Bad news? Oh, yeah, it’s everywhere. Nothing is fair and everything feels fake, bag actors get away with all the vile things and good people are getting punted under buses en masse. It’s the hottest year on record and the coldest year for the rest of your life, and it’s not you, it’s the shareholders. Here’s a sympathy card made with AI featuring Jesus playing beach volleyball while sporting four pairs of gleaming, hairless nipples.
Cool, right?
And we’re getting told to handle all those horrors like this:
1
We’re told to calm down. Don’t. Your feelings are valid.
2
We’re encouraged to just roll with it, to somehow merge all the indignities seamlessly into our identities.
3
We’re encouraged to be positive. Good vibes only! Live, laugh, love. Deny, repress, repeat. Amen.
4
We’re persuaded to be numb instead of dangerous, otherwise business as usual is over—and then what will the shareholders think!?
5
We’re encouraged to ruminate instead of activate. But nobody really want you to DO anything. Raise awareness, not armies!
6
We’re shown many ads for alcohol and sports betting and many other things we can’t afford, like biodiversity and prescription drugs.
7
We won’t hear about what happened in a few, short days, and we’ll be expected to act as if it never happened even sooner.
8
We’re trained to excuse the inexcusable in order to remain professional.
9
We’re offered socially acceptable ways of undertaking small acts of kindness while large acts of cruelty go culturally ignored.
10
We’re supposed to be grateful that we get to live the dream, so we mow the lawn while trying not to think about all the things that are eating us alive.
The more we minimize what we feel, the worse off we all are. Grief can’t be good if it’s not allowed to be felt. <3