The Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act is the largest climate bill passed anywhere in the world and puts the US within striking distance of meeting the commitments of the Paris Climate...
Exemplary
Democrats are not the climate collapse preventing, morally good, democratic option : they're the (fine, far) lesser evil, but they are still evil. Our youth know this more so than us.
The Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act is the largest climate bill passed anywhere in the world and puts the US within striking distance of meeting the commitments of the Paris Climate agreement. The Democratic party has become a real left wing party in the last 10 years and people need to stop pretending otherwise. No they are not socialist and they never will be. But we are long past the days of Clinton conservative triangulation.
My hope has been, since 2016, that eventually they'll be so desperate they try doing something radical enough for me to drink the kool-aid on. Median Salary level UBI. Guaranteed public housing for all. Complete carbon emissions shut down.
Bernie ran on many of these ideas and lost, twice. I voted for him twice. But at a certain point you have to admit the reality that there is no popular support for these ideas and economically most of them just do not pencil out as possible. There is no mysterious "They" controlling the democratic party, our fellow citizens heard the case and weren't convinced to vote for it.
Overturning money in politics. But of course they wouldn't . They'd rather lose every election from now till eternity than to lose donor dollars.
The only way to overturn the Citizen United Supreme Court decision is either a Constitutional amendment (which is in any practical sense impossible) or the hard generation long fight of getting enough justices on the court to overturn the opinion. You achieve that the same way the ant-abortion advocates took decades to overturn Roe v Wade, you continue to vote for democratic presidents for years and years until you finally break through. And if we aren't willing to do that, we aren't really all that committed to the cause.
This is kinda nit picky on my part, but Sanders ran on literally 0 of those platforms listed, and for the ones he did, he had legislation submitted that did pay for it. As an example, his tuition...
This is kinda nit picky on my part, but Sanders ran on literally 0 of those platforms listed, and for the ones he did, he had legislation submitted that did pay for it.
As an example, his tuition free college plan used a less than 1% tax on certain stock and investing options.
He didn't run on pie in the sky ideas, he just wanted to bring us inline with basically the rest of the developed world.
Like I said I voted for the guy twice but he did run on many of those ideas, housing for all, green new deal to completely eliminate emissions, jobs guarantee (which isn’t UBI but it the closest...
Bernie had a lot of great ideas, especially on education and healthcare but when you start to add everything up it gets very, very expensive. Which I think a lot of it is worth it but those numbers are terrifying to a lot of voters. Americans hate nothing more than taxes and his programs would require higher taxes on not just billionaires but the middle class as well (I’d argue they get more than enough value to make it worth it but the primary results speak for themselves and our fellow citizens didn’t agree)
Complicating this is the many Americans' misunderstanding of tax brackets, leading to the widespread belief that the lower and middle classes get hit just as hard by taxes as the top 1% and 0.01%...
Americans hate nothing more than taxes and his programs would require higher taxes on not just billionaires but the middle class as well (I’d argue they get more than enough value to make it worth it but the primary results speak for themselves and our fellow citizens didn’t agree)
Complicating this is the many Americans' misunderstanding of tax brackets, leading to the widespread belief that the lower and middle classes get hit just as hard by taxes as the top 1% and 0.01% are, which is then wielded by republicans to boost unpopularity of taxes.
I had to go back and re-read the article because I thought I missed a huge chunk of it. Turns out, you were replying to @chocobean. We still have a long way to go regarding climate change. I...
I had to go back and re-read the article because I thought I missed a huge chunk of it. Turns out, you were replying to @chocobean.
The Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act is the largest climate bill passed anywhere in the world and puts the US within striking distance of meeting the commitments of the Paris Climate agreement. The Democratic party has become a real left wing party in the last 10 years and people need to stop pretending otherwise.
We still have a long way to go regarding climate change. I appreciate the IRA, the infrastructure bill, and the chipping away at student loan debt as much as the next guy, but I don't think those accomplishments are enough to shed the label of the "lesser of two evils." Especially while we're in the midst of a genocide and the majority of the party is applauding and giving unconditional military aid to the guy perpetrating it. The Democrats have definitely moved to the left of where they were in the 90s (well, for most things), but I don't know if that qualifies them as a real left wing party. But I guess that's more about perception. Hey, speaking of perception....
Bernie ran on many of these ideas and lost, twice. I voted for him twice. But at a certain point you have to admit the reality that there is no popular support for these ideas and economically most of them just do not pencil out as possible. There is no mysterious "They" controlling the democratic party, our fellow citizens heard the case and weren't convinced to vote for it.
Ignoring the part where everyone dropped out except Warren, Bernie lost in large part because of the perception that he wasn't the best candidate to beat Trump. A perception that was fueled by thousands of hours of media coverage driving that narrative. His ideas were popular, as seen in polling and evidenced by the fact that many of his opponents adopted a version them in the primary.
Also, didn't we kind of get a glimpse of the 'They' in action during the whole Biden debacle? Pelosi, Schumer, and the donors were the ones who ultimately got Biden to step down. It may not be as nakedly transactional as Peter Thiel, the Kochs, and the heritage foundation are with the Republican party, but Democrats have their version of that. The party leadership sets the course and that decision is based in large part by the interests of the donors, which conveniently tend to be reflected in the media.
The only way to overturn the Citizen United Supreme Court decision is either a Constitutional amendment (which is in any practical sense impossible) or the hard generation long fight of getting enough justices on the court to overturn the opinion.
They can also expand the size of the court, which unfortunately doesn't have a lot of support outside the progressive wing of the party. And I think that's where I, cocobean, and so many others on the left get frustrated with the Democrats. We always see Republicans turning some fairly inconsequential thing, like a girls swim meet or a racy book in a highschool library, and turn it into a key campaign issue to push the country further to the right. Democrats don't have that, even when the issues are popular and the facts are on their side. Everyone hates the idea of corruption and money in politics - Trump ran on "Drain the Swamp!" but they don't rally around that idea and push for that change in a meaningful way. I mean ffs, there is an actual real existential threat in climate change. Could you imagine what it would be like if they talked about it they way that Trump and the Republicans talk about immigrants? Of course not. And that's because they're not a real left wing party.
