I don't watch mainstream media, but most of my friends in real life, over 50, are absolutely overwhelmed by this week. To the point where they walked out on conversations because their ability to process what's going on has reached the absolute hilt. MSM is breaking Gen X & Boomers' brains. 🧵
Unfortunately, the response to this has demonstrated to the not-sees exactly how to manipulate voters in 2026. I can almost GUARANTEE there will be multiple attempts like this around September/October of 2026. Hell, maybe right before election day. False flags orchestrated by the hardcore right.
Violence as a form of manipulating people's emotions is, I'm sure, right there in the fascist handbook. People on the right are being used & abused by so many power hungry groups, passing them around like a toy. Do they ever get fed up of the coercion? Of being lied to? Such a toxic relationship.
I believe people susceptible to reactance manipulation through aggression tend to have high levels of anxiety (often untreated because they fear going for medical consultation, or they distrust medical professionals), so they believe the only way to maintain their "freedom" is to help oppressors.
I'm a Gen Xer, and I don't know if MSM would break my mind because they've done such a shit job of covering this administration I'm not tuning in to any of it.
Gooooooood for you!
Melissa I love you, thank you
It just appears they are going on with their lives and ignoring it .
I'm older Gen X & hubby is Boomer. We might've needed to do some research on groyper & a few other things, but we're keeping up. The difference is we don't rely on MSM for all the news, though. Argued w/younger Gen X tonight (Trumper) who isn't getting it at all, despite my providing sources.
I don’t think I’d be able to understand ANY of this mess if I used only mainstream sources to explain it to me. With the exception of AP, which I read every day, I think MSM is all about ratings and only inserts unnecessary junk into factual events.
In fact, instead of telling the basic truths, they bring on “the other side of the story” who just muddies the waters with propaganda junk. So instead of just understanding things as is, you’re subjected to ludicrous theories that have no basis in facts. Just so MSM can pretend to be non-biased.
That *is* infuriating. Good journalism tells the facts; it doesn't have to be balanced. It just has to be well-researched and state the truth.
I mean, if they're reporting on someone convicted of murder, they don't have to provide a "well, if you look at it this way" defense in the article. Offer them an opportunity to comment for the article, but that's it.
The amount of reporting done about the shooter without any facts has created so much junk. So much retraction. I mean, WSJ doesn’t have a single person who can do a reverse search on the bullet and see that it was the manufacture label and not a trans engraving? Every speculation muddies the truth!
Which gamer or podcast bro do they listen to?
I went out to eat at a restaurant to disconnect and everything along the road was triggering me. Flags, solar panels, churches, rainbows, the food, even the bill. I'm my own enemy.
There was a playground with a beautiful mural of raised hands, on top it said: 47 school shootings so far.
I wrote about that earlier. bsky.app/profile/resi...
Yep, on Friday I tried to get out and get away from screens, stop for a lil’ treat, and just ended up furious and sickened when I noticed all the flags at half staff in my town. Couldn’t get away from it.
Gen-x here... I agree, throw in some family who like to text all day, Facebook, Instagram and everything else phones...lot of disastrous idiots out there making a living in media telling people how to live their lives, instead of minding their own. ✌️
My brain is not breaking. However, there is an overwhelming sadness for our country. GenX/boomers will be fine, the sadness is for younger generations and how life will significantly suck more for them thanks to this regime and what it is doing.
Agree. Keeps me up at night.
tell your generation to stop fucking us?
Kirk was my generation. There's no age limit on being an authoritarian asshole.
It isnt a personal thing. Wealth inequality plays a significant factor in aggreviances of z and alpha
Kirk was also a multi-millionaire. Wealth inequality isn't gained by age differences. Mark Cuban, Zuck, Musk, Warren Buffet, Bezos, Bill Gates were all millionaires before age 33. Zuck was only 22.
This, just overwhelming sadness
That’s what it is. I feel such dread and sadness for them. I agonize over my granddaughters. I’m so scared for them.
And today I have stopped going to my current church.
Which church?
