Depressing Takes From Bluesky

Scrolling the "Discover Feed" on Bluesky can become a real time suck.  It brings up pretty much random posts, many of which do not interest me and many of which involve showing cats.  And sometimes it gets overwhelmed with Indonesians or K-Pop jerks until you figure out how to mute them.

One day in July I saw this post based on a Simpsons episode from long ago.  The episode is a flashback to when Maggie was born.  Homer and Marge were finally out of debt and so he quits the power plant in spectacular fashion to go work at the local bowling alley.  He finds actual job satisfaction there for the first time ever.  But then Flanders reveals that Marge is pregnant and soon Homer realizes he has to go literally crawling back to Mr. Burns for his old job.  As a punishment, Burns puts up a sign saying Homer will be there forever.  Homer uses pictures of Maggie to customize the sign to say, "Do It For Her."

So the basic premise of the episode is that Homer sacrifices his personal happiness for his family.  What did someone glean from all this:

A job with decent money, benefits, and stability is great--even if it's super boring and your boss (and his toady) try to make your every day there a living hell.  Wow, you really nailed it!

And you see where someone else says "dream jobs are a joke." And ends with, "just don't lay me off again!"  Basically all these people care about is money and stability.  They almost entirely miss the point about finding job satisfaction.  And the second one is probably willing to do anything the boss wants to keep her precious stability.  

God, it's so depressing to think people who presumably aren't as old as me are this broken by the world.

Though it's a little hypocritical on my part since I didn't study creative writing (my dream job) in college because I knew there was little chance of being able to support myself on it.  And, hey, I was right!  Still, ebooks have let me have a little taste of that as a "side hustle."

 In the thread was also this comment:

So, OK, seriously, you'd rather live in a zoo than in the real world?  Because that's basically what The Truman Show was:  a zoo.  Only he couldn't see the bars.  I suppose the way these people think is the same way viewers of the show thought:  he has a house, wife, job, etc so what's the problem?  I mean other than everyone around him (including his wife) is fake and occasionally we have to traumatize him to keep him from escaping or to keep anyone from telling him the truth.  Isn't it better to live in a nice, cozy cage where everything is provided than to make your own way in the scary real world?

It's again pretty depressing to see people are so broken inside that they agree with this.  That what they really want is to live in a zoo.  What the hell is wrong with you?  Zoos are good for endangered animals (or maybe soon-to-be endangered) so dipshit humans can't kill them all off like dodo birds or nearly the bison, but they're not supposed to be for humans.

I suppose people do this all the time on reality TV shows, letting themselves be filmed and doing all this unscripted (ha ha) drama for the cameras.  At least that's so they can maybe win a prize and get slightly famous for fifteen minutes.  Truman didn't get any money and wasn't even aware he was famous.  If that's what your idea of a great life is, I think it's pretty shitty because none of it is real.  Your entire life would be scripted and controlled by someone else.  To some extent maybe all of our lives are scripted and controlled by others but at least we have some choices.

These people all seem like good candidates for one of Offutt's DOOM! posts.  They just make me sad and a little depressed.  What happened to the pioneering spirit that let us slaughter trees, animals, and Native Americans to go from sea to shining sea?  How are we ever going to get to Mars or anywhere else if we're just a bunch of scared rabbits hiding in our warrens?  I guess hope some douchebag billionaire will enslave some of these rabbits to force them to colonize other parts of the Solar System.  There's a lot of stability in that--unless your suit starts leaking or something.

It's worth noting really none of these rabbits had the guts to fight back to make it a flame war.  Pathetic.