SOURCE - https://brightwanderer.tumblr.com/post/681806049845608448
Alt-text:
I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.
Like… if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you’re a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.
The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.
| just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success… I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.
Working in medicine, especially emergency medicine, I have to hold on to this kind of mindset very tightly. I see death frequently. I have had infants die in my care, and there is nothing I could have done to save them. I have had frail, miserable, elderly people in my care that have been kept alive through titanic and terrible measures, and their lives would have been so much better overall if they had been allowed to pass peacefully a few years earlier.
I saw another post yesterday about the old and infirm lying in nursing homes, staring at the ceiling, coding, then being dragged back to life by the heroic efforts of the staff and the ER…just to go back to staring at the ceiling for another year.
It seems counterintuitive as a physician (in training), particularly in emergency medicine where our whole job is to steal from the reaper, to advocate for sooner, more peaceful, more autonomous deaths. I have always been a proponent of physician-assisted suicide because I have seen too many people whose lives would have been better if they had been shorter.
saw another post yesterday about the old and infirm lying in nursing homes, staring at the ceiling, coding, then being dragged back to life by the heroic efforts of the staff and the ER…just to go back to staring at the ceiling for another year.
That explains a lot about the state of software these days.
I believe you are making a joke, but I realize that I should explain the terminology.
Someone “coding” means that their heart or breathing stopped and “calling a code” means getting all the relevant equipment and personnel to do CPR to make them not dead anymore. (CPR is quite literally necromancy and you cannot convince me otherwise.)
What feels weird is just how much of fictional media fights in favor of this concept. A hundred evil rich people wanting to live forever, not realizing the terrible consequences behind their immortality elixirs.
The immortality elixirs usually come with some amount of eternal youth or prevention of illness. If someone is healthy and able to interact with the world, that’s one thing. But someone with lung metastases or emphysema who is just lying there, drowning in their own lungs for however long…that is a life not worth living. If you could stay healthy forever, then being alive forever would just be a test of your tolerance for loss.
Very good perspective and this is actually similar to some of the ideas of Buddhism. Everything in this life is temporary, enjoy it while it lasts.
We also don’t need to see failure as a wholly bad thing. If your hypothetical business closes down because you couldn’t afford to keep it open, it DID fail, but if it ended up making your mental health better to not have all that stress, then it lead to a good thing.
Maybe I’m too realist and literal.
At the hill’s foot foot Frodo found Aragorn, standing still and silent as a tree; but in his hand was a small golden bloom of elanor, and a light was in his eyes. He was wrapped in some fair memory: and as Frodo looked at him he knew that he beheld things as they once had been in this same place. For the grim years were removed from the face of Aragorn, and he seemed clothed in white, a young lord tall and fair; and he spoke words in the Elvish tongue to one whom Frodo would not see. Arwen vanimelda, namarië! he said, and then he drew a breath, and returning out of his thought he looked at Frodo and smiled.
‘Here is the heart of Elvendom on earth,’ he said, ‘and here my heart dwells ever, unless there be a light beyond the dark roads that we still must tread, you and I. Come with me!’ And taking Frodo’s hand in his, he left the hill of Cerin Amroth and came there never again as living man.
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of The Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, last paragraph of Chapter VI: Lothlórien. I bolded the last 8 words.
Aragorn knows to let go, while deeply, profoundly, cherishing what was. Be like Aragorn.
This translates to tv shows too to prove the point.
Tv shows that only have a few seasons that are high quality start to finish are so much better than tv shows that go on and on and on and on.
For example, the simpsons, whilst an excellent show, should have ended many seasons ago. It’s 30 odd seasons in, and it’s stale. It’s a little funnier recently, but i dont think it will ever be as big as it was.
I would consider it a failed show now but a successful show back when it was popular.
So it’s pretty much proof of the point that forever is not the definition of success.
Open ended and no another season planned? Fuck em.
Great TV show that ended well? Sign me up.
This post wasn’t sponsored by Good Place (seriously, go watch it, and watch The Selection right after).