This recent video does a good job outlining specifics as to why Democrats are incentivized individually and organizationally to do the bare minimum and just try to ink out ahead of Republicans...
This recent video does a good job outlining specifics as to why Democrats are incentivized individually and organizationally to do the bare minimum and just try to ink out ahead of Republicans
Democrats had full control at the beginning of Biden's term and failed to pass Roe v Wade or a number of other items he campaigned on. Voting only gets people into chairs. Without significant public pressure on specific policies, sitting in chairs doesn't mean much
There is no mysterious "They" controlling the democratic party, our fellow citizens heard the case and weren't convinced to vote for it.
There actually was in 2016. The news was filled with how many superdelegates Clinton had secured before primaries even started, painting Bernie's campaign as frivolous. There was no incentive to vote. In 2020, everyone was (rightfully) focused on Bernie's age over policy. Biden was chosen over him by resignations and endorsements, not voters explicitly
That’s not how it works. Democrats had 50 votes in the senate including Joe Manchin who is far from the rest of the party. You cannot pass Roe v Wade without 60 votes. You can pass a budget...
Democrats had full control at the beginning of Biden's term and failed to pass Roe v Wade or a number of other items he campaigned on.
That’s not how it works. Democrats had 50 votes in the senate including Joe Manchin who is far from the rest of the party. You cannot pass Roe v Wade without 60 votes.
You can pass a budget reconciliation bill with 50 votes (+ Vice President tie breaker) but that can only change government spending, not do things like set abortion policy.
The news was filled with how many superdelegates Clinton had secured before primaries even started.
Superdelegates don’t vote on the first ballot at the convention so they are irrelevant if you get the most votes. 30 million people voted in the 2016 Democratic primary, 36 million voted in the 2020 primary. That’s not much of a difference.
Correct, and I want to add that I get really tired with people saying things like "Dems had control" here, or "Dems had a super majority during Obama". I don't know if it's ignorance or willful...
Correct, and I want to add that I get really tired with people saying things like "Dems had control" here, or "Dems had a super majority during Obama". I don't know if it's ignorance or willful dishonesty.
Can you convince Manchin of your bill? No? Then you have 49 votes at a maximum for budget reconciliation. For anything outside of that, can you convince either 10 Republicans, or Manchin to undo the filibuster? Lmfao no, you're short 10+ votes.
The way voting works in the Senate is frankly really simple, and I legitimately don't understand where the confusion is coming from. If Manchin and Sinema aren't on board, you don't have the votes for anything.
The fact that Biden for Manchin to vote for the biggest investment into climate change the country has ever seen is a fucking miracle, and absolutely destroyed Manchin's political career.
Democrats had control at the beginning of Biden's term, and in that time they spent their time passing the ACA, which caused more than 10% of Americans to gain health insurance. It's true that he...
Democrats had control at the beginning of Biden's term, and in that time they spent their time passing the ACA, which caused more than 10% of Americans to gain health insurance. It's true that he didn't complete everything he campaigned on, because the President can only do so much when congress is held by the other party.
I disagree about there being no “they”—it’s not comforting to imagine a few billionaires making the decisions because that’s not a democracy, but do you think if Bernie had been in Biden’s...
I disagree about there being no “they”—it’s not comforting to imagine a few billionaires making the decisions because that’s not a democracy, but do you think if Bernie had been in Biden’s position, he would not have received the nomination?
God I'm old. Just over a year since reddit effectively died and I'm completely out of touch with the meme-o-sphere. And honestly? I don't miss it, and don't feel like my life is the lesser. Sorry...
God I'm old.
Just over a year since reddit effectively died and I'm completely out of touch with the meme-o-sphere. And honestly? I don't miss it, and don't feel like my life is the lesser.
Sorry for any whiplash, but: culture is trash, especially convenient internet culture. Effort and time spent on that shit above a certain baseline is just wasting your life, because it isn't life, even if it feels like it. Time spent thumbing through books, looking at trees, hanging drywall, changing your oil - do that shit, that's actually real life.
All that said - super stoked about Kamala, and gen alpha's embrace of her. Their priorities in life may be fucked, but at least they're getting behind the right guy.
I don't see how the internet is any different than other distractions that we enjoy. Books are equally not real life. They're a thing you can hold, unless you're reading a book on your phone, in...
I don't see how the internet is any different than other distractions that we enjoy. Books are equally not real life. They're a thing you can hold, unless you're reading a book on your phone, in which case they're just another thing you're looking at on your screen.
Not OP, but we understand fiction to stand apart from life. It can be compelling, but it's not real or important beyond the emotions it stirs in us or the ways we share the experience with others....
Not OP, but we understand fiction to stand apart from life. It can be compelling, but it's not real or important beyond the emotions it stirs in us or the ways we share the experience with others.
But these days people feel like the Internet is real, a real place where your actions matter and bleed into real life. In some ways that's true, but in many others, we're all screaming into a person shaped void, casting our thoughts out towards a user name who we think of, but cannot truly connect with in the same ways as, a real life human.
The popularity of goofy internet memes suggests the opposite to me. Mind you, I take the Internet fairly seriously, which is why I am present on Tildes and partake in discussions like this one....
The popularity of goofy internet memes suggests the opposite to me.
Mind you, I take the Internet fairly seriously, which is why I am present on Tildes and partake in discussions like this one. Notably, I am not interested in memes.
But almost everyone I know mostly uses social media to laugh at jokes and share them with their friends; they don't care about their online identity — or even think of themselves as having an online identity. The Internet has about as much personal meaning to them as TV does to me. And they love memes.
But even though I am much more invested in my online presence than the average person in my social sphere and have considered the internet an important aspect of my life ever since I was a young child, my personal life is still overwhelmingly offline and always has been.
