#patriotic consumerism

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“New Canadian plant at Niagara Falls, Ontario, of the Kotex Company of Canada, Limited. Top: section of manufacturing department. Insert: Mr. L. E. Phenner, Sales Manager, Kotex Company of Canada, Limited; bottom: exterior view of the new Kotex plant. Monday marked the opening of this magnificent new factory and office building built to supply Kotex and Kleenex for the domestic market and the United Kingdom. In the words of his Worship, Mayor Swayze of Niagara Falls: “This new plant and office is an outstanding addition to this community. Its construction has given employment for some months to many artisans which has assisted materially in these men carrying on during this strenuous time." Mayor Swayze went on to say: “The example of the Kotex Company of Canada, Limited, should be an incentive to all industries for in this way and in this way only, can a return to normalcy be assured." Construction of the new plant was started June 24th, and work was given to an average of 60 men a day from this date until the structure was completed. All labor and all contractor were Canadian.”

- from the North Bay Nugget. November 30, 1932. Page 5.

#niagara falls #kotex #kleenex #manufacturing plant #kleenex factory #patriotic consumerism #canada in the british empire #capitalism in canada #boosterism #great depression in canada

[foe-paw]

YOU THOUGHT THAT YOU COULD OUTSMART THE VERY THING THAT RUNS THE BLOOD OF YOUR KIND?

#starkid #black friday #team starkid #hatchetfield #uncle wiley #wilbur cross #foe art #my brain disease re. this weasel guy in full denim continues #in Mine own headcanon he was very similar to john mcnamara when he entered the portal - a strongly moral person and a patriot #but wiggly manages to establish that the only way for wilbur to get what he wants (to help his country even though it is sick and militaris #and poisoned with consumerism and the chase for money above all else- #(wilbur cross is an anticapitalist is what i'm saying) #anyways yeah. wiggly sells despair and wrath and convinces him that the Only Way to save the world is through wiggly's ways! #no hope otherwise! #so....... why not become a comically evil double-crossing full-denim satan archetype! #also fun fact it took me two whole watches of black friday before realizing wiley wasn't meant to be literally satan #he's only figuratively satan! #the anticapitalist activist we deserve :]

[poindexters-labratory]

Hurricane William Afton Lore Dump Part 2

CW: discussion of the Vietnam War, American cultural conflicts, nihilism, moral injury, and mentions of drug use

Henry and William continued to work on Fredbear (Fred renamed) and Bonnie, planning out the course of the next few years of their entertainment/restaurant business, William learning business and economics from books (he didn't need to go to an expensive school to learn what he could learn in books he could find at the library for free (well, the library card was about 25 cents)), Fredbear and Bonnie were slowly coming to life. However, the world kept spinning around them.

History Bit: July 28, 1965, President Johnson would send out a national televised speech that he would send 50,000 American troops to South Vietnam. American troop occupation would peak in Vietnam in April of 1969, with over 540,000 troops present.

Henry knew at some point he would get called out to fight, but never knew how to bring it up to William. There was never a right time. Even when he eventually did get his draft call in 1967, he still didn't know how to talk about it, but he had to. William did not take the news well and they had a nasty fight about the frightening situation.

Will thought it was absolute bullshit that Henry had to fight in a place he had no business being in and potentially die, and Henry's only choices were fight in a war or imprisonment. Henry desperately tried to get it through William's stubborn English skull that this is what it meant to be American, and it was his duty and loyalty to his father and grandfather who were veterans to defend his country in whatever way he could, and if he died, then that's what happened. William couldn't do anything to change that.

William joined the anti-war movement soon after and Henry left to be deployed in Vietnam for a year. Whenever Will missed Henry, he worked on Fredbear and Bonnie by himself, so he was in that workshop just about every day.

William does not like things being out of his control. Restrained and infantilized is how he's lived his entire life up until now and his best friend may get taken from him, and he's still leaving him stranded in a strange place for a year. America was a scary place to be in the 60s.

A London teenage boy/young man in the 1960s could live a completely different lifestyle than his post-war era father and they could still have pleasant interactions. William watched people physically fight on the news over "destabilizing American traditions and values" because of the various movements taking place at that time.

(Timeline's video called "1967: The Counterculture Year That Changed the World" covered what was happening in the 60s between America and the UK and the differences between the two countries. That video really gave me a lot of information and insight. It's a 40-minute-long documentary.)

There's something interesting to say about William being English during the height of this cultural divide in America. This is a topic I don't see people in the FNAF fandom talk about other than the odd British joke. William Afton not being American should be a bigger deal than it is in this fandom. He doesn't hold the same values that the American population does around this time. English traditions didn't hold water to the intense American conservatism relating to patriotism, consumerism, and family values. He just so happened to find himself in rural, conservative Southern Utah.

This culture shock was tremendous and terrifying. Being a teenager in London meant being free from having the sort of national responsibility that William's father had thrust upon him in the 40s, and although Edward was bitter about this generational freedom, he wasn't opposed to William having fun and being stupid. Sure, there was conflict between generations, but this was violent. London was bright for the first time in years, hopeful, and the closest he's seen to this kind of fighting was between mods and rockers in the streets.

