After years of bullshit, corruption and nepotism, we as a society (or a critical mass of it) accepted that lies and bullshit is a part of life.

I really think that’s what is going on here, we filled our reality with contradictions and things that drive us crazy, now a large percentage of the population are okay listening to inefficient guessing machines.

Seriously, the fact that hallucinations didn’t kill the hype is, imo, a hallmark of being in a post truth era.

This is not the mindset that made computers and the Internet. Feels more like late stage Rome.

Late stage western Rome was kinda fine, they even had Christianity kinda receding (Goths and Vandals were far more pious Christians, while in Rome there was plenty of support for restoring the old state religion). What really killed them was intrigue and inability to hold the territory militarily.

Late stage eastern Rome can be divided into a few different long periods. If we mean after being crusaded, then it was shattered and trying to recombine into something useful, eventually finished by Ottomans. If we mean before - well, there was the long period of Seljuk conquest of Anatolia, initially a result of the empire being weakened by conquests against its buffer states and allies which didn't really have to be conquered. But in any case it's probable that the same thing would happen, the Seljuk armies of the initial invasion time are described as quite numerous, and they had a few military innovations east Romans didn't have.

That would happen with machine-generated texts in my childhood (00s) as well.

I think the propagandized (by Apple and many other companies, but also just by stupid reductions) idea of "invention" is why they think that.

They've been literally taught that the people making "inventions" are always "rebels" who disregard existing knowledge.

It's especially funny that in the areas more familiar to them they are all for authority even when it's suicidal madness.

It's harmful when you make yourself believe that a machine comfortable to use, with state-of-the-art electronics with tech processes hardly achievable in many places on the planet, advertised and visually designed to please, sold on scale big enough to make it worth it, - that this is a result of some rebellion.

Rebellions don't look like that. This is how gifts from the emperor of the sun from his forbidden palace look. They are nice too, but nothing in common with rebellions, like at all.

Like a cargo cult.

I think it's actually related in essence to cargo cults - first European empires (or one can even call it one big empire) traded important resources and slaves for colored glass, then for nice clothes, then for weapons, and eventually they started trading them for the actual meat of their culture, creating colonial elites and, in their perception, spreading the empire to only good effect. If the colonial savages only learned muskets, and started to produce muskets, it's both no income and danger, but if you make them more integrated and dependent, they are not going to shoot at you.

So. Marx happens. Marx is notoriously industrialist in focus and in his model colonies are just reduced to some black box. That's exactly why Marxist and derived ideas became so popular in former colonies and dependent countries, they could draw in place of that black box whatever they wanted, and yet have a common internationalist ideological family, allowing for some alliances and understanding. There was a bridge in the form of Russia - industrialist Marxism mixed with various agrarian ideologies and created the Bolshevik one, of using peasantry to create a "socialist" regime first, and then industrialize, sort of with an inferiority complex. For ex-colonies and dependent lands, though, the agrarian part was the most important one, that allowed them to culturally bond with the imperial core through anti-imperial ideology that gave them freedom to do whatever they want.

Then during the Cold War the empire reformed itself, and it sort of in appearances chose a middle ground. It both internalized some of the Marxist emotion and imagery, and adjusted the imperial mechanism for global trade and exchange. It also used the split between USSR and China. That's how it defeated the USSR (though mostly USSR defeated itself).

So - one of the ways to not turn this iteration of global trade and exchange into yet another spread of power to dependent world was, I think, this kind of centralization and heavy propaganda. The glossy, 00s-style portrayal of "the western world" like one big Disneyland entertainment park, with a "rebel" being able to change it all and make some of that entertainment too.

It simply eventually spread back because that always happens.

#1 Why the hell did I write that, #2 it's not some conspiracy theory, I think most of that was happening naturally, not devised by some evil conglomerate of elites.

Ah, the sleepy salt

Took too much Natrium Bruhmide

Oh fun! When Americans lose their healthcare I expect these kind of stories to rise.

This is literally the Dunning-Kruger effect in action - people can't evaluate the quality of AI responses in domains where they lack the knowledge to spot the bs.

I think he meant later stage westen Rome before the Gothic/Vandals/Longobardic tribes conquered it. A paper tiger entirely convinced of is own superiority whilst their military power and world control slowly dwindled.

So basically what you summed up in a sentence. The eastern Roman and Seljuks need not have been brought into this, I think.

Well, lacking troops due to big demographic and agricultural changes outside your control is not the same as being a paper tiger. Their internal turmoil coincided with a military threat.

Also western thalassocracies have been accused of being largely paper tigers a few times in their history, yet from Ottomans to Napoleon to German Empire to USSR no contenders managed to prove it.

OK, what matters is the OP's point on lies. I agree with that entirely. Lies brought the USSR down, and the same has unfortunately caught up with its Cold War adversaries. It just became visible a bit earlier that this state is not going into space colonizing everything and is not building a classless society with everyone equal and free. But 40 years later, I think, we can confidently say that neither is USA fulfilling its own "cold war promise". 30 years ago I suspect even many Americans sincerely believed that it is. Everyone thought it was one side's defeat, while in fact it was a draw with both sides failing.

“Lose their healthcare?”

What healthcare

if ChatGPT tells you to order restricted substances on the internet, probably don’t do that

so what am I supposed to do with my 3.8 tons of gunpowder now??

Mix it with water and finger paint on a 12’ by 12’ canvas

Then do a big art attack

Social networks are all about making and keeping people angry to make people come back

And I hate that it works. Every time I hop over to Reddit out of habit, the posts and comments are so irritating that it makes me want to refute them. But then I come to my senses because I remember that I've been banned and can't comment. Also, I don't want to contribute to that site in any way.

I'm slowly, but surely, weaning off that site.

I told my wife about this story and she told me that everything on the internet should be taken with a grain of salt. I told her this guy took a few too many grains.

Fun fact, mountain dew used to have bromine in it

Finally evolution back in effect