I don't consider social media (despite its name) to be a part of my social life at all, except insofar as I sometimes use it to keep up with friends and family living overseas. But interacting with strangers, like in the Tildes comment section, doesn't just feel like an inferior form of socializing; it does not register as socializing to me at all. It feels more like a solo reading/writing hobby that I enjoy a few times a week during periods of solitude, in the same general category as reading a book or watching a movie by myself.
For people I know who are into memes, this seems far more so the case. If all social media died tomorrow, I feel sure that nearly all of them would immediately jump into some other source of cheap, idle entertainment to joke about with friends.
I understand that there are many people for whom this is not the case. However, I am not convinced that this is the majority of people who use social media. And when we look at the segment of the population who use social media primarily to share and consume memes, I suspect the percentage is much lower still.
An actually accurate picture of how people perceive the Internet as a seamless portion of their social life vs strictly a way to entertain yourself would probably require survey data that I don't...
An actually accurate picture of how people perceive the Internet as a seamless portion of their social life vs strictly a way to entertain yourself would probably require survey data that I don't know where to look for, but my own set of anecdotal evidence suggests it's a generational thing, where the cutoff is whether the person was born before or after the Internet became omnipresent. Obviously the line is blurry since I conclusively stand on the "socializing outside and inside of the Internet does not feel fundamentally different to me" side while you're on the "the internet and social life are two separate things" side despite the fact that according to our respective bios we're roughly the same age, but I do think that whether you started socializing with your peers before or after the Internet became an unavoidable fixture of society has a lot of impact (and while I'm picturing the "internet is everywhere" threshold as a moment in time for brevity, geographical and cultural factors are definitely at play)
I also think that we have a different perspective regarding memes. Assuming I understood you correctly, you associate interacting with memes with idle entertainment rather than "serious" interaction with the Internet and therefore opposite to treating the Internet as meaningful and "real", and in the context of browsing memes just for the sake of it, I'd agree. However I think there is something important to consider: memes, by their very nature as the cultural analogue to genes, are not just mindless entertainment, and I, as someone who interacts with memes a lot, see them as a medium of communication and expression just like long form text and other forms of media would be. They're the representation of an idea important enough to the creator to shape it into a form optimized for sharing and/or further editing. Sometimes just for fun, sometimes as a way to share their interests, sometimes as an artistic exercise, sometimes as a way to fit in with the community they wish to integrate with. This is something I consider an important aspect of socialization (... at least within the Internet, something tells me that I would rightly be seen as insane if I were to react to a joke in person by whipping out my phone with a picture of the FlareWheeze emote), and I think this is a mindset a lot of people who sit on the other side of this "omnipresent Internet" threshold share, consciously or otherwise. Given that Tildes is specifically a space that caters to long form discussion over memes, I suspect I'm in the minority with this mindset in this specific place, but I think it is a lot more prevalent on the wider Internet.
For what it is worth, I was a very early adopter of computers and the Internet (or, rather my parents were, but they allowed me to access the Internet starting around 1991 when they got an AOL...
For what it is worth, I was a very early adopter of computers and the Internet (or, rather my parents were, but they allowed me to access the Internet starting around 1991 when they got an AOL account). Almost no one else I knew in person had Internet access until much later, though, and I think this is actually why I do feel that I have an online identity (or several, actually); the Internet of the 90s was much more intimate than it is now, and it was an entirely separate community from my real-life community. It genuinely was a source of socializing for me back then — as in I had online friends I treasured as much as my real-life friends.
This is not the case for me now. While I have kept in touch with several of my old online friends, I have not made a new online friends since I was a teenager — whereas I continue to make new friends in real life. The Internet is no longer a place I go to meet new people and forge new social connections. I still think of myself as having an online identity and as having a presence in some online communities, but it's not the source of my social life anymore. I love Tildes and really enjoy reading/writing here, but it doesn't feel like part of my social circle at all.
Many of the people I am talking about are substantially younger than me. My sister and her social circle are a decade younger than me, and my partner teaches at the tertiary level and very nearly all of his students are around two decades younger — and as a very involved and beloved teacher, he's has become enmeshed in his students' subculture (which spills over onto me). The Internet, of course, has evolved into extremely important infrastructure — banking, shopping, communications, etc. — but I get the distinct impression that most young people's social sphere is still concentrated in people they know in person, even if the Internet has displaced letters and phone calls.
For example, my partner's students seem to primarily participate in Discord channels with their real-life friends (where they share lots of memes that they make for each other or that they pull from other sites). They are also mostly using their phones to do everything, rather than desktops and laptops like my generation tends to prefer. Phones seem to encourage being online more hours of the day, but their interaction with the Internet tends to be more light and casual: watching TikTok videos, sharing memes in group chats, etc.
I agree with you that memes are a much more important means of expression than they may appear from the outside. However, the way memes are broadly propagated (anonymously shared and reshared) is just very unlike the way dialogue works. To have a social identity, you need to have a community where people know who you are. Sharing memes within a group chat or with your friends when you're hanging out with them absolutely counts (most people I know do this), but making or sharing memes on a major subreddit where nobody notices your username is a very different kind of thing (hardly anyone I know does this). From what I have observed, the Internet is increasingly fracturing into smaller, more private communities — and because virtually everyone is on the Internet now, these communities are not the hodgepodge of randoms from all over the world like they were when I was young; when all your friends are online, you can just interact with them instead.
I think that can be true, but I think it definitely depends on how you're using the internet, and what your expectations of it are. It can be used to form real connections, to learn real things,...
I think that can be true, but I think it definitely depends on how you're using the internet, and what your expectations of it are. It can be used to form real connections, to learn real things, to do real good, and to do real harm. I think there are also ways to build false connections without the internet, although it's usually not as easy a trap to fall into.
I've had a pretty similar experience. I've been trying to get my wife to drop imgur for about as long now, because she is on it constantly, as I was reddit and I don't think it helps her mental...
I've had a pretty similar experience. I've been trying to get my wife to drop imgur for about as long now, because she is on it constantly, as I was reddit and I don't think it helps her mental health much.