Was Redeemer's Fellowship...a Christian church. I will be looking for one that keeps politics out of church.
boomer here, don't watch any msm including PBS, the local gannet rag, get all the news that's fit to print from pakman and obermann, & meidas (and a few others) 👍
AP is the only traditional outlet I use. And maybe The Guardian or Wired every so often. I won't touch WaPo or NYTimes with a ten foot poll after the way they handled election news. They'll never earn my trust again.
I'm a 37 year old Millennial and I feel nuts all the time. I stopped watching news stations years ago 🙃 I try to just read it now.
Me too. Their talk shows are a hot mess. No facts. All drama & speculation. Plenty of propaganda. AP has great factual articles that omit speculation and stick to very clearly defined facts. They've kept me sane this year.
What they didn't even make it 7: Notices Bulges OwO What's This? That was the best bit.
many of my GenX friends, myself included, have pretty much retreated entirely from traditional news outlets. i'm at the point where bsky is my only social media space as well. these are awful times.
I checked out of mainstream bs when it became apparent that none of them wanted Kamala Harris as our president back in 2024. But I feel betrayed, ngl. Hope their ratings absolutely tank!
Me too. CNN was purchased by a Repub in 2018. I knew then where it was headed. I was surprised at NYTimes & WaPo, but now that I know how neoreactionaries, accelerationism, & the AI race have radicalized billionaires, I get it. They broke democracy because billions are never enough power for them.
My guess is that as the news gets so much more overwhelming & difficult to comprehend - people turn it off. But the media's survival depends on ratings. & Instead of understanding why people need neutrality, they pile on MORE drama to try to lure people in. Perpetuating the over-loaded cycle.
The tenor of news casting into spectacle, dread and a nervous humming and whoosh keeps you always on your seat. And the line between straight news and commentary is largely gone. Opinion isn’t news, is it? They’ve been looking for a way to have the news make a profit since before “Network”.
“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” ~Howard Beale
i think this is definitely true for many people, though likely more for Boomers than GenX. for myself and those who i know, the turning off isn't about difficulty comprehending anything, it's just the endless barrage of awfulness and inanity. i hate being this angry all the time.
Good point. And when the people we're trying to understand live in ecosystems of developed hatred, the only way to learn about them is to expose ourselves to more hate.
I get my news entirely from AP. They give me all the facts & zero sensationalism. I check it multiple times a day, & stay informed without losing my damn mind. The mainstream media is on a mission to make people lose their damn minds. Trump is a reality TV Fascist. Who can stomach it?
I use Ground News. It helps put events into perspective and points me toward international coverage
I tried them for a while. They’re good, but because you could only share links that led back to ground news, I couldn’t keep people in my Discord informed with it - without them buying a subscription too. So that’s when I began to use AP links.
The money behind the outfit I don't trust. They are compiling a database of the populace based on news consumption, and I wonder what they plan to use it for. It's a service that does help norms, though, so I tend to hold my tongue because I merely have suspicion without hard evidence
Oh we can process it all right. What’s happened is we have stopped listening to their bs. They have been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion and the next step is execution.
I did read the thread but I don’t really see your connection to Gen Xer’s brains being broken. That’s the unclear part
Because 4 of my real life friends over 60 who got their news entirely from mainstream sources were unaware of Fuentas and simultaneously overwhelmed by the Kirk event. Even to a level of "walk out bc I can't handle this conversation." All had gotten impressions of this week from MSM.
Then this is an American Gen-X problem, because I'm almost 58, don't live in the US, wasn't educated in the US, don't consume US MSM, and I know exactly who Nick "Your body, my choice" is. He's a really nasty piece of work, and I'm here, living in Germany, thinking the US has gone mad, UK too! 😬
I know of him only from brief clips during the election when I was on X. I do credit X pundits with letting people know how batshit crazy Fox News and the alt-right podcasters have become. I really don't seek them out so I have no idea how radicalized they are. It's terrifying.
I hear you. I've never really been interested in politics, until the Brexit vote (I lived in the UK at the time), and the UK has been reckoning with their own mini-Trump, and the Heritage Foundation have been stirring the pot a whole lot there, too. I moved away from the UK to Germany in late 2020.