The good place is such a motherforking good show
Whats The Selection about? The Good Place was amazing and it was a shame they cancelled it. Could have done with just 1 more season.
It is a spinoff about the Bad Place
The hell do you mean cancelled? It’s a complete show, from start to finish
Wow! I must have dreamt that. I felt sure it was cut short so it all got wrapped up quick in season 4. But googling it now is giving mixed messages, some showing michael schur intended to or decided to make the 4th season the last and others saying people were mad it was cancelled.
Don’t be afraid to enter the water knowing that you are not going to swim forever.
I think the fear isn’t simply exiting the pool, its drowning.
The “coffee shop” analogy breaks down when you look at the before - assuming debt, developing skills, building business relationships - and after - owing more than you earn, filling for bankruptcy, hemorrhaging staff, going back to being a wage earner rather than an owner-operator.
Same with marriage. You get older and slower and tireder, you have this shared history that doesn’t exist between anyone else, you have shared assets that can’t easily be divided up, you have a shared family.
These aren’t just whims, they’re economic events and deeply psychological ones, too. Bad ones. They are describing a material decline in your quality of life.
Yeah, the fixation on nostalgia and fandoms is bad for us as a society. No, you shouldn’t feel leashed to your hobbies… or your job or your relationships. But there’s also feelings of stability and reliability and security that comes with an enduring institution in your life. Knowing you can substitute experience for raw energy and you don’t have to relearn a trade or another person or rules to a new game from scratch has value. It pays dividends.
You don’t want to get into the water and find out you need to relearn how to swim. Especially when you’ve so far from shore.
Agree with most of these I guess, but marriage specifically is the one thing that’s intended to be forever. Til death do us part and all that jazz.
There’s nothing wrong with forever, but it shouldn’t be some sort of “standard” we hold everything to.
The “death do us part” thing is a tradition, but marriage is a legal status. Not everyone is going to follow that tradition, and surely you wouldn’t argue this ought to bar them from the legal status
I think it definitely applies to relationships. It does you and any of your partners a disservice to say your relationship was only a success if one of you died.
A person isn’t a thing you possess. They have needs that grow and change with them. If those needs ever stop being compatible with the relationship, then the relationship should end. That’s not failure. It’s wanting the person you love to be happy.
Marriage is not just another relationship. It’s literally defined by people deciding, and vowing to stay together forever.
But realistically, we all know you can get divorced. While we might hope it’ll be forever, we also know we’re still not gonna stick around if things get too bad (nor should we). Nobody has the shocked pikachu face when marriage isn’t forever after all. No matter what the vows say, in practice we pretty well accept that it’s a big commitment, but not a permanent one.
How about this: things are allowed to fail and that’s OK.
If you marry someone with the intent of staying together for the rest of your lives but you don’t, the marriage failed. It doesn’t have to define you.
It’s also okay to fail. I agree with that as well. I just won’t see a relationship - marriage or not - as a failure if it brought two people happiness for a while until they amicably decide to end it. It’s only a failure when it makes them miserable or when they end it by needlessly hurting the other person. But… that’s still okay if they can at least see what they did wrong and learn from it. We all make mistakes.
It just depends on your definition of failure. Did the marriage fail to make people happy? Not necessarily. Did the marriage fail in its stated aim to bind two people forever? Yes definitely.
I personally think a divorce is usually a failed marriage (unless the marriage was specifically intended to be limited time) but I don’t think that failure is always a bad thing.
For me it comes down to how you use language. Mental health is important to me and I recognize the power of words, so I care more about the impact of language use. No matter how much you reassure people that it’s okay to fail, failing still feels bad. It makes people feel like … a failure. That seems counterproductive and unnecessary to me. Why make people feel bad when they did nothing wrong?
You can specify exactly how and why it’s a failure if you want, and you’re not technically wrong. I’m just not principally concerned with being technically correct in the first place. I’m reframing the standard narrative because I hate to see it go unchallenged. So for anyone who’s hurting and reads this and feels like shit, this time I’ll be the one to say something.
