What we get upset about
(midwest.social)
merdaverseby Tjeerd Royaards
The reality is people are too busy trying to get by and too tired of all the doom on the news to keep up or care as much as they should about the deaths. They're tragic, but also disconnected from the day-to-day reality of trying to get by.
Gas prices, however, impact them directly and can't be ignored.
I've spent decades watching conservatives not give a flying fuck about anything until gas prices increase.
It's so very pathetic.
A lot of the discourse around gas prices that I see comes from people who do care about the human issues desperately trying to convince Trump supporters this is a bad idea. And since Trump has never exactly been big on legality or moral conduct cost of living is what gets used.
I don’t know a single person who is more upset about gas prices than the victims of this, and I live in an oil state. Yet I keep seeing memes like this, I can’t help but think there is some “America bad” going on here.
All I hear at work is complaints about the gas prices.
When coworkers or customers bring up the topic, I point out the school we bombed. Everyone agrees its evil. I wonder if complaining about gas prices is just the professional way to complain about the "war" in Iran. I probably missed that little social cue. I hope that's the case; that most people are self-censoring and not just completely selfish.
But, have we Americans become such cowards we can't just openly talk about how fucked it is? It feels like it.
I do agree, this is not exclusive to Americans.
But I think its normal to have more of a reaction to Gas prices that affect you personally. Knowing that there are people dying somewhere is kind of abstract and probably won't create any emotional reaction.
There are ways to do that. Reading stories of victims for example. But you would have to willingly listen to those. You don't have a choice with the Gas prices.
Gas prices go up all the time, literally they have been this high before within the last few years. I disagree that it’s normal to be more upset about that than death, and as I said I don’t know a single person who is.
I find the first panel very upsetting. I'm well aware that we have an extensive history of being warmongers, but this level of pure evil without even a hint of any sort of legitimate reason is beyond the pale. I saw a truck with a graphic of an American flag and silhouettes of troops on it the other day, and all I could see were soldiers of an evil bloodthirsty government. I lived in Germany for 10 years and grew up around the US military, and even though I'm not a fan of combat I know it's sometimes necessary, but the mask has been fully ripped off now. Most of the soldiers didn't sign up for this, but they're meat for the grinder to commit war crimes just like in Russia now.
30% of humans are subdiagnostically psychopathic. I will die on this hill.
And 75-80% of those people are male.
I, too, will die on my hill.
It's more like 12% psychopath + 28% sadist + 20-30% gray zone people, with 28% good-ish, and 2% actually good.
EDIT: Sadists technicaly have empathy btw, but choose evil anyway. They are far worse.
Then there's 20%-30% who are like "Oh, I don't get involved with politics" and that's where we are today...
I know what the cartoon is trying to say, but those graphs make no sense
I really liked getting literally free gas before that whole war thing started…
For real, why is the x axis labeled with the y axis label, and why is the y axis label at the origin?
Is this AI, or just someone that slept through high school math?
Expecting cartoonists to create perfect graphs is asking too much, I think.
There's only one XKCD.
I don't want perfect, I just want it to follow the rules that we all learned in middle school. I will die on this unimportant hill.
Definitely not AI, the author is very much against it. But yeah, the graph labelling is really weird
I would assume the point is getting across but the text gets to be horizontal which conserves space and eases readability.
The fact that the gp got it means it is working as intended not trying to teach you rise over run.
I think the label on the bottom right is supposed to be the title/subject of the graph, with x implicitly defined as time and y implicitly corresponding to the subject.
Still misleading though, there are better ways to present the info
Why is the dog so concerned about gas prices?
The humans are upset at the big screen, so it must be some sort of threat.
It drives up the dog food prices
I also make my dogs buy their own food
Selfish land of selfish people electing selfish "leaders."
I'm so sick of living here I almost wish ICE would deport me.
Don't worry it's not just the US that is obsessed by oil. I'm from its northern petrostate neighbour and the same thing happens here.
Our police harass and dislodge natives so we can sell sweet sweet oil to the rest of the world. Ecologists are considered terrorist and the economy is the most important thing at any election. And we also get very upset when gas prices are going up. Much less for a few thousand dead humans.
Almost like there's been decades of colonialism sustained though an overwhelmingly well-funded information campaign to associate that land only with the resources it holds for the metropole.
This really has some r/im14andthisisdeep energy. Also looks suspiciously like some gen AI bullshit.
I think two things can be true at once.
I’m upset about both!
you seem to be a very small minority... but still appreciated
America has taught me even American lives don't matter when it comes to the American business. American citizens can be written off in death like day old donuts. And no one blinks an eye. We are pawns and slaves in an evil game that plays out theater on the world stage. Wake up for real. We don't have much to lose and the phrase "by any means necessary" should be constant mantra in all our minds.
But then again shuving a syringe of mass media, materialism, and desensitizing entertainment that drowns out reality like heroin is so worth it. So worth it we literally murder people via tax money for it and pretend we aren't murderers and will still have a spot in "heaven."
The average person is not personally impacted by the deaths of people on the other side of the world.
They are impacted and concerned when the cause of those deaths also results in consequences they personally feel.
What a tough concept to understand.
Also worth pointing out that our world is so oil-dependent that increasing the price of oil will almost certainly increase the price of everything else.
Food, medication, housing. People across the globe will feel the consequences.
I don't mean to minimize the direct deaths of the war. And yes, there will be plenty of people in the US who are driving pickup trucks getting 10mpg who will but h and mlan about how they can only afford to go on 2 tropical cruise vacations this year instead of 3 because of the increased gas price. But there will be people who lose their lives from the indirect economic consequences of this too.
And yes, this could have been prevented in a lot of ways: by moving the global economy away from fossil fuels alng time ago, or by not having a war. But the people in positions to make those decisions are not the ones who will suffer the most from them.
the average person is a selfish cunt.