That said, she struggles because it is a way for her to connect to her friends in real life and keep up with them by sending them memes.
I agree with you and I voted for your comment. But, hang that drywall and save money for a vehicle that doesn't need an oil change. We have to stop driving internal combustion vehicles.
I agree with you and I voted for your comment. But, hang that drywall and save money for a vehicle that doesn't need an oil change.
We have to stop driving internal combustion vehicles.
For sure. It was just an example of a thing I did recently that felt real. Pick any of these to insert in its place: Go to the beach with your girlfriend, go to lunch with your brother, text your...
For sure. It was just an example of a thing I did recently that felt real. Pick any of these to insert in its place:
Go to the beach with your girlfriend, go to lunch with your brother, text your mom, pet your dog, weed your garden, mow your lawn, pick up a new video game, watch an old movie.
I use TikTok, it's my current addiction (that I really should get rid of) but I've been getting a ton of Kamala Harris edits. For the uninitiated, an edit is a series of clips usually set to music...
I use TikTok, it's my current addiction (that I really should get rid of) but I've been getting a ton of Kamala Harris edits. For the uninitiated, an edit is a series of clips usually set to music cutting with the beat of the music.
There's currently an edit of Kamala with millions of likes set to 365 by Charli Xcx from her album Brat. This was after Xcx tweeted that Kamala is brat. This got attention on several news channels.
This sort of youth appeal is something I didn't expect Kamala to have. I guess I have an outdated view of Kamala that stems from her disastrous 2020 primary campaign. It's the type of youth appeal Bernie had in 2016 (although this is coming from a different area than that was).
It's stupid, but it makes me hopeful that actually maybe Kamala can win. Even though this was thrusted upon her at the last minute. I also didn't expect the Dem party to unite with her so quickly and heavily.
If anything, the unification is something I expected first. You're right though, it's a tough uphill fight for Kamala and this looks like a good starting point to get some mematic inertia that...
If anything, the unification is something I expected first. You're right though, it's a tough uphill fight for Kamala and this looks like a good starting point to get some mematic inertia that will serve her well.
It’s not just youth. https://x.com/tristansnell/status/1815246616850264540?s=46 From the tweet - There was a Zoom tonight for Black women organizing for Kamala Harris. The call had a max of 1000...
Apparently there was another zoom call for white women for Harris that hit 150k+. Sounds like lots of demographics centering around not have an old white guy for president.
Apparently there was another zoom call for white women for Harris that hit 150k+.
Sounds like lots of demographics centering around not have an old white guy for president.
It'll be more than just Israel/Palestine. As the wealth transfer/ concentration continues, a large swath of the American public are becoming painfully aware that neither party have their interest...
It'll be more than just Israel/Palestine. As the wealth transfer/ concentration continues, a large swath of the American public are becoming painfully aware that neither party have their interest and welfare in mind
"Ms Ellis works full-time as a nurse’s assistant and has a second part-time job. [...] Ms Ellis has sometimes turned to risky payday loans (short-term borrowing with high interest rates) as she grapples with grocery prices that have surged 25% since Mr Biden entered office in January 2021. [...] "I’m a Democrat," says Ms Ellis, who lives in the Philadelphia suburb of Norristown. "I love voting for them. But Republicans are speaking volumes right now and Democrats are whispering." / “I want somebody to help me, help the American people," she adds. “Joe Biden, where are you?” 'I had to downgrade my life' - US workers in debt to buy groceries -
7 July 2024 BBC
The article did a good job pointing out that memes are fun because we don't know anything at all about how Kamala Harris will help anyone. She's a blank green screen: while it's fun to play with that for a hot minute, as soon as the projectors are turned on and the boring same old "Vote Quimby!" adverts start playing, it can become boring or even insulting very quickly.
At the end of the day, folks will be happier to turn out for Dear Cult Leader and go home feeling like they spat on their enemies and helped saves the world, than the folks who dragged themselves to the poll wishing someone like Bernie was running or that they're merely there for the lesser of two evils. Repeat: Democrats are not the climate collapse preventing, morally good, democratic option : they're the (fine, far) lesser evil, but they are still evil. Our youth know this more so than us.
Harris is the front guy of a two party system that has left regular working class Americans behind for decades. Honestly I don't know how else candidates can possibly get more disengaged votes aside from the straight up fraud plus fear and hate route. UBI maybe.
My hope has been, since 2016, that eventually they'll be so desperate they try doing something radical enough for me to drink the kool-aid on. Median Salary level UBI. Guaranteed public housing for all. Complete carbon emissions shut down. Meaningful electoral reform (I'm looking at you Justine Trudeau). Overturning money in politics. But of course they wouldn't . They'd rather lose every election from now till eternity than to lose donor dollars.
My sister in law had a massive amount of student loans forgiven by the Biden admin. My wife will have hers forgiven in a couple of years, once she reaches 10 years as a public servant. Something...
My sister in law had a massive amount of student loans forgiven by the Biden admin.
My wife will have hers forgiven in a couple of years, once she reaches 10 years as a public servant. Something implemented by the Obama admin.
My youngest gets to go to preschool for free, saving us thousands of dollars this year and next. A program implemented by Democrats in my state.
My oldest gets free breakfast and lunch at their public school. A program implemented by Democrats.
These are just a few things that I am directly aware of in my bubble; looking at the achievements of the party in my own state shows many more that help people in my State in general.
I'm not saying they're perfect, I feel that the way crime is generally being handled isn't a benefit, both major crimes and petty. Putting fees on stuff like plastic bags, banning plastic straws are silly, have little impact and ultimately harm the poorest amongst us. Piggybacking on that, constant new regulations on things may help in some cases, but ultimately often raise prices and make CoL higher for everyone else.
Democrats aren't perfect, but they're not threatening entire classes of people on Pride month by saying, "God hates Flags" (wink, wink) like my State GOP chair did this year. They don't have a platform of grievance.
I fear that too many potential voters are more interested in laying about and not even trying because Perfect is the enemy of Good. They'd rather mope that things aren't further to the Perfect, ideal Left than see the good that's happening right in front of their faces.