Then I guess you, like me, dislike the concept of marriage. Because the whole point is forever. The forever part is not even what I hold against it though. Some people can and want to be together forever. Feeling forced to be by culture is a bad thing though.
I see it mostly as a legal contract and legal status, but with a lot of extra baggage heaped on top. It’s an overloaded concept that tries to cover too many things at once, making them all suffer. Separate out the legal business and you’d lose the need for an explicit declaration that this union is to exist in perpetuity until cancelled by either party. Sure sounds full of romance when stated that way, doesn’t it?
And regardless of how you look at it, the idea is that it’s for life, from the ground up. I could go into how it’s rooted in other horrible things but yeah, the romance is retrofitted to get people to accept it. And it’s worked.
Then I guess you, like me, dislike the concept of marriage. Because the whole point is forever.
As you get older, you may realize “forever” isn’t actually forever. Its just for the few decades you have left on this planet in this existence. If you find someone that you like being around, they like being around you, and you’re both willing to put up with each other’s faults and shortcomings, then marriage can be a really good path forward.
When we age, our looks go, our health, and many times our minds too. Having someone that cares about you and has your back through all of that, is a wonderful thing as you will have their back too. You still see them as beautiful as you did when they were younger, and they see you the same way. You look past each other’s graying (or missing) hair, to lack of physique, the lines in your faces, the extra weight you carry in strange places, and eventually the loss of mobility you’ll have and they still want to be around you. You still want to be around them.
Old age frequently brings loneliness too. When you’re not forced to work a job with people anymore, it takes effort to maintain social relationships with other people. When you have your mate, you always have that company irrespective of other social connections (or lack of).
Finally if your partner dies before you, I think it will give you something to look forward to in your own eventual death. You know you’ll be at the same place as your mate, wherever or whatever that is. If there is something after, they’ll be there waiting for you. If there is nothing, you get to be nothing together. Life is really tough if you’re going it alone. A mate can shave off those sharp corners and make even the most unpleasant times bearable.
If you find someone like this, I encourage you to grab on and hold them tight. If you don’t, life will move them along and you’ll be left with just yourself against a cold and uncaring world.
That’s all well and good, but you absolutely don’t need marriage to stay together forever.
The point was that the concept shames you into it. Another option is just to stay together because you want to. Seems more meaningful to me that way anyhow.
That’s what I strive for in any relationship: staying together purely because we choose to. I don’t want someone to stay with me for any other reason, and I want my partner to know that I choose them. Not out of obligation or necessity, but because I truly want them close to me. It’s simple but meaningful.
My wife just moved out after 30 years of marriage, and it sure feels like a failure to me. Maybe some people get to the point where it’s not working, and they aren’t invested in the marriage so much that walking away is painful. I think most people would say they shouldn’t have been married if they weren’t that invested in making it work though.
A lot of people have suggested that we should have marriage contracts that have a renewable time limit. Like, “Hey, let’s get married for ten years and see how that goes.” I could see that being a good thing, but I also think it’s fundamentally a different mindset than the traditional expectation of forever.
Thanks for sharing your story. Similarly, I’ve been with my partner for 10 years. We planned on having kids, never materialized because of reasons. Now… We are distancing. It certainly feel like failure. I just moved to a new apartment last week.
So far, I haven’t ‘duel’ the loss, except for some occasional irruption of either sadness (~95%) or rage (~5%). We keep talking daily, trying to part ways softly, we are both migrants in a new country, medium sized city, which adds some peculiarities.
I think we try to avoid the sentiment of failure by keeping an open mind, and a friendship. I even fantasize this is only temporary. But honestly, we have been on this for a while. Like after the pandemic.
Anyway, some comments in this thread really help me. I do want her to be happy. We both deserve the best, and frankly we may not be the best fit today. But we were powerful. We went through a lot, and we did good.
PS. Feel free to write privately of you wanted to share more.
