Australia/NZ-specific subreddits, in particular, were always absolutely fucking awful (everything from city subs, to politics, to finance), but this is worse than even during ‘Rona…
For context, this week the Australian Tax Office (ATO) essentially declared war on small (but not big) business, and said that they will use every tool at their disposal to squeeze every unpaid tax dollar out of said businesses, no matter what consequences that has for insolvencies, the economy, and hell, everything that follows that.
I am not kidding when I say that they literally said “Well, if this destroys more businesses than the GFC, that’s too bad.”
In a normal world, such an announcement would have been treated with… At least some degree of disgust, but not on Reddit. On Reddit, people were literally saying they wished that the ATO could employ lynch mobs. In the AusFinance sub (the irony), they were saying they hope small business owners kill themselves over this, because they clearly deserve to…
It’s pretty crazy to me, to see how toxic this discourse has become.
That place is… Well, it’s probably worse than I ever expected it would become, honestly. And that’s just with me lurking, not even wading back in to discussions again…
Not really a post with links, more of a rant, but... I'm currently trying to get "back into" the academic world, because it seems that life is dragging me that way again. But then I look around and see the massive gender gap, and it puts me off again.
I know multiple women who've got engineering scholarships, and a significant number who are younger than me who are currently doing their PhDs. I know three Rhodes scholars, two of whom are women. Almost every woman from my finishing year has at least a Masters, which is crazy to me. Combined with scholarships, exchanges and "topping the class", I've been surrounded by female high achievers for more than a decade.
And then there's a girl I know who didn't even finish school, yet who somehow gets to work in Antarctica regularly, and represent the Air Force at airshows, despite being a civilian, and not even a pilot. Because she's "model pretty" (literally a fitness model), and "charismatic", and "works hard" (she's basically a hustler. Though I still have absolutely no idea how she got to where she is).
Meanwhile, as for the guys I know..? I can only think of two who have even started their PhD. Several I know didn't even get a degree (like me, unfortunately), or, in a couple of cases, didn't even finish school. At least three committed suicide. I've seen multiple men I know have breakdowns in the "academic world" (as did I), and drop out. Yet I barely ever saw that happen to the women I knew, and if it did, they always bounced back. Sometimes even scoring cushy government jobs in completely unrelated fields (like, actresses becoming heads of government departments, for fuck's sake), afterwards.
And yet you can't even get a relationship here (much like the US), if you don't have the six figures, stable job and decent "bachelor pad", even if you are in reasonable shape and over six foot. Because there's always some other dude who has all or most of that who can take your place...
This is just so... Blatant, that it is really bringing me down. Combined with woke bureaucracy (mandatory "consent training" for one. Enforced smartphone use for another), and the false allegations I detailed last year, I'm just so... Fucking over it.
No wonder men are dropping out of "mainstream society" at the rate that they/we are. The deck is completely stacked against us, at this point.
/endrant
Admittedly I’ve only been in Melbourne, so far, as I just got back (unfortunately things have worked out that way, and dragged me back here…), but this is now, on a technicality, Australia’s largest city, and it feels awful… Like, I cannot for the life of me understand what possesses over five million people to want to move to/live in this shithole. But I’ve never liked Melbourne, so maybe I’m just jaded…
However it honestly feels like things are on the brink of collapse, or implosion, here. I see that the city has, in many contexts (official and otherwise), *been given the dual name of “Narrm”, which is meaningless, made up, Abo shit. I see that the “activists” spent most of the last couple of months tearing down and defacing statues, and yelling and screaming about “tearing down the colony” and similar bullshit. And they’ve gained so much “institutional power” that councils are now scared to put those same statues back up, or just flat out refuse to do so…
I see that endless woke immigration has turned this place into little more than a Chinese vassal state, where fucking Mandarin is becoming almost as common as English (on signs and the like), and I see that sheer entitlement, an over-generous welfare state, and a failing education system has turned this place into essentially a country of entitled brats.
So yeah, much though I hate to admit it, Sweden clearly has its problems, but at least it feels like a vaguely functioning society still, where people still want to work and contribute to society (at least native Swedes, that is). It really doesn’t feel like that here, so much, anymore… Sadly.
Not that I would ever live in Melbourne anyway, but I don’t really see myself “repatriating” here, long-term. I just don’t like it enough to stay.
Though the weather is much better than almost anything I experienced in Sweden, and nature here is nice (I love the smell of eucalyptus, for one. I guess that’s in my blood) - I admit that much.
But fuck, as a society, “we’re” becoming just like much of Canada, or Blue States in the US, now. And that’s rather sad.
Hi, I’m back again. It’s been a while. Don’t want to talk about that right now…
But anyway, about a week and a half ago, I did not know who Erin Moriarty was, because I don’t watch the show, nor have I seemingly seen her in anything else, so…
I only learned about her from a Reddit discussion about other “botched”/“bimbofied” young celebrities… And then I went down the inevitable rabbit hole (yes, I saw the previous discussion here, too)…
Anyway, the whole thing made me rather… Sad, or at least unsettled, to think that someone so obviously attractive completely ruined her face and body like this, and has probably ruined her career, now…
But also the wider discussion around it. The whole “denial” thing, and the “don’t ask, don’t tell” (lol) approach that Reddit mods have been taking (and also The Boys production staff)…
I watched the Megyn Kelly discussion segment. I don’t think she said anything particularly wrong, or cruel (although she got the date of one photo wrong - big whoop! Lauren is lying about that one, too), and nor did her guest…
And now we have this, as the result (I can’t link on mobile, but the rant is almost the only thing left on her Instagram).. And all online discussion about it is being sanitized…
Honestly, at this point, having ruined her career and her looks, and how obviously mentally and physically (I believe she has an ED, at least) unwell she obviously is, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if she either sinks into obscurity, or worse, because surely the show cannot continue to filter Starlight’s appearance more and more forever, while ignoring what is really going on…
Poor girl. Poor, poor girl. And what a fucking society we now live in, where this, and Anya Taylor-Joy, and Bella Hadid, and so many other naïve young women do this to themselves, and then keep making it worse and worse…
And then they blame it all on “online trolls” or “misogyny”.
Eugh. /Endrant
I hope I don’t find out that she died, in a few years time. Genuinely.
Fuck Hollywood, and fuck “LA”.
Edit (actually important): One thing I noticed immediately when this came up last week, but forgot to mention here, is that you rarely, if ever, see her smile anymore. Not on her own Instagram, not in promo shoots and at events, and not even in her role as Starlight…
Posing? Sure. Pouting. Yes. Blowing kisses at the camera and contorting herself to show off her new enhanced figure, and how skinny she is now? Very much so. But never smiling. Never looking natural. Never looking like she did, in any of those same sorts of environments, pre-Covid…
Like I said, that very clearly differs to even 2019 (when the photo Megyn Kelly was talking about was apparently taken), before all this cosmetic surgery shit. It may be that she physically can no longer smile normally, but I think it also shows just how… Not in a good place she must be.
And her eyes. As someone else pointed out here last week, her eyes look cold, now. She looks, sad, and kind of “mean”.
I think that’s why this one really got to me. It genuinely looks like they stole her soul or something…
Notably, this happened to Jennifer Gray, 30 years ago, and she rarely ever starred in anything again. And, one I care more about - Jewel Kilcher, who must be one of the more… Ironic music sellouts out there. :-(
Something is rotten in the state of pop culture…