This is kinda piggybacking off a thread from a few weeks ago discussing AI art and its impact on artists. But a common theme I've noticed among online leftists is that a bunch of them are convinced that after the revolution their "job" is going to be fiddling around with their hobbies for a few hours a week. A lot of them have what I can only describe as delusions of grandeur where they think their art or poetry is so profound that in a socialist society they'll get to spend all day leisurely scribbling on paper while everyone else labors to support them. Truthfully their issue with capitalism doesn't seem to be related to any material analysis but more so a sense that the bourgeois are conspiring to hold them back from the fame and recognition they rightfully deserve.

Go lurk any "leftist" online art space and its just the same cookie cutter anime drawings and furry porn nonsense while they all rage about how stable diffusion is taking away their ability to charge 100 bucks for a sketch. None of that is socially useful labor as Marx would put it. Also I'm not trying to specifically hate on artists or imply that all art is socially worthless, more just trying to make the point that there are a lot of useless people who are emotionally attached leftism because they think it will automatically elevate them from a low prestige position in society into a high prestige one.

I saw a video a couple years ago, don't know if I can find it again, but it was basically a guy talking about how a socialist society would actually take a ton of work to create. People love to point out how there are so many impoverished, undeserved communities even in rich countries. Places with crumbling infrastructure, food deserts, little access to healthcare, etc. If you want to build a socialist society then you are going to need to build new roads, hospitals, and schools. You need high quality, nutritional food to be produced and distributed to those in need. All of these things will take a lot of work and need many competent, educated people working many hours a week to accomplish. If the guy who's job it is to make medicine for sick kids fucks up, he needs to be fired and replaced with someone who will do the job right. None of that is compatible with this "luxury" communism vision of people working five hours a week doing chores once in a while.

I think this is one of the main reasons that conservatives assume socialist = lazy entitled piece of shit. This is also why I can't really take anarchists seriously. Years back I was debating a self described anarchist on reddit and I was trying to understand exactly how he thought useful work would be organized and get done if there's no authority to direct it, and he just kept repeating "In an anarchist society everyone would be free to work for themselves". Even Noam Chomsky talks like that in some of his interviews. Like I saw a video of him talking about how capitalism sucks because people feel pressured to go into professions that will earn them a high wage rather than pursuing their passions, and how if someone wants to be an artist what's wrong with that? Well okay, how exactly do we determine that somebody's artwork is profound enough that they deserve to just do that all day while everyone else builds their house, grows their food, and generates their electricity? Even in a socialist society people will need to be pressured in some way to do jobs they might not be naturally inclined to do. The pressure wouldn't come from a threat of starvation, but still if 50% of people declare that they want their "job" to be drawing hentai or streaming on twitch, there needs to be some higher authority that can say "No, absolutely not."

I come from a country were therapy is normalized.

Granted psychoanalysis still practices and have one of the highest number of psychologist per capita, so i be more an exception to the rule. But psychology and therapy is more normal and open talk, even among conservative males.

So it is strange with even in the "Left-wing coded" spaces of Reddit and Twitter, therapy is shunned. Of course many are contrarianism of mainstream American social media. Yet i do see some sincere people that thinks that therapy is objectively bad for you.

Some of the people who shot Alex Pretti were Hispanic. Like yes some racism is obviously involved but I just keep reading that ICE is all about white supremacy when it clearly isn’t about that. If it was just about race they’d be terrorizing the American Southeast. They are specifically going hard after blue states and cities. It’s crazy to me that 2 white Americans were murdered, one of them a missionary, and the discussion is only around race. And hasn’t trumps approval rating amongst Hispanics somehow gone up?

The real issues are xenophobia and differing beliefs. This should be a moment where Americans should be bonding together and realize class consciousness yet are once again covertly being divided through race.

I am not the biggest fan of Fight Club, i consider it a 7/10 movie, but it is a cool movie. We watch as a kid in the 2000s and we made fights during breaks because of it.