History Bit: Mods and rockers were an English subculture. Mods (short for modernist) wore suits and were very clean, listened to a variety of music, such as jazz, soul, blues, etc., and rode scooters. The rockers were the rival subculture of the mods, a biker subculture, or a greaser in North American culture. In 1964, there was a national moral panic involving these two subcultures clashing in physical fights within Southern England. William may or may not have been involved in one of these physical conflicts.

Suffice to say, William was a hippie in the 60s. He's always been rebellious, and hey, the hippie community was very accepting, the music was great, and the drugs, fantastic. He grew his hair out, started dressing more androgynously, and the year Henry was gone, he got even taller and matured, now 20 years old, almost 21. He started getting very close with Henry's younger brother, Quincy, who was his age. Michael was three and developing well. Everything was going okay, but he still worried about Henry every day.

Henry was not very pleased with him when he came back, spring of 1968. Having a bunch of people who have never been to war, shaming the efforts he made to stay alive everyday was not great to begin with, now his best friend seemingly agreed with them and looked like them and talked like them. This strain almost broke everything apart, but they held onto each other. They cared about each other, and the massive hug William gave him, crying tears of joy that he came back alive was an experience he wouldn't trade for the world.

Of course, there were still massive differences between the two friends, but it wasn't like they were anything alike in the first place. The differences made them endear the other. But there were some problems, especially concerning Henry's outlook on life after returning home.

Before his deployment, he tended to look toward the brighter side of situations. It's one of the reasons William stuck around for so long while he was facing his "teenage blues". Henry was logical, but he wasn't a cold person. Humanity was a logical positive Henry would always turn to whenever William was drowning in pessimistic dread, pulling him to the other side while his mind lied to him.

But war put Henry in a more nihilistic mindset if anything. Nothing truly mattered in the grand scheme of it all. War made him feel like the smallest possible thing on Earth. His entire life he's held a passive view on the world around him, that he couldn't possibly make a difference because he's just one nobody guy from New Harmony, Utah. His involvement in the Vietnam War made these feelings worse as he watched disaster unfold in front of him and he couldn't do anything about it.

William told him that maybe he couldn't make a difference to the rest of the world. But he did make a difference in Will's life.

Together, they worked in making Fredbear and Bonnie come to life, William charmed (and scared the shit out of) the bank's loan officer, bought and renovated a building in town, advertised, attended business and robotics conferences (and the odd art festival), watched Michael grow up and get a baby brother, there were setbacks and accomplishments, and finally, the day came. Summer of 1971, Fredbear's Family Diner was opened.

Intermission of William Afton Fun Facts!!

William's liking for rabbits came from having an imaginary anthropomorphic rabbit friend when he was little that looked like a shadow with very white eyes and teeth. It disappeared whenever someone came around. Probably unrelated.

He's always wanted to perform either in a circus or in ballet

One of his legs is longer than the other, causing some discomfort while running that got worse as he got older

Will knows how to tumble some, taught by Claire, who was a gymnast. Don't let him anywhere near a trampoline, he'll overdo it. This almost means he's done many backflips off the Diner's stage. Some have been unsuccessful, but most of the time, he lands them.

William can play guitar by ear. Very well.

He is very high energy, under-stimulated most of the time, so he is almost as rambunctious as his children. Making him a great dad to play with.

He listens to a wide range of music, having an insane amount of music selections. Black Sabbath, The Beatles, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Aretha Franklin, Three Dog Night, Janis Joplin, ABBA, Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane, Led Zeppelin, Elton John, The Animals, James Brown, The Mamas & The Papas, Jimi Hendrix and a whole lot more. He loves music. (Projecting)

His favorite movies Alice in Wonderland, Bambi, Monty Python skits, 101 Dalmatians, West Side Story, Aristocats, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Grease, The Rescuers, The Secret of NIMH, The Fox and the Hound, and The Sword in the Stone (he's a Disney adult)

Part 3 ->

#fnaf #william afton #fnaf hurricane #henry emily

[pinkeoni]

do u realize that st is anti-communist lol

I bet you also think Animal Farm is an anti-communist novel.

Okay, maybe I am giving the show too much credit. This is the same show that just announced their new board game and has already been merchandised to hell and back already. The Duffers are no George Orwell.

But still, there is a difference between what is in the text of the show and how their network chooses to market it.

I can understand where an audience member may see ST as anti-communist, considering that the characters themselves, the heroes of the story that we are meant to root for, are anti-communist. Which makes sense! These are characters living in America during the Cold War with the Soviets. The entirety of the Scoops Troop and Jopper plotlines in season 3 are about bringing down the “evil commies” and Hopper spends most of his time in season 4 being tortured in a Russian prison.