My hope is that a combination of factors drive Harris to success this time. First Trump is quite old and unattractive. Second, he is no longer a blank slate in politics. When he ran in 2016, he...
My hope is that a combination of factors drive Harris to success this time. First Trump is quite old and unattractive. Second, he is no longer a blank slate in politics. When he ran in 2016, he could gish gallop incompatible promises while followers believed the ones that they wanted to believe. Now he has a record to evaluate. That record includes acts that many people find reprehensible. Third many many people are highly motivated to prevent him from taking office. They are not going to quibble about whether Harris is perfect. She is a means to an end.
It's not inevitable. Swing voters are unpredictable. But I am impressed so far with Harris campaign and I think she has a good shot.
I think her campaign is doing a pretty good job so far as well, especially with essentially no time at all and an aggressive opposition that isn't afraid of getting reprehensibly dirty. I do also...
I think her campaign is doing a pretty good job so far as well, especially with essentially no time at all and an aggressive opposition that isn't afraid of getting reprehensibly dirty. I do also have some hopes for her election, and the thing I'm hoping for with the meme bump is for her team NOT to count young votes in before they show up at the polls. The apathy, pessimism and disenfranchisement has been worked on for decades, (heck, they got me there) and is going to be very difficult to overcome.
I am very confused by this youth culture today. Are they saying Harris is a party girl that uses a lot of cocaine? Seeing as this song is about nothing other than bumps, keys, and lines?
I am very confused by this youth culture today.
Are they saying Harris is a party girl that uses a lot of cocaine? Seeing as this song is about nothing other than bumps, keys, and lines?
While that might be true, this particular song lyric is literally only about doing cocaine. That is what is making me confused as to why it was chosen for this video.
While that might be true, this particular song lyric is literally only about doing cocaine.
That is what is making me confused as to why it was chosen for this video.
I'm not going to pretend to be plugged into everything Gen Z means but it's safe to assume that there's more of a vibe with "brat summer" than a literal lyric to life translation. If I go strictly...
I'm not going to pretend to be plugged into everything Gen Z means but it's safe to assume that there's more of a vibe with "brat summer" than a literal lyric to life translation.
If I go strictly based on the Urban Dictionary definition of "brat summer" I'd suspect it's a) hyperbole, b)the "unapologetic" part of the definition and the vibes of someone who isn't pristine at all times.
But like, all vibes. Tiktok trends work like that. The sound is popular, and thus the sound gets used for videos with a particular aesthetic.
Example: currently a version of unstoppable is going around with a "what they think they look like" and a strong panther or large cat, and then as the chorus hits, the sound becomes a parody of the song with a tiny house cat not being big and tough at all.
The Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act is the largest climate bill passed anywhere in the world and puts the US within striking distance of meeting the commitments of the Paris Climate agreement. The Democratic party has become a real left wing party in the last 10 years and people need to stop pretending otherwise. No they are not socialist and they never will be. But we are long past the days of Clinton conservative triangulation.
Bernie ran on many of these ideas and lost, twice. I voted for him twice. But at a certain point you have to admit the reality that there is no popular support for these ideas and economically most of them just do not pencil out as possible. There is no mysterious "They" controlling the democratic party, our fellow citizens heard the case and weren't convinced to vote for it.
The only way to overturn the Citizen United Supreme Court decision is either a Constitutional amendment (which is in any practical sense impossible) or the hard generation long fight of getting enough justices on the court to overturn the opinion. You achieve that the same way the ant-abortion advocates took decades to overturn Roe v Wade, you continue to vote for democratic presidents for years and years until you finally break through. And if we aren't willing to do that, we aren't really all that committed to the cause.
This is kinda nit picky on my part, but Sanders ran on literally 0 of those platforms listed, and for the ones he did, he had legislation submitted that did pay for it.
As an example, his tuition free college plan used a less than 1% tax on certain stock and investing options.
He didn't run on pie in the sky ideas, he just wanted to bring us inline with basically the rest of the developed world.
Like I said I voted for the guy twice but he did run on many of those ideas, housing for all, green new deal to completely eliminate emissions, jobs guarantee (which isn’t UBI but it the closest thing that is actually possible to afford with todays economy and technology)
Bernie had a lot of great ideas, especially on education and healthcare but when you start to add everything up it gets very, very expensive. Which I think a lot of it is worth it but those numbers are terrifying to a lot of voters. Americans hate nothing more than taxes and his programs would require higher taxes on not just billionaires but the middle class as well (I’d argue they get more than enough value to make it worth it but the primary results speak for themselves and our fellow citizens didn’t agree)
Complicating this is the many Americans' misunderstanding of tax brackets, leading to the widespread belief that the lower and middle classes get hit just as hard by taxes as the top 1% and 0.01% are, which is then wielded by republicans to boost unpopularity of taxes.
I had to go back and re-read the article because I thought I missed a huge chunk of it. Turns out, you were replying to @chocobean.
We still have a long way to go regarding climate change. I appreciate the IRA, the infrastructure bill, and the chipping away at student loan debt as much as the next guy, but I don't think those accomplishments are enough to shed the label of the "lesser of two evils." Especially while we're in the midst of a genocide and the majority of the party is applauding and giving unconditional military aid to the guy perpetrating it. The Democrats have definitely moved to the left of where they were in the 90s (well, for most things), but I don't know if that qualifies them as a real left wing party. But I guess that's more about perception. Hey, speaking of perception....
Ignoring the part where everyone dropped out except Warren, Bernie lost in large part because of the perception that he wasn't the best candidate to beat Trump. A perception that was fueled by thousands of hours of media coverage driving that narrative. His ideas were popular, as seen in polling and evidenced by the fact that many of his opponents adopted a version them in the primary.
Also, didn't we kind of get a glimpse of the 'They' in action during the whole Biden debacle? Pelosi, Schumer, and the donors were the ones who ultimately got Biden to step down. It may not be as nakedly transactional as Peter Thiel, the Kochs, and the heritage foundation are with the Republican party, but Democrats have their version of that. The party leadership sets the course and that decision is based in large part by the interests of the donors, which conveniently tend to be reflected in the media.
