Where did we go so wrong?

[Aib Ld]

Back in the day, companies weren't afraid to try new stuff and people had a spine. And if people dare dare try to speak against each other, the others wouldn't go down without a fight.

But now, you can't go one single step without people "REEEEE"ing at what you done. Everything triggers everyone, people 'speak for the others' instead of letting them speak for themselves, companies bow down to screeching harpies and give them free passes when they proclaim they're mentally ill but they're not.

So what went wrong here? How did this era came to be? Who and/or what started this?

 

[Rumpled Foreskin]

I would say it’s probably because of the gays and letting women have rights.

 

[Cato]

The rise of social media, and the resulting increase in virtue signalling and image crafting, catering to the most vocal and outraged rabble, enabling of outrage culture by online echo chambers, and real risk of having one's livelihood and reputation destroyed for expressing the "wrong" opinions.

 

[8777BB5]

I'd say a change from Jock Culture to Nerd Culture that started in the eighties and got ridiculous in the 90s.

 

[Black Waltz]

It probably has something to do with parents coddling their kids all the fucking time.

 

[Coconut Gun]

I'll give you a hint: It has to do with (((a certain ethno-religious group))).

 

[Audit]

Joke answer: The babyboomers coddled their children so much that this generation is incapable of dealing with adversity and companies have adapted to this.

Real answer: Marketing teams have ruined everything. Companies are obsessed with their image now and their marketing and PR teams are staffed with soft skinned liberals that graduated with a degree in communication. It's a real case of garbage in-garbage out. Combine this with an unprecedented era of exposure and a company will always be on the look out for a potential media disaster. Nowadays, rather than telling morons to fuck off, it's just safer to give them what they want and pray that it satisfies them so that your business isn't disrupted.

 

[The Manglement]

It's all Twitter and outrage culture. Companies and celebrities have to exist in the social media space if they want to succeed, but the minute you step over the line or do anything that can be possibly be construed as offensive, there are a million people ready to crucify you for it. People have a mob mentality, and at the end of the day everyone loves a public execution.

People want to be mad, because it allows them to be 'slacktivists'. "Sure, I have never helped anyone in Africa, or worked for the betterment of my community, but I got a pedophile in jail. Or not in jail just run off the internet. Or at least Twitter. And he was totally a pedophile, he once said he had sexual thoughts about a 19 year old, and he's 25, and that's practically a pedophile."

It's kind of what we do here, or a lot of people do here at least. A lot of people sperg and a-log because they want these 'horrible people brought to justice'. You faggots know who you are.

 

[PT 404]

It's called the behavioral sink, and we're circling down the drain.

 

[IV 445]

I’m not sure what that “one thing” reason behind all of our cultural rot today is. If we did find that silver bullet, we would have resolved to fix it by now.

But then again, more and more we see how the moaning of the Christian Right of the 80s and 90s is vindicated. We were founded as a Christian nation, our founders went to church 14 times a week, maybe God is the answer, as trite as it sounds.

Now, proving Christianity as a national identity is best is the hard part. I think people just “feel” like it is, myself included.

 

[Chaos Theorist]

Giving normies unfettered access to the internet and social media while the megacorps pander to the lowest common denominator in the chase for ez money while at the same time education standards have been going down the drain in the Western world as everyone and their dog treats wikipedia and snopes as the gospel.

 

[Positron]

Bad parenting. It is bad parenting every time.

 

[Joan Nyan]

I'd say a change from Jock Culture to Nerd Culture that started in the eighties and got ridiculous in the 90s.

Jocks = thesis
Nerds = antithesis
Silicon Valley = synthesis

 

[RadicalCentrist]

But then again, more and more we see how the moaning of the Christian Right of the 80s and 90s is vindicated. We were founded as a Christian nation, our founders went to church 14 times a week, maybe God is the answer, as trite as it sounds.

Speaking as an edgelord atheist, religion was great at making sure the majority of humanity didn't blow away their school before offing themselves. If there is no punishment, no afterlife, than really, what's stopping lunatics from doing as they please before suicide?