But here’s the thing that most anons seem to be doing, which is conflating the Soviet Union with communism. Saying that Will Byers would be a communist =/= saying that Will Byers would support the Soviet Union. And okay, I may have made that edit of Will in an ushanka, which I did only because editing fictional characters in ushankas is funny. Here it is again:

Let's bring it back to what I mentioned in the very beginning, which is George Orwell's Animal Farm, but specifically the last scene of that novel. The farm animals have successfully led the revolt against the humans, and yet the state of the farm is as bad as it was before, and the pigs are sitting at the table indistinguishable from the humans that they rebelled against in the first place.

Because Orwell's novel isn't saying "communism bad," but rather, the political leaders of the Soviet Union had gone against the original principles they were fighting for.

So the show is definitely anti-soviet, which doesn't equate to anti-communist. To be fair, there isn't much in the show that is expressly pro-communist, but the show isn't really pro-capitalist either. In fact, the show isn't even really that pro-American.

I feel like the ideology of the Cold War was very us versus them, or you're either with us or your against. You are either a red blooded American who is a proud capitalist and uphold the beliefs of your country, or you are a soviet communist pig. But as Papa would say—

The best season to express this is season 3. Season 3 introduces Starcourt Mall— the pinnacle of American consumerism. We learn that the mall has actually been actively hurting the town, causing many local businesses to go belly-up because they just can't compete.

But we also learn that Larry Kline, the mayor of Hawkins, was actually colluding with the Russians the whole time and the mall was a big front for the Russians to conduct their experiments. The point that the show was trying to make is that the same patriotic "All American" man who held a Fourth of July celebration for the town is on the same side as the "Evil Communist Russians."

Let us not forget that this is the same show that said that American government agents were "bad men," and actively used the Reagan/Bush campaign as a symbol of danger. Maybe ST is not the flagship communist show, but it isn't the flagship pro-American capitalist show either.

tagging @aemiron-main since you expressed interest on my poll

Side bar! Did you know that during the Second Red Scare, queer people were labeled as communists and prosecuted, because their lifestyles were considered inherently anti-American, and a security risk to the country? True story!

#anon #asks #communist!will #stranger things #i was debating deleting this draft because my friend told me that its not worth the energy to respond to these asks #and hes right #but ppl wanted to see the communism analysis so #also the ideology of the characters =/= the ideology of the show #I don't know if any character would be expressly interested in communism except for our russian pals (and maybe jonathan unironically) #but that doesn't necessarily that that is what the show is going for #of course these characters are patriotic because they live in the midwest america during the cold war #anyways communist byers ftw

[dk-thrive]

No wonder it (coffee) costs so much

Just the other day, I was in my neighborhood Starbucks, waiting for the post office to open. I was enjoying a chocolatey cafe mocha when it occurred to me that to drink a mocha is to gulp down the entire history of the New World. From the Spanish exportation of Aztec cacao, and the Dutch invention of the chemical process for making cocoa, on down to the capitalist empire of Hershey, PA, and the lifestyle marketing of Seattle’s Starbucks, the modern mocha is a bittersweet concoction of imperialism, genocide, invention, and consumerism served with whipped cream on top. No wonder it costs so much.

— Sarah Vowell, from "The Nerd Voice" in The Partly Cloudy Patriot" (Simon & Schuster, September 2022)

#sarah vowell #coffee #starbucks

[haunteddollgender]

I just watched the Family Guy clip that features "the robot from Rocky IV" and then had to watch the actual clip and yeah there is a robot in Rocky IV. How did Lou feel about that scene?

Okay so big spoilers for the Rocky series ahead because this is going to be such a long answer.

Rocky IV was so fucking out of left field it actually made me put my monthly Rocky movie watch on pause.

Okay so there is a lot going on with this movie that make it so very distinctly 80’s and at the heart of this 80’s-ness is the overbearing influence of the Cold War. It is a Cold War movie. It’s a primary source for life in America during the Cold War. It’s… so very very rough.

First of all of course there’s a lot of anti-Russo sentiment but there’s also just a very insane display of wealth, very much like the kind of vibe that made the Rocky series (imo) kind of a tragedy in I-III. Because the wealth and status of celebrity had been chipping away at Rocky slowly and slowly and he had been losing himself and his personage and humanity and his passion and his ability to sustain and nurture his close interpersonal relationships. But in Rocky IV when he flaunts his wealth it’s suddenly shown to be a positive thing and not in complete contradiction to what the movies have shown us so far up to this point.

This shift in focus is very clearly supposed to reinforce the western capitalistic idea that financial success and pointless consumerism are necessary for actual happiness, because Rocky needed that good ol’ Americana reprieve from those darn Ruskies. And so the robot that he buys (which very weirdly becomes like a wife for Paulie, because I guess no living broad would take him) is a very tacky and very VERY 1980’s manifestation of this newfound positive spin on consumerism in the Rockyverse.

