The Huffington Post Effect.
Unfortunately, there’s another side of this coin. The “original” content sources value freshness to grab attention and hyperbole to generate interest. The end result is Drudge Report / Brietbart / Alex Jones / Joe Rogan journalism that mills out innuendo, conspiracy theory, and quack medicine as Breaking News. And that becomes the “original journalism” all the other copypasta outlets reproduce ad nauseum.
Is this a real person? Or is this “Nebraska broke 60/40 for Trump in 2020 and 60/40 for Trump in 2024, nothing has changed”.
Year | GOP | Dem
2020 | 556,846 | 374,583
2024 | 564,816 | 369,995
I am willing to gamble on the difference being entirely old people dying / new people registering to vote.
Nevermind the fact that the state is being gobbled up by investment funds. So the lonely Berkshire Hathaway Investor out in Omaha who actually did vote for Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2024 is getting exactly what they asked for - bailouts when the stock market is in crisis and easy money for investors when farmland is most profitable.
Y’all are inventing a guy who doesn’t exist so you can feel smug at them and ignoring the bulk of the state, whose politics you have neither the inclination or the education to grasp.
Listen, Liberal! and you might find out What’s the Matter With Kansas Nebraska
The first two panels show the female character pretentiously telling an adult male
With the implication that it’s a lie, and the truth is in the fourth panel, yes.
You referred to the comic AND it’s readers
If you’re sympathizing with the artist, you’re buying into this dystopian fantasy of how the artist’s burned out friend “really feels”, yes.
But this is coming from inside the artist’s brain.
I like this comic because it highlights my consistent experience with arrogant parents acting as though I’m not truly mature or successful because I haven’t procreated.
That’s not what the comic shows at all. It ends with a solitary burned out person pinning for the past.
There is no subtext of alienation or despair in my enjoyment.
Presumably because you’re not the one who wrote the cartoon.
Hitler’s government qualifies as “authoritarian” in the same way that FDR’s government does. It can describe Starmer’s UK. Or Sheinbaum’s Mexico. It can be applied as easily to Lai Ching-te’s Taiwan as Xi’s China. It’s a nothingburger of a word, mostly implying you don’t like the policies of the person in charge.
I mean, it’s definitely a deliberately ill-defined term that’s used to conflate dictatorships of the bourgeoisie and dictatorships of proletariat. Also, mysteriously, never seems to describe friendly oligarchies like MBS’s Saudi Arabia, Netanyahu’s Israel, Milei’s Argentina, or Bukele’s El Salvador.
But its language that’s very intentionally borrowed from Anarcho-Capitalism, intended to defame any kind of public governing structure. The end goal of describing every governing body we don’t like as “authoritarian” is to venerate “free markets” as a utopian alternative to popular governance.
It’s not just about communism. It’s a term intended to denigrate any kind of popular government.
Far-Right: Trump
Far-Left: DSA
The Middle: ducking Amy Klobacher throwing a stapler
Sure. But the meme still holds.
GRRM will release that sixth book any day now… Any day now, I tell you!
She wasn’t a fanatic, she was cold and calculated.
Eh. She was detached (often because she was drunk) and ruthless. But she was also obsessed with the Targaryans, initially because Rhaeger rejected her for Lyanna Stark but eventually because she needed to justify incest with her brother. She was absolutely a fanatic. A racial purest, obsessed with the perpetuation of her bloodline. The “at least she was a loving mother” line others attributed to her was far more about her fixation on continuing a permanent line of Lannisters.
The “fanatics” were the religious faction that was gaining power.
The Sparrows were a branch of The Church of the Seven composed of impoverished working people ravaged by the endless wars between the Houses. They were certainly orthodox in their beliefs. But the “fanaticism” tended to be described as disrespect for the aristocracy and militant organization outside of the major Houses.
Hell, the most notable aspect of the Sparrow leadership was that it was not beholden to the throne. The High Septon under King Barathon was as much a party to the intrigue and debauchery as anyone else in the council, and this passed as normal behavior. He wasn’t above having people tortured or executed for apostasy. He just knew when to look the other way as it served the King. Breaking from the corrupt practices of the captured church was only labeled “fanatical” in so far as it ran afoul of the demands of a weakened central government.