😒 Chinese curse: may you live in interesting times.
Yup! Here we have the AfD, which Musk has been promoting on his vile hellsite, but we also have a coalition government, so we're not in the quagmire as much as you and the Brits. But it still ain't rosy! 🫣😬
My thesis is that the deflection ecosystem that cannot handle the complexities of alt-right youth factions has relied on easy blame. (left wing professors, divisive language, etc) to justify lashing out at the left. Blaming them for radicalizing Tyler. (Not meme culture).
I see. I’m a professor so most of my friends and colleagues are Gen X and are keenly attuned to what’s happening (in general), but also particularly because what is happening with politics and MAGA directly affects our jobs and lives and those of our students
My friends are retired. So they don't have colleagues. Just our community discussions and the media. And some Facebook.
You’re doing good work to keep them up to date!!!
Funny, not 24 hrs after I made this post, my friends in their 60s sent me a message, furious at the media. Saying they were totally disgusted & even saying “my brain hurts." I sent them a video explainer on gamer culture. They said, “I’ll look tomorrow. Right now I’m struggling. 😪”
I told them, “You need to turn off MSNBC. They can be sued by Kirk’s wife for saying anything wrong. They’re terrified & it’s making them go along with the propaganda to play it safe." This allows Vance, Miller, Musk to push their agenda & MSM won’t counter it.
But we who have no money won’t get sued for defamation of character. So WE'RE pushing back against this ridiculous propaganda. On the internet, we’re speaking out about the true cultures that influenced Tyler. The real enemy of Kirk: his own alt-right alter ego: Fuentes. The media is not!
This might be the best explainer of the non-political side of the dark web.
Those who get their news entirely from MSM (older generations) have been spoon fed that guilt trip & blame deflection so heavily they've become overwhelmed and can't handle talking about Kirk. While the younger generations feel no guilt because they understand who actually radicalized Tyler.
I'm 61 and don't feel like my brain is broken...I explained Fuentes to several of my friends. The MSM isn't doing anyone any favors for sure though.
Glad to hear it!
Now the MSM & right-wing leaders are in a great purge campaign. A McCarythism of journalists, teachers, and professors who are getting fired for "their share of blame in Kirk's death." Leading to misplaced witch hunts that have real-life consequences for people who have nothing to do with Tyler.
Resist.
While the very person who hated Kirk most - Fuentes - is actually rallying the violent neo-nazi portion of the internet to shame liberals who feel no empathy for Kirk's death (through harassment & doxxing). While convincing them that their army will use this crisis to rid America of its evil (us).
Those who don't know how much Fuentes hated Kirk, don't know how opportunistic it is for him to fall in line as the next charismatic leader of the volatile white male youth base. Leading them into extremism, schizophrenic delusions of grandeur, & an epic battle of good & evil with the left.
A neurologist at the University of Miami was just fired.
There were quite a few. Maybe 10 teachers or professors who had been fired or put on leave. Which, you recall, was Kirk’s legacy. Having professor’s lists: he would send his followers to harass for indoctrinating people to be liberal. All this & not one of them taught Tyler. 😶
Look at this shit though. A 6 YEAR OLD WITH A GUN OUT AT HALLOWEEN?!
What makes you say their brains are broken? We see that the problem is way worse than originally assumed and there is no easy solution because half of the nation is in a cult.
Did you read the thread? This was just about the way mainstream media misrepresented who's to blame for Kirk's death. That includes the idea that liberals caused it through violent rhetoric and left wing professors and teachers radicalized our kids.
Every time someone attacks me and uses "Your generation" type argument, I can't help but to chuckle when Gen A will do it to them. I mean, you are right about most of this, the older SOME people get, the more close minded THEY become. But I'm glad you are not implicating every Gen Xer.
I’m not implicating ANY generation. This is a post about MY FRIENDS. These are people I care about. They walked out of a conversation so upset because this week has overwhelmed them to their core. They’re weary AF. I simply blamed the media for exhausting them for ratings.