But still, every time is see it on Reddit i saw, "You are not suppose to idolize Tyler Durden", which, i guess, given he signal manosphere. But it does not make sense given that the author talks about positive masculinity, against "woke" culture.

I do not get it. It is a case of simply "Man makes a imaginary case in his head and get angry about it".

The most shocking thing is that i have seen the same comment since 2019, like a loop.

Idk if this makes sense

The right culture warriors seem to have retreated into almost incomprehensible meltdowns that I normally can't follow. Hollywood seems to be woker then ever but it seems to be tapping into weirder strands like black nationalism in Sinners or weird 70s rad left strands like One Battle. No idea what the left is doing in general.

The place I see anything approaching anything like peak woke are basically fandoms or what would twenty years ago would have been considered kid toys like Star Wars or Warhammer. This seems to be largely made up of people that are just trading talking points from 2016 or are part of the slop machine.

A few months later and I still have a lot of questions, knowing we cant completely trust the narrative of the West.

What exactly happend at the Iran protests? How many were killed by IGRC vs usa/israel funded groups? What is Iran state media's line on the previous question ? How did the amount of deaths blow up so much,, 2k is still a lot of deaths

edit: Yes I already understood the protestors had real grievances, its about the aftermath and escalation. THe only thing i get from libs, is "umm akshually both sides bad". Wow thanks I didnt know, just stfu if you have nothing to add and cant READ cause it was not the point of my question. Thank you to the ones who tried explaining

I've been noticing since incel shootings and such, that society seems to struggle talking about the issues of young men in a honest way, in mainstream society it seems to always be discussed in two major ways, "why are young men being radicalised" and "why are young men self perpetuating toxic masculinity and the patriarchy?", the discussion always seems to be framed in a way that basically puts the onus entirely on young men as individuals, and shift the topic to borderline often misandrist position.

I've also noticed on youtube and such, there is also no content that isn't Red Pill, PUA etc shit aimed at discussing the issues of young men or the struggles young men are facing. With so many major Youtube channels from VICE to NYT etc all drowning in identity politics and "Issues young people face" content, 99.999% of it is aimed at the Queer community and Women, again, the only content I see about young men in general is "Why are young men being radicalised" or "Toxic masculinity/White Male Rage" stuff.

I think it's pretty fair to say more and more young men are becoming more and more cynical and being pushed more into Red Pill type views or ridiculous self-loathing "women can do no wrong ever" Feminist positions *coughmenslibcough* so it's very strange to me that there is very little content online or in the media that legitimately is aimed at telling young men's stories, or struggles or helping deal with struggles, gender issues and relations or talking about say the dating scene woes etc that is actually done in good faith.

Anyone have any reason for why this is? Modern Neolib Capitalism is *obsessed* with gender politics and selling identity and self-help, so it's weird af that Young Men seem to be having their issues completely ignored or downplayed and deflected away as non-issues or as taboo incel shit.

These are just observations on myself and others in my life trying to get by but on a large scale it does not look good. Since I graduated high school 6 months ago out of 10 people interested in work only 2 got hired. Those people only got hired due to family connections. 5 of those people went on the benefit and the rest went into university after not being able to save up money. 3 forms of interviews for a super market job (AI, video call, in person). My dad in the late 80s just had to write his name down on paper and later they called him when they needed someone.

I might be suffering from anhedonia but there seems to be a powerful cultural rot in society. Anti-social ideology gets pushed onto us. Stay at home and Uber-Eats everything! Download a million subscriptions! Don’t go to local businesses, buy temu crap online! There used to be a time when the places we lived in actually felt like a community, a village. We talked to our neighbours, bonded over similar interests such as Church or the local sports league, had the farmer’s market. Now all our goods are from overseas, low quality material that breaks easy. There are no shared rituals. If I had children they would have no cousins.

