2026
Feels Like 2016 Was When It Started
Submitted 23 hours ago by OriginEnergySux@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/0d5029bf-a4bd-4a57-b4fb-53ca1ea5e732.jpeg
Comments
CaptDust@sh.itjust.works 22 hours ago
PattyMcB@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
This guy can read minds
anise@awful.systems 2 hours ago
yes, but slowly
the_fuckler@nord.pub 19 hours ago
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 16 hours ago
A lot led up to that after the Citizens United decision in 2010. And the 2008 global financial crisis. And Putin ignoring term limits in 2007. And the Bush Electoral College victory in 2000. And the 1995 Crime Bill. And the Reagan admin in 1984, particular his cutting of taxes, gutting of regulations, war on welfare, and foreign policies such as Iran-Contra. And the entire history of the Soviet Union before that, including creating the monster that China is today. The invention of leaded fuel had a large measurable decrease in average intelligience across the entire earth. Hell, the use of petrol in general. Even before that, measurable climate change was present as a result of burning coal. Perhaps it really started when chemistry allowed nitrogen enriched fertilizers for the first time, which also paved the way for explosive ordinances and ballistics. Then again it was only a matter of time since Gunpowder was first popularized in China.
You know what? I blame Jing Fang for everthing. /s
postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
You forgot The Patriot Act, 2001.
OriginEnergySux@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 10 hours ago
TheMadIrishman@sh.itjust.works 23 hours ago
I’m tired of being edged with end of the world promises. PLEASE DELIVER.
OriginEnergySux@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
I distinctly remember in November/ December of 2014, driving to work up a hill in the fog, and my partner and I listening to NPR on the way into the station, there being a segment about Hillary and their inevitability as the Democratic candidate. And I remember how in the conversation we had about it I brought up the point about how profoundly stupid and disastrous it would be to just coronation Hillary into being the nominee, because she was a profoundly weak candidate; maybe the weakest candidate possible for the moment.
First and foremost she’d telegraphed her run decades in advance, and had given the entire RW apparatus decades to prepare for her specific run. The opposition had been specifically preparing for this exact moment and if there was one person they were particularly prepared to run against, it was Hillary. Entire think tanks had been committed to that task for decades. It didn’t matter if anything they presented was true or not; they’d have clips to run for days.
Second, her performance as secretary of state had been poor. She’d pissed off both the RW and progressives with her performance, the only ones truly appeased by her being slop-eating liberals. She was a total hawk, and basically extended the international hegemony established under Cheney an additional 8 years. She had no friends with regards to her role in government.
The third was that the Obama administration had clearly failed in their ability to make their campaigned upon policies, at least the ones the base which thrust Obama into power had prioritized, into power. Obama won on the back of the Occupy movement and the spirit which led the broadening of Occupy was the same spirit that ushered Obama in. And Obama, in so many ways, had betrayed that spirit. They took the side of corporations and banks in the manner of their governance. So any candidate coming from that administration was going to struggle.
And finally, media appeared to be completely oblivious to all of this. There is a kind of “head permanently nestled in ones own ass”-ness that only NPR and those for whom that broadcast is tailored to, the true liberals, can demonstrate. And it was already on full display.
chunk6235@piefed.social 20 hours ago
And let’s not forget that Hillary’s campaign promoted the dumbass as a viable candidate because she thought she’d be able to whip his ass no problem.
So thanks for giving us trump Hillary, I hope you’re happy with your choices. And given we knew they were friendly back in the day (and the fact she tanked a progressive candidate), I’m sure she is. Plus, trump fucking everything 6 ways from Sunday makes her husband’s awful choices seem downright normal.
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 16 hours ago
“tanked a progressive candidate”…?
sartalon@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
That was the first time I ever donated to a campaign. It was Bernie’s campaign (and AI was a card carrying Republican).
Then I watched what Hillary’s campaign did and have refused to give any money to any campaign ever again.
That’s the only election I didn’t vote.
I have been voting Democrat down ticket ever since (as a protest vote) and wondering how the fuck everyone got so fucking stupid.
Fuck the money. We need to eat every fucking billionaire/mega millionaire. There is no other way.
They want to survive? They need to give their shit up and live like the rest of us
artyom@piefed.social 19 hours ago
Trump was as much the conservatives being smart as it was dems being stupid. Putting Joe and Kamala up were also profoundly stupid decisions. Like can we not find anyone <80 who doesn’t have a sordid history?
kestrel7_7@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Yes. Trump got fewer votes in 2016 than Romney did in 2012. If everyone who voted for Obama had showed up to vote for Clinton, Trump never would have won. I think it’s fair to say that Clinton lost that election more than Trump won it.
Trump isn’t very popular, and never has been. He got like 20% of eligible voters in '24. The Dems merely keep running even less popular candidates. Their entire platform in '24 was “hey at least we’re not that guy” and they still didn’t manage to distinguish themselves from him enough. Fundamentally, both the Dems and Reps are super out of touch with American voters as we actually exist. I think the Dems and Reps are far more similar to each other than they are to what most people in this country actually want.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Putting Joe and Kamala up were also profoundly stupid decisions.
:100:
And even here at the left end of the internet, saying something so profoundly obvious outloud got you put on the naughty list.
vinsombra@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
2026: it did end, the transition to hell was subtle, but I see it now.
chunk6235@piefed.social 20 hours ago
2026: Do we really have time for such optimism?
impairedimperator@lemmy.zip 22 hours ago
2014 for me. Gamergate was…weird. I didn’t realize it fully at the time, but there were a few people I previously respected that I started having serious questions about.