Did you read the thread?
I Apologize. I'm a cat. We don't read threads, we play with them.
Melissa, Bomer here. I get it. I was raised on intellectual discussions about why "It can't happen here" could... Those ended decades ago. Right when the Kirks and Fuentes generation was born. The rise of Fox became their food. Digested... We're living the results, today.
F•ckin’ old guy here. I remember watching Wally George on a local access channel and while he had a following he was too clownish to take seriously even among conservatives. Fast forward and Limbaugh and his clones dominated AM radio but unlike Wally George people took them seriously.
However, after being initiated by Wally George, Rush Limbaugh and his innumerable wannabes I became pretty well versed with right wing grievance politics so I wasn’t surprised when it turned out that a right wing white nationalist..
… was responsible for bombing the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building…
… or while working with a white supremacist during Obama’s first term that there was a segment of the population that was extremely engaged in their revenge and murder fantasies.
While some of the terminologies have changed over the years the broader themes and conspiracy theories haven’t.
…
That's very interesting. You're saying the pattern remains, and they just recycle the scapegoats and grievances.
Absolutely. Even The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was based on pre-existing books that fed on age old prejudices and conspiracies. The Turner Diaries that inspired Timothy McVeigh were referenced by the Proud Boys leading up to January 6th.
Shooters as well take fascination with other shooters and serial killers. The Colorado shooter the day of Kirk’s shooting wore a WRATH shirt as an homage to Columbine’s shooters. That’s an echo 26 years later, in the same county.
Reactionaries haven't had a new idea since 1789, and that idea was "How dare you?"
I think when news became a ratings machine. When propaganda became the tool for people to make money... that's when it became an acceptable norm for people to grift on hate. I still think the immorality of capitalism is more to blame for our crisis than Christian fundamentalism.
Greed... Feeds the belly, wallet and soul.
I try to avoid corporate media now - get a lot of news from this platform, and certain YouTube commentators whose coverage i trust and respect. But for sure different segments of the population experience the world in very different ways…
We're all fractured into different media ecosystems... living out completely alternate realities. Even when I pop into other forums it's like walking into a different country's airport. "Why is everything so different?" Takes some adjustment.
GenX here. I don‘t watch any television news And haven’t for a long time. I can’t imagine how people who have those shows on all day can function. MSM is currently garbage, but they are especially out of their depth with this whole CK thing. Some people have a hard time listening to and learning
from younger people. It is at least something that I have experienced anecdotally. My kids understood those memes immediately and I listened and looked it all up. The internet is a different thing for younger generations.
Agreed. MSM can barely speak correctly about what tariffs are and their fallout. Now they have to explain Groyper Wars Spotify Playlists with Bella Ciao on it? And memes that say, "If you read this you're gay." Which btw, I took to mean he intended to shoot gay people. Not that he's pro LGBT.
100%. And they’re not communicating with anyone who understands meme language to be able to report on it.
I am well over 50 and grew up w mainstream media, even trusting it. I cannot imagine trusting it now. I live an online-news life. Not an online life, thank god
I use Talking Points Memo, Just Security, Raw Story (carefully), The New Republic and substack authors like Vladeck and The Bulwark. Also Garret Graff
Thanks for the list!!
What are your go-to sources? I do a lot of AP for updates throughout the day. And Heather Cox Richardson & Joyce Vance to dive deeper into the complexity of Trump's administration.
I do the same but recently I have been relying more on foreign news sources. I trust The Guardian and BBC far more than CNN or MSNBC these days.
Even the BBC has become a platform for the racist sentiments on show here in the UK, and suddenly everyone here that never heard of Kirk before thinks he's some sort of holy martyr to the cause of nationalism
Headlines on radio6 "The conservatives have written a letter to the govt" as they try to keep up pressure on starmer. So THIS is the headline Job done eh Fucking disgraceful bias non stop
Bias Benefits for Conservatives
The agenda is so thick in America. You know you live in a propaganda system when everybody who is tasked with telling you the news has an agenda for themselves. Nobody cares about the truth. They’re all in it for another reason. To wade through the propaganda & find something real is exhausting.