Stannis and the Red Lady were significantly more fanatical in practice, given the number of people they burned alive and the amount of out-and-out witchcraft they performed. The Sparrows were just factional in so far as they refused to “bend the knee” in the same way as their predecessors.
that old preacher dude makes a power grab and has Cersei walk through town naked and shit.
Cersei had committed a litany of horrific crimes and was forced to pay penance. The walk of shame was intended to reprimand her and to wake her up to the degree to which her people reviled her for her corrupt leadership.
She could have come out of it wiser. She could have returned to the palace, experienced contrition, and looked to repent further for her abuses and excesses. Instead, she bombed the church and killed thousands of people.
I don’t know how else you describe that except as fanaticism.
The Internet used to be such a neat place.
You just used to be younger and hanging out in forums with other younger people, with brighter and more optimistic outlooks.
Now you’re discovering the Boomer Web, where everyone bitches and whines and despairs and complains.
I had a thought yesterday: it sucks that after you die, you can’t come back. AND that time just keeps flowing for everybody else after you’re gone.
You’re still here. We don’t go anywhere when we die. We return to the soil and become integrated into something new. Our memories fade away, but we’re still the same raw dough we sprang from. And our planet is rich with life. The thing that is you will become a million other things that are someone, in time. And they’ll become a million million other things. And on and on, into eternity.
Why do some people feel the need to make it as shitty as possible for others?
Brain chemicals, mostly.
Be careful. Life as an auntie/uncle can be a gateway to the kind of love and joy some folks around here consider… unnatural.
Pretty soon you’re buying them presents, taking them to the zoo, and giving up on late night drinking and watching old movies from a tiny TV at a shady bar, because you’re more invested in the kid’s soccer practice the next day. I know, I know, it sounds horrifyingly bleak. But it could happen to you!!!
There’s definitely this strain of “Why would I ever want to sacrifice for anyone else? Who could possibly deserve that much love?” coming off these comic artists and their readership.
It reeks of alienation and despair. Like, that final panel of the comic might as well be of the artist themself. Alone, on a roof, half conscious, rings under the eyes - that’s more than a few people I knew back in college.
It’s a childless person thing. Very much an outsider “I only see my friends when they’re looking for time out” perspective.
If you want to see this in spades, you can go through the back catalog of Penny Arcade. Pre-kids, there was a ton of this “Oh no! Kids are the worst! They get in the way of all my drunken debauchery and time-consuming hobbies.” Post-kids, its a tidal wave of “Look at what my son can do! Look at what my daughter is into!” and they’re going out of their way to make life as fun and fulfilling as possible for the next generation, because that’s what they know they craved at that age.
I gotta say, it’s been the exact opposite for me.
One couple has kids, and everyone passes around the baby making cooing faces. Six months later, half the block is pregnant.
Add in that there’s this reflexive desire in a big community of like-aged friends/family for our kids to be friends, too. My wife has eight or nine different cousins who are all her age. And we all had kids within a year or two of one another.
Like so much else, the religion in theory strays from the religion in practice
U Rarzar works for the Ma Ba Tha (Association for the Protection of Race and Religion), a Buddhist organization comprised of both monks and laity. The organization is well-known for its social welfare programs and its advocacy of Buddhism. It is also known for its persecution of the Rohingya Muslims. Buddhist organizations such as the Ma Ba Tha have circulated pamphlets and flyers espousing the dangers of Islam and the imminent Muslim threat. U Rarzar is in charge of the organization’s bi-weekly magazine. In his mind, Muslims, no matter their ethnicity, are a threat to Buddhists. According to U Rarzar, “Muslims and ISIS are the same. It is just the difference of a name."
But, in GoT, the Lannisters were the fanatics
Idk about you, but I only trust news from a certified primary source like… checks notes… Bari Weiss and the Free Press?
Aw fuck, dude. They get Internet in my main steam media