r/complaints

We know who is responsible for this problem

On a certain flared only "free speech" Con sub, they're circle jerking each other about how Kamala's American Fair would be so much worse. How bad Biden was and would've been

KDS & BDS, anyone?

And how brown people bad, no surprise there, they're MAGA.

And then circle jerking how patriotic they are .. Fucking blind ( or plain proud) to the reality they have turned this country fascist.

So I’ve gotten into a little bit of a Reddit argument. A post was about smutty books and how people need to stop recommending them without warning, because a lot of the time they’re basically straight up porn.

I commented that it’s also become way too normalized to read that shit in public. It’s one thing, for example, to read a romance novel that just happens to have a sex scene or two. But it’s another to be reading straight up porn with barely any plot while being out in public. I think it’s inappropriate. And if you do it, at least keep it discreet instead of posting about it online because I’ve seen that too.

Then someone responded, let’s call them A.

A: It should actually become even more normal to read that stuff in public, because saying it isn’t okay is just pointlessly restricting.

Person B then pointed out: how is it okay to read that in public if it’s not okay to watch porn in public?

A: Because then other people could be exposed to the graphic content, and there could be kids around. It isn’t okay.

So I responded by asking how is watching ethically produced porn, for example, on your phone, with headphones, so different from reading explicit stuff. Let’s say for example you’re sitting alone in the corner of a bus and nobody can see your screen or read your book. Both the watching and the reading is being done for sexual arousal, to get off. So then why is watching unacceptable while reading is treated as perfectly normal? Maybe just wait until you get home either way?

I got downvoted.

So please explain what I’m missing. Since when is it completely normal to read porn in public? What is exactly so different about watching it versus reading it, assuming that nobody around you can see or hear either thing?

I understand that words are far less likely to expose someone else to graphic content. Videos are much more obvious, and someone could accidentally see the screen. I understand that distinction.

But I still think it is socially inappropriate to be doing either in public. And yes, if nobody is exposed to what someone is privately watching or reading, I guess it does not matter in the grand scheme of things. As long as there is no actual harm being done, and I’m posting this in here because I realized I’m complaining. I just still think it’s kind of crazy.

Why are we reading or watching things specifically intended to get us off while sitting around random strangers? Is that not uncomfy to you? What you don’t know can’t hurt you sure, but how is that an okay thing to be doing?

(Also, before anyone makes baseless assumptions, I do not think there’s anything inherently wrong with adults reading those kinds of books. Written erotica and filmed pornography are not equatable. One is fictional and does not involve real people, while the porn industry can be really fucking exploitative. Whether you believe ethical porn exists is a separate discussion and not the point of this post.)

My point is that I do not think either thing is socially appropriate to be doing in public, even when it’s being done discreetly.

What am I missing? Why are people defending reading that shit in public and I’m getting downvoted?

In case anyone needed a reminder, the peak individual tax rate was as high as 94% in 1944 to fund WW2, and still as high as 90% until 1963. It wasn't until the tax rate dropped from 70% to 28% under Ronald Reagan that we saw the influx of the super-rich class in the United States. In 1988 there were only 68 billionaires in the country. When Trump took office there were 536. Today there are 938 in the US alone who account for an astonishing 26% of the entire wealth of the country, with many billionaires paying an effective rate less than those considered middle-class.

Tell me again that the super-rich aren't taxed enough or why they deserve yet another tax break.

I was around for the 1976 bash, it felt more patriotic and historical than this new one.

I remember going to the 1976 train that had car after car of history, it had actual pieces of American history.

Coins that had 1776/1976 - the works.

This time around - a sign saying 250. Yay

Doubt I will be around for the 300 one, hope they get their act together by then.

Rant over - need to yell at some clouds now!

Fuck Amazon! And of course all of the dirt poor MAGAts will rush to defend him:)

I'm so tired of this rhetorical sleight of hand where if you can poke holes in the genocide legal threshold which is genuinely high and will ultimately be decided by the ICJ, that somehow becomes a full exoneration of everything Israel has done to Palestinians since 7 October (or prior).

No. Stop. This is bullshit.

Even if you personally believe the genocide charge doesn't hold up legally, you still have to contend with 75,000+ violent deaths documented by independent peer reviewed surveys, at least 56% of whom were women, children and elderly. 94% of hospitals damaged or destroyed, a birth rate that collapsed 41% in two years, a population under siege, systematically denied food, medicine and fuel on video, hundreds of repeated strikes on displaced person camps, aid convoys, and clearly marked civil defense, journalists, and aid/healthcare workers. Every credible human rights organization on earth, Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, the UN Special Rapporteur and various commissions, MSF, Israeli NGOs like B'Tselem, all are documenting systematic war crimes and crimes against humanity using the same methodology they apply everywhere else to every other conflict from Rwanda to Sudan.

War crimes are war crimes. Mass atrocities are mass atrocities. "It didn't clear the legal bar for genocide" doesn't make tens of thousands of dead children suddenly acceptable, it doesn't make the deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure legal, it doesn't make collective punishment of 5 million people in Gaza and the West Bank okay. That's fucking bananas.

