You know what really, really, really sucks?

All of this. Take the titles and names of the religions away. Make up new words. Call them all whatever you want to and you know what they all have in common?

Their humanity.

Any of us would be animals under the right circumstances. All of history says exactly that.

I wish we could find a way to do away with all of it.

Even then though, atheist states have committed mass murder. It isn’t just religion, it’s humanity. Isn’t that sad?

If we erased all of our history tomorrow and gave humans a damn Nintendo and a handful of cartridges, we’d be killing each other over Mario bros in 100 years.

I really wish I was just sitting in a dirty house in West Virginia, breathing exclusively from my mouth, saliva dripping at my feet. I wish I didn’t see humanity for what it is.

What really, really sucks is that we could drop this crap and get along if we were truly intelligent. We aren’t. We’re herds of bloodthirsty animals making things up so we can FEEL like we have meaning.

Oh well.

I remembered this and googled it. In my mind there was a video, but man. It’s been a crazy 8 years.

“When Elon Musk came to the White House asking me for help on all of his many subsidized projects, whether it’s electric cars that don’t drive long enough, driverless cars that crash, or rocket ships to nowhere, without which subsidies he’d be worthless,” the ever-gracious Trump wrote in 2022, “and telling me how he was a big Trump fan and Republican, I could have said, ‘drop to your knees and beg,’ and he would have done it…”

https://futurism.com/the-byte/musk-trump-president-bromance

Holy crap, they did.

I spent a lot of my life there and boy oh boy.

I hear it’s nicer up north, but I couldn’t afford to go anywhere and check it out. It is WILD where I came from.

Oh, and yours isn’t the comment I meant to reply to.

Shitter, zitter. It’s all gravy baby.

I mean, shitter is cool and all. It ain’t poppin’ though.

Each post that goes viral is poppin’.

If it really blows up it’s BACKNE and it’s POPPIN’!

But the best xits are all BLOWING THE FUCK UP!

Whole place was covered in pus! means EVERYONE popped it. To pop a xit is to share a post.

Gah. Hep me loard.

Xitter! It’s poppin’!

Me too. My favorite memories come from Unreal Tournament on Dreamcast. I had this terrible, ancient LCD projector that overheated and turned off over and over again. It had to be opened, so to block the light I stuck a black sheet over it and stuck a fan in the window.

We had a huge screen that honestly was probably barely visible, and we had a blast.

God I miss my job.

More than 20 years of peace and I took it for granted. When the boss started talking about selling the place I thought, “Who would buy this outdated hole in the ground that makes no real money and is surrounded by competition?”

What bums me out the most though is that when I was 16 he said, “Come work for me. In 10 years I intend to retire and I’ll lease one of these places out to you and you’ll take over when I die.”

I knew it wasn’t happening at the 11 year mark.

Don’t be loyal. Jump around. Don’t throw your life and time away. Everyone I know who has ever made any money did so by selling their skills to the highest bidder.

I helped someone else get everything they ever wanted and I got nothing but promises.

Don’t do that. Seriously.

(I should have made this its own comment but yours is the one that moved me to write it. The speech is directed mostly at OP and anyone else who stumbles onto it.)

If it makes you feel any better, I read it with the f and not the t any way. I wouldn’t have noticed if not for this chain of comments.

Could be Hitler Dino Cat as a Venture Bros character.

Hate me if you want to. I don’t mind.

Awww man you just unlocked a memory of mine. I had several of those.

Also, like the other person who replied to you, I had He-Man toys that did that. I’m like 90% sure it was Skeletor and He-Man.

Well, if you really believe that then organize and get your hands dirty. I wish you luck.

I believe we can win without violence.

I actually liked the flat screen crts. I have a 1080p flatscreen crt and I love it. Can’t use it though because I’m scared my kids will get crushed by it.

When I was a kid, I was taught never to hit someone unless they hit me first. There were, of course, exceptions. Is someone hitting your brother? You’d better bust his nose. I did that too. I did it and I faced the consequences, whatever they were.

Do we still have the ability to act without violence? We shouldn’t be violent if the answer is still yes. But, we’re animals who were born from the chaos of a violent and terrifying world. Our ancestors had to outrun predators and enemies at least long enough to reproduce or we wouldn’t be here, and that is written in our blood as far back as we can see in time.

It is in every one of us to take things to extremes. Our ancestors done it over and over again, and under the right circumstances any one of us would stand over our enemy, covered in blood, breathing and smiling like a chimpanzee with the bloodied corpse of his former foraging mate at his feet.

It is in our nature to identify with one group or another, and as we become more connected, all of the splintered groups that the world had before are forming into two large consolidated groups. What really makes me sad is that I don’t think there is a permanent solution. That makes me wonder if violence is even worth it, again, when there are still ways to solve problems without violence.

If we colonized another planet right now with likeminded people and built a perfect system of government, it wouldn’t take very long for our humanity to get in the way of it. Someone would always be convinced, and then convince others, that they could do it better. Their identity would get lost in the group and then war would be inevitable.

Violence is a temporary solution. You kill your enemy and then wait for your new enemy to come. That is what I see in history, and I’m very thankful that I live in a time and place where violence doesn’t have to be a part of my life. I spent the first 17 years of my life in violence, and ultimately violence was what brought it all to an end. I don’t miss it. I don’t miss seeing that wild look in the eyes of men. I don’t like seeing people become animals.

I believe that we can still solve it without becoming monsters.

Of course, I didn’t forget what I just read. I have seen the incrementalism here and I realize that things that would have seemed absurd 10 years ago are just par for the course now. We still have good people in the right places. I’m not a religious man, but as a father of small children, I pray that they succeed over the next four years and that things will ultimately go back to normal.

COVID threw a lot of people off. It made a lot of things excusable that wouldn’t have been in any other time. We’re still not really past all of that.

I just hope that people don’t turn to violence. I have lived in that world and it is very, very, very ugly.

If it does ever come to that, I hope that the people who push for it with words have the balls to get out there and crawl around in it. I hope that they aren’t just sitting around inspiring that in other people.

I don’t know. I’ve got a lot more to say but I have a lot to do today.

Let’s be good people while we can and pray that we don’t have to be anything else. Too many people have been pecked to the bone by vultures and crows throughout our history. If we don’t have to litter the world with corpses, let’s not. Please.

Am from deep in WV and I’ve known many people who lived on dollar store food. No car, nearest grocery store is 40 miles away.

It’s a sad place.

Bro, the Counter-Strike devs put porn in the game. I’m surprised they were all able to get away with it.

Huh? Oh no, dude it’s easy. Hold alt and press f4 and it brings it up. Then just browse it with the s and d keys.

Bahahaha! Half the lobby is gone!

There was a point in my childhood where every shirt I owned was a Stone Cold Steve Austin shirt.

I mean, he did say so.

Heil Kitler!

Just seeing the pic, I could hear the sound.