoned from birth, dysgenic, Low-T mutants who are rightfully ashamed to exist and likely will not breed due to all of the self-loathing, or cock-cutting. I still stand by the common sentiment that Idiocracy was just a documentary from the future, but that future came much sooner than anticipated.

Combine that with all of the technology we have, and all of the tech we have to look forward to, and you realize that there was always somewhere on earth to run, until now. There's no escaping the lunacy. It's all over every format of media, in the public dialogue, people don't shut the fuck up about it ever. Even innawoods isn't going to save you from the technology, now that SpaceX alone has enough satellites in orbit to have a real-time map of the entire globe at once. We're fucking boned, man. It would take the deaths of billions and the loss of decades of technology to recover from what our careless hands have wrought.

Wars have started over one stupid thing, but they generally aren't caused simply because of that one stupid thing. It takes a decent push to get a whole group of people to start killing another group of people, and that usually involves a great deal of time spent with a seething hatred of the other. WWI started because of a sandwich, but that's only tangentially true. Due to all of the country and world-scope events at play, something like WWI would have been almost destined to happen. My point is, crazy shit has always happened, but absolutely nothing that's ever happened on the face of the planet quite compares to this inescapable globohomonculus hell-realm we have created for ourselves. War isn't as bad as this, especially from the angle of humanity's dignity.

 

[Yinci]

Yeah Clown World Always

 

[L50LasPak]

I agree with this mostly but there's a caveat. The post-WW2 period and subsequent Cold war saw a reduction in the general craziness that was going on because things were generally more stable. Of course, there are plenty of Clownwolrd-worthy events that took place during the Cold War, but they were fewer and far between. Peace lulled us into a false sense of security for sixty years, and now that things are destabilizing Clownworld is back in full force.

 

[Lemmingwise]

• The War of Jenkins Ear, a major conflict between England and Spain that started in 1739, where the excuse was that a British captain got his ear cut off in 1731.
• The War of the Golden Stool, a conflict between the Ashanti people and the British, which started because a colonial administrator wanted to sit on the Ashanti's magic chair.
• The Tokyo War Crimes trial, in which one of the defendants, Shumei Okawa, arrived dressed in pajamas and slapped Hideki Tojo's head. There is video footage of this.
• The fact that one of the bloodiest wars in human history was started by a guy claiming to be Jesus's brother.
• Pretty much everything about World War 1, from the murder of Archduke Ferdinand being due to the driver fucking up, to the 12 battles of the Isonzo, to Germany using a British-held telegram cable to try to get the (civil war ravaged) Mexico to attack the United States because they might join the war (and then go 'yeah, come at me bro' when it got leaked).
• Tulip Mania. An economic bubble caused by fucking Tulips.

These examples aren't that convincing. Some wars have poor justifications, just like some fights between people have poor justifications. You can't just hit your brother in the head and tell your parents "I wanted to hit him" or "he had a toy that I wanted to play with." You need something like "He took it out of my hands first!"

People lying is not really indicative of clown world in the way people are asked to accept vaccine passports and such, while also remaining afraid (and angry) towards unvaccinated people (then what is the vaccine protecting you from!?).

Or that we need to help women, because men and women are the same and equal.

Besides, the clown world meme has always been a cope anyways; an attempt to laugh and deal with the horror that is descending on us.

 

[Haim Arlosoroff]

"Frivolity is the frequent companion of pessimism. Let us eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. The resemblance between various declining nations in this respect is truly surprising. The Roman mob, we have seen, demanded free meals and public games. Gladiatorial shows, chariot races and athletic events were their passion. In the Byzantine Empire the rivalries of the Greens and the Blues in the hippodrome attained the importance of a major crisis. Judging by the time and space allotted to them in the Press and television, football and baseball are the activities which today chiefly interest the public in Britain and the United States respectively. The heroes of declining nations are always the same—the athlete, the singer or the actor. The word ‘celebrity’ today is used to designate a comedian or a football player, not a statesman, a general, or a literary genius."
- The fate of empires and Search for survival; John Bagot Glubb Sir, 1897-1986.

---

Its not that silly things may or might happen. Its that silly things will be predicted, mocked, and then happen with a surety over and over again with increasing speed. Clownworld is noticing the slippery slope and praising it, and mocking those who go down it gleefully expecting not to fly off the cliff at the end.