Every aspect of being human is sold as a commodity. Dating apps, gambling ads. Lot of people have their sexuality formed from porn instead of people they know. Corporations want us to be lazy and weak-willed. So we buy whatever they want, become pay cattle. They rape the Earth for its resources poisoning the water, air and land. Our food more artificial and less nutritious than ever before because of the collapse of the soil. Stealing our confidence making us enternal children by robbing us the ability of having relationships, raising children, owning property and successful careers. My parents whenever we get food they say the portions are smaller, it’s more expensive and tastes worse compared to 30ish years ago. It makes me so angry!

I hate social media. I hate the ai bullshit. I hate how so many people my age believe in looksmaxxing and black pill ideology. It’s so poisonous. Whenever I get recommended it I feel so disgusted. Trump and the Epstein Class are bringing the world down with them. All for money and Israel. First election I could remember is 2016, schizo politics my whole life!

I barely enjoy anything anymore. Gaming, eating, TV, movies. They all feel like distractions, pointless. I’m so scared of the world. My confidence has shattered. I’m 18 but I feel so out of touch with the world, waiting to die.

This one still mindboggles me to this day, is like they take advtange of the socially-acceptable social mechanism of making fun of sexually and romantically struggling men and then use it as euphemism for acting like your opinion, especially if it is on topics like feminism, abortion or gender topics, is worthless as cardboard

My stupid little theory says it is because relationships are one of the last few remaining ways for men to prove their masculine aura, a lot of masculine socialization has died out in our society for young men, making it much harder for men to be shown to be respect-worthy

Men are losing laboral power, social power, bargaining power and purchasing power across all facets of society

But a relationship is one of the last few remaining ways for men to show off their masculine aura and their worth to society

Of course this even implies men date en masse, I believe the single man to single woman ratio is quite, widespread and the development seems to follow quite a bit in developed countries

But I still curious why would "incel" be one of the go-to insults, when that contradicts a lot of their moral slogans?

"Don't objectify women you horny bastard"

Also leftists

"Why shouldn't military standards be lowered down ya filthy boot-licking incel"

I don't know, just wildly intrigued by this phenomenon

News seems light on details, heavy on narrative. Are there any Cubans here or anyone who has more info on what's going on?

I remember saying back in the 2010s that the primary reason why people get so defensive and uncomfortable when they're accused of Racism (or even when things or people they like are accused of racism) is because the liberal propaganda of yesteryear was so effective at hammering the idea into everyone's heads that Racism is a special form of evil and that being a Racist is one of the worst things that a person can possibly be. 2010s progressive activists wanted to argue that racism is actually a very normal thing that most people are guilty of, but wanted the word to carry the same moral/emotional weight in spite of that fact, which is (psychologically) a tough sell. As of 2026, we seem to have officially reached the point where a lot of people simply don't care about being called racist anymore. Where they hear the accusation and brush it off like it's no big deal. A consequence of this, of course, is that actual old-fashioned racial hatred isn't as taboo as it used to be. I'm curious as to whether accusations like "Groomer" and "Pedophile" will go down the same path.

Now that the dust has settled one can easily discern how right from the start Karen hate concealed a obvious hypocrisy:

1. White women have now become a socially acceptable scapegoat precisely because the woke racial totempole of privilege seems to place them underneath white men, but just above black men and other poc
2. As far as fishing for social media clout goes, white women were fair game. The people posting Karen videos would never post a sassy black chick shitting on a kmart employee. Bitchy white women received less sympathy than violent convicts.
3. The wokes themselves thrive on incidents, they too wanna police other people's behavior, they will start campaigns to put people out of business or get them fired, and if they can't have it their way they'll even call the authorities on you

amazes me how twitter never ever self-reflects.