Not only is the new view on money already insane enough, but Rocky’s view on death and mourning also take such an insane and disorienting turn in this film. In Rocky III, when his trainer Mick died, it put Rocky’s entire life on pause. He couldn’t talk to anyone, he couldn’t fight, and he began to lose touch with who he was. The pain of that loss overwhelmed him and this set a very profound bar for Rocky’s relationship with grief. It’s established that grief is debilitating for him, and that it takes time for him to recover and begin to cope. However in Rocky IV, when his best friend Apollo dies, it’s a completely different story. He’s immediately hopeful for the chance to avenge him, and ready to hop into the ring.

I think that the forced patriotism of the movie creates a disappointing blind spot for the narrative, because nothing about the first three Rocky movies pointed in the direction for ANY of what happens in Rocky IV. And I think that the robot is the perfect example of how nonsensical this installment was to the series.

#sorry if this answer sucks. it’s 2:30 am #asks

[ammonitetestpatterns]

where do you play your games on?

i don't have many personal belongings, i am wageless and expatriated, reliant on the generosity of another, loosing silicon and paper traces, transmitter imprints. a daemonic attachment to the sensuous, the assail of intuition with drudgery and consumerism, the hoarder's false icons, make me feel like the unfolded haplotic and unstipulated sincerity/reality put to a long art or lifework (bildung, too fraught a term?) is capsized and stung to sea, seven of pentacles reversed. everyday i wish i had the courage to crush my electronics with a sledgehammer. solitary gaming is not as open in creative capacity or spiral staircase entry nailings to a self remade time, such that i would channel energy toward console acquisition, i take pride in loyally resigning myself to my snes and pewter. i have a fondness for archaic adventure games, druidic mysteries and visual novels for laughing matters, relished through a windows 98 install on my partner's IBM personal computer 300GL, or by the phosphor ghost blots of a senior partner. it even smells gamey to shuffle through secondhand floppy disc galleries in total dark, waiting for the occasional weird raster hatched erotica to perk up on screen, at which we cheer grotesquely, snarling at the scroll of a mutating relationship to sexuality and the pleasure of seeing from its shining chest. a few years ago i wanted to extract the audio files from the disc image for the apple II GS version of dream zone, but that never came to fruition. our latest tiny task was to burn LSD dream emulator onto a CDR to run on a scrap playstation, its function frontally for a shop display but tacitly for the elevation of the tinker's enterprise, inspired by a recent hangout/accompanied guy time, prowling through his friend's save after questioning him on the unmistakable jewel case tucked atop a shelf to which he confessed its artifice. a chain of CRTs flashed the signal in unison, tied by a wire baton. i tried to yank him over but he was too determined to beat solitaire for old time's sake. magnetized, looping his appearance, the grey man strung a sightline to my rehearsals of fragmentation, arterial gown trains unbunching at the happy town tunnel, a pulse caught under steel. the day after my birthday, riding the tryptaminic ease out, parting the beaux arts sculpting the energy transmuted and consolidated in everything, we passed back and forth a cigarette of damiana, mullein, mugwort and skullcap as the sidewalk furrowed in droves of feet around us, alterior forms aflit, reduced to fluid evaporating to city air and poison fume curvature, the cut and concourse of skirt and skins, egrets nimble under raincloud parasols, porcelain scales tiptoeing. suddenly we saw heaven, must have been choked with the hilarity. a republic of gamers sign suspended, golden, guarding over an otherwise unmarked and rather diffident black door. we pressed our palms in the shape of prayer and bowed madly, finally there was our patriotic salvation, our asylum from the warmongering of the senses. a spatial special fit for the homophone from which ojigi reached reverence in the stitch between motion and the telepathic speech act. gratitude flies me, makes me weightless over the magnitude, the rock split on the activity to which i am lent, weighed with how much is lost, an impossible proportion when your blood, importance is barred and equanimity toward enmity, the nobility in withholding, whittles its sentinel smoke to an ineffective hell. the cow toils, having total access and acclimation to the sensuous and knowing its bounds against the hope for knowledge.

this is all too internet, i need naivist abandon, smarter than any lionized sprezzatura for it is not false, unspoiled by any social simulacral mediation of the network and its orgiastic, explosive exchange of desire pumping its endlessly denied and yet compulsively prioritized platelets into a vile differencing creature suspended in a vat. apathetic to the body, sterile for its oversight, spying on cellular caresses, dalliances swallowing over the lines of separation, sporelike. i want a reality innocent for its inheritance of every ill of the inwit flayed across arrangements of matter and time, the well of history, memory drawn out and in. so that i may be the ὀπαῖον ῥέπον, lantern hole, heaven entry, night heavy, lowered as a sleepy maid's fragile eyelashes on silver moonpan'd summer, the scale dipping and the counter weight forcing a flounce, folding desolation and dissonant intension to rest. i refuse to allow the unrelenting bloodloss of the worldly profane to stain me, but i can hope to be its small medic.

