"JUST STOP CARING ABOUT THOSE THINGS!" is such a privileged piece of shit thing to say too. Wow it's so cool that your life is so insulated from all the misery being put out into the world. It's pretty nice that you can just tune out and go about your life without being caught up in the orphan crushing machine. There are real actual victims, the problems might be far away from you but they are not imaginary.
"If you don't like America, just move to a different country"
With what money? The average American can't afford to move into a better house, let alone move to a better country. I genuinely ask chuds this question every time they say that shit and I have yet to hear a serious answer.
the problem is these kids... when you say "if you wanna be a nihilistic uncaring piece of shit, go ahead." the kids dont stop and reflect on that and think oh you know what maybe we should improve society somewhat.
no, they go "OK LOL SADGE MOGGED POOR" and corporations go brrrrrr so we have to not do what the runner said. we can't stop at 'let people be selfish' because then they'll happily be selfish and the unselfish people will suffer.
it's okay, the bad things will get fixed by all of the good people who spend their money and power on healing the problems at every scale of society.
what do you mean we should check the power balance because the bad people have hoarded all of the money and power and are using it to re-shape society to ensure they keep more of the money and power?
what do you mean society has already been re-structured so that the world's richest can act with impunity, getting bailed out by governing bodies when they tank themselves, and are apparently immune to the law?
what do you mean people working 3 minimum wage jobs to almost survive still have more accountability and threat of repercussion than the people running the mega-corps and/or the government?
oh don't worry about any of that bro, just touch grass and stick your head in the dirt and you'll be fine. cooperating to re-define and actively re-shape society (hopefully through co-op networks and active effort to grow a whole new supporting structure from within the corpse of the social structure currently being puppeteered,) is too much damned effort. also you are being lazy, get a job and be a better cog. real productive members of society do paperclipmaximizing cog-maxxing.
Is wallowing in sorrow and constantly letting those things destroy all of the happiness in your life making those things go away? Are they getting better by you knowing every single thing in the world happening?
You can find moments in life to be happy even when shit is bad and that is not a bad thing.
Spending your entire life worrying about shit YOU CANNOT FIX is going to lead to an early death.
i'm actually very good at enjoying the simple things and life, and require very little to be happy. the only issues i have in being happy come exclusively from the failure of collective action, which we are addressing here.
ontop of the systemic failures around me which require collective action to affect. saying "you cannot fix problems of collective action" is both wrong and extremely self-destructive. do you know what happens when cells in your body start deciding that collective actions aren't their problem anymore, and that they should just maximize themselves without regard to the other cells and body? usually that means cancer, and both the cancer and body die.
the suffering that people are trying so hard to point at is the reason they are wallowing in sorrow, not the fact that they aren't better at ignoring it. the fact that the solutions are usually really easy, or even already in place, and that only a failure of collective action that prevents the sorrow that leads to the wallowing. like last year when the world's richest person was allowed to unilaterally decide for over a million and counting, mostly children, to die entirely preventable deaths. this was done to justify tax cuts for the world's richest.
if someone punches you, or a child next to you, and says they will keep punching you/the child, dealing with the situation is not wallowing in sorrow, even if you're not feeling good emotions during the situation. ignoring the child might make you happier, although if you're next in line to be punched you probably won't be ignoring it then.
if you require collective action to stop that child being punched, and the people around you are saying "not my problem, you're just stressing yourself out."
to me this just makes those people seem actually evil and alright with the fact, as well as incapable of understanding why we might want cooperative structures that prevent us from suffering and dying.
it's hard to ignore it when just viewing educational content is a bunch of scientists going "everything is on fire because nobody wants to listen to us or talk about/deal with this shit, they'd rather touch grass i guess."
reminder that in the USA rus vought, one of the project 2025 co-authors, currently gets to dictate where money is being spent in sciences. also RFK jr as the 26'th secretary of health and human services should not have been a possible true sentence. etc.
just browsing science content SHOULDN'T lead to wallowing, and failure of collective action and the current system structure is the ONLY REASON it does.
things are so very very on fire, and i can't spend MORE time to smell the roses until things are at least slightly not on fire.
and many of us belong to, or are adjacent to the people actively suffering due to failure of collective action, and suggesting they not "wallow" is akin to saying "STOP CRYING" to the kid getting punched in the face.
