Year of the Rat #9: Assburgers for EVERYBODY!

[Cainad (dec.)]

Found it! ---> ∑

Wait, never mind...

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Found it! ---> ∑

Wait, never mind...

How did you generate a sigma?

[Jenne]

Sure we are--it's called "suburbia."  Why know your neighbors when the assholes on Desperate Housewives are so much more "interesting"?

No, we're equipped, we just got lazy.  B00b t00b feeds the lazetrain.  If you know who you're living next to, you might have to care.  Caring means sharing.  And if it's all for me and none for you...that equation doesn't work right.

When you start dismissing everyone you meet on the street, how long does it take before you start dismissing people you might get to know, but don't have the energy to?  To keep to yourself, stay within your own circle of friends, never offer to help anyone out.  Alienation piled on alienation.

Plus the internet means people get the simulation of human contact and never have to learn to deal wtih face to face social interaction.

I don't think the alienation means you can't handle humanity--it means you're too lazy to fuck with the reality that IS humanity.  We have already dismissed people we know, we have gone from living as huge multigenerational units to not-quite-two generational ones.  The nucleus is now just that--single-celled.  Why?  Because we can afford it. 

It's not that we are unable to KNOW everyone and be involved with them--it's that we don't have to.  We no longer need to talk to a real person to get anything done, we no longer have to step outside our doors to go anywhere.  We simulate reality because why bother actually living it and getting messy?  Stay clean!  Smell fresh!  Don't sully yourself with the endometrium of life.

Instead, sterlize and neutralize and then seal it in ziploc.

Because in the WallyWorld of tv, everything stays neat and tidy.  And you can ignore and forget and push it all behind and away.

When we lived in villages, we knew everyone--knew when they took a shit and what it looked like and how it smelled.  We lived shorter, dirtier lives.  (What we'd call organic, I guess, in our modern lingo...)  But a whole village was a huge-ass family, really, an organism.

And now we've distilled ourselves so minutely, we don't touch anything we don't want to, smell anything we don't want to, taste anything we don't want to. 

So I don't think it has to do with inability, or what we're "equipped" for--I think it has to do with control, tidiness, and laziness. 

[Jenne]

It's a normal variation, the reason it's "more common" is that there are more people.  Also that sort of mental illness is no longer attached with the kind of social stigma that prevents people from blabbing about their problems all over the place. 

Well, and people are "better" at diagnosing now.  Or, rather, rare diagnoses are understood better and so are attributed more often as the cause.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Found it! ---> ∑

Wait, never mind...

How did you generate a sigma?

We Macfags have a few secret mahdjiqual tricks.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Found it! ---> ∑

Wait, never mind...

How did you generate a sigma?

We Macfags have a few secret mahdjiqual tricks.

Oh, you're a stinking Mac heretic.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

 

[tyrannosaurus vex]

A lot of these disorders are associated with physical, structural differences from 'healthy' people.  So while the current era is certainly unique, I'm not prepared to claim it is actually causing any of them.

"Physical, structural differences" are evidence that TV has so saturated our gene pool that our brains are now adapting. New generations are already being born with large cavities in their brain, "naturally" designed to be reservoirs where puddles of stupid can collect.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Found it! ---> ∑

Wait, never mind...

How did you generate a sigma?

We Macfags have a few secret mahdjiqual tricks.

Oh, you're a stinking Mac heretic.

Born and bred

[BADGE OF HONOR]

Jenne I agree except I would replace tv with internet.  Internet is false interaction and this is how we get furries.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

It's a normal variation, the reason it's "more common" is that there are more people.

But that makes no logical sense, taken literally. If 10% of people have red hair, red hair does not become more common as a proportion of the population when the population increases. It stays at 10%.

[BADGE OF HONOR]

It's a normal variation, the reason it's "more common" is that there are more people.

But that makes no logical sense, taken literally. If 10% of people have red hair, red hair does not become more common as a proportion of the population when the population increases. It stays at 10%.

10% of 10 people = 1 person
10% of 100 people = 10 people
etc etc

The larger the population, the more people who have x problem.  I have no idea whether there's been a change in the rate of occurence over time, but if every single person who has, say, Aspbergers can't shut up about their problems, that adds up to a lot of people very quickly.  Especially on the internet where there is no physical limit to the population.

I am trying very hard not to talk out of my ass here, hope I'm being understood. 

[Raphaella]

A lot of these disorders are associated with physical, structural differences from 'healthy' people.  So while the current era is certainly unique, I'm not prepared to claim it is actually causing any of them.

"Physical, structural differences" are evidence that TV has so saturated our gene pool that our brains are now adapting. New generations are already being born with large cavities in their brain, "naturally" designed to be reservoirs where puddles of stupid can collect.

Also one could take into account the behaviors that are learned from watching the TV. If a child sits indoors all day watching the tube, even 'wholesome' Disney programing, they tend to pick up strange social behaviors that otherwize would not occur if they were interacting with other, real children.

[Darth Cupcake]

A)
B) Holy shit TV is so fucking evil. It idealizes dramatization of everything, which encourages people to have problems (ADD, bipolar, whatever) so that they can complain about how hard it is, and people will prop them up, and every minute of their life will be a montage from the OC where the fragile beautiful girl gets loved despite her emotional difficulties (nevermind that the intelligent, emotionally well-adapted but plain looking girl will remain the outcast) and the bad ass boy with severe inabilities to function is the one that gets mad laid. (At least, this is what I think--they keep playing the OC at my gym, but I am listening to music, so I just see but don't hear; it's kind of terrifying.) And we worship and obsessively watch the downfall of celebrities through drugs and mental breakdowns, just feeding this sick machine of GLAMORIZING the idea of BEING FUCKED UP.
C) high fructose corn syrup is one of the most evil things that exists, besides TV.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

It's a normal variation, the reason it's "more common" is that there are more people.

But that makes no logical sense, taken literally. If 10% of people have red hair, red hair does not become more common as a proportion of the population when the population increases. It stays at 10%.

10% of 10 people = 1 person
10% of 100 people = 10 people
etc etc

The larger the population, the more people who have x problem.  I have no idea whether there's been a change in the rate of occurence over time, but if every single person who has, say, Aspbergers can't shut up about their problems, that adds up to a lot of people very quickly.  Especially on the internet where there is no physical limit to the population.

I am trying very hard not to talk out of my ass here, hope I'm being understood. 

That's more people, not a higher rate of occurrence. "More common" = "higher rate of occurrence".

No matter how many more people there are in the world, unless the rate of occurrence changes, something cannot become "more common".