As to a general topic of society decline itself, postmodern thought has rendered artistic endeavors meaningless - unless it makes you rich.

 

[Fagatron 69]

It's late stage capitalism. Marx theorized that an emphasis on competition would lead to employers shafting employees in order to make enough money to stay competitive against companies that were doing the same thing, leading to a race to the bottom.

As time went on the winners of competition would get fewer and fewer leading to money and power being concentrated in the hands of the few. Competition would decrease and eventually it would come down to a small handful of people that controlled everything. As an example look at Google and Walmart.

He was right and what he theorized would happen is terrifying. To answer your question we're living in the end times.

 

[Slap47]

It's been like that since the puritans. It hasn't even gotten worse, its just that lefties have taken up the torch of being insane moral busybodies because of the rights decline in influence.

Previously the internet attracted people that were pretty chill but now that it's opened up to the world, mainstream hysteria and morality has taken over.

 

[BILLY MAYS]

It all started from the birth of one Christopher Weston Chandler.

 

[Judge Holden]

Allow Uncle Holden to drop some wisdom of the ancients upon your tight little shota ass

Not one goddamn thing has changed.

What you complain of is not new. Its not even recent. Its not even from this fucking century.

Back in the early to late 2000s companies and politicians and media were terrified of being declared "unpatriotic" in the wake of the middle east wars and 9/11. People renamed fucking french fries to "freedom fries" because France didnt sign up for one of a half dozen brushfire conflicts at the time. Anyone who questioned this narrative without being rich enough or famous enough to get away with it? They suffered the same shit that those who piss off SJWs suffer today.

Then in the 90s you had political correctness's first incarnation and all the mediocre hypocrisy and prudishness we see today, coupled with the same faux-progressive narrative from businesses, media, and politicians. Same shit, different decade.

And in the 80s the satanic panic and moral guardians made their biggest resurgence since the goddamn 50s all over the damn west, and the same companies and same media you complain of being so egregiously bad and callow today rolled over and pandered to the screeching fanatics just the same as ever.

Political narratives being pushed on society, with corporations and media desperately clinging to them in order to stay nice with the powers that be, is shit thats been going on since the fucking roman era. And in some form or another probably beforehand. Hell some of my earliest memories of reading into history was of roman corporations bending to the more powerful factions in the senate, media of the time going out of its way to attack the senate's enemies both past and present (this kind of thing is why Caligula is known as such a depraved monster, since he pissed off the senate enough to have them go out of their way to destroy his memory afterwards), and popular scapegoats being singled out and blamed for everything (i.e. christians).

As long as there are people in power with different interests looking to advance their own power and influence, and as long as there are moral crusades and political causes and religious fervour to be manipulated and pandered to by these people in power, and as long as there exist corporate entities that are desperate to keep their name "good" no matter how much they must kowtow to idiots, there will exist the same shit you complain about.

Assuming that "oh in the past it was so much better and freer and more open" is vanity. There was never a "golden age" of intellectual freedom and openness. Just that these days this shit has become all the more noticeable because instead of the drooling fanatics and cynical profiteers spewing their bugfuck insane and idiotic rhetoric and reasoning in private and closed spaces which never got reported on by media and political figures who went out of their way to put a "sane and nice face" on their horseshit, they either do everything online for the world to see, or their private and closed spaces get recorded and spread to the internet for all to view.

So no. We did not "go so wrong". We have merely been given windows into the narrative process that has been fucking up human society for literally thousands of years. And thus we finally are able to start to counter it in real time rather than years or even decades after the fact

 

[Slap47]

Allow Uncle Holden to drop some wisdom of the ancients upon your tight little shota ass

Not one goddamn thing has changed.

What you complain of is not new. Its not even recent. Its not even from this fucking century.