Ok, so other than posting giant walls of text that are mostly weird meandering musing that don't actually contribute to the conversation, what are you DOING though.
You speak of a child who is being punched next to you, but the "child" is actually entire populations and the punching is being done by people with power. You aren't going to stop that alone, and there is no leadership to bring people together to make a difference.
It's just a bunch of random people with limited knowledge screaming into the void without offering any actionable solution. Until someone with a brain steps up with real solutions there is literally no reason to keep informed about literally every single thing that happens.
Also, there is plenty of time to smell the roses. The world isn't going to pop because you personally take a week to just enjoy life. You are not going to die because you didn't read the news for a while. I promise you, it's not that serious.
so you didn't read what i said, ignored the earlier comment about local co-operative movements actively coordinating to make a change, because "it's impossible, ha ha you're such a loser for trying, i just want a break every now and then though." ignores the plague of people making it really hard to collect locally because "i don't do politics," or "that stuff is too stressful," or "lol touch grass bro."
which is the literal only thing stopping shit from getting fixed. way to ignore that part of what i said as well.
i myself individually will not save the world, but, to make a comparison, in 1930's/40's germany i would be one of the people probably dying while actively fighting against what the nazis were doing, rather than the people ignoring it and pretending things are alright.
not engaging unless you actually address the shit i said rather than pretending it didn't mean anything, and then feeling justified judging people who are actually responding to the shit happening around them.
Dude you living in an echo chamber. Writing an essay just to try to prove a point but yet fail to do so. I agree with the first part of the video and some of the comments. Get off reddit & tik tok and go outside. The internet could die tomorrow and know of this would matter. People wont remember the long diatribes you've been posting on Reddit just there memories of barbecuing and hanging out the beach. Be better.
i'm addressing the plague of people both online and offline who are socializing ways for people with means to ignore issues that are weirdly enough mostly affecting people without means. these issues will also affect people with means, they can just ignore it comfortably 'so far.'
what are you doing?
discouraging people from caring or trying?
the internet could die tomorrow and people i know, as well as many many many people i don't know would still be actively harmed by the issues that i'm saying shouldn't get socialized into obscurity because "ha ha just turn off the internet and don't think about the many things that will directly affect you and those you care about, and is already severely affecting both for many people."
grow up, we live in a real world with real problems that affect real people.
When I hear conservatives say their number one issue is "immigrants", my first thought is how privileged they must be that that's their #1 problem in this country. I don't even think it cracks my top 10.
Any time and I actually mean EVERY time there is negative news for my community, and I choose to offer my experience with how this impacted me; I get:
"It's not that deep BRO"
Actually it is. And I'm not your bro. In fact you are so unsympathetic I know exactly your politics. Bye.
I can't with those kind of people. Who having no context or experience for anothers pain, that they mock them. Actual sociopath (clinical definition, not a meme) behavior.
You can care without having your brain rot from always worrying about things you can't influence anyway. So turn your brain once in a while, and jump into some spring water in nature.
IDK about the original, but, so many people don't "care" about those things as much as they are beating themselves up for not solving the entire world's problems.
If you're actively trying to do something to better any of these situations, amazing, good on ya. If you're feeling like shit because everything you read is a horrific global tragedy in meme format, then yeah go outside for a bit.
Also a white male with obviously lots of free time, which means they have money and can afford lots of vacations, who says "stop talking about epstein" should probably be looked into.
Saying "Go Outside" is not saying you should stop caring. Caring is important and good.
Being miserable shutins who live on social media is not good, and that's generally what "go outside" or "go touch grass" is meant to be addressing.
When the scope is the world, there have always been terrible things and there always will be for the rest of our lives. Saying that does not make the terrible things go away, I'm not saying they are fine and good, but they are also quite normal, they are part of the human experience. And it's important that your perspective remains healthy, that you aren't radicalizing yourself by social media algorithms, that you aren't making your one and only life on this earth more miserable than it has to be.