The genocide debate is legitimate and worth having but using it as a get out of jail free card for documented atrocities is intellectually dishonest and frankly obscene. The bar for genocide is high by design, it was never meant to be the minimum threshold below which anything goes and totally cool. What the fuck.

All of this stupid Great American State Fair stuff just ruins everything. I never heard of the Great American State Fair until, maybe a couple weeks ago, but from what I gather, it's just of silly booths that they set up in these tents along the National Mall that showcase each state. Are we in Middle School or something? Why do we need to have that? And for refreshments they have shitty $25 dollar hamburgers and corndogs. It'll cost ya an arm and leg just to eat and drink something. No wonder no one showed up.

The whole thing's just a cheap-ass scam. I'm just gonna stay home and watch fireworks on TV.

Everyone I know is either working or just relaxing because they are exhausted from working two or three jobs to pay rent. Food prices are insane. Gas prices are insane. The president himself is insane. The streets in my town are quiet and dead and there is a fireworks ban because we are at extreme risk of wildfire, but there are still jerkoffs blowing things up in various dark corners of town. It’s a really creepy energy overall.

Firstly, no one controls their height. I have personally never seen height as being that important and then I saw a close up of a bunch of the insecure snowflakes and their confederate flags and it was clear that 90 percent of them were in the 5’9 and under crowd. Again, your height doesn’t make you less of a man, unless you’re one of these guys and apparently you think it does so now you have to wave your flags and bother the public who was just trying to have a nice day.

Hey guys, I just wanna get this off my chest. Sorry if it's the wrong subreddit or already known to everyone.

I think all of us are tired of the enshittification of everything the last couple years. It sucked the joy out of everything that's dear to me and left me with a fresh education that had me find no job and now earn minimum wage in a retail job. Life is unbearable and I had a lot of time to think about it.

I think most of us can agree that this turbo enshittificatiom started after covid. Why? What's changed? Haven't we been mostly back to normal? Well on one hand supply chains never brought their prices down after stabilization, opening doors for inflation.

On the other hand, and this is important, we people have been glued to our phones during lockdown and never recovered. This opened positive doors like normalizing home office. But also made us addicted to social media for example. After perceiving reality from social media, especially the youth in their most important years, for teo years we never have truly let go. Which is why I believe politics are so out of hand.

We are very attached to these algorithm ridden apps that shower us in confirmation biases. And politics revolve fully around these now. I am still in awe about the Epstein files not leading to ANYTHING so far. How is that possible? I tell you how: because everyone reads about them and then scrolls to the next post again and again. We don't forget about them and are still mad but our emotions are watered down by funny pet videos, home crafts , emotional pop psychological analyses about our friends and so on. If you see a post about Epstein every couplr weeks there might have been 100s of posts i between awoking all kinds of thoughts and emotions. Well you could take forks and torches and rebell but it's easier to just rant in the comments and keep scrolling out of addiction . Has been a very busy day at work already, hasn't it?

Further, we basically erased all forms of productive discussions from society due to confirmation biases. Conservatives will only see posts about how stupid lefts are, but lefts are evenly only seeing how uneducated conservatives are. I don't care who is right here, we need to TALK to each other and find a middle ground no matter how stupid the "other fraction" is. How can we do that if our realities are only what we believe to see? If we keep seeing how right we are and how wrong they are, but the same source of confirmation is showing the opposing enemy the same about their opinion? Politicians are using this by only making short content worthy extreme offenses about each other to gain virality but to absolutely nothing in the end and be able to pass destructive laws between viral clips insulting each other.

How about AI? It's a hollow promise of paying off that's been artificially blown up by telling people how great it is over the years. It has flooded the internet by storm over a year with artificial bot content after it has used our uploads illegally to feed it's thirst and that's all it did so far. Pollute what we have been glued to over the years. There would be no AI craze if we were all in parks and never seen empty promises of it. It had to deliver results to reach end costumers by suggesting it to each other which it never did. It's a mess, that not only used and polluted our environment but also our beloved webspace.

Also the late digitalization of games and media. That's only possible by being plugged constantly to the web. Imagine if we abandoned the internet, how would they justify forcefully making everything digital? Why do you think this happens NOW so forcefully? Many people claim the end goal is to make game time or even PC time a time based service. You pay 20 dollars and can use your PC for a day which is streamed from their clouds. Why do you think this happens now, why do you think they are so sure that this works?

Because we have abandoned the real life fully during covid and they know. Everyone with a huge budget is using it against us. I love using reddit , I love downloading games from steam, I love streaming music and everything as much as the next. But I have been using it less and less over months now and I have realized there is a peace in it I didn't remember anymore. My 1060 GPU should be dying anytime now and so does my 5 years old phone and I have considered not replacing them (I mean I can't anyway, I have 0 money) and the thought of not being available 24/7 by mail or whatsapp is kinda obnoxious but who is gonna stop me? What will I do with that free time? Maybe go on the streets and rebel, I don't know. But I will definitely have the possibility and the urge to.

We need to abandon the internet to work on real life being enjoyable again I guess