u/nya-cat

Found this video about the history of laundry fragrance in America and why we apparently decided that “clean” should have a smell. It gets into how heavily fragranced detergent and fabric softener became so culturally ingrained here that Americans basically walk around everyday in a shared cloud of synthetic laundry musk without even realizing it.

Also, this woman sounds like a female Jeremy Irons and I could listen to her explain dryer sheets for six hours.

I hate the smirky ass 😏😏😏😏😼 raised eyebrow tongue in cheek ironic marketing that happens now where it’s like the product is too good for them to actually have to tell you it’s good so everything has to be sort of sneaky and understated and the Toyota commercial lady smirks at you like you’re in some sort of inside world with her and she knows that you know and maybe she would even consider continuing to talk to you outside of the Toyota dealership if you bought that Camry and now it’s like you’re not even being sold a Toyota anymore you’re being invited to understand why a certain type of person would drive a Toyota and obviously you’re smart enough and cool enough to figure out the rest without anyone having to embarrass themselves by actually saying BUY THE TOYOTA BECAUSE ITS GOOD and I think this is what bothers me because now the commercial has to pretend it has dignity and I have dignity and we’re both above the extremely humiliating reality that somebody is trying to get me to give them money

it used to just be a guy in a suit yelling at you that this is the best car ever made and it will make your American dream come true and honestly I vastly prefer that there’s something almost respectful about just openly trying to sell me something and kinda explicitly hamming it up like yes you want my money and yes I know you want my money and now you have 30 seconds to explain why I should give it to you, perfect, I understand the nature of our relationship and i don’t have to think very hard or wonder if something that was just displayed to me was actually done in some ironic way to make me feel clever or in on an inside joke

im so tired of watching commercials and being aware that every interjection and every little 😏 look at the camera was engineered by like 80 people in a room to make me feel like im not being advertised to while im very obviously being advertised to like please stop trying to preserve my sense of agency. I know what is happening and i know i will never be free. i know you have psychologists. i know you have studied my demographic. I know somebody made a powerpoint about how the Toyota lady should raise her eyebrow at me in exactly the way my mom used to when she knew I was lying about something. how do they know about that? I desperately want to please her and yet I don’t want her to know me. I don’t want her to understand my lifestyle. I don’t want to feel like maybe we would be friends under different circumstances because she’s just like me after all. I want a bronzed up man in a perfect Italian cut suit (whom I can never imagine meeting) who is very obviously standing on a studio set to point at the Toyota and tell me it’s the greatest fucking machine ever constructed instead of making me think about my fucking stupid chud life and how no one will ever love me AND I now also have a $40,000 car note at 12% interest

i grew up close to Wisconsin Dells aka the waterpark capital of the world and i would regularly go there with my family and friends. it was very normal to get “beat up” by the slides. most water slides are grossly under maintained and will regularly have like sharp lips and exposed metal in the slides. you always left the dells with at least one concerning scrape. But the most common thing you hear about is kids getting ejected off rides because they’re too small. like oh yeah my 7 year old cousin flew off the top edge of the Space Bowl because he didn’t weigh enough to keep the tube in contact with the surface of the ride. this was just kind of accepted as one of those things that happens at the dells.

i went to Mall of America when i was a kid and went to what was then Snoopy Park (much better than Nickelodeon Universe btw) and went on that one ride that goes like 50 feet in the air and just spins you around. i was i think 6 and i started sliding out from under the lap bar because i was so small and thankfully my mom has a severe anxiety disorder and noticed it and made the operator stop the thing because otherwise i would’ve plummeted like 50 feet onto the cold hard concrete of Snoopy Land Mall of America in front of my whole family.

but it’s kind of crazy because i feel like almost everyone i know has some story about almost getting maimed by an amusement park. like everyone has an uncle or cousin or friend that got launched off something or split their head open or got absolutely shredded in a water slide. maybe this was just a very midwest childhood experience but i don’t think i’ve ever met anyone that doesn’t have at least one completely insane story.

i knew someone who had one of those “perpetual stews” going and she was so excited about it. she was genuinely proud of it and kept talking about how every addition made it more flavorful and complex over time, and she really wanted me to try it.

it was so so so bad.

it wasn’t rotten or anything. it didn’t taste alarmingly off. it was just… musty. like it had this deep funky quality that felt completely wrong in a way i can’t really describe. the weirdest part was that she genuinely thought it tasted amazing. it was so bad that i started wondering if the perpetual stew had slowly altered some part of her brain. like she’d been exposed to it for so long that her baseline for what tasted good had shifted without her noticing.

she’d also gotten her boyfriend and roommate into it. they both insisted it was delicious too, which i fear only strengthens my theory.