Sorry you’re going through that. I’m going to make the assumption that, with it being a ten year relationship, you’re not super young, but much younger than me (I’m 62). I hope you and your partner are both able to move on in a way you can be at peace with it, and once you’ve grieved the relationship are able to find someone who works better.
Goes both ways, I’m happy to chat if you’d like.
I’m sorry to hear about your circumstances.
Me and most of my friend/family group have married in the last few years and I don’t know if anyone would have bothered if there wasn’t a promise of forever. There’s often the desire for a home and kids and it’s (in my opinion) hard to do that if you don’t have a commitment from your partner. I don’t want to raise kids alone or have to do custody arrangements if I can avoid it.
If housing and child rearing were more communal it would maybe be different but I think the commitment is kind of the point.
If you’d be willing to share your experience please feel free to. I didn’t have the experience of married parents or even watching them interact/divorce so I’m always on edge regarding the kind of issues I’m possibly missing in my own relationship.
I’m an open guy and didn’t mind sharing whatever, but I’m not sure which aspect you’re interested in. I had great role models - my parents were happily married for 50 years until my dad died. My wife and I had problems off and on for years, and we’ve been more roommates than romantic partners for quite some time. We had an argument and she confessed that she hasn’t been in love with me for some time. She’s not with anyone else or anything like that, but she doesn’t want to be with me.
Thank you for sharing. Sorry to hear about your father but it seems like he had a child and wife who loved him.
That falling out of love concept is really my big fear. I think I know what a healthy loving relationship is, but only because I think I’m in one. The thought I might wake up one day to my partner saying that no actually, we were not in one of those is my big concern. I don’t know what it should look like and having nothing to compare to so it feels like the biggest obstacle we could have.
I’m sorry to hear you’re going through that but glad to see that people can and do make it out relatively ok. I truly wish you the best.
Thanks a lot. No worries about my dad -he was pushing 80 when he died, and he lived a life most people would be proud of. It was also 24 years ago. Sadly, my mom lived ten years longer, and I think the only reason she didn’t die of a broken heart is because she got Alzheimer’s and kind of forgot about my dad’s dying.
I don’t think there’s one kind of healthy relationship. Every person has strengths and weaknesses. The key is finding a person whose strengths and weaknesses meshes with your own. I’ve seen people with significant issues have happy marriages with spouses who just love them and balance with them.
Ultimately, all we can do is try to work with our partners, understand that every relationship has rough times, and hope we can weather those times. Sadly, there’s no guarantees, as I can attest to.
That falling out of love concept is really my big fear.
Don’t overthink it. If you are aware that this could happen, you will be able to see it at its earliest ;)
Did you communicate about it with your partner? That’s probably a great starting point. Go for a chill afternoon of opening. Sometimes, we go through so much together that we take the other for granted, or just forget to open-up and share our innermost feelings with enough room of both space and time.
Thanks for the reassurance.
We’re generally pretty good and I think that’s the issue. It feels so weird to have a normal loving relationship it feels like that itself is cause for concern lol. Will definitely find some extra time today to tell them how special they are though.
The game Outer Worlds touches upon this concept a bit, although it’s set in a space-capitalist dystopia.
Like a more administrative declaration of vow renewal, in a sense. Can feel a bit cold and could cause a lot of bureaucratic headache however.
I’m sorry for your loss/pain though, on a more serious note.
Thank you
I would agree if we stopped making marriage the end goal of relationships.
I tend to agree with you there. There are a lot of things intended to be temporary, and a lot of things intended to be permanent.
Wasn’t there a study about that Man instinctively looks for other partners after while, this being the natural behavior?
Given that, christianity sets unrealistic expectations.
99% percent of the times a study calls some ‘natural behaviors’ on humans, it’s just propaganda looking for legitimacy.
Don’t know the study but any anthropologist can tell that’s a generalization on a certain time, place, and society. It’s (mostly) true, only under certain conditions.
Now did they study any other gender? Perhaps by Man they refer to all humans??
Perhaps by Man they refer to all humans??
No, male humans.