#text

[themacfag]

The land of consumerism

Inside this great castle of commerce I was, crowds flooded the halls of this great palace of commerce. The clean streets of this micro town breathed with the spending of the economically disadvantaged, fighting like dogs over the latest product they were commanded to buy from the omniscient boxes in their pockets and homes. Like zombies they crowd the hottest stalls spending money they didn’t have on things they didn’t need. Tag lines of the corporate blanketed the walls, their blind followers gather at the gates. Such entrances guided in thin marble sheets, hiding the truth behind them as though the marble was a reflection of the companies that this place housed. Under a thin venire of public relations managers the true sinful beasts lie inside the headquarters of the corporations. Like lions placed on display, the expensive products of the stores are placed upon obelisks of their masters approval. Various stores for the populous to enjoy are cooled to a comfortable level, providing a chilled euphoria to the shoppers that choose this fate. This state, inviting and addictive like a temperate heroin they all take pleasure in of this castle of the pleasures of modern man.

Now outside I was head to head with a sea of machines in a valley of concrete. Only there for the lucky few who were able to drive such an expensive luxury. Cigarette smoke and sunglasses cloud the delighted shoppers judgement, forcing them to partake in the devouring of the stalls of meat and food are collectively huddled near the entrances of the complex. At a terrace I was able to see the old communist buildings that watch over this new wave of capitalism that has perversely flooded this once great land. Marxist ideas and ideals clash toe to toe in this new Cold War of ideologies, hidden from public view of the unsuspecting public. Like a disease these palaces spring up like woes of the west. Even outside the bounds of this place I’m still bombarded by the cladding of consumerist, cars bare the crests of foreign lands as though they were chariots of the emissive political ideas set forth by their powerful party leaders, overextending their reach to lands beyond their grasp. “Made in China” hides underneath everything in sight like the branding of the beast. Their makers just under the age of adulthood, slaving over their work like one mad with passion to earn the worthless bills dolled up with the faces of dead leaders that strike a aching patriotism inside their holders whenever sight is placed upon them.

#me@themall #writing #loser vibes #gucci

[senselessconjuration]

I just reblogged a post about DS9 that got me thinking about the little bubble of anxiety about genetic engineering that happened in the late 90s.

It was like: we’d seen how fast computers advanced. We were seeing the growth of the Internet and how quickly it changed Everything. And then a sheep got cloned and a lot of people were saying this is it, this is the next thing. We’ve unlocked a new technology and it’s going to speed up exponentially like technology keeps doing And we’re all going to be genetically engineering perfect test tube babies and creating a new underclass of the genetically imperfect.

Remembering it I’m like lol sci fi Really oversold the danger of clones, what we should have been anxious about was climate change or the erosion of privacy and advances in surveillance technology.

But as a teen in the late 90s it really felt like we had climate change beat, because we had been so aggressively sold on the idea that it was fixable through small individual action. I lived in a liberal college town so as far as I could see most people were doing the things. We were recycling. Turning the water off while brushing our teeth. Not standing in front of the fridge with the door open. Everyone I knew was doing all that stuff they were told would work, so clearly we were gonna be fine. They said the holes in the ozone layer were shrinking, and I know as a kid I was not alone in assuming that they would close with in the next couple of years and then we just had to hold on a little bit longer until Solar energy was ready to go and global warming was fixed forever.

And to be fair we were also not expecting 9/11 to drastically alter what basically everyone who grew up afterwards thought of as an acceptable violation of privacy. If you don’t remember the Patriot Act being passed, you probably do not remember what it was like to have reasonable expectations about what personal information government and corporations are entitled to. The line was crossed so far and so fast that it seems inconceivable we’ll ever get back to where we were when we should’ve started freaking about about privacy and surveillance. (See also: that post about how the Must Be Stopped Evil tech of the 2000 Charlie’s Angels movie is CELL PHONE TRACKING)

It’s weird to look back on that 15yr old who figured that climate change was mostly taken care of as long as we kept recycling our cans, who was sure the Internet would be an outlaw paradise forever, who thought it not impossible they might retire to a Martian colony someday. That 15yr old who wondered if she’d be the last generation of gay people or maybe would gay parents engineer their kids to be gay? Who hoped someone maybe would invent gene therapy to cure Being Fat but knew more likely what would happen is people would engineer their children to not be fat and it would be even worse to be fat for the next 100yrs or so until all fat people are extinct.

(Lol typing that out really makes it clear that I said to myself “when they invent human fixing technology the first kinds of people they will get rid of are People Like Me.” Which is very typical teen me.)

There are plenty of things that did turn out to be just as big of a problem as I worried about back then like: soulless consumerism, gentrification, cops, school shootings, Nazis, Russia, and the decline of American theater.

[d-lone-vultywr]

Two core words/phrases I usually associate for each of the 12 Homestuck Aspects

(A/N: I only pick words based off what little info I learned about HS Aspects)

Space: go-with-the-flow, haphazardness

Time: impatience, (crazy) preparedness

Light: enlightenment, academic

Void: theoretic, incognito

Mind: logical, forethought

Heart: individualism, ego

Breath: freedom, gullibility

Blood: romance, peace

Life: joie de vivre, consumerism

Doom: misfortune, minimalism

Hope: delusions, patriotism

Rage: force, hostility

#homestuck aspects #space #time #light #void #mind #heart #breath #blood #life #doom #hope #rage

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Join the Prosperity Procession,” Kingston Whig-Standard. November 16, 1932 Page 10. ---- By Buying Freely Now you will be helping to Restore Good Times.

