Rottcodd

I keep wondering how much, if at all, this was inspired by Fujimura-kun Meitsu. It's sort of as if Helmet got a spin-off manga and was promoted (or demoted, as the case might be) from boke to tsukkomi.

And right on cue, unintentional irony.

My objection to it is that it seems that its subject and its target audience are essentially the same people.

I was going to say this, but I figured I could just scroll until I found where someone else inevitably said it.

By the end, I was just letting the drama wash over me and not even trying to sort out which version of who was doing what in which timeline.

And honestly, I suspect that that's the best way to appreciate it anyway.

Or you could just not care so much.

If you post memes that are likely to offend someone somewhere, then there's a risk that one of those someones is going to be a mod, and they're going to delete it. And really, that's just the way it goes.

Certainly you might prefer that they have explicit, precise and closely followed rules so you can accurately predict what they'll do, but there's really no requirement that they do so - if they want vague rules arbitrarily enforced, that's their prerogative.

And really, what are you out if they do delete a post? It's not like you paid for it or you have some sort of quota you have to meet. You just toss things out into the internet, and some of them float and others sink.

I'm always curious - what is it that leads you to believe that you should be able to decide what other people may or may not do with their own bodies?

I've never been able to wrap my head around that whole idea. There's just no angle on it that makes sense to me.

If I presume that people do have the right to decide what other people can do with their own bodies, then we end up with self-defeating chaos, since different people have entirely different, conflicting and even contradictory, views on that.

But if I decide that they don't have that right, then... they don't have that right.

I don't see a chain of logic that can possibly lead to the conclusion that anyone does have that right, but it seems I can't turn around without running into yet another person, like you here, who blithely presumes that they do.

So really - how does that work? Inside your own mind, what's the reasoning that leads to the conclusion that you, rather than the actual people who actually inhabit the other bodies around you, should be empowered to decide what they may or may not do with their own bodies?

I just can't make sense of it.

So seriously - who's peddling this anti-vaping propaganda and what's their goal?

Vaping is easily the most effective way to stop smoking that's ever existed. Certainly we don't want kids to start doing it, and kids are the basis for much of the propaganda, but it's never just restricted to trying to make it so kids don't start. All of the propaganda efforts are directed toward stamping out vaping entirely, and that means that millions of people whose lives could literally be saved by switching from smoking to vaping will be denied that opportunity.

Why? Whose interests are served by denying adult smokers access to the most effective smoking cessation product ever?

For me it's "v".

IfvI'mvnotvcarefulvIvgetvthis.

Like many labels people choose to self-apply (including but by no means limited to religious ones), "atheist" has a bit of an image problem, since the people who are most eager to self-apply it, and to broadcast that self-application far and wide, tend to be insecure, over-compensating, self-absorbed, obnoxious assholes.

There are a great many generally kind, decent people who identify as "atheists." You just don't generally know that they do, since, being generally kind and decent people, they aren't crashing around like football hooligans, alternately screeching about their own team and atacking the opposing team.

And that's the case with pretty much all labels. The problem is almost never with people who self-apply a particular label, but simply with noxious assholes, regardless of the label. It's generally just our own biases that make it so that we consider the noxious assholes who wear one label to define all who do and the noxious assholes who wear another to be unfortunate exceptions to the rule.

Yeah - that arguably would be cheaper, and it definitely would be better for society as a whole.

That's entirely irrelevant though, because it's not going to happen.

The primary reason that decently-paying jobs have become so much less common is that, over the last few decades in particular, the money that would've paid decent wages has been diverted to pay truly obscene salaries to a handful of executives.

And the people drawing those obscene salaries, and making general pay decisions for corporations, tend to be, quite seriously, psychopaths.

A person who has morals, principles, integrity and empathy will exercise self-restraint - they'll have particular choices that they simply will not make.

A person without any of those qualities - a psychopath - will not be constrained. They will be entirely free to choose any course of action that will benefit them in any way, entirely regardless of the consequences to others.

So all other things being more or less equal, paychopaths will have a strategic advantage in competitions for position in hierarchies like corporations or governments.

In a sound society, that advantage will be blunted by the simple fact that people with morals, principles, integrity and empathy find them and their tactics reprehensible. That has historically made them more the exception than the rule.

In the 80s in the US, there was a fundamental change. Society was sold the idea that "greed is good" - that winning is everything and to the victor goes the spoils and watch out for number 1 and so on - essentially psychopathic views were marketed as virtues. Successfully.

And throughout that period, enough psychopaths succeeded that theirs became the dominant viewpoint, particularly in the largest corporations (or the most rapacious, and thus most successful throughout the takeover era of corporate consolidation). And since then they've just grown more entrenched and more self-serving, and richer, and more powerful.

Which brings me back to the point - yours is a relatively sound viewpoint, but it's entirely irrelevant, because the people who control the power by which such a thing might be accomplished are psychopaths, and they are not going to act in a way that might diminish by even a fraction their undeserved and destructive wealth and privilege, even if it's not only for the good of society as a whole, but then necessarily for their own long-term good. They just aren't psychologically or morally equipped to make that choice. And they control the power in our society, so nobody else can meaningfully make that choice.

So really, the only remaining option is the same one that eventually befell Sumer and Egypt and Athens and Rome - societal collapse. Just as was the case with them, the upper classes have become too entrenched, too self-serving and too greedy to make the choices that would save their civilization, and nobody else has the power to overcome them. And just as was the case with those civilizations, the common people, between being confused and being self-servingly manipulated and misled, blame subsets of each other instead of the people who really bear the lion's share of the responsibility for the woes facing their civilization. So just as was the case with their societies, things will just get uglier and uglier until they finally fall apart. Like it or not.

Have a nice day anyway though, because that's really all you can do. We can't stop the relentless downhill slide, but we can at least try not to make each other unnecessarily miserable along the way.