My favorite interactions are Chinese users coming up with really obvious solutions, and having to explain how much deeper the problem goes.
"Since your rent is high, why not just build high-rise apartments?" Because if we gave poor people a place to live it would bring down property values and investors and landlords would lose money so it's easier to harass them until they go to the next city and become someone else's problem.
"If you have all these taxes but poor social services, where does all the money go?" Not only does it not go to helping us, it goes towards the military and police who are actively harmful.
"If your groceries are expensive and you have lawns, why don't you just grow your own food?" Well, we should, but if you have a landlord they might not let you.
"Why do you put up with this instead of standing up against the rich?" Hey, you know that Marxist theory that you had to learn in school and thought was super boring? Well, while you were learning that, we're taught that communism is the devil, so instead everybody comes up with their own bizarre explanations of why things suck that usually involve siding with the ruling class against other countries, if not blaming minorities in our own country. And also people are so chauvinistic that they think any problem we have must be even worse everywhere else because "WE'RE #1!"
There so much stuff that I'm not used to explaining because everyone's just internalized the horrors and rationalized them away, and there's also so much stuff I wouldn't be able to say because people run away screaming if you try to apply Marxist framework to things.
There's gotta be a "Oh yeah, the time knife, we've all seen it" meme I can make out of this.
My favorite interactions are Chinese users coming up with really obvious solutions, and having to explain how much deeper the problem goes.
"Since your rent is high, why not just build high-rise apartments?" Because if we gave poor people a place to live it would bring down property values and investors and landlords would lose money so it's easier to harass them until they go to the next city and become someone else's problem.
"If you have all these taxes but poor social services, where does all the money go?" Not only does it not go to helping us, it goes towards the military and police who are actively harmful.
"If your groceries are expensive and you have lawns, why don't you just grow your own food?" Well, we should, but if you have a landlord they might not let you.
"Why do you put up with this instead of standing up against the rich?" Hey, you know that Marxist theory that you had to learn in school and thought was super boring? Well, while you were learning that, we're taught that communism is the devil, so instead everybody comes up with their own bizarre explanations of why things suck that usually involve siding with the ruling class against other countries, if not blaming minorities in our own country. And also people are so chauvinistic that they think any problem we have must be even worse everywhere else because "WE'RE #1!"
There so much stuff that I'm not used to explaining because everyone's just internalized the horrors and rationalized them away, and there's also so much stuff I wouldn't be able to say because people run away screaming if you try to apply Marxist framework to things.
There's gotta be a "Oh yeah, the time knife, we've all seen it" meme I can make out of this.
Something like this, comrade:
country where everything was designed to be a scam from the ground up vs. country where society was improved "somewhat"