By Giving the Preference to Produced in Canada Goods you will be ensuring Jobs for your Fellow-Canadians.

[AL: Keep spending to save the economy - patriotically! Not the most effective solution to the Great Depression, but could to know that this idea, which famously came up after 9/11 in the States, has a long pedigree.]

#kingston ontario #capitalism in canada #capitalism in crisis #buy local #made in canada #patriotic consumerism #consumerism #consumer capitalism #retail capitalism #great depression in canada #pressures of the great depression #canadian patriotism

[kitaychan]

Ok SO

Classic dystopia literature, in this case I will mainly be talking about the big 3, 1984, a brave new world and farenhight 451, with occasional mentions of other books.

These books are very different from what we normally perceive as "classic", most of them arent very old and instead of dealing with the distant dreary past, instead we deal with the much more in your face past.

Orwell wrote his books as satire and political commentary against both communism and Nazism, both of which were very prevalent in the times because the 40s woke up and chose violence, as well as in a few of his books poking the metaphorical stick at capitalism.

(This is how animal farm managed to get banned in the ussr for being anti communist and in the USA for being pro communist)

1984 deals with a lot of things, the ever present surveillance that started to pop up in Orwells time and is becoming ever more relevant as the days go on past, the idea that the herd mentality works on large numbers of people if they're scared enough, hence the "two minutes of hate" routinely screened to the populace to stir up patriotism and a willingness to fight a threat that they believe exists, but never has. Winston being a part of the 20 to 30 percent of the population who is in on this whole...disaster are even more scared of big brother than the more simple majority, because they know what happens when they fall even slightly out of line.

I know this sounds like a lot of shit actually read the book, it also talks about bodily autonomy and is just overall a very good read.

A brave new world paints an opposite picture to 1984, but it's just as dystopic, Aldrous Huxley (the author) wrote this before Orwell wrote his whole set of novels. A book written in 1932, still resonates with our society today, because huxley wrote it as an observation of his time and role in society, the cult like consumerism, the chasing of pleasure. in physical and material ways, soma, a drug engineered to not cause any side effects and optimum pleasure, and the whole children being made in a factory and later encouraged to have "erotic play(the kids are having orgies why)" they worship Ford, father of the production line and Freud which is not something I want to get into rn.

Both show our modern world with alarming similarity, yet theeres always a slight dissonance between our world and theirs.

(I will continue this later as I am reaching the ask limit, but read the books if you haven't already)

Ahh the big 3! From those books the only one I've read until now is 1984, the way it criticizes totalitarianism is really interesting and it left me with such a bitter taste!!

That's actually one of the reasons why I've been delaying reading 'A brave new world' though the way you describe it makes me want to read it!

Ahh that similarity to reality you mention is what makes dystopias so alluring (in terms of wanting to read stories set in one) because they can be scarily close while also sounding like a distant exaggeration :o

Also I hope you don't mind me linking this to hetalia but this fic takes 1984 plus a bit of alternative history to make the country boys form their own fucked up dystopia :o

#ahhh I really want to read a brave new world now #the criticism of consumerism was my jam back in third semester of uni #ahhh

[whatevergreen]

Excerpts:

"Given the threats of environmental collapse, surging white nationalism, militarism, and heedless corporate capitalism, it is understandable if we think that our moment holds an ultimacy. These threats are real. They are our version of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. Together, they create a menace that is unique in the evolution of living things. We fear that we are in the process of committing collective suicide and that it may already be too late to do anything about it.

Of course, apocalyptic angst is nothing new."

"...At the top of the Wheel is the realm of the gods. This is a rare class of beings—the 1 percent, as we would call them—who keep themselves at a distance from the suffering of others. These are the people, like the first President Bush, who stand in bafflement before a barcode scanner. They don’t know how to buy their own groceries or cook. On a web show spoof, Cooking with Paris, Paris Hilton holds up a spatula and says, “I don’t know what this is.” Paris is perhaps laughing at her own social class, but that doesn’t mean that she thinks that she should know what a spatula is. It’s more like the old saying of the French nobility, “As for living, our servants will do that for us.”

Descending to the right is the realm of the demigods, creatures who are envious of the gods and often fight with them out of jealousy. For us, this is the realm of the businessman (gendered term intended and richly deserved), those fighting up the corporate ladder, concerned only with the accumulation of money and things that, they hope, will one day make them gods.

Moving on clockwise, the first of three “lower realms” is the realm of the hungry ghosts, people who crave and grasp for things to fill their essential emptiness but who never have enough. Worse, what they do have is indigestible, is dry as dust in their mouths. This is the realm not only of consumerism but also of an enslaving fantasy of consumption..."