WSJ broke me last week. It reported rumor as fact. Their editorials are painful, but the news folks know how to keep opinion out of a story. And now I can’t trust them either.
That was disappointing, considering they broke the story on the Epstein Birthday Card. It was a huge blow when it was released this week. Kirk's death happened just a couple of days later, knocking the story out. All of this McCarythism over who's sad over Kirk is to KEEP focus off Epstein.
Good
On purpose
Nick Fuentes is a person Gen X & Boomers can't process. After 1. MAGA 2. Project 2025 3. Neo-Reactionaries 4. Christian Nationalism 5. & Charlie Kirk... 6. The Groypers is the straw that broke the camel's back. They've reached the absolute hilt of processing power & I think the media did this.🧵
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. I'm a Boomer and a child of Holocaust survivors, and I don't think the phenomenon of Nick Fuentes and the incel-Groypers is brain-breaking. What to do about it, is another question.
Groypers isn't difficult to understand. IF they hadn’t shared 10,000 misleading details about this case, then the truth would be easy to talk about. It’s merely the way the Media continually deflects onto distracting & even overwhelming side stories that muddies the convo. Here’s a thread:
If anything I feel brain broke with the suggestion that I can’t process what’s happening
💯
Mainstream Media plays by old rules in a new world & heaps on stress & drama that isn't relevant to this moment. They blame the wrong groups & milk the wrong causes for ratings. Never helping Americans process the real psychology at play here. This is why 2025 is so overwhelming & volatile. 🧵
Meanwhile, these fringe ideologies fostered underground are becoming powerful enough to influence mainstream America. Which forces us to deal with the ugly reality of them. EVEN if we can't. I watched 1.5 hours of Nick Fuentes post-Kirk & I can't even share it with people bc they're so broken.🧵
The USA is in free fall
One thing I didn't foresee was that in a right-wing ecosystem that can NEVER take responsibility for its own flaws... As they fracture & fold in on their own rivalries & grapple with their own violent base - they won't be able to process it either. They'll blame the left. Because they have to. 🧵
They will blame the left, because they always do
Take for example the attack on professors & teachers, as a possible influence on Tyler Robinson. He engraved MEMES into his bullets! There is no person under 40 who would take that as a sign that he was radicalized by Gender & Women's Studies 101. In a UT technical college! That's 4-chan! 🧵
If this was someone radicalised & turned into a raging left wing ideologue as we're meant to believe, you might imagine he would've made more effort into laying out his justifications for killing someone than engraving internet memes & references to Helldivers 2 onto bullet casings.
I have been thinking that all day. Shooters use symbols to communicate with the people who they identify with. The people who do understand it, didn't need to have it explained to them. Most of us still don't understand it. Therefore he wasn't communicating with us.
But what strikes me as even more interesting is that SMs, 4chan, & the alt-right ecosystem have been radicalizing young men for 15+ yrs. MSM only ever began truly questioning WHY did THIS young man snap?... because the victim was someone important. It never mattered before then. 🧵
For those of us who have been screaming that shooters are 99% white teenage boys radicalized by the internet - for 20 years... it's like - where is this September 2025 revelation coming from? To the Christians & conservatives, it never mattered UNTIL Charlie Kirk was victimized by it. 🧵
Maybe it matters to understand where my generation is coming from, maybe it’s more important to just keep informing us of this new world. Speaking only for myself, I grew up on a different world and when I explain that world to my young co-workers, they are amazed and bewildered.
I’m bewildered by the fact that I seem to be the first adult in their lives who has ever bothered to describe a world that exists now only in movies and tv shows. Point is, many boomers can run a computer but it’s not our first “language”. My kids were born and raised in the digital age;
The internet and how all this works, the wonks, computer nerds, groypers, 4chan and all the rest you refer to above, is their first language. There are myriad other reasons, perhaps for later. Prescription: take our hand, as a few others of several generations on Bluesky do, and educate us.