Look, can we please not mix politics/ideology with science? You’re mistaken if you think human is 100% conscious decisions. In economy, it’s long known already that homo economicus is a fantasy. We are mammals too.
The way hypothesis are drawn, which programs are promoted, where budgets are cut, etc. are all political decisions that shape science. But I understand your point, although I wasn’t talking about free will. Somehow, this talk reminded me of a book, ‘the naked ape’… it was written by a zoologist. Probably had many things just plain wrong, and it’s more speculative-observations than actual rigorous studies. But I enjoyed reading it when I was an life sciences undergraduate. Btw, why are we writing Man with a capital letter? This is what prompted my previous question.
Only if you think humans are slaves to instinct and are defined by them.
Man also instinctively eats lots of sugars and fats because they are high in energy, so is restraining oneself to a healthy lifestyle unrealistic?
You think all your decisions are conscious too, hm?
A large part of modern world is obese. Going against your instincts is a informed struggle. In case of high sugar and fat meals, whilst circumnavigating the instincts with a healthy diet.
Yes many are obese, and it can definitely be a struggle, but that doesn’t make being healthy an unrealistic expectation. It’s highly realistic, and many people are healthy.
Yeah, but you have to know how and have to motivation to do it.
About marriage: the whole concept reside in the mutual promise of a “forever after”. If that’s not your thing, totally fine. But then you wouldn’t engage in it in the first place? In that sense, the marriage would indeed have failed (to deliver on its core premise).
Putting aside an afterlife, common wedding vows have “for better, for worse, … in sickness and in health, until death do us part.” So at least for people using those vows, they are committing to stay together until one of them dies. A divorce would mean a failure to follow through with that commitment.
I’m all for ridding our society of marriage and transitioning to civil unions instead. It’s a dumb-ass concept to promise to love someone for your entire life when both of you are bound to change a lot, sometimes becoming unrecognizable. The only reason it “worked” in the past is because the primary concern wasn’t actually love or happiness but rather performing the duties assigned to genders by patriarchy.
On a more philosophical note, did the marriage really “fail” if the person you promised to love changed so much so as to become a different person in the same body?
The “ship” of Theseus
what you’re saying is only true for some religions that don’t allow divorce. most do. there’s no forever after promise in most cases, just living together and caring for each other.
Then you shouldn’t use that phrase in the marriage vows, that’s the issue. If you don’t promise the forever, you are not failing the promise
it’s not a requirement in vows; I’d be surprised if most people did it. your perception is colored by TV and movies which generally uses Catholic traditions because it’s more suitable for visual representation.
I grew up in a Swedish pentecostal church so my experience in vows are more coloured by experience from that denomination rather than catholic tv
fair but still there’s a lot of religions and countries out there. where i live people usually just promise to take each other as spouses.
what you’re saying is only true for some religions that don’t allow divorce.
I’ve watched people who got married in high school go through divorce in their twenties and thirties and forties. It’s more than religion. You come out of the situation angry and insecure. You plunge into a dating pool that’s anxiety ridden and full of other jaded people. You carry your own insecurities with you. Often, the divorce is necessary, but it’s rarely fun.
there’s no forever after promise in most cases, just living together and caring for each other.
Feeling as though you have someone who wants to be near you and care for you, then waking up to discover that person is gone is extremely difficult.
There’s no forever. Everything ends. But the end of a relationship means assuming a great deal of emotional and financial and physical baggage. A home built for two people is radically changed when one is gone.
It isn’t something to trivialize or make light of.
To clarify: I meant this purely at an interpersonal level, i.e. if you enter a marriage, you should at least honestly intend it to endure.
Plenty of people get married and don’t believe in an afterlife.
This is actually rather poignant.
By this standard, “successful” companies simply haven’t failed yet.
It’s standard that in human experience, we will fail at things. It happens, it happens often, and it will continue to happen. Failing at something is the first step. Without failure, how would we ever know how to “succeed”?