Couple years later, I started cutting maga out of my life and if felt exactly like those gamergate folks.
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 hours ago
I’m still frustrated by that shit. There were actual instances of bad shit happening in gaming news media that got drowned the fuck out by all the culture war grifters and rampant fucking incels.
- Random “ok but not GOTY” indie games getting GOTY level reviews, then people finding that the dev and the journalist(s) had a history of bar crawl pictures on twitter together.
- Leaked industry email lists where journalists openly were asking other journalists to take it easy on their dev roommate’s first release.
- A few big names in games journalism getting shit canned for writing honest reviews about how mediocre some AAA game was, when that game bought an ad on their site to the tune of a full site retheming around the game.
- Undisclosed referral links.
- Undisclosed sponsorship of good reviews.
- Some games trying to use the fact they had LGBTQIA+ representation to paint valid critiques as the same thing as bigoted harassment, when some of the critique was even coming from LGBTQIA+ folx.
- A few no name indie devs caught faking harassment and hate DMs.
It was a few big issues, a scatter of medium issues, a few minor things only noticable to obsessives, and then a massive clusterfuck of actual stalker/*phobe bullshit slopped on top.
I’m happy that shit like responsible disclosure started happening in the end, but what a fucking mess.
blartcap_@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 hours ago
Reviews and editorials never described as “gaming journalism” before GamerGate. The fact that Gamergate successfully convinced everyone that editorials and reviews can be called “journalism”, even people who opposed Gamergate, was their biggest victory.
GamerGate was a Steve Bannon POC for MAGA and it wasted no time in setting the stage for Lügenpresse by inappropriately using the term to describe opinion pieces they knew they could get angry young men to get outraged over to start getting people used to the idea of demeaning journalism as a whole. “MSM” was just the MAGA version of “gaming journalism”, but more refined since they realized with their POC that demeaning all “journalism” meant that any that they tried to spin up never got any traction because it was also “journalism”.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Yeah. I agree. I time it to 2014 and can see Gamergate, now in retrospect, as a clear part of the origin story of the current moment. And one of the clearest signals is how befuddling and practically impossible it is to actually understand what gamergate is/ was. I was there for it, in the sense that I saw it happened, but it was noise at the periphery of my vision. And even what I did right there, the swapping of a subject word to an action word; how language around this “gamergate” thing evolved, and how it became completely befuddling to those not already interior to this thing to understand.
And I still dont understand it. And I don’t think others, even those deeply involved understand it either. But I want to be clear when I say “understand”, I’ve done a fair bit of research. I’ve pulled every reddit forum post on the matter. I’ve read book chapters and deep articles. But with the Epstein files and Bannons involvement, which we only now understand: it sure was “something”.
MY current working hypothesis; I think gamergate was the test run for Brexxit. And the test run for MAGA/J6. I think there is potentially also a Hungary and Orban, which preceded gamer gate.
impairedimperator@lemmy.zip 18 hours ago
I don’t know if it was a test run or if it showed the ability to weaponize Extremely Online folks.
I remember gamergate as something that, on the surface, looked like possibly legitimate criticism, but then as you said, people that went into it became kind of odd, with their own language used to describe it which didn’t really make sense. Like, the words were there, but they were using kinda tortured definitions in a way that weaponized them.
Personally, I’ve always been fascinated with language as someone who basically grew up bilingual, and picked up a few along the way since. There are concepts that I simply am unable to discuss in certain languages, because the words are not there.
Weaponized language had been around for some time. Hell, Gingrich basically made his career by using specific loaded phrases in speeches given to an empty senate chamber, specifically for the weirdos who watch C-SPAN. Similarly, you had some insular (often hate) groups that had their own internal lingo. Gamergate seems to have combined the two in a way that is now becoming increasingly common in politics.
blartcap_@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 hours ago
It was confirmed in Fire and Fury by Wolff that GamerGate was indeed Steve Gannon’s POC of MAGA.
Quexotic@infosec.pub 16 hours ago
2026: OMG please, NOW
cobysev@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
2016 was the year that a bunch of celebrities started dying all at once. The world has never been the same since.
Zachariah@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
badcommandorfilename@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
Yes, that’s the only logical explanation en.wikipedia.org/…/2016_United_States_presidentia…
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 16 hours ago
TBF we don’t have the same culture of celebrities that we used to. Hollywood is an industry that beats dead horses and only hires the same 26 people over and over for everything. The kids these days only know about minor internet celebrities which aren’t recognized by the general public.
Celebrities have always lived and died but they’re rarely replaced any more.
DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
The kids these days only know about minor internet celebrities which aren’t recognized by the general public. … Celebrities have always lived and died but they’re rarely replaced any more.
That we don’t recognize them doesn’t mean they are legitimately celebrities. The landscape is changing, music and Hollywood don’t make all major celebrities anymore.
Don’t confuse yourself for the “general public”. That’s a mistake entertainment producers have made since forever, and it’s often the end of their careers.
When I was a graphic designer, I had to keep up with the trends or become irrelevant. My personal tastes be damned.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
Yup, the fabric of reality began to unravel when Bowie passed.
logi@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
His space man persona was the real Bowie all along. And he was here to hold the fabric of reality together.
shutz@lemmy.ca 20 hours ago
Have you looked at the celebrity obituaries lately?
QuinnyCoded@sh.itjust.works 23 hours ago
Adrien_0715@lemmy.ml 18 hours ago
The old world already ended, what kids learn at school today is completely different then it was in 2019.😂
BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 hours ago
The Evangalists got the useful idiot they needed that thinks P2025 is a good thing. They want to bring around the end times because they’re fucking wackos. They’re a threat to humanity.