P.S. This is a fantastic breakdown of Meme "Black Pill Accelerationism." This completely explains why Groypers hated Kirk and what kind of fatalistic edgelord world Tyler might have been wrapped up in. Especially the relevance of the memes. Incredibly succinct wrap-up of the perpetually online.
Really informative breakdown. Ty
Must see, thank you very much !
Called the McCarthyism! You see the difference between Cancel Culture and McCarythism was that Cancel Culture came across spontaneous speech & then ruined their lives. While McCarythism was actually investigating, seeking out, witch hunting communism systematically. Innocent people weren't safe.
Turn off the media, cause "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." - Malcolm X
Joe McCarthy`s personal attorney (Roy Cohn) was also a young Resident Rump`s lawyer AND mentor too.
thanks
FASCINATING… now where’s the plug?!
I’m glad I read/watch folks who track the alt-right. When this happened I suspected an internal feud. But, when I try to explain this alt-right culture to my husband, friends, family etc they can’t process it. To them the “fascist” meme was straightforward from their understanding. The guy is lefty.
Which is an incorrect interpretation. The only person who seemed to get it was my 70 yo dad. He’s always been good at adapting to new info. But you’re right, we are in a tough spot as a society. Bc if people can’t understand the problem then how do we fix it? And if the right blames only the left,
At some point people need to draw upon what they know to be right and not right, and not what they are told to think. I believe that most people know how to do this but have been manipulated to believe that bad alternatives deserve consideration. As a boomer, I am crystal clear about what I see.
I am Gen X. My friends have been worried about their teenaged sons because they are targeted by this, and have been for awhile. I am familiar with Charlie and Nick and I know how Qanon started so it’s not that far of a leap honestly. But it does break my brain that this is where we are.
I’m not sure if you’re alerted of the entire thread, but I was responding to your comment as well. 👇 But another thing that makes sense the least about many of these explanations is that they don’t apply to Mormon Utah, where I lived for 5 years. Too many people don’t understand Mormons.
Their internal problems will only worsen to the detriment of us all. 😞
Boomer’s first brainrot
I can’t tell you how many times the internet broke my brain this year. But I persist, because… I’m 35 and I’m going to have to be dealing with this America for 35 more years. Unless I bail and move to the French Caribbean. Then I just have to deal with hurricanes.
Just FYI, hurricanes can be really really bad but I hear you.
I know. We had 3 last year. I live in Coastal Georgia. Only 2 hit our city. Debbie was a tropical storm but stayed hovering over us for days and caused weeks of flooding. Helene had 80mph winds when it passed us. Left quickly.
The only thing that’s left is to for the media to convince Boomers that Groypers are “radical left pro-trans communist radicals” and we can proceed with the apocalypse 👍
The intent of such constant "bad news" is to overwhelm us. It's been used for generations, however, the social media outlets have fanned the flames & made the ingestion happen so quickly that we are choking on their vomit.
Nice anecdote. But there are plenty of others. Who can.
Great to hear it!
💯 The huge reaction from the over-50 crowd in my world this week didn’t make any sense, like something doesn’t add up. Some kind of consciousness shift happened but I can’t quite identify it.
Thank you for saying that! The only thing I could imagine is that this week has been kind of like McCarthyism. The purge. The right-wing are using this as the legitimization for an extermination of the left. Christian fundamentalists are using this crisis event as a sign from God. Small thread:
Exactly. And the older crowd are interpreting the events as Kirk+Tyler but no Fuentes, like the third leg of the stool is missing.
The bizarre thing is that nobody on the right ever analyzed the motives of a school shooter before this week. They just moved on - completely disinterested in why a young man would suddenly commit a heinous act of violence. They’ve shown no interest in the radicalization of the 16 yr old from CO.
Which is why I wrote this, this morning. They’re using their personal trauma & grief to hunt down the enemies who caused Kirk’s death. But vengeance wasn’t what they encouraged any single previous family to have when their loved ones were lost in school shootings. They claimed prayer was enough.
Great analysis!