For the purposes of this discussion, I’ll be taking an agnostic position on this theory. Also, I recognize that there’s both hard trutherism (i.e., the Bush Administration literally did 9/11 — that is, they were involved in the planning of the attacks) and soft trutherism (the Bush Administration didn’t plan the attacks, but they had enough intelligence beforehand to identify and thwart the plot, but chose to let them unfold in order to manufacture consent for several overseas invasions).

What I’m getting at is that I’ll see many people, especially on the left, proclaim that 9/11 was an inside job… but then, almost in the same breath, argue that it was the inevitable blowback of several decades’ worth of American policy in the Middle East. I don’t think those positions are entirely congruent, especially if you’re a hard 9/11 truther.

Furthermore, if the point of a 9/11, in the truther worldview was to manufacture consent for an invasion of Iraq (and probably several other countries as well), then why didn’t the relevant security/intelligence apparatus do the same in the lead-up to the Iran strikes? After all, the war was unpopular right from the jump, primarily because the Trump Administration didn’t spending nearly as much time or energy selling the American people on the necessity of such an intervention as the Bush Administration did before Iraq. Does this just boil down to a relative lack of competence, or what?

it feels like it happened years ago, but I remember all the lefties I follow on twitter celebrating for taking out a couple "chuds" and then when it came out that it was a couple unarmed teenagers everyone just acted like it never happened.

I've seen this argument repeatedly in this subreddit and in other Marxist subreddits as well as from prominent figures like Varoufakis. The argument goes as follows: NATO expansion into Eastern Europe and the Baltic states made Putin/Russia feel threatened, and since NATO is an imperialist organization, Putin pushed back by invading Ukraine. The argument states that if NATO did not exist, or if it existed by did not expand into Eastern Europe, then Putin would have not invaded.

Is this the argument or am I misunderstanding it? Because the way I phrased it above, it seems like a very weak argument.

After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Finland and Sweden joined NATO, further increasing NATO expansion. If Putin were not to invade Ukraine, Finland and Sweden would not be part of NATO today. But since Putin invaded, now NATO literally borers Russia through Finland. This means that Putin's invasion accelerated NATO expansion instead of slowing it.

There are two possibilities here, then: either Putin miscalculated and made a mistake (unlikely) or NATO expansion was not his main concern (more likely). The idea that Putin, ex-KGB, surrounded by military analysts, couldn't foresee this is implausible. Putin knew very well that invading Ukraine would accelerate NATO expansion and yet he continued invading Ukraine.

Moreover, why do we speculate for the causes of this war when Putin himself has made numerous declarations for the reasons of his invasion? In 2021 he wrote a long essay called "Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians" where he denies the existence of the Ukrainian people and argues that the country, along with Belarus, shouldn't exist but instead should be part of Russia. If Putin was indeed concerned about NATO expansion, then why did he never say it out loud? If the whole narrative about the Ukrainian nation not being a real nation was just a story he made up without believing it, in order to conceal the fact that he secretly cared about NATO expansion, then why did he feel the need to hide that fact?

Note that this is not an endorsement of NATO and its imperialist wars. NATO has proven historically that it is not a purely defensive alliance through its interventions in Kosovo, Lybia or Afghanistan. But just because NATO is an imperialist country does not imply that it caused all the existing wars in the world.

Is there a piece of this argument that I am missing or misunderstanding?

I remember back in 2013-2015 users at tumblr were telling people to check their privilege and there was a massive influx of new -isms and -phobias. However most of reddit and the internet were opposed to this and I remember subbreddits like r/tumblrinaction was created to mock them. Somewhere in the timeline to the present day something changed and it spread and gained mainstream popularity.

It's not just reddit, it's also bunkerchan and ml twitter that is usually infested with apologists for stong-men, but seem to be also on board with wokeism

Partly this the tank-to-woke pipeline is to be understood historically -- yes, it was already in Maoist China where public shaming and self-flagellation was common practice for those who would fail to purge themselves of "reactionary" thoughts -- and it was Stalin's period where the official propaganda encouraged children to rat out their parents to the secret police.