"... At the nadir of the Wheel is the hell realm, although, since it’s an ever-turning wheel, the hell realm can be at the top and the god realm at the bottom. In the era of climate catastrophe— the Anthropocene—putting the hell realm at the top of the Wheel makes sense, especially since it puts the billionaires at the bottom, in a hell of their own making, multimillion-dollar homes under water in Miami Beach, where their money can’t save them.

The fifth realm is the animal realm. The denizens of this realm are ignorant, angry, and hostile to change. In our version of this realm, patriots profess unqualified love of country, faithfulness to a sordid version of Christianity, hatred of “outsiders,” and hatred of those above them, the elites, which doesn’t mean only the gods. To a degree, they are fond of the gods because the gods tell them what they want to hear—witness the present-day campaign rallies at which people demand “red meat” to confirm their ignorance and feed their hatred. In the animal realm there is a long list of “fighting words,” to which residents respond with resentment and, too often, fists and guns.

And finally, there is the human realm, an ambivalent place of both understanding and “ordinary unhappiness” (Freud). This is where the animals imagine “fighting words” come from— the cultural elites, the snobs, always parading their superior knowledge and trying to enlighten the animals. Of course, humans are bewildered by the resentment of the animals, but there it is anyway, bewildering or not. Humans are curious and creative. Humans are open to change so long as it is the result of attention and honesty. Change, for them, is not a threat but a form of play. If real understanding is going to come about, it’s going to come about among humans.

But even there it’s not all milk and honey, because the realms are not rigid castes. The realms do not have big beautiful walls. They are not places to which we are condemned as if in Dante’s Inferno: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Psychologically, the realms represent shared tendencies. For instance, the social slaves of the animal realm think like the gods. They think that they can become gods because wealth is just around the corner, a matter of patience, hard work, and good fortune. In other words, they trust in the system that daily oppresses them..."

"What astonishes me about the Wheel is how well the six realms account for the dysfunction of our world, our polity, now." An interesting article. I may not agree with every aspect but it is worth reading, and puts a widely known but rarely understood image (the wheel) in a contemporary context.

#wheel of life #hungry ghosts #capitalism #buddhism #climate change

[hjellacott]

Things I, an European, primarly associate with the USA (and contribute to my general disdain towards the country)

In no particular order.

Gun violence and general obsession with owning guns.

Security arches in schools.

Gender reveal parties.

Bachelor/ette parties.

Surrogacy.

A need to have cars and use them for everything, everywhere, all the time.

Lack of healthy foods.

Enormous power of big pharma, gun companies, and insurance companies.

Inhumane health system.

Weird obsession with controlling women's bodies.

Weird obsession with having biological kids, instead of adopting, at ALL COSTS, hence the surrogates.

Big, wooden houses with abnormally spacious rooms, that are not homey nor welcoming at all and seem better made for pictures than for actually living in them.

Pollution as fuck.

High chances of dying young.

Education what's that.

Unaffordable everything. Healthcare, education, life, etc.

Privateland.

Private jets everywhere.

Drugs and alcohol abuse.

Girls get hyper sexualised fast as hell.

A political system that just makes no sense.

No social care.

Strange sense of patriotism, flags everywhere, huge love for the army and wars, but there's no social care, no sense of community, and it's pretty much every man for himself.

Homophobia.

Cheerleaders & American Football obsession.

Baseball obsession.

Schools seem to be better suited for mating than for education.

No proper, affordable and well-connected, well-made public transport.

Bicycles what's that.

Capitalism and consumerism at its finest.

Environmental practises where.

Recycling? Can you eat that.

Obesity.

Strange English accents.

They love themselves, they're the centre of their own world, they need nobody else.

Don't ask them world geography questions.

Racism.

Deep ignorance (and particularly about the rest of the world).

The big north-south divide.

Low quality acting.

Country of freedom: to die young, to be abused, to be used, to be corrupt, to be a shit, to treat everyone else like you're any better...

#USA #US #United States of America #Opinion #society #world

[haaathi-musings]

Mondays were the worst day of the week. The whole world was headed to work in what could only be called a sea of poor saps and unwittingly conditioned souls. They lived a life that has been engineered in subliminal ways to evolve into the life of worker ants. Equated Monthly Installments made them live the illusion of a free and spirited life. But actually, they had made themselves slaves to the powers that be. A working man is a happy man; he asks no questions and tries to pay his bills on time. He is always short of money and is already spending unearned income to pay for his lot of happiness this month. He is not aware that it is a lifelong deficit. The moment the deficit is cleared, he can actually think for himself; and that is something that they will not allow him to do. Prices will rise due to engineered shortages; wars and manipulated fuel prices will keep him enslaved to his EMI life. The opiate of the masses today is retail therapy. It is not keeping up with the neighbors as much as leading the neighbors now. The latest TV, car, phone will keep him living a life he thinks he can afford but he has hypothecated his life for it. A lifetime of inflation keeps him living from paycheck to paycheck and then some. And this is how the masses live in debt, forever and ever. Change can come, but he will have to sacrifice the superficial material happiness he aspires for, and think for himself and not believe in all the ways in which his lifestyle is sold to him, through movies, books, newspapers, advertising and the inescapable digital media attack that he is the target of every single moment of his life.

