What are your thoughts on 2021 in personal life and in general?
The only reason 2021 didn't totally sever the social contract is that I still have people I care about in my personal life and I have to have some sort of restraint to not alienate them. I used to shoplift a decent amount because I'm white and not dumb, but this year it's almost become a habitual thing. There was one time I tried walking out of the local Kroger with a bottle of Bacardi under my coat, and the store manager ripped it out of my hands and was an ass about it. I spent the next couple of days using fake texting apps to make calls to the customer service line, left bad reviews, complained to the employees there and got him shitcanned. Stimmybux got me back into wargaming after years of a hiatus because I couldn't afford it. It's very relieving to see that, for such a reactionary hobby (because it's expensive and has fash-friendly lore most of the time), nobody gave a shit that I showed up looking like a Golden Girls cosplayer. That's out the window with the covid spike, but I've been sure to prime my shit right on my apartment's front steps, just blatantly leaving black and white paint streaks.
At my last job, I would just put trash in my manger's desk or hide milk cartons around her office. I'd unplug shit all the time, we've had multiple times where all the breakfast food in our freezer (for the buffet we have going on during the pandemic) go bad because nobody checks it for days and I'd just let shit go bad so they couldn't put stuff out and it'd waste the company's money. If there's not a camera in front of something (outside of the elevator for obvious reasons), I just tugged at it as hard as I could to see if I could break it, and a lot of times it broke. There are still machines that are just broken. The reason I left was that one of the guests (the CEO of some protestant cult or whatever) complained that I wasn't nice enough to the ringworms who were staying at the hotel and that they've decided to cancel their contract, which cost the company a ton. I was asked to fill out an email saying how I won't be mean to the guests in the future, and instead I waited until my next shift and then told her as soon as I got to the hotel that I quit. Later that night after getting hammered, I sent an email to corporate saying that she was trying to start a union. I don't know the results of that, but I wouldn't be betting on the future of a mermaid themed hotel with <10 people per night staying there.
I hate this country with every fiber of my being and it's gotten to the point where the only way I can express it is through just doing whatever little I can to help shit break down faster. The snapping point really was at the end of last year when the last childhood friend that I had, who came out to me as a woman and was the most important person I had in regards to expressing myself as a nonbinary person, kill herself. That was the point where I started going into work visibly intoxicated and just mean. I'm just mean all the time, and if I'm not to someone, it's because I'm busting my ass to avoid just screaming at them at how fucking insufferable everything is. It's working, I've made friends and the only friendship I broke off was with a shitlib, but I sure to be as mean about it as possible, and kept sending little updates on how the Biden admin was doing until he blocked me. This year made me appreciate the US worker more than any other point in my ideological journey. To steal that chapo line from the Darius McCollum ep (I still cry thinking about that), if you're making under $50,000 a year in this country, you're a prisoner and should act like it. I used to say "I don't even want this country reformed", which is a hilarious line in hindsight because we couldn't get it if we wanted (and you shouldn't), and it's not our decision. And if you're the people making those decisions, or just making $200k at this point, you and everyone you're connected to are Romanovs's to me.
It's obviously not praxis, it's not bring about the workers paradise or a better living wage or whatever your goals are, but I can't help but feel joy as things fall down. Going to a McDonalds and seeing them close at 7:00 PM gives me hope. Seeing 100+ boats on the west coast waiting to get unloaded is the light at the end of the tunnel for me. Barren shelves are cracks in the wall. I don't want this place to continue anymore. I don't have any family, I've never went to college and couldn't afford it if I wanted (I don't, if we're being honest), but I need one if I could ever hope to afford a house. I got real close with the unemploymentbux, but then the housing prices blew up and I needed a new car because there's no living in this country without one. I fucking hate driving so much. My mom died when I was 10 because she had to drive 45 min each day to get to work. But I gotta blow most of my cash to get this metal hunk of shit so I can sit in traffic and pray that I don't get fucking sideswiped on my way to forced labor (wage slavery is slavery, I have an effective gun to my head demanding I work), doing something very much not important during a pandemic. Our society exists just so I have to keep going to that job. Excuse me for taking joy that you're not getting a PS5 anytime soon, I fucking pray that not a single one after this last batch gets sold new.