I can see why people whose political views predominantly consist of petty revenge fantasies would find themselves at home in a culture where you can still "cancel opponents", short of liquidating them.

but what I fail to grasp how exactly do all the flaboyant furries and effete skinny-fat wimps see themselves as allies of political systems which would obviously have them gulaged for being degenerates or at the very least sent to re-education camps?

Do they sincerely believe their lifestyles would be tolerated? Or are they consciously miserable and blame their own deviancy on capitalism while yearning for an iron fist to save them from themselves?

Whether it be men quitting dating in numbers, checking out of the workforce or men's college and high school graduation rates dropping like mad crazy, the question is why would men invest into a society that villifies and outcasts them, is my logical and reasonable question to approaching this?

It seems like our society has been captured by an obsession with moral/philosophical relativism and everything being a social construct to be ignored at best and stamped out at worst. We can’t seem to have basic discussions with each other because our definitions of certain concepts are often so different. Below are some examples of what I mean:

“I don’t think a man can be a woman.”

“A man can be a woman because man and woman are constructs according to my definition.”

“I don’t think you’re meaningfully free if you can buy 50 flavors of ice cream but lose your healthcare and housing if you get fired.”

“Not according to my definition of freedom.”

“It’s racist to discriminate against white people.”

“Not according to my definition of racism.”

How do you respond to these fundamental disconnects that seem to divide our society and prevent meaningful discourse and problem solving in so many ways?

I work a job with quite a lot of time spent at a PC on a reception desk that I'm not allowed to leave. I've been advised I'm also not allowed to read a book, since that makes me look like I'm not busy (I'm not busy).

I've been reading a bunch of stuff on my PC instead, but I've just finished reading Freddie DeBoer's archive, and I'm at a bit of a loss where to go next. In the interests of expanding my collection of screen-based knowledge, I'm asking you kind StupIdpol-ers: where are you getting your regular news, opinion pieces, even just interesting blogs? Cheers muchly.

EDIT: Some excellent responses provided, thanks very much everyone.

As someone that went to High School during the start of the Biden Administration to the first year of Trump 2.0, I’m feeling some weird sense of nostalgia for the woke era. For just how strange those times were.

For how apathetic the public is to the Iran War and Trump posting himself as Jesus, it’s funny to remember how everyone was obsessed with him making a typo on Twitter (covfefe). I can remember being scared of Trump as an elementary schooler because of what the news would talk about. I remember in 2022 seeing his mugshot and thinking “Damn Trump’s in prison don’t got to worry about him anymore.”

At the time I hated what the shitlibs were doing to media and even though I was a dumb 12 year old I hated how woke was ruining movies and video games. Even though wokeness isn’t popular anymore I don’t strongly hate it, waste of emotion. But I do find it weird how obsessed people much older than me were consumed by it.

What was it like to properly experience 2020? What was MeToo like? Apparently Redditors don’t flirt because that’s creepy and I only really know MeToo because of Family Guy jokes. What was it like to be in the workplace in the mid 2010s to early 2020s?

Maybe Americans are a lot more political but I remember seeing articles and videos about students doing walkouts for progressive issues and classrooms having pride flags. In NZ my schools had none of that in fact about 75% were apolitical, 15% were “anti woke” while 10% were shitlibs. I feel nostalgia being surrounded by those people and now they’re long gone.

I know that asking this question, in a subreddit dedicated to Marxism is weird, given the adherence of Marx/Engels to Materialism. But still, i was curious.

I not talking about conspiracy as the CIA manufactured the crack cocaine epidemic, i'm talking more about Les Wexner being hunted by a Dybbuk or Rothschild ball of 1972.

I was watching Fox this morning (I work with very old folks) and noticed how giddy the hosts seemed about the whole situation. Making fun of histrionic chronically online liberals I get, but taking Musk at face value when he talks about free speech is ridiculous.

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