SoulGalaxyWolf

But wait, there’s more!

This last line hit hard for me, especially with this being a metaphor for social media and the internet. For me, all I had was my online world. My school treated me like a lolcow. I had no real friends. All I had was the friends from far, far away and the worlds we used to get together. So to compare this to the driving metaphor, it would be like only being able to travel with a car because there's no more busses. There used to be busses, but they recalled all of them.

They don't actually want us to have access to the breadth and width of knowledge available on the Internet.

They don't want us to know what's happening in Palestine.

They don't want us talking to people in Germany who maybe have complex feelings about the bombs that we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

They don't want us learning about them murdering women in broad daylight for no reason until it's several days or weeks later, if at all.

They want a return to when the US population in particular (and other countries to varying degrees of association and oppression) were easily propagandized with no recourse, because it was hard to find information that countered the propaganda.

That's why enshittification. That's why AI. That's why forcing ID for social media platforms. That's why banning children from said platforms. Kids, after all, are the easiest minds to mold. If you get them used to not having instant access to semi-accurate news and knowledge, then the rest of society will eventually follow.

Yes, Facebook and Twitter are havens for misinformation, but they're also breaking news sources with firsthand accounts.

Traditional media can be, to some extent or another, controlled.

Individuals can be controlled.

Even target demographics can be controlled, with careful applications of force, disinformation, and hype.

But whole populations of people, en masse, with a semi-reliable network for distributing their views and information?

That's a whole different monster, and it's a lot harder to control.

They've learned this since the advent of the iPhone. They watched Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, everything that happened during the beginning of the pandemic, and what's going on with the ICE protests.

(They've tried their own hand at it with Cambridge Analytica, right-wing and dem plants on Tiktok, several CIA ops, and a lot of creative uses of the emergency powers acts, but none are as successful as home-grown, free-range organic rage.)

The Internet is a useful tool but it's giving power (knowledge/information) to the people and they don't like that. It's inconvenient and annoying to the ruling class, for us peons to be properly educated, correctly informed, and righteously enraged.

Remember that they want you ignorant to what they do. Think of the world in terms of the control of information and this makes a lot of sense.

"it would be much better for both the environment and the kids' health if they spent more time walking, or taking the bus."

the problem is there isn't anywhere (in america) for kids TO walk. everything is miles and miles apart, so kids simply can't walk anywhere, and instead will spend more time isolated at home. or, if they want to take the bus, it means either

1) they take the school bus to and from school, and have no time to do after-school activities

2) they or their parents have to pay tons of money every year to take the city bus, which is unreliable, or impossible due to bus stops being far from houses

and before you say "oh, people care about kids! they'll put a stop to that!" no. no they won't. children are a marginalized class of people, and the danger associated with walking everywhere in america will just be another thing that gets added onto "the experience" of being under 18.

children will be hit by cars while walking, or commit suicide because they're isolated all summer away from everyone they know.

America is build centered around cars. I watched several videos about it, and I mean, I see it everywhere: sidewalks stop randomly, wide roads, crazy drivers, not easy to get on a bus.

It's why I miss going to college where you can walk everywhere to meet your needs: places for food and store convenience, and all that.

I also hate driving. I'd rather walk everywhere.

The main consensus of OP is the stupid laws not getting to the core of the problem, or they DO know, but they would ruin a capitalists agenda for profits and no, we can't have that!

It's connected to feeling guilty, because it seems like I spend like a week being okay, then having to disappear for more than just a month.

It also has to do with my creative burnout, too. If I can't create, or isn't obsessed with something, I don't have enough serotonin to deal with the stress of my social anxiety or just socializing in general (thanks, introversion)

I just want to tell people that I'd probably feel better with interacting indirectly (like them reading or I reading posts the other posted), but that feels wrong somehow 😮‍💨

I just want to describe myself to people as a cat who asks for pets, but then runs off like the hand burnt me somehow.

I recently discovered the japanese horror game Death Mark and I'm in love with the series and its characters! This fandom seriously needs more attention in my opinion. I'm happy I can contribute at least a little something to it.

A fanfiction called "The Burning Star" by MoonflowerSong (found on AO3) inspired me to draw this little comic. It's about a spirit of a young woman who died tragically in a fire, now haunting a theater and causing a lot of work accidents. Mashita is asked to investigate the case and naturally drags Yashiki into it.

The scene I've drawn doesn't appear in the fanfiction but rather is my imagination what could have happened in the setting of the story. While investigating the theater, Yashiki suddenly hears music through the hallway. He follows it and is lead to the stage where he finds an innocent looking piano... (I'm not a good writer but I hope my art is decent enough to convey my ideas...)

(No spoilers for the movie btw)

I wanna see more fanfics of the confirmation that he's been reading and studying all sorts of science books in order to open the portal.