Or perhaps it is just that we are totally disgusted by everything and tired of arguing about it and trying to find some good in the world instead of all the racist, misogynist, hateful bullshit being spewed. THAT is how I am feeling.
One of my friends actually texted me that. I sent her a video explaining what Groypers were and she thought it was an actual video of Nick Fuentes. Without opening it, she said, "I can't watch anymore hateful things." This seedy underbelly is very demoralizing.
Not me. I’m going out swinging.
😄
IMO Gen X has difficulty processing it all b/c we were raised by boomers & taught garbage like "the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell!" But nothing about being engaged w/ politics. Also doesn't help having the likes of Josh Hawley in Congress saying 1 thing & voting the exact opposite.
None of us were taught how to understand this by our parents or our classrooms, for sure. It's really the self-learning via podcasts, historians online, and bits and pieces of essays that we can make sense of this disaster. I've been binging like crazy to try to understand all of this.
Social Media is another rabbit hole distortion machine that is truly warping young people in ways I'm not even aware of. Charlie was 4 years younger than me and it feels like he came from an entirely different cultural machine. But "perpetually online" people understand Groyper better than me.
this boomer is full on - I dont watch MSM either tho.
😂
I've accelerated my plans to go to Mexico and set up a resistance radio station, then on to South America where I can buy a house and live a life in which my brain isn't snorting cortisol every 30 seconds
The day Kirk died, (& Fox declared war on liberals) my 65 year old friends were texting me "We're asking our kids to move to Europe with us." Their grandkids are the only reason they're still here.
I'm fortunate to have savings. So far, there aren't a whole lot of restrictions on moving money out of the country
Lucky!!
Very much so. Unfortunate enough to have lived in Colombia and mexico, so I speak both dialects of Spanish
Amazing! There was a time when I wanted to live in Colombia. I love the rainforests. Costa Rica was beautiful too, but for some reason I liked Colombia’s forests more. Hated Peru’s deserts though.
Peru was hard living. I was up in the mountains for about 4 months and had a job where I would write down messages and then I paid a kid to hike up the mountain to the radio station so that they could broadcast, and then write down the messages that came in and deliver them to the recipients
Peru was the toughest trip I’ve taken outside the U.S. - with the exception of Russia. Machu Picchu was beautiful though. Lake Titicaca was freezing cold. Haven’t been to Mexico but my partner is Mexican, so I’d have a personal guide to find the right place for us.
I definitely want to go back to Mexico and visit the Yucatan peninsula and the Mayan ruins. I've been quite fascinated by the influx of Mayan language and culture in the United States based on immigration from Guatemala and Honduras primarily. Chiapas is stunning
It sure would beat sitting in America doomscrolling.
Columbia's gorgeous but when I was there was during the height of the Norco wars. It was extremely dangerous and there were communist gorillas in the jungles kidnapping people
Mexico is great at that time, but I would not live in Western Mexico right now because there are too many bullets flying around
Not *unfortunate. It was a great learning experience. I had a heart procedure done on Friday and apparently the anesthesia is not quite out of my body 🤣
OPSEC
All MSM is corporate media; all corporate media is conservative. All MSM is conservative.
Succinct and true! I think part of it is that corporate media can be sued left right and center. They actually don’t have free speech. While poor people are rarely sued. What would be the point? So the media is clamping their mouthes shut and protecting themselves at the cost of democracy.
Threatening lawsuits has been a Trump technique forever. The thing is media giants have the money and lawyers they just need to have the backbone and believe with truth on their side justice will ultimately prevail.
Me trying to explain what a groyper was to my MIL on a long distance call was excruciating.
This boomer for sure. I’ve been trying hard to stay calm and focused but that Kilmeade man shocked me so badly I think he broke my brain. I’ve been feeling frozen just staring out the window for most of the weekend. It was the way his eyes twinkled. He looked so pleased with himself.
That gaslighting broke my brain too. These people are sitting there trying to shame liberals for not crying over Kirk’s death. They’re implying that a lack of sadness actually compels people to commit violence. (NO IT DOESN’T) & yet, that guy encourages lethal injection & that isn’t violence?