Back in the early to late 2000s companies and politicians and media were terrified of being declared "unpatriotic" in the wake of the middle east wars and 9/11. People renamed fucking french fries to "freedom fries" because France didnt sign up for one of a half dozen brushfire conflicts at the time. Anyone who questioned this narrative without being rich enough or famous enough to get away with it? They suffered the same shit that those who piss off SJWs suffer today.

Then in the 90s you had political correctness's first incarnation and all the mediocre hypocrisy and prudishness we see today, coupled with the same faux-progressive narrative from businesses, media, and politicians. Same shit, different decade.

And in the 80s the satanic panic and moral guardians made their biggest resurgence since the goddamn 50s all over the damn west, and the same companies and same media you complain of being so egregiously bad and callow today rolled over and pandered to the screeching fanatics just the same as ever.

Political narratives being pushed on society, with corporations and media desperately clinging to them in order to stay nice with the powers that be, is shit thats been going on since the fucking roman era. And in some form or another probably beforehand. Hell some of my earliest memories of reading into history was of roman corporations bending to the more powerful factions in the senate, media of the time going out of its way to attack the senate's enemies both past and present (this kind of thing is why Caligula is known as such a depraved monster, since he pissed off the senate enough to have them go out of their way to destroy his memory afterwards), and popular scapegoats being singled out and blamed for everything (i.e. christians).

As long as there are people in power with different interests looking to advance their own power and influence, and as long as there are moral crusades and political causes and religious fervour to be manipulated and pandered to by these people in power, and as long as there exist corporate entities that are desperate to keep their name "good" no matter how much they must kowtow to idiots, there will exist the same shit you complain about.

Assuming that "oh in the past it was so much better and freer and more open" is vanity. There was never a "golden age" of intellectual freedom and openness. Just that these days this shit has become all the more noticeable because instead of the drooling fanatics and cynical profiteers spewing their bugfuck insane and idiotic rhetoric and reasoning in private and closed spaces which never got reported on by media and political figures who went out of their way to put a "sane and nice face" on their horseshit, they either do everything online for the world to see, or their private and closed spaces get recorded and spread to the internet for all to view.

So no. We did not "go so wrong". We have merely been given windows into the narrative process that has been fucking up human society for literally thousands of years. And thus we finally are able to start to counter it in real time rather than years or even decades after the fact

If anything, the internet is where everything "went so right". For the past 20 years people have forged their own idea of polite society, one that was more tolerant and open to the discussion and mockery of anything.

It created a bunch of Nazis and Sjws by giving them hugboxes to ferment their madness but it also created vanguards of free expression that have the capacity to stand against both the moral busybodies of the left and right.

At no point in history has there been such a large group of people prioritizing the right banter.

 

[SeaPancake]

Make no fucking mistake. People were as sensitive then as they were now, it's just that your complaining was really only restricted to your friends, family, and what few protests you could get organized. You didn't really have the massive, instant communication we have now where if you have a problem, you can theoretically scream it at 7 billion people in an instant, and those people can comment and reply and so on. There is also the fact that, honestly, people didn't think that certain people were people that deserved respect. Being 'different' was something to avoid, even if your differences weren't controllable. Culture has, more than ever before, shifted to include more examples of diversity and variation and has given up on the idea that there is a 'set' existence that we should follow in order to be morally, mentally, and physically sound. The old 'one lifestyle/existence fits all' is not applicable or realistic to everyone and it shouldn't be considered as such because it's just being intellectually dishonest and purposely naive.

Back then you couldn't say anything critical of church or religion without people judging you for it. The Beatles were blacklisted in America for a short period because Lennon said they were bigger than Jesus. How many thousands of people threw an utter shitfit when Sinead O'Connor went on SNL and tore up a picture of the Pope in protest of the Church covering up sex abuse scandals? She wasn't making a death threat, she was just making a statement, but it was the 90s and the church still had a hold on people to the extent that a valid, if politically charged, criticism was enough to make people lose their shit.

That's just one example, and of course popular culture has helped disseminate the idea that 'nothing is sacred', but in its place other things have cropped up as touchy to tackle..wich is why stand-up comedians are still in business.