I grew up in the evangelical movement. I heard over and over and over again (some variation of this) when I was a kid, “The nation that refuses to aid Israel will fall! All of those who turn their backs on the Jews will burn when god returns.”

Those people are deadly serious too. It wouldn’t matter what Israel does.

That is religion. It is crazy to me that we live in this age with endless knowledge at our fingertips and people still believe all of this nonsense.

We can look into the belief systems and religions of people from all over the world, and somehow the majority of us can’t look at our own systems and realize that it’s all bullshit.

You can hear the teachers in rural India say, “The caste system is the will of God! How can you question the will of god?” A couple clicks later and you can hear a child Imam saying, “How can there be any god besides Allah?!” A few more clicks, you can hear a rabbi say, “We are the people chosen by god!” A couple more clicks and you hear the preacher say, “All other gods are false gods. Only our son of god is the one true god!” Hell, you can go down a rabbit hole of all the “gods” currently living with lucky followers of the one true living god right here, right now. Vissarion in Siberia gave those lucky bastards the Last Testament they’ll ever need to read. Imagine being lucky enough to shake your god’s hand and watch him prance around in white and burgundy robes and grow old before your eyes.

There are so many one true gods out there. You’d think that alone would make people think and question their own one true god. Nope. Not only do the majority of us keep putting our hands together and saying amen, we got folks out here making brand new gods today for future people to fight and die for.

It’s amazing.

9 times out of 10 I don’t sleep when I try. If I do sleep it is because I’m exhausted and I wake up feeling worse than when I went to sleep.

When I was younger though, I could nap half a day if I wanted. Depression! The nap maker!

Now that I’m not depressed I barely sleep.

You know me, huh?

Oh I wouldn’t have even remembered anything about the title without googling what you said so you’re doing better than me. :p

Well said!

You talking about the Black Mirror episode?

I watched it a decade ago or something (can’t remember it), need to see it again. It’s 15 million merits though.

I’ll dig for it. Might have been bullshit but I definitely read it.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll end up being the face of bad women’s anatomy on Lemmy. :p

I’ll find it.

Ed won’t even know where to start with his wiener. You ever read that story about the lady who never got pregnant because her husband had been inserting himself into her urethra opening?

It isn’t. Florida needs pregnant teenagers who can’t get abortions so that they can use their children to sit on the coastline and pedal the land up out of the water. This is also where they will get their electricity. It also needs a constant supply of these children because they’ll have to replace them after every hurricane.

Everything I just typed is probably more likely to work than abstinence based sex ed is to prevent pregnancy and is just as scientifically valid as a sex ed class with no sex and no ed.

It be fat bastard for me.

I’m not here for it haha.

“Ok, so he seen the girl making out with the inbred dude who screwed his cousin and then he immediately went home and “talked to the dead” through poker cards to see if there was any chance she’d still marry him some day? Bahahahahaa. He’s only 12? Oh my god, where else can this go?”

This is exactly what I’ve seen in Appalachian coal country. I once sat with a man who cried his eyes out because of the decision to call Florida for Bush. That same man died a Republican.

In my own family, when I was a kid they were all democrats. Now they’re all republicans. Of course that also has to do with their religious views and the bigotry that comes with that.

What you’re saying here is a big part of it though. “They called us hillbillies and inbred hicks all our lives, and now we can’t say anyone is a fairy? I learned to laugh at myself and now I have to hold my tongue for other people?!”

I didn’t just make that up. I’ve heard several variations of that since the 2010s when the big switch kicked into overdrive.

I’ll also say that racism had a big part in the shift. A man with the middle name Hussein was elected 7 years after 9/11 and that man was black. It caused a lot of white brains to short out.

I really did think that a Chinese social media company would never stand a chance here. I run into 80 year old farmers who ask me, “Did you see ‘at feller on TikTok who does ‘at thang with the tractor?”

That same person will go on and on about China. People are neat.

Mike Tyson is more than a man. He could’ve entered the ring in a frilly pink skirt with a lollipop sticking out of his ass and he would have still been terrifying.

All of them be trying to charge us to be alive. If my landlord could come up with a good enough reason to charge me to breathe, he’d put it on the invoice.

Watch the clip. If dude’s name had been Bob and not Nicky it wouldn’t have happened.

Still though, your point stands and it’s still one of the funniest, most awkward moments caught on video. :p

Haha, god I loved doing this on Counter-Strike. “Did you guys hear about the hidden tit pics in counter strike? No shit, hold alt and press f4 and it shows the best tits I’ve ever seen. I don’t know how game developers get away with this stuff.”

Half the lobby is gone, the other half is laughing.

The whole “small town on the edge of dying” bit. Holy shit have I experienced that firsthand.

See, what happened with a lot of these towns is that their industry became a part of their pride and culture. Where I’m from it’s coal. Trucks everywhere have a decal of a coal miner with one of two phrases. “Coal keeps the lights on.” and “6 inches from hell.”

My grandfather was a coal miner, so was his father, and his father, on both sides of my family. My father realized that the industry was dying so he left (and left us here haha). My brother did it for awhile but left it behind because of the drug problems in the mines. There was a whole underground urine market that kept things moving.

Even the poor fools who never worked in the mines go on and on about coal like it’s some kind of idol.

I would imagine the same thing happens in other places. The people fear big changes until their fear backs them into irrelevance. I’m getting older, so I can relate to that, only I vote for my kids, not to make me feel less afraid. Whatever world they grow up in won’t be one that I’d be perfectly comfortable in. It has always been that way as far back as we have been recording history. No sense in fighting where the world is going just because I don’t understand it or relate to it.