One thing I’ve been wanting to write about is how these people can’t comprehend what violence truly is. They claim that our laughter about Kirk's death is a form of violence. But they harass people, send death threats, send bomb threats, doxx people - and none of those are violent acts? Bro…
Why are you trying to get your point past fascists? Do u think they're gonna listen to reason and agree with you? I'm very happy with CK's death. I hope all fascists kill each other. The problem will solve itself
I’m here, aren’t I?
Indeed, we are here
Where MAGA isn’t.
Well, now it's time to brag. My country's authoritarian ex president is facing jail time and I'm really happy about it.
I’m happy for you too. My neighbors are Brazilian. Too bad they live here, now, where we let people get away with coups.
Go birds, fuck ice and free Palestine!
My FAVORITE show ever That's 70 show! I have all the dvds. "And my foot is about to kick your ass!"
I wish I could have the personality of Red Foreman. He doesn't have to hold back at all. Doesn't care what anybody thinks of him. Eric mostly just looks stunned. Nobody really talks back.
Well I'm bald, I'm old like him, and do not care much about what others think of me so... I'm ALMOST there! I guess i'm a dumb ass! 😂😂😂
This! I’ve been so confused by this. Friends going on about the left and violence. They are equating just protests, standing on the sidewalk with signs, violence (but of course pp protesters not 🙃) or yelling at people violence. The best is any criticism =violence.
I've protested Trump 20 times in the past 10 years & I'll tell you, not only was every protest peaceful. No distruction of property... But Non-violence was the mantra of organizers. Announced over the microphone. Anyone trying to gaslight us into believing we encouraged violence is loony tunes.
I mean: these are thugs violently kidnapping people off the streets and taking pleasure in separating families and causing pain. They love stockpiling AK-47s & mock black tragedies from police violence. But WE’VE radicalized them to go off the deep end and assassinate people? It breaks the brain.
I wrote this, this morning to talk about just ONE of the hypocrisies I’ve witnessed this week. Were I to write essays for all of them I’d have an entire blog filled to the brim with their illogical inconsistencies. They’re so angry AT US. So sure we’re the evil scourge of America. It’s exhausting.
Among the GOP base are many people who desperately want to believe they are good & decent, that they haven't been seduced by twisted versions of patriotism & faith. But the example of democrats is a constant reminder to the contrary. And so they must revile & remove them from civil discourse.
That is an interesting observation! Someone who left the alt-right said that MAGA was experiencing for the first time how it feels to be in pain from a national event & have the other side laugh at that pain. But it reminds them of the 100 times they did it. And now they see how hurtful it was.
It's time to get the police involved and start suing the shit out of these unhinged losers
Anyone that needs a media spin to tell them how they should feel about anything in 2025 is well & truly lost at this point.
I agree. But I think for the older generation, it’s not a media spin. They grew up in a world where the media was trustworthy. I, personally, grew up in a world where media was shit. My teacher shared articles about Fox News bias when I was in high school. I’ve only known propaganda.
Fair point - I live in Asia & propaganda from state owned media dictates everything, for most people it's all the news there is. It was jarring to me in 2014, but now it's just normal, as a lot of the world is following the same pattern now..
I'm gen X by the way, in case it matters 😆
It does not. Contrary to the assumptions made in comments to this post, I'm not ageist. Actually, my partner is Gen X, & most of our friends are 65-75. Because of the area we live in. But the friends who seemed most affected by this week were those who had been paying the most attention to MSM.
I agree, people of all ages are vulnerable - I do feel older folk & children are most at risk of a lot of the dangers of modern media, be it TV or online. There's responsibilities for families to keep tabs & help intervene I think. My 7yr old comes home from school with some wild things in his head😕
Social Media hit my high school in 2005. MySpace. YouTube. But nobody really had cellphones. So you had to be on a computer to do it. I didn't have a cellphone until after I was out of high school and didn't have a FB until after that. Now... kids' whole world is shaped by these virtual worlds.
Yep.. brainrot. Being a parent feels like a non stop existential crisis, & the internet is only part of it 😨