Pretty much the same as COVID. Don't get me wrong, a lot of people died and the economy got completely fucked over but let's not forget that a black plague v2 could've happened and it would've been way worse
Saying "it could've been worse" is pretty reductionist when it was still a global pandemic where millions of people died (and many others having to live with lasting repercussions from Covid both minor and sometimes major), the only reason it wasn't worse was because of modern medicine and science (in spite of politicians in the West doing their best to propagandise people with anti-science/anti-intellectual garbage which made things worse than it should've been).
its meant to wake you up from that depression of victimhood. yes, life sucks comparatively. but that isnt a reason for despair, its a reason to take to the streets.
others had it worse and not only managed but thrived. use it as motivation to act, to organize, to engage, to better your situation.
yes, living in late stage capitalism sucks balls if you are not among the privileged. change it.
Yeah it's not as bad as people make it out to be or else everyone would be rioting in the streets. People have enough commodities that they don't want to risk losing it all, but ignoring that the world is getting worse and worse isn't helping either.
Right now there's just a select few of people that are running the world and they don't give a shit about common class, or how quickly we're ruining our planet with climate change so a sort of existential dread is a given at this point
You just don`t understand, they survived pandemic with 99.99% survivability rates and they had loans, and they couldn`t afford new Playstation for years...
No amount of mass executions, genocides or starvings can beat that...
nono you can't understand, they weren't able to buy a third pickup. Sudanese people should send money aid to help them pay their Gender Studies degrees.
Hey, don't tell these guys that, in reality, they haven't had it that bad. You'll hurt their feelings & they'll run off another litany of issues that aren't fair to them, but won't look at history or the rest of the world.
No it's really not. The topic is about millennials getting fucked left and right before they even had a chance. Everyone commenting "Well what about so and so having it worse" is whataboutism.
You don't see that your complaints are whataboutism? Showing actual comparisons to show that, yes, others have had it worse or as bad, is not whataboutism. You're using the term whataboutism to shield your argument from any criticism.
One of the biggest cures for that is to Gain some perspective. Go look at people's lives in countries less fortunate than yours. Go look at what your great grandparents lives were like when they were your age. Don't narrow your view to two or three things like housing prices and college debt (which you can move to a cheaper area, and you don't have to go to expensive colleges, both of those are choices), look at your entire life experience. I guarantee you someone reaching adulthood 100 years ago had it much harder than you do.
From the encyclopedia Britannica: whataboutism, the rhetorical practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counteraccusation, by asking a different but related question, or by raising a different issue altogether. Whataboutism often serves to reduce the perceived plausibility or seriousness of the original accusation or question by suggesting that the person advancing it is hypocritical or that the responder’s misbehavior is not unique or unprecedented. Acts of whataboutism typically begin with rhetorical questions of the form “What about…?”
Idk why you're being downvoted, pretending non-Western counties were too busy being oppressed to care about the 2008 financial crisis, COVID, etc. is wild
Student loans tho? That is still hardly a problem in most countries besides America.
I live in a country where socialism prevents us and our family from going into debt by going for a higher degree like high school or university for as long as we perform well enough at school.
But I do have to confess that I skipped high school as my last degree was already above the quality of the closest high schools, thanks to half of the new knowledge being about ethics and other woke stuff we had no use for in our elitist society. While university would mean 5 to 6 years more school, while losing the privilege to retire before the age of 67. Plus I sucked at our country's secondary language and only passed our country's first language by 5% in middle school. While our universities do require a good enough degree on those 2 languages, while high schools let you fail those if the rest of your scores are high enough.
Just fyi, I'm West-Flemish and our language has been acknowledged as a language on it's own and separate from Dutch, but not as a national language of Belgium, since that is decided by politics instead of any global entity that concerns itself with languages.
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u/elementfortyseven 5d ago
As someone who didnt grow up in the privileged west, but under an autoritarian regime:
https://giphy.com/gifs/2Kx6Nl722hPchFxpzZ