You know the answer to this in your head. I have to say, for the sake of this website and the FBI agent reading this, I do not condone violence in any way. You can't type it out here, and it really ain't the website's fault. Not like /leftypol/ or r/antiwork or breadnroses or this place could do something useful if they wanted to keep the place open. People don't come to these places, places that I've made friends through, as workers but as members of a fandom, even if they're politically involved and these places should be seen as such. Anyone who's calling for violence right now is a fed, and none of the orgs can or want to organize that violence in a meaningful way against the state. It's not their fault either, they'll get Fred Hampton'd if they do something outside of the most basic harm reduction. That's not gonna be forever, but it will be until the United States as a national goverment is in shambles and cannot allocate enough resources to kill us off (which is the goal through direct violent repression and policies like raising interest rates while allowing unemployment to expire, or all of our covid policies). The prospect of instability, the sort that I'm really afraid of and I'd absolutely be at the front of the line to get the worst of as an openly queer worker, is preferable to this going on for another week. If the outcome is I still don't have my mom or friends and everyone that cares about it is getting sicker and poorer, why would I want this blight to go on any more. The United States is the most evil creation humanity has ever stumbled into and the guilt our ruling class has cannot be absolved. Even with their bougie medicine, they just wouldn't have enough time to make up for what they've done. We're worse than the Nazis, we're worse than the current Japanese goverment (which is the same as the imperial Japanese goverment).
I'll never vote in another election again, I'll never put in a hard day's work under any circumstance, and I will actively try to lower profits as much as possible. 2021 was the year that, for the sake of having something to look forward to in the distant future, I gave up on this country completely.
99.999999 percent he's a terf but I pop whenever I see him, like at E3 a couple of years ago or when he shows up on random youtube videos looking like coke did coke. To tie it back to the thread, he's seeing JewWario/Spoony in the Channel Awesome movies. Obviously terrible people, but there's something captivating seeing morally disgusting dweebs get really angry at the Zelda CDI games.
we're never gonna see Ikki Kita give Crisis Core a 2/5 and that makes me sad
You had an independent platform that vaguely winked at something decent, like most breadtubers, and then turned out to be a shitlib irl. Remember when she was browbeating the people who correctly pointed out that Joe Biden was a rapist corporate suit?
I genuinely hope she doesn't take the Adam Sessler (she's just the post-2008 collapse version of a G4 host) route where she shows up once every 3 years to increasingly worse responses. Don't come back, we don't need more video essays on Transformers. Don't do little voice cameos in other youtubers videos about how the French revolution was bad actually. She's made enough connections to carve out a 6 digit, 10 hour a week consulting/writing gig somewhere and could spend the last decade this disgusting country has left living pretty comfy.
It's not a parachute made of gold, but it's still one that her class position affords her and that we would never get. Don't cry for some rich kid just because of a parasocial relationship you haven't worked out. She wouldn't feel bad for you.
I think before anything, this is an example of a failure of the online left that came out of the Bernie campaign. You have a huge group of normies who are quickly approaching class conscious under their own terms and instead of adapting to this sentiment and winning over the workers on there, you honest to god have people who don't want a flood of new users onto this site. There are others who tried to interject and good on them, but the sentiment that you shouldn't go where the workers are is why I log onto this website every 3 months on a throwaway.
To answer your question
to justify moving to automating low level treat services
If they could, they would. The automation isn't there yet, won't be soon, and to adapt without having a class of people you have to openly oppress during exponentially more intense decline and withdrawal of the state, you'd need a UBI and capital can't get it's shit together enough for basic spending on roads.
This is also in the face of massive chip shortages and a shipping crisis that continues to build on itself. Even if the tech was there to have the sort of automation they threaten, and the capital was there to invest, there just aren't enough parts floating around. FF14 couldn't get a new server for one of the most profitable game of all time. I think I'll call Burger King's bluff on this.
If there is a near term massive culling of workers, they might blame it on automation or labor agitation but it'll absolutely be the result of the fed raising interest rates and dead capital / zombie firms finally being absorbed by big porky. Fun fact: half of those firms are in producing real, physical products which I'm sure will only help the rollout of the robots.
you're just describing the only people I've gamed with consistently for the last decade