We're all used to the obvious rot and see it every day; Advil's Black Pain Equity campaign, pronoun sections on corporate meeting software, "safe injection sites" funded by municipal governments being a hot bed for drug abuse. That stuff is so brazen that anybody with a brain and without an agenda will be repelled immediately.
But what about the subtle rot? I'll use the Onion as an example. Perhaps its a bad example since they are a good showing of obvious rot, but I just learned that they purged their old African-American neighborhood terrorized by ask murderer headline and it happened with no fanfare at all. A slow purging of old material deemed ungood; a memory holing except for the fact that the Onion used to be printed on paper and people just took pictures of the old headline. But the point stands -- I had no idea it was purged until I deliberately went looking for it, and its the only old "edgy" Onion headline that appears to have been purged in this fashion.
What else have others observed?
It was a nice day so I walked to the grocery store with a backpack.
At the exit, there wasn't a designated spot for cart returns and no cart boys.
All the carts are organized at the front entrance and there's a narrow corridor with a guard rail in between the two which I presume is some sort of cart chute.
I returned my shopping cart to the chute so it wasn't blocking the exit.
I immediately turn around and there's some jogger on crutches staring at me and blocking my exit. I ask him if he would like my cart and he mutters something unintelligible.
I then work out that he wants to walk down the cart chute and my cart is blocking his path.
I move the cart and leave it so it's haphazardly in the vestibule.
He starts limping along the cart chute and doesn't say thank you.
I watch him traverse the length of the chute and immediately exit out the entrance of the store.
He had me move the cart when he literally could've traveled two feet to his right and walk along the outside of the store to his destination.