i didn’t get sick but i think about it all the time. i wonder how many people are just keeping perpetual stews and quietly convincing themselves they’re delicious. maybe one of them is reading this right now.

goodnight. x

>open reddit

>post niche observation to rs_x

>first comment:
>your niche observation is dumb and wrong

>check their profile

>we have the same taste in everything

this website is so committed to discourse it won't even let two people with identical interests be friends

i want to know it's happening. i don't like this existence where so much of the labor that keeps us comfortable happens completely out of sight. like what do you mean i can click a button on my phone and then a whole kitchen of people makes a meal for me and then another person drives to pick it up and then drives to my house just to leave it at my door and i never once make eye contact with any of them.

it makes me sad because i feel like i never acknowledge that this person exists. to me they're just a 2d low quality selfie and a first name they were forced to truncate, and i'll never see them again. and that's their life, over and over and over again.

i only hope that when they stop working they can go home and be called by their actual name.

and yeah i get that this is the point of the service. but it still makes me sad. i don't like how inherently dehumanizing it is.

this is just one example in my own life. i think the more labor someone can afford to outsource, the less they have to witness it.

the house is cleaned before the client gets home. the food is left at the door. the labor disappears before they arrive.

don't let them see the work.

don't remind them there's a person behind it.

im alone

but i hear children,
families,
laughter around me.

i feel their tubes
hitting mine.

there's something hypnotic
about the way it feels.

tubes knocking into one another,
the artificial tide,
the same soft collision
over and over.

i feel peace.

it smells like chlorine,
polyester,
foam pool noodles,
the inevitable mildew.

i know it's all here,
but i cant open my eyes

and i no longer feel
the warmth
of the sun.

i think i lost my ikigai

i love sugar it’s so yummy and amazing it makes cookies taste good it makes my coffee nice it makes fruit yummy it makes everything better every incredible dessert owes it everything i love sugar i love sugar if sugar has a million supporters i am one of them i will never stop eating it even if my visceral fat consumes me and my feet fall off

i genuinely think we’ve convinced men that they’re lovable mostly insofar as they’re useful. provide, fix, drive, protect, carry, build. if that’s the foundation of your self-worth, female competence starts to feel threatening.

i’ve heard women say they want a boyfriend so they never have to learn how to drive or build another piece of IKEA furniture. it’s such a bizarre vision of intimacy, voluntarily shrinking your own autonomy and lived experience so someone else can feel necessary.

ladies, acquire competencies with reckless abandon.
fellas, don’t confuse being needed with being loved.

there is no margin for error. one week of eating like everyone else and you’ve become visibly fatter in every measurable dimension.

the modern food environment in the US is calibrated for people much larger than me. standard portions, combo meals, “value,” all assume an appetite and energy expenditure i simply don’t have. eating out regularly requires either leaving half the plate untouched (while being met with a concerned look from the waitstaff or your dining companion) or quietly accepting that your face is about to round out.

maintaining a small frame requires a degree of vigilance that people immediately pathologize. if you’re deliberate about portions you’re “obsessed” and “disordered.” if you aren’t, your body simply reflects the math.

if you’re over 5’5 you have no idea how much room for error you’ve been afforded.

and no, the extra weight does not graciously redistribute itself to anywhere besides my face and appendages. thank you for asking.

Made the mistake of buying local, grass-fed whole milk. Now regular milk tastes like the sad reality of industrial dairy farming: vaguely plastic, faintly poopy, and uncomfortably bovine.

Grass-fed milk tastes like I’m a barn kitten drinking from a fresh saucer my farmer master just yoinked for me as a reward for my first successful mousing.

Coffee shops are basically inaccessible now unless they explicitly advertise premium milk options, and I’m not sure if I’m ready to become the kind of freak who carries their own milk everywhere.

Wish I could go back to drinking normal milk and feeling nothing.

Renting? Scam. Buying? Scam. Leasing? Somehow an even bigger scam. Health insurance? Scam. Employment? Scam. College? Scam. Medication? Scam. Taxes? Scam. Retirement accounts? Deferred scam. Social media? Psychic scam. Dating? Resource extraction scam disguised as intimacy.

Every institution appears to have converged on the same business model: identify a human need, place three middlemen between you and it, and charge a subscription fee.

I genuinely feel like I’m in a constant state of being harvested. Not metaphorically. Somewhere there is a windowless conference room full of executives discussing how to convert my remaining life force into shareholder value.

Get sick? Scam. Get old? Scam. Die? Your estate gets scammed, and your family has to pay $1,000+ to torch your body into ashes.

Is this an American thing or is this simply what it feels like to become conscious?