They can also expand the size of the court, which unfortunately doesn't have a lot of support outside the progressive wing of the party. And I think that's where I, cocobean, and so many others on the left get frustrated with the Democrats. We always see Republicans turning some fairly inconsequential thing, like a girls swim meet or a racy book in a highschool library, and turn it into a key campaign issue to push the country further to the right. Democrats don't have that, even when the issues are popular and the facts are on their side. Everyone hates the idea of corruption and money in politics - Trump ran on "Drain the Swamp!" but they don't rally around that idea and push for that change in a meaningful way. I mean ffs, there is an actual real existential threat in climate change. Could you imagine what it would be like if they talked about it they way that Trump and the Republicans talk about immigrants? Of course not. And that's because they're not a real left wing party.
This recent video does a good job outlining specifics as to why Democrats are incentivized individually and organizationally to do the bare minimum and just try to ink out ahead of Republicans
Democrats had full control at the beginning of Biden's term and failed to pass Roe v Wade or a number of other items he campaigned on. Voting only gets people into chairs. Without significant public pressure on specific policies, sitting in chairs doesn't mean much
There actually was in 2016. The news was filled with how many superdelegates Clinton had secured before primaries even started, painting Bernie's campaign as frivolous. There was no incentive to vote. In 2020, everyone was (rightfully) focused on Bernie's age over policy. Biden was chosen over him by resignations and endorsements, not voters explicitly
That’s not how it works. Democrats had 50 votes in the senate including Joe Manchin who is far from the rest of the party. You cannot pass Roe v Wade without 60 votes.
You can pass a budget reconciliation bill with 50 votes (+ Vice President tie breaker) but that can only change government spending, not do things like set abortion policy.
Superdelegates don’t vote on the first ballot at the convention so they are irrelevant if you get the most votes. 30 million people voted in the 2016 Democratic primary, 36 million voted in the 2020 primary. That’s not much of a difference.
Correct, and I want to add that I get really tired with people saying things like "Dems had control" here, or "Dems had a super majority during Obama". I don't know if it's ignorance or willful dishonesty.
Can you convince Manchin of your bill? No? Then you have 49 votes at a maximum for budget reconciliation. For anything outside of that, can you convince either 10 Republicans, or Manchin to undo the filibuster? Lmfao no, you're short 10+ votes.
The way voting works in the Senate is frankly really simple, and I legitimately don't understand where the confusion is coming from. If Manchin and Sinema aren't on board, you don't have the votes for anything.
The fact that Biden for Manchin to vote for the biggest investment into climate change the country has ever seen is a fucking miracle, and absolutely destroyed Manchin's political career.
Democrats had control at the beginning of Biden's term, and in that time they spent their time passing the ACA, which caused more than 10% of Americans to gain health insurance. It's true that he didn't complete everything he campaigned on, because the President can only do so much when congress is held by the other party.
The ACA was passed during Obama's first term, not Biden's.
I disagree about there being no “they”—it’s not comforting to imagine a few billionaires making the decisions because that’s not a democracy, but do you think if Bernie had been in Biden’s position, he would not have received the nomination?
If Bernie had gotten the most votes in the primary either time he ran, he would’ve gotten the nomination.
God I'm old.
Just over a year since reddit effectively died and I'm completely out of touch with the meme-o-sphere. And honestly? I don't miss it, and don't feel like my life is the lesser.
Sorry for any whiplash, but: culture is trash, especially convenient internet culture. Effort and time spent on that shit above a certain baseline is just wasting your life, because it isn't life, even if it feels like it. Time spent thumbing through books, looking at trees, hanging drywall, changing your oil - do that shit, that's actually real life.
All that said - super stoked about Kamala, and gen alpha's embrace of her. Their priorities in life may be fucked, but at least they're getting behind the right guy.
I don't see how the internet is any different than other distractions that we enjoy. Books are equally not real life. They're a thing you can hold, unless you're reading a book on your phone, in which case they're just another thing you're looking at on your screen.
Not OP, but we understand fiction to stand apart from life. It can be compelling, but it's not real or important beyond the emotions it stirs in us or the ways we share the experience with others.
But these days people feel like the Internet is real, a real place where your actions matter and bleed into real life. In some ways that's true, but in many others, we're all screaming into a person shaped void, casting our thoughts out towards a user name who we think of, but cannot truly connect with in the same ways as, a real life human.
The popularity of goofy internet memes suggests the opposite to me.
Mind you, I take the Internet fairly seriously, which is why I am present on Tildes and partake in discussions like this one. Notably, I am not interested in memes.
But almost everyone I know mostly uses social media to laugh at jokes and share them with their friends; they don't care about their online identity — or even think of themselves as having an online identity. The Internet has about as much personal meaning to them as TV does to me. And they love memes.
But even though I am much more invested in my online presence than the average person in my social sphere and have considered the internet an important aspect of my life ever since I was a young child, my personal life is still overwhelmingly offline and always has been.
I don't consider social media (despite its name) to be a part of my social life at all, except insofar as I sometimes use it to keep up with friends and family living overseas. But interacting with strangers, like in the Tildes comment section, doesn't just feel like an inferior form of socializing; it does not register as socializing to me at all. It feels more like a solo reading/writing hobby that I enjoy a few times a week during periods of solitude, in the same general category as reading a book or watching a movie by myself.
For people I know who are into memes, this seems far more so the case. If all social media died tomorrow, I feel sure that nearly all of them would immediately jump into some other source of cheap, idle entertainment to joke about with friends.
I understand that there are many people for whom this is not the case. However, I am not convinced that this is the majority of people who use social media. And when we look at the segment of the population who use social media primarily to share and consume memes, I suspect the percentage is much lower still.
