I blame commercials and PSAs. I stopped watching TV in the mid-2000s and have ad blocker online. Watching TV today is like stepping back into Plato’s Cave. You don’t realize how psychologically damaging commercials are.
As an example, a few years ago I watched a live stream of the local news during a weather event with ads that couldn’t be blocked. Four hours later, I had seen the same commercial for an HIV drug at least 8 times. I had the thing memorized and I was very, very aware of HIV all day as it replayed in my brain. I don’t ever think about HIV. But I was forced to. I’m usually happy go lucky but after that ad, and other ads for a myriad of other drugs for diseases, plus PSAs reminding me how my life is a vicious jungle with death just a step away, I felt pretty bummed. Some of those PSAs are down right mean spirited.
Without ads, I can control my exposure to the horrors of the world. With ads, you’re at the mercy of the station or website drowning you in human misery. There probably needs to be a law to limit those kind of commercials. Like one PSA a week and one pharmaceutical commercial a day.
Agree, but I don’t think it’s limited to ads or PSAs, I think everyone with empathy is having a real hard time, because the news and the internet is constantly making them aware of, just, awful things. War and famine abroad and at home, all while like, 800 people in the world sit atop mountains of gold, doing absolutely everything in their power to destroy the planet and subvert democracy. We’ve been past the climate change “tipping point” for YEARS, and we’re still growing our oil and gas consumption. Anybody that cares about peoples suffering, is going to suffer, because we can’t empathise with everyone, everywhere, all at once. And yet, that’s what we’re asked to do, everytime we see the news. We’re still trying to play todays game by yesterdays rules.
The reality of the situation is that in the lifetime of your child, they will see complete economic and agricultural collapse. Why do you think that syphilitic pedo rapist wants Greenland so bad? Because projections show that giant iceball is going to be our best farmland in 60 years. Meanwhile any nations near the equator will be absolutely fucked. Chemical manufacturers in the US have so captured the government, that they’ve been poisoning all your water and food for decades without as much as a peep from regulators. Gotta get that new glyphosate weed and bug killer! nevermind it’s been banned by almost every country except our dumbasses.
if this were minecraft, I’d say that all we really need to do to save our species, is kill about 3-400 billionaires, redistribute their wealth, put a blanket moratorium on oil and gas usage, transitioning the worlds fleet of cars to electric (or just abandoning them all together in favor of trains), and establishing a one world government. Just think of the amount of artistic and scientific endeavors we could achieve if man were allowed the freedom to breathe and live. Imagine if you had universal healthcare, universal pre-k and daycare, imagine if you were given a 4 year college education just as a matter of course. Imagine if rent control existed, and a universal basic income to allow you a basic standard of living. Imagine how much happier you would be.
Hey, we’re only like 3-400 billionaires deaths away from achieving it.
That’s part of it.
Never earning enough to live is the other.
The economic disparity in the US is greater than it was before the French Revolution. No matter how hard younger generations work, they can’t earn money at a rate that exceeds price inflation and experience. 60% of this country is doomed to never get ahead and the other 40% just don’t realize it’s so bad for everyone else they’re killing themselves.
Do they take into account the ads that are run on those sites?
I mean, everybody talks about how YT is killing everyone but I don’t get it. Unless… There was one day I sat down for breakfast, feeling great and started to play a light hearted review of a movie from Red Letter Media, about to eat a spoon full of Cheerios when an ad snuck past my ad blocker. It started off with “Cancer is different when it happens to a child.” I immediately closed my browser and sat there in stunned silence for five minutes with my chin on my lap. That ad just shat all over my day before it even began. When I got back to watching RLM, I was still thinking about kids with cancer for five minutes while Mike and Jay made jokes.
If people are bombarded by that kind of bipolar stream of videos while watching YT, I can see how it can ruin your life.
People, super especially kids, should not have social media with their real name. No one should use social media or the Internet in general with their real name unless they have bodyguards, a PR team and plan each post like a mission to Mars. There’s literally billions of people who can see you, and one of them is definitely going to be lunatic who can find out where you live and murder you in your sleep.
I get it, context and all, but it’s very funny to me that you say you got bummed out by couple seconds of advertising for a cancer drug or treatment interrupting your video of bumbling hack frauds shouting about AIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDS. Hell, Mike literally can’t help but laugh at geriatric women describing their health problems.
Like I said, it’s like stepping back into Plato’s Cave. It’s almost impossible to explain what it’s like.
It not so much the context. There’s no build up to “children with cancer”. Whether it’s about that or not, a block of advertising is a string of shitty short films specifically designed to be like a tear jerker to get a reaction out of you within 30 seconds or less. If you’re not used to that psychological tug of war, it almost physically hurts.
I have diabetes and the vascular disease that comes with it. If Mike and Jay make jokes about it, it makes it easier to live with. But if a commercial starts with a deep booming voice dripping with dread exclaiming “Diabetes”. Oh yeah, I forgot for a second that it’s a deadly serious disease that will probably kill me. Thanks commercial. I was living my life for a second.
No, this specifically is about how seeing content in which teens explain how to kill yourself has an impact on the probability that you try to kill yourself.
That’ll do it. But also having to hear about side effects 100 times a day, including nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, constipation. indigestion, belching, flatulence, fatigue, and dizziness, pancreatitis, gallbladder problems, kidney issues, and vision changes, thyroid tumors, including cancer, may not help.
I blame commercials and PSAs. I stopped watching TV in the mid-2000s and have ad blocker online. Watching TV today is like stepping back into Plato’s Cave. You don’t realize how psychologically damaging commercials are.