• The War of Jenkins Ear, a major conflict between England and Spain that started in 1739, where the excuse was that a British captain got his ear cut off in 1731.
• The War of the Golden Stool, a conflict between the Ashanti people and the British, which started because a colonial administrator wanted to sit on the Ashanti's magic chair.
• The Tokyo War Crimes trial, in which one of the defendants, Shumei Okawa, arrived dressed in pajamas and slapped Hideki Tojo's head. There is video footage of this.
• The fact that one of the bloodiest wars in human history was started by a guy claiming to be Jesus's brother.
• Pretty much everything about World War 1, from the murder of Archduke Ferdinand being due to the driver fucking up, to the 12 battles of the Isonzo, to Germany using a British-held telegram cable to try to get the (civil war ravaged) Mexico to attack the United States because they might join the war (and then go 'yeah, come at me bro' when it got leaked).
• Tulip Mania. An economic bubble caused by fucking Tulips.

None of these were predicted, mocked as just the moronic thing we would do, and then done before us as if prophesied.

Most of these were honor driven and so completely silly to the modern honorless western man, but hardly silly to the colonial gentleman who thought he was tough shit and others should recognize it. Maybe tulip mania, but Gamestonk will get to the moon right? People have always gotten rich doing stupid novel shit and afterwards people cargo-cult the shit out of it and sometimes lightning strikes again and again in the same spot.

I think things like BLM Rioters Awarded Nobel Peace Prize and then Black Lives Matter movement nominated for Nobel peace prize is unique to our era (which some call the 'Spenglerian Winter' period), we used to stupidly misunderstand the world but today we stupidly misunderstand ourselves.

 

[Inspector Rex]

Clown world is a spectrum, as dumb shit have always existed and will always exist

However, we've started go into "red territory" in 2012-2016, and I blame a widespread adoption of political and corporate bots.
In 2014 I've witnessed Russian internet going in complete retard mode during Crimea/Ukraine events, when posting a cat gif could lead to 100s of people wishing genocide to each other out of nowhere.
In 2016-2017 I've witnessed the same shit on global scale during Trump's campaign and Brexit.

Politicians and big businesses noticed an effect the internet has on real world and started to abuse it, and it's going to get worse. Nobody will ever convince me that any political shitshows on social media websites like reddit aren't artificial.

 

[TFT-A9]

We've always been living in Clownworld. It's just that only recently have we had the technology to archive and disseminate the stupidity. In previous ages stupid shit would be written out or downplayed, because it wasn't 'dignified'.

I've actually been thinking about the effects of the Internet and mass media on how people take in and process information, in what quantities, and the knock-on effects of this.

I'm torn because I'm someone who thinks knowing the truth is always better than not knowing the truth, but the transmission of information does not necessarily factor veracity into anything and what I'm seeing emerge with people and just society in general reminds me of a child being barraged with tons of information, at least some of it conflicting, and proceeding to have the world's loudest tard-rage about it.

 

[Scolopendra Dramatica]

My grandmother swore things have been going downhill since the 70's, she died in the early 2000's but I've yet to meet someone more based and clown pilled. I believe her.

Once we passed the line where an average working man couldn't pay for a home for his family without help the great cuckoning started. The stranglehold on the historically sacred family unit started there and we've been spiralling since.

However it did get significantly more brazen in the nineties so I wouldn't necessarily disagree with anyone that thinks it really started there. It depends on how you define clown world I suppose.

 

[Syaoran Li]

In retrospect, the malaise of Current Year started with the Great Recession and Obama here in America.

Although it wasn't as obvious until after Occupy crashed and burned and the Woke Left became increasingly prevalent both online and in real life.

 

[polyqueerandrosensual]

The 90s also had tons of niggerdom not previously seen, so it really did begin there. Rap and ghettoness became mainstream, faggots managed to outlive AIDS, degenerate weeb shit took over, and of course the internet began and we all know how that went.

 

[Sweetpeaa]

After the recession. No financial certainty, no mental restraint. That's why people play the blame game more than ever, team up with all these retarded political movements and can no longer behave decently to each other. They should be ashamed of themselves but they can't because the behavior has become socially acceptable.

 

[Blobby's Murder Knife]

Yes, imagine that Michigan and Ohio went to war at one point. In WWI there were generals that refused to believe modern weaponry changed the face of war.

 

[DeadFish]

What you call clown world is you wittnessing a process as old as history it self.
The process is:
A bunch of crazy tards make up crazy tard bullshit
They gather enough power to force their bullshit to become "common sense"
Any one who isnt retarded, isnt crazy, isnt full of shit and has actual good sense gets labeled as crazy, full of shit and dumb.

The sane, honest, smart people get weeded out.
The genetic rejects gain power.

The result over time humanity gets sicker, dumber and more delusional.