An actually accurate picture of how people perceive the Internet as a seamless portion of their social life vs strictly a way to entertain yourself would probably require survey data that I don't know where to look for, but my own set of anecdotal evidence suggests it's a generational thing, where the cutoff is whether the person was born before or after the Internet became omnipresent. Obviously the line is blurry since I conclusively stand on the "socializing outside and inside of the Internet does not feel fundamentally different to me" side while you're on the "the internet and social life are two separate things" side despite the fact that according to our respective bios we're roughly the same age, but I do think that whether you started socializing with your peers before or after the Internet became an unavoidable fixture of society has a lot of impact (and while I'm picturing the "internet is everywhere" threshold as a moment in time for brevity, geographical and cultural factors are definitely at play)
I also think that we have a different perspective regarding memes. Assuming I understood you correctly, you associate interacting with memes with idle entertainment rather than "serious" interaction with the Internet and therefore opposite to treating the Internet as meaningful and "real", and in the context of browsing memes just for the sake of it, I'd agree. However I think there is something important to consider: memes, by their very nature as the cultural analogue to genes, are not just mindless entertainment, and I, as someone who interacts with memes a lot, see them as a medium of communication and expression just like long form text and other forms of media would be. They're the representation of an idea important enough to the creator to shape it into a form optimized for sharing and/or further editing. Sometimes just for fun, sometimes as a way to share their interests, sometimes as an artistic exercise, sometimes as a way to fit in with the community they wish to integrate with. This is something I consider an important aspect of socialization (... at least within the Internet, something tells me that I would rightly be seen as insane if I were to react to a joke in person by whipping out my phone with a picture of the FlareWheeze emote), and I think this is a mindset a lot of people who sit on the other side of this "omnipresent Internet" threshold share, consciously or otherwise. Given that Tildes is specifically a space that caters to long form discussion over memes, I suspect I'm in the minority with this mindset in this specific place, but I think it is a lot more prevalent on the wider Internet.
For what it is worth, I was a very early adopter of computers and the Internet (or, rather my parents were, but they allowed me to access the Internet starting around 1991 when they got an AOL account). Almost no one else I knew in person had Internet access until much later, though, and I think this is actually why I do feel that I have an online identity (or several, actually); the Internet of the 90s was much more intimate than it is now, and it was an entirely separate community from my real-life community. It genuinely was a source of socializing for me back then — as in I had online friends I treasured as much as my real-life friends.
This is not the case for me now. While I have kept in touch with several of my old online friends, I have not made a new online friends since I was a teenager — whereas I continue to make new friends in real life. The Internet is no longer a place I go to meet new people and forge new social connections. I still think of myself as having an online identity and as having a presence in some online communities, but it's not the source of my social life anymore. I love Tildes and really enjoy reading/writing here, but it doesn't feel like part of my social circle at all.
Many of the people I am talking about are substantially younger than me. My sister and her social circle are a decade younger than me, and my partner teaches at the tertiary level and very nearly all of his students are around two decades younger — and as a very involved and beloved teacher, he's has become enmeshed in his students' subculture (which spills over onto me). The Internet, of course, has evolved into extremely important infrastructure — banking, shopping, communications, etc. — but I get the distinct impression that most young people's social sphere is still concentrated in people they know in person, even if the Internet has displaced letters and phone calls.
For example, my partner's students seem to primarily participate in Discord channels with their real-life friends (where they share lots of memes that they make for each other or that they pull from other sites). They are also mostly using their phones to do everything, rather than desktops and laptops like my generation tends to prefer. Phones seem to encourage being online more hours of the day, but their interaction with the Internet tends to be more light and casual: watching TikTok videos, sharing memes in group chats, etc.
I agree with you that memes are a much more important means of expression than they may appear from the outside. However, the way memes are broadly propagated (anonymously shared and reshared) is just very unlike the way dialogue works. To have a social identity, you need to have a community where people know who you are. Sharing memes within a group chat or with your friends when you're hanging out with them absolutely counts (most people I know do this), but making or sharing memes on a major subreddit where nobody notices your username is a very different kind of thing (hardly anyone I know does this). From what I have observed, the Internet is increasingly fracturing into smaller, more private communities — and because virtually everyone is on the Internet now, these communities are not the hodgepodge of randoms from all over the world like they were when I was young; when all your friends are online, you can just interact with them instead.
I think that can be true, but I think it definitely depends on how you're using the internet, and what your expectations of it are. It can be used to form real connections, to learn real things, to do real good, and to do real harm. I think there are also ways to build false connections without the internet, although it's usually not as easy a trap to fall into.
i do no such thing
(previously)
I've had a pretty similar experience. I've been trying to get my wife to drop imgur for about as long now, because she is on it constantly, as I was reddit and I don't think it helps her mental health much.
That said, she struggles because it is a way for her to connect to her friends in real life and keep up with them by sending them memes.
I agree with you and I voted for your comment. But, hang that drywall and save money for a vehicle that doesn't need an oil change.
We have to stop driving internal combustion vehicles.
I mean, you still have to change your oil while saving up an unreasonable amount of money.
For sure. It was just an example of a thing I did recently that felt real. Pick any of these to insert in its place:
Go to the beach with your girlfriend, go to lunch with your brother, text your mom, pet your dog, weed your garden, mow your lawn, pick up a new video game, watch an old movie.
Ya get YET ANOTHER vote from me!
I use TikTok, it's my current addiction (that I really should get rid of) but I've been getting a ton of Kamala Harris edits. For the uninitiated, an edit is a series of clips usually set to music cutting with the beat of the music.
There's currently an edit of Kamala with millions of likes set to 365 by Charli Xcx from her album Brat. This was after Xcx tweeted that Kamala is brat. This got attention on several news channels.
This sort of youth appeal is something I didn't expect Kamala to have. I guess I have an outdated view of Kamala that stems from her disastrous 2020 primary campaign. It's the type of youth appeal Bernie had in 2016 (although this is coming from a different area than that was).
It's stupid, but it makes me hopeful that actually maybe Kamala can win. Even though this was thrusted upon her at the last minute. I also didn't expect the Dem party to unite with her so quickly and heavily.
