VoxAdActa @ VoxAdActa @kbin.social

Posts

0

Comments

45

Joined

2 yr. ago

"WhY dO pEoPlE sAy RePuBliCaNs ArE fAciSts????"

What do you think, @Kantiberl ? Do we have a clue towards that enduring, eternal American mystery? Or nah?

About the only thing we can do is unsubscribe from and block the dozen or so "Reddit Sucks" communities/magazines, and report the "We Still Hate Reddit" threads that pop up elsewhere for being posted in the wrong place (like Technology or Gaming or wherever).

Like, ok, at first? Sure, I can go with "it's not a lie if you actually believe it," in 1985 or even 1995. But by 2010? Come on. And then in 2020, to be like "Well, I mean, I never specifically said I believed in it, just that, you know, it was a thing..." is so gross. It's like some shit my ex-wife would have said after a three-day-long running argument about some basic fact of the universe.

I was leaving the Wal-Mart parking lot about a year ago and there was a man with a cardboard sign at the traffic light. I was about to ignore him, and then I thought: "I just spent $50 on a toothbrush. I spend $5 on this guy."

After that point, I started thinking. I'd always been told these guys would "drive away in a BMW at the end of the day" and/or "they're gonna buy drugs", and I never really thought about those claims.

The BMW thing turns out to be a Bigfoot story; everyone "knows a guy" or "has a cousin" that saw that happen once, but in a world where everyone's got a phone in their pocket and a camera on their dash, I have yet to see such an event being documented. God knows the insufferable pricks who trot that line out would die happy if they could make that kind of evidence go viral.

And the drugs... I mean, maybe? I guess? But then again, I could give my kid money for his birthday and he might go out and buy drugs with it, too. I have no way to know that. I shouldn't give anyone money ever, I guess? Fuck, as far as "giving out money" goes, I'm giving Wal-Mart money that they're going to use to increase poverty, fuck the environment, and lobby Congress for bills that will inevitably have an actual body count. Giving money to a guy who's looking to score a joint doesn't even rate on that scale.

Not to mention that, as far as I know, there's an equally likely possibility he's going to take that $5 bill and use it eat something for the first time in two days. So yeah, that's a gamble I'm willing to take.

And why are we more likely to give money to a guy shittily playing a guitar with a hat on the ground? Because we feel like he's working for it? What a shitty way to think about people. Entertain me, poor person, and if you're good enough, I might give you a pittance.

Or maybe it's because you can just drop some change in the hat and don't have interact. As an introvert, that does kinda sound like a selling point. But I'm cynical, so I'm pretty sure it's more the previous thing.

If I've got more than an insultingly small amount of cash on me (that is, I'm not going to grab a couple of quarters out of my cupholder), and the circumstances line up so it doesn't put me in any danger or at risk of any real consequences, yeah, I'm gonna give someone cash.

I'm pretty sure that question mark on the second to last line is anachronistic. I don't know exactly when western punctuation was incorporated into traditional Chinese script, but I'm almost certain it was well after 1870. The character at the end of that line, before the question mark, is "ma", which, by itself, turns a statement into a question.