I have severe anxiety too. It is an unfortunate additional challenge, but it does not absolve us our part in society nor give us an excuse to treat others poorly.

Lol, imagine thinking you’re allowed a momentary reprieve from advertising in this hellscape of a world we’ve built.

Frequently the point of comparing the two is to caution before they actually become comparable, though. I think it’s intentional hyperbole to make a stark point, not an insensitive reduction.

Dude just wants whatever has a dragon, wolf, or forest on it, he ain’t thinking deeper than that.

Bro’s penis must be almost an innie.

It’s not even real. It’s a fabricated story to push an agenda of a special interest group.

Edit: to clarify, the news story is real, the mom’s story isn’t. It’s just a fiction to push the agenda.

I think part of why it feels so non-impactful to you is because 9/11 truly set off a chain of events that has led to the situation we’re in, including the many tragedies you mention in your comment. Of course 9/11 doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and it itself is just a one part of a much more complex web of actions and decisions, but the fact remains that for most common people 9/11 was an absolute tipping point after which nothing is the same. The sort of horrors you’re talking about in the world in the wake of 9/11 just weren’t the same kind of reality in the world before, at least not with the same intents and reactions thereto. You’re right to think it’s strange the way people react to and hold 9/11 because you’re never experienced the world before it. And to be clear, I am not saying the world was perfect before or that there weren’t horrors before, because their were, but 9/11 became a catalyst for so much reactionary evil and overreach and horror that it simply is non-comparable to what came before.

important note: this entire comment and perspective implies an enormous Western post-colonial bias. People in different parts of the world had and have an enormously different reality especially in regards to this event and I will not pretend to be able to speak to their experience.

I’m so confused, I’m a Spotify user and there are multiple artists I’ve selected “don’t play this artist” on that Spotify blocks for me; it won’t even play those artists when I click playlists including them.

Personally, I think it’s extremely unlikely. That’s why I think Apatheism is the way:

The theist says there is a God with certainty, the atheist says there is no God with certainty, the agnostic says we cannot be certain the existence of God, and the apatheist says “guys why are we wasting our time stressing out about unknowables? Let’s go get a pizza.”

This suggests a cosmic reason or purpose, yet I find no evidence for that conclusion exists.

There just might simply not be a “why?”

Absolutely. But the harrowing part is realizing this applies to some folks we deem delusional in the context of our world too.

And was probably said by various people before that too, whatever. The point is this is an obvious derivative.

My friend, we cannot even prove that our entire life is real.

We know the human mind is capable of extreme delusion, we can observe this in mentally unwell patients who are convinced their delusions are reality.

So if we acknowledge the human mind is capable of delusion, delusion so strong to be certain in its veracity, then there is no way that we can confidentially conclude that anything and everything we know isn’t delusion.

So in short, there is no way to definitively prove the internet is real because we can’t even definitely prove that reality is real.

I could be laying in my crib right now having imagine this and every interacting leading up to it entirely, just waiting to wake up. Literally every single thing I think I know could actually fully and completely not exist. The only thing I can be certain of in all reality is that I exist because I am considering my reality: I think, therefore I am.

Somebody really enjoyed the success of the quicksand tweet and was hoping for an encore

I tried to look into this, but I couldn’t figure out how any of it works.

Also my name is Violent J

No you don’t

Oh so Mary does it and people spend the next thousand years making statues and paintings in her honor, but Elena does it and gets blasted on social media?

Hypocrites

You know that for the vast majority of human history copyright didn’t exist, and yet people still created art and culture, right?

edit: If you’re gonna downvote, have the balls to explain how I’m wrong.

The actual audacity

Are the cops you know actively marching in the streets in the name of justice and demanding police reform from their unions and leaders? Are they actively and consistently doing this, actively working to dismantle corruption and systemic problems with policing, every day?

Because if not, that’s how we know.