As an example, a few years ago I watched a live stream of the local news during a weather event with ads that couldn’t be blocked. Four hours later, I had seen the same commercial for an HIV drug at least 8 times. I had the thing memorized and I was very, very aware of HIV all day as it replayed in my brain. I don’t ever think about HIV. But I was forced to. I’m usually happy go lucky but after that ad, and other ads for a myriad of other drugs for diseases, plus PSAs reminding me how my life is a vicious jungle with death just a step away, I felt pretty bummed. Some of those PSAs are down right mean spirited.
Without ads, I can control my exposure to the horrors of the world. With ads, you’re at the mercy of the station or website drowning you in human misery. There probably needs to be a law to limit those kind of commercials. Like one PSA a week and one pharmaceutical commercial a day.
Agree, but I don’t think it’s limited to ads or PSAs, I think everyone with empathy is having a real hard time, because the news and the internet is constantly making them aware of, just, awful things. War and famine abroad and at home, all while like, 800 people in the world sit atop mountains of gold, doing absolutely everything in their power to destroy the planet and subvert democracy. We’ve been past the climate change “tipping point” for YEARS, and we’re still growing our oil and gas consumption. Anybody that cares about peoples suffering, is going to suffer, because we can’t empathise with everyone, everywhere, all at once. And yet, that’s what we’re asked to do, everytime we see the news. We’re still trying to play todays game by yesterdays rules.
The reality of the situation is that in the lifetime of your child, they will see complete economic and agricultural collapse. Why do you think that syphilitic pedo rapist wants Greenland so bad? Because projections show that giant iceball is going to be our best farmland in 60 years. Meanwhile any nations near the equator will be absolutely fucked. Chemical manufacturers in the US have so captured the government, that they’ve been poisoning all your water and food for decades without as much as a peep from regulators. Gotta get that new glyphosate weed and bug killer! nevermind it’s been banned by almost every country except our dumbasses.
if this were minecraft, I’d say that all we really need to do to save our species, is kill about 3-400 billionaires, redistribute their wealth, put a blanket moratorium on oil and gas usage, transitioning the worlds fleet of cars to electric (or just abandoning them all together in favor of trains), and establishing a one world government. Just think of the amount of artistic and scientific endeavors we could achieve if man were allowed the freedom to breathe and live. Imagine if you had universal healthcare, universal pre-k and daycare, imagine if you were given a 4 year college education just as a matter of course. Imagine if rent control existed, and a universal basic income to allow you a basic standard of living. Imagine how much happier you would be.
Hey, we’re only like 3-400 billionaires deaths away from achieving it.
…in minecraft
That’s part of it. Never earning enough to live is the other. The economic disparity in the US is greater than it was before the French Revolution. No matter how hard younger generations work, they can’t earn money at a rate that exceeds price inflation and experience. 60% of this country is doomed to never get ahead and the other 40% just don’t realize it’s so bad for everyone else they’re killing themselves.
Blame social media. We have studies that show direct correlation between suicide rate and instagram, for example. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1461444819850106
Do they take into account the ads that are run on those sites?
I mean, everybody talks about how YT is killing everyone but I don’t get it. Unless… There was one day I sat down for breakfast, feeling great and started to play a light hearted review of a movie from Red Letter Media, about to eat a spoon full of Cheerios when an ad snuck past my ad blocker. It started off with “Cancer is different when it happens to a child.” I immediately closed my browser and sat there in stunned silence for five minutes with my chin on my lap. That ad just shat all over my day before it even began. When I got back to watching RLM, I was still thinking about kids with cancer for five minutes while Mike and Jay made jokes.
If people are bombarded by that kind of bipolar stream of videos while watching YT, I can see how it can ruin your life.
In the past when you were bullied it usually was contained to school. Now with social media, it continues in the safety of your home as well.
People, super especially kids, should not have social media with their real name. No one should use social media or the Internet in general with their real name unless they have bodyguards, a PR team and plan each post like a mission to Mars. There’s literally billions of people who can see you, and one of them is definitely going to be lunatic who can find out where you live and murder you in your sleep.
Eh, I refuse to be that scared.
Then you can’t blame social media if it goes south. You know the risks.
Beats the hell out of existing in a state of constant anxiety, of second-guessing every decision, of looking suspiciously at every stranger I pass.
I get it, context and all, but it’s very funny to me that you say you got bummed out by couple seconds of advertising for a cancer drug or treatment interrupting your video of bumbling hack frauds shouting about AIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDS. Hell, Mike literally can’t help but laugh at geriatric women describing their health problems.
Like I said, it’s like stepping back into Plato’s Cave. It’s almost impossible to explain what it’s like.
It not so much the context. There’s no build up to “children with cancer”. Whether it’s about that or not, a block of advertising is a string of shitty short films specifically designed to be like a tear jerker to get a reaction out of you within 30 seconds or less. If you’re not used to that psychological tug of war, it almost physically hurts.
I have diabetes and the vascular disease that comes with it. If Mike and Jay make jokes about it, it makes it easier to live with. But if a commercial starts with a deep booming voice dripping with dread exclaiming “Diabetes”. Oh yeah, I forgot for a second that it’s a deadly serious disease that will probably kill me. Thanks commercial. I was living my life for a second.
No, this specifically is about how seeing content in which teens explain how to kill yourself has an impact on the probability that you try to kill yourself.
That’ll do it. But also having to hear about side effects 100 times a day, including nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, constipation. indigestion, belching, flatulence, fatigue, and dizziness, pancreatitis, gallbladder problems, kidney issues, and vision changes, thyroid tumors, including cancer, may not help.
Frankly, I’m just glad that there may be a tax on advertisin (and other things) to try and shore up health care costs in Michigan.
Source: https://www.mlive.com/politics/2026/02/whitmer-wants-new-taxes-on-tobacco-sports-betting-to-keep-health-spending-stable.html