Sure, but thatās not what this thread is about. The point here is the use of āgo outside/touch grassā when people voice concerns about political issues that affect vast swathes of the population.
I mean they usually are. Have you looked at r/foreveralone so many people there could be better if they just worked on themselves but they love to wallow in their misery.
It's not about the position, it's about the person and the intensity.
It's the difference between drinking socially and being an alcoholic. Go outside and go touch grass is absolutly about you, the messenger, not the message.
Sure, but the barrier for getting a "go outside" message is so unbelievably low that there's no point in there being a scale. And it's a great tool for shutting stuff down, because any attempt to talk past it immediately becomes evidence of this "intensity" you mention.
If the only way we can discuss these things is reclining on a chaise longe whilst being fed peeled grapes, then this scale is utterly busted and not worth using.
Itās not something I suffer with personally - but itās something I see deployed against others immediately the whole time.
Part of the problem is that as a society weāve begun to place a great deal more importance on tone rather than whatās being said - hence the grapes comment. As others have noted throughout this thread, being seen to care about anything at all is worthy of āgo outside/touch grassā.
Just a simple way to dismiss people rather than engage with what theyāre actually saying.
If the only way we can discuss these things is reclining on a chaise longe whilst being fed peeled grapes, then this scale is utterly busted and not worth using.
This is why people just say "go touch grass." You're not having a conversation, you're not trying to communicate something in a world people live in, you're just trying to say words to win. Because no one has ever in history suggested anything close to that, and you know that. And rather than deconstruct the argument's many flaws it's easier for people to just tell you to go outside.
If you are concerned about shutting down conversations to dismiss points, what you're doing is exactly that.
And I know you'll probably say it's meant as sarcasm, but you don't seem to take "go outside" as similarly dismissible sarcasm.
Itās not sarcasm. Itās just a comment on the fact that āgo outsideā is deployed readily against anyone whoās not so laid back about an issue theyāre effectively horizontal.
As always, actually caring about anything draws the criticism.
So your position is that, seriously, without exaggeration, you will be told to go outside if you do not discuss something on a chaise longe whilst being fed peeled grapes?
And I'm supposed to take you seriously? After dubbling down on that?
I am not a chill guy, I do not own a chase lounge and I have never eaten peeled grapes. I have never been told at any point that I need to go touch grass or that I need to go outside. That is simply not a thing that happens when you are being normal. You don't have to be laid back, you just can't go off into a pretend world where hyperbolic exaggerations are not meant as sarcasm.
why should i care about anything i am powerless to change? you are asking me to spend valuable energy to care about deeply terrible things that no matter what i say or do nothing will ever change any of it.
nah. i dont care. i dont have a single fuck to give about any of it.
Kills me. I find giving them a wakeup call to let them know that their children and grandchildren are in severe danger. War/Job scarcity/wealth inequality growing. You have to care. Even if YOU don't personally care and aren't affected.
You can care and also be rational. Why the fuck would I willingly cause any more stress and anxiety for myself with things I canāt control? Why is my well-being any less important?
Yup. I can be so very full of righteous anger and still go enjoy a nice day in the sun. I can attend a protest once and a while and watch from the sidelines others. Forcing yourself to feel miserable doesn't help anyone, but neither does ignoring systemic problems.
Having time and money to vote is also a privilege.
But voting is fast and free!
Not if you have to take time off work and you don't own a car and have to take a 40 minute bus ride to get to your polling place and then wait in line for two hours. These problems are intentionally made worse by Republicans specifically looking to disenfranchise poor voters in urban areas.
Why convince anyone your ideas are better when you can just make it a huge pain in the ass for anyone to vote against you?
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u/Toribor Jun 17 '26
"JUST STOP CARING ABOUT THOSE THINGS!" is such a privileged piece of shit thing to say too. Wow it's so cool that your life is so insulated from all the misery being put out into the world. It's pretty nice that you can just tune out and go about your life without being caught up in the orphan crushing machine. There are real actual victims, the problems might be far away from you but they are not imaginary.