 

The writing on the wall is written in blood, “Disengage from the Matrix, or become its umpteenth victim”. Happiness is not a swipe away as the commercials claim; indeed it needs a freethinker to see it for what it is. And those who looked at it for what it was and spoke or wrote about it, disappeared or died mysteriously. A man is simply a puppet till he discovers the truth that all that is going on around him is a charade. Then he becomes a freethinker, a free man. The signs are out there, but his conditioning keeps him enslaved to the matrix. Being creatures of habit, it is a near impossible task. 

Economic wars leading to financial slavery by getting the masses hooked on the freebies and then withholding them is the way of this age. There has never been a time where so much was owned by so few; a world with so much consumerism and inequality, that it is now considered the patriotic duty of the citizens to raise their standard of living to keep the economy afloat. And that is where the machinery kicks in; advertising and news conglomerates control the misinformation that reaches the masses. All scientific research is in question now. Whom can you believe in? Crony capitalism is thriving while prices of essentials are skyrocketing. Whom can you turn to?

Nobody.

Swim or drown, it is only up to you. There is nobody else who knows or cares enough to help you out. Use your own assessment of what is going on and think your own way out. All sense of responsibility has disappeared in the haste to be the next Trillionaire. Social responsibility is a myth. It has always been about the balance sheet, power and profits. How much is enough? It is never enough. So slave away or grow your own food. Oh wait, the Billionaires have taken over that too.

[laresearchette]

Thursday, December 07, 2023 Canadian TV Listings (Times Eastern)

This Video Not Available in Your Country: Thursday Canadian Lineup (Times Eastern):

WHERE CAN I FIND THOSE PREMIERES?: THE BLACK HAMPTONS (BET +) ARCHIE (BritBox) THE ENVOYS (Paramount +) THE LOVERS (Sundance Now/AMC+) CHRISTMAS AT THE OPRY (Global) 8:00pm TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT (W Network) 8:00pm SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY (Slice) 10:00pm

WHAT IS NOT PREMIERING IN CANADA TONIGHT: SILENT NIGHT, FATAL NIGHT (Premiering on December 09 on Lifetime Canada at 8:00pm) THE MISSION (TBD - Nat Geo Canada)

NEW TO AMAZON PRIME CANADA/CBC GEM/CRAVE TV/DISNEY + STAR/NETFLIX CANADA:

CBC GEM KID SISTER (Season 2)

NETFLIX CANADA ANALOG SQUAD (TH) THE ARCHIES (IN) HILDA (Season 3) I HATE CHRISTMAS (Season 2) (IT) HIGH TIDES (BE) MY LIFE WITH THE WALTER BOYS NAGA (SA) WORLD WAR II: FROM THE FRONTLINES (GB)

NHL HOCKEY (SN) 7:00pm: Sabres vs. Bruins (TSN2) 7:00pm: Kings vs. Habs (TSN4/TSN5) 7:00pm: Leafs vs. Sens (TSN3) 9:00pm: Jets vs. Avalanche (SNWest) 9:00pm: Hurricanes vs. Flames (SNPacific) 10:00pm: Wild vs. Canucks

STARS ON ICE - KURT'S FINAL TOUR 2023 (CBC) 8:00pm: A star-studded cast, including Patrick Chan and Elvis Stojko, pay tribute to Canadian legend Kurt Browning.

NFL FOOTBALL (TSN) 8:15pm: Patriots vs. Steelers

BARBARA KNOX AT 90 (CBC) 9:00pm: Celebrating Barbara Knox's 90th birthday; a chance to see the real Barbara away from the lights of the "Corrie" set.

AUSSIE GOLD HUNTERS (Discovery Canada) 9:00pm

STAY TOONED (Documentary) 9:00pm/9:30pm/10:00pm/10:30pm (SERIES PREMIERE): Eric talks with Ben Schwartz, Angelo Muredda and Lake Bell about the good of being bad and ugly. In Episode Two, Eric talks with Russell Peters, Selma Purac, and Lauren Faust about cartoons and consumerism. In Episode Three, Eric talks with James Adomian, Nic Sammond and Noelle Stevenson about queerness in cartoons. In Episode Four, Eric talks with Bobby Moynihan, Natalie Coulter, and Elamin Abdelmahmoud about PSAs and moral messaging on Saturday mornings.

CANADA'S DRAG RACE (Crave) 9:00pm

OUTBACK OPAL HUNTERS (Discovery Canada) 10:00pm: The Misfits prove their worth to Opal Joe with an ancient bulldozer on their last dig; the Opal Whisperers suffer from infighting; the Cheals race against the clock and seasonal storms to rescue their mission.

CANADIAN REFLECTIONS (CBC) 11:30pm: Tabanca; Hatha

#cndtv #cancon #canadian tv #canadian tv listings #aussie gold hunters #canada's drag race #outback opal hunters #canadian reflections #nhl hockey #nfl football