...so I was drunk in rdrama/motte BotC server one day and promised to write up a post-level critique of the American middle class. Of course, the "project" kept getting bumped for the sake of far more important things, such as drinking joylessly while reposting telegram posts on shitty drama discord servers, this being a far less effort-intensive way to anger people. However, today I suddenly felt bored enough to actually remember my prior commitments, so here it is:
Lawns are fucking moronic. Just think about it - if you put like 20% of Cook County lawns together and combine all the land, money, and effort that goes into their maintenance into something actually useful - you'll have a fucking Disneyland with a Champs-Élysées annex. But nooooo, this isn't good enough, because that would be public and not MINE, MIIIINE, MOOOOOOOOOM, HE'S USING A TOY THAT'S MIIIIIINE!!!
Worse yet, if I were to personally decide "fuck this, this is retarded, I don't need this shit, there's a perfectly good park like three fucking blocks away - I'll just grow potatoes or something else actually productive on this plot" - a formless, permanently scowling creature - the dreaded bored HOA housewife - is sure to be crawling out of the woodwork in seconds, with a clipboard and her trademark Karen-y bangs. And she'll instantly begin to shrilly preach about how something so unbelievably ludicrous could not possibly allowed under any circumstances, because, god forbid, other Karens looking for a place to live will drive past and certainly think "waah, waah, this is proposterous! Potatoes?! I can't even! I need everything to be exactly uniform!", leading to her pride and joy, the land value of the lawn containing her shitty cardboard box with fancy beige siding - will go down. Un-acc-ept-ab-le!
This isn't really my main point - it's just an absolutely phenomenal illustration of why the American middle class is the worst fucking socioeconomic group to ever live. They are petit bourgeois to an extent (primarily in their deeply rooted insecurity and precarious status), but their sensibilities are worse than that - they see themselves as some sort of smaller-scale genteel manor lord, whose lifestyle they so artlessly attempt to ape - but they lack the taste, the resources, or the confidence to actually do that. So instead, they ape the simplest bit - a manicured lawn that said gentleman would use for playing cricket or going on mid-afternoon horseback rides or whatever the fuck it is that those inbred bastards do there - but without the space to realistically be usable for that or really anything else outside of serving as a glorified litter box for the family dog.
And yet they do see themselves as above everyone else. They are aggressive about it, too! “Look at me, I have made it, I have my lawn. Mine! MINE! I won't live in a pod like those disgusting city-dwellers, ugh!.. I'm a real American. This is real America! I like my Bud Light Coors Light, my pickup, my Jesus, and my Red Lobster! Oh, and my vastly superfluous rifle collection! My office plankton job makes me inherently superior to those dirty poors, who just lack my good, old-fashioned work ethic, or they’d be able to file regional shrinkage dynamics reports just like me and become productive members of society!”
To sum it up, the only real question is... Why are they like this? Who hurt them? What possible calamity has caused them to become these incredibly shallow, yet exceptionally vain shells of something vaguely resembling human form? Perhaps we’ll never know.
I am, however, interested in your guys’ opinions on the subject!
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Wow, it sure is convenient that your outgroup fucking sucks. I mean they are some real assholes. Some irredeemable excuses for human beings. How dare they converge on different solutions than you? And to do so while being both stupid and unattractive?
Seriously, you’re engaging in the lowest form of complaining. Why not ask one of the more interesting questions, like:
What would it take for me to empathize with these guys?
Cui bono? Whose incentives got us into this situation?
What might right-thinking people do to fix the mess?
Why am I anywhere near Cook County?
Edit: oh, right. I like my superfluous rifle collection. It’s a nice luxury with, in my case, no practical value. If you haven’t been shooting, you should try it at least once, especially if you have any affection for machinery.
Perhaps a lobotomy.
That is a very complicated issue with multiple factors. Partially it was a planned marketing campaign by a number of industries. Partially it was mass racist hysteria, and partially this hysteria was manufactured or at least aggravated by some well-meaning, but objectively misguided policies.
This is a very interesting discussion to have.
Well, on one hand it looked like it was slowly getting a bit better, with gentrification and expansion of public transport into something that isn't inherently a meme. But then 2020 events happened, each of which has done a lot to reverse the recent gains. Fixing it would require a number of centralized (not local) policies now.
Why wouldn't you be?
Honestly, I was planning on visiting this fall. My girlfriend is enamored with the idea of big-city life, renting and all. I think she’ll be disappointed, but it’s worth a look.
What is the current status of public transport? I’ve heard the hub-and-spoke trains plus the L makes for an effective enough solution. Is that not true?
You should see how long it takes for Dallas transit to get anywhere.
It depends on how close you are to the loop. If you're relatively near - yeah, public transport works great. If you're far away and not near the L station - getting places is going to be a struggle.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link