If anything, the unification is something I expected first. You're right though, it's a tough uphill fight for Kamala and this looks like a good starting point to get some mematic inertia that will serve her well.
I think that a lot of the youth push is organic due to no longer having to choose between two geriatric white men.
It’s not just youth.
https://x.com/tristansnell/status/1815246616850264540?s=46
From the tweet -
There was a Zoom tonight for Black women organizing for Kamala Harris.
The call had a max of 1000 people. They hit it immediately, and got a hold of the Zoom CEO to help.
40,000 people joined. For over 4 hours.
They normally have around 500. They raised a million dollars in three hours.
Apparently there was another zoom call for white women for Harris that hit 150k+.
Sounds like lots of demographics centering around not have an old white guy for president.
They have also had calls for black men and for white men. I wonder if they are also going to separate out Latino and Asian American people
A million diets?
Dollars.
It was actually about 1.5 million dollars.
Oh yeah. Now I got ya.
Haha whoops. Built in IOS swype is certainly a thing.
It'll be more than just Israel/Palestine. As the wealth transfer/ concentration continues, a large swath of the American public are becoming painfully aware that neither party have their interest and welfare in mind
The article did a good job pointing out that memes are fun because we don't know anything at all about how Kamala Harris will help anyone. She's a blank green screen: while it's fun to play with that for a hot minute, as soon as the projectors are turned on and the boring same old "Vote Quimby!" adverts start playing, it can become boring or even insulting very quickly.
At the end of the day, folks will be happier to turn out for Dear Cult Leader and go home feeling like they spat on their enemies and helped saves the world, than the folks who dragged themselves to the poll wishing someone like Bernie was running or that they're merely there for the lesser of two evils. Repeat: Democrats are not the climate collapse preventing, morally good, democratic option : they're the (fine, far) lesser evil, but they are still evil. Our youth know this more so than us.
Harris is the front guy of a two party system that has left regular working class Americans behind for decades. Honestly I don't know how else candidates can possibly get more disengaged votes aside from the straight up fraud plus fear and hate route. UBI maybe.
My hope has been, since 2016, that eventually they'll be so desperate they try doing something radical enough for me to drink the kool-aid on. Median Salary level UBI. Guaranteed public housing for all. Complete carbon emissions shut down. Meaningful electoral reform (I'm looking at you Justine Trudeau). Overturning money in politics. But of course they wouldn't . They'd rather lose every election from now till eternity than to lose donor dollars.
My sister in law had a massive amount of student loans forgiven by the Biden admin.
My wife will have hers forgiven in a couple of years, once she reaches 10 years as a public servant. Something implemented by the Obama admin.
My youngest gets to go to preschool for free, saving us thousands of dollars this year and next. A program implemented by Democrats in my state.
My oldest gets free breakfast and lunch at their public school. A program implemented by Democrats.
These are just a few things that I am directly aware of in my bubble; looking at the achievements of the party in my own state shows many more that help people in my State in general.
I'm not saying they're perfect, I feel that the way crime is generally being handled isn't a benefit, both major crimes and petty. Putting fees on stuff like plastic bags, banning plastic straws are silly, have little impact and ultimately harm the poorest amongst us. Piggybacking on that, constant new regulations on things may help in some cases, but ultimately often raise prices and make CoL higher for everyone else.
Democrats aren't perfect, but they're not threatening entire classes of people on Pride month by saying, "God hates Flags" (wink, wink) like my State GOP chair did this year. They don't have a platform of grievance.
I fear that too many potential voters are more interested in laying about and not even trying because Perfect is the enemy of Good. They'd rather mope that things aren't further to the Perfect, ideal Left than see the good that's happening right in front of their faces.
Msg like yours give me some hope, thank you
Harris was the 2nd most left senator after Bernie in her last session. Who are you actually describing here?
Like Koopa said, the Biden administration has really pushed the envelope with the Inflation Reduction Act, so they are doing a lot of good.
I do really hope you and @Koopa are right, and that I'm just being overly pessimistic.
My hope is that a combination of factors drive Harris to success this time. First Trump is quite old and unattractive. Second, he is no longer a blank slate in politics. When he ran in 2016, he could gish gallop incompatible promises while followers believed the ones that they wanted to believe. Now he has a record to evaluate. That record includes acts that many people find reprehensible. Third many many people are highly motivated to prevent him from taking office. They are not going to quibble about whether Harris is perfect. She is a means to an end.
It's not inevitable. Swing voters are unpredictable. But I am impressed so far with Harris campaign and I think she has a good shot.
I think her campaign is doing a pretty good job so far as well, especially with essentially no time at all and an aggressive opposition that isn't afraid of getting reprehensibly dirty. I do also have some hopes for her election, and the thing I'm hoping for with the meme bump is for her team NOT to count young votes in before they show up at the polls. The apathy, pessimism and disenfranchisement has been worked on for decades, (heck, they got me there) and is going to be very difficult to overcome.
I am very confused by this youth culture today.
Are they saying Harris is a party girl that uses a lot of cocaine? Seeing as this song is about nothing other than bumps, keys, and lines?
Brat just means girlboss, or slay, or queen, but you're also not afraid to be a bit loud or messy sometimes.
While that might be true, this particular song lyric is literally only about doing cocaine.
That is what is making me confused as to why it was chosen for this video.
I'm not going to pretend to be plugged into everything Gen Z means but it's safe to assume that there's more of a vibe with "brat summer" than a literal lyric to life translation.
If I go strictly based on the Urban Dictionary definition of "brat summer" I'd suspect it's a) hyperbole, b)the "unapologetic" part of the definition and the vibes of someone who isn't pristine at all times.
But like, all vibes. Tiktok trends work like that. The sound is popular, and thus the sound gets used for videos with a particular aesthetic.
Example: currently a version of unstoppable is going around with a "what they think they look like" and a strong panther or large cat, and then as the chorus hits, the sound becomes a parody of the song with a tiny house cat not being big and tough at all.
https://imgur.com/a/StSACek