This doesn’t, and shouldn’t, imply that we are bad at a thing, or that we can’t become good at it, or that we should give up and stop trying. It also doesn’t and shouldn’t imply that we should continue to try. “Failure” is just an outcome, whether that is good or bad is entirely up to the viewer to decide.
I would argue that failure is simply a mental/social concept. Things simply happen. “Success” or “failure” is entirely dependent on those who had some interest in what specifically happened. Even if you’re trying to achieve a specific outcome, whether you do or not is entirely inconsequential. You tried to achieve an outcome by doing x, y, or z, and then a, b, and c occurred. Whether a, b, and c are the outcome that was desired or not is not a consequence that the universe cares about.
So much of this is simply social constructs.
I agree with you that failure can be viewed as something natural and even positive in many cases. But the text was more about branding anything that doesn’t last as a failure. It suggests that the fact that something has an ending doesn’t necessarily mean it was a failure, even though it is often labled as such.
Yeah, I kinda went off on a tangent there…
My brain is weird
Yeah, brains do that.
Reminds me of last week when everyone was talking about how Bluesky is worthless because it’s just going to go the way of Twitter. And I’m like, Twitter was a good thing for like 15 years.
If Bluesky follows that same pattern, great.
I don’t like the pattern of having to pay a search cost, then finally getting everything set up, and then they gradually enshittify until the process repeats. I’d rather just have stable infrastructure, like email.
I feel an adjacent thing about Lemmy — The conversations I most value are ones I used to have on Reddit, but dwindled over the years, as Reddit discourse degraded. Something that’s notable is that, on Reddit, the last bastions of meaningful discussion were the little niche subs, indicating that quality of discussion may be inversely correlated with the size of a community.
The federated nature of Lemmy makes it far more resistant to Reddit’s fate, but I still feel a sense of inevitability that there is a timer on how long this can last. (Speaking as an aging punk), it reminds me of what happened to Punk: it went mainstream, and thus less punk. Some people have the instinct of gatekeeping a thing to preserve it, but everything needs fresh blood, and some of the people who discover punk via the mainstream are have a heart as punk as anyone I’ve met — we can’t exclude the masses of “normies” without excluding these people too. In the end, I see that punk is probably dead, but the “true punk spirit” is alive and well, having moved into spaces that were less visible to the mainstream. Similarly, I expect that I’ll always be able to find online clusters of cool nerds to have meaningful conversations with, because even if Lemmy dies a slow death, they will find (or build) a new space.
Ultimately, the inevitable temporariness of Lemmy (and other platforms like Bluesky) is quite a beautiful thing for me, because it forces me to be more mindful of the moment I’m in, and how, despite the world being shit in many ways, here is something that I am really glad I get to be a part of
In the end, I see that punk is probably dead, but the “true punk spirit” is alive and well, having moved into spaces that were less visible to the mainstream.
Punk in the form that existed in the early 80s hardcore scene died around 84 (before I was even born). It came back in other, different forms, in different places over the decades. I’d argue that punk really isn’t the first incarnation of the “true punk spirit”, just the one that we associate with the anarchic and rebellious, possibly in part due to the concerted effort to demonize it in mainstream media in the 80s and 90s (couldn’t have any of that peace and love shit being seen positively, especially with greater acceptance of direct action).
Leave it to the Internet to be the best (and worst) of all.
I’m at best a poser punk but the diy ethos always rung true. That said one of my favourite places online is a local old school punk forum. It’s niche enough that with its own problems there’s still a community.
In my experience that’s kind of what an online community needs to be. Not exclusive, but niche enough. I too used to be on Reddit, got there when the great Digg migration happened. Those days it was small enough to have have a community on some subreddits. Gradually it got the point that when I’d read the article or had a reasonable thought about the question there were 11000 replies and anything worthwhile was already said.
These days Lemmy feels kinda similar to the old Reddit. Maybe things stay the same or maybe they change and there’ll be another place I log on.
All that said, what OP posted is profound. What you posted is too.
I’m at best a poser punk but the diy ethos always rung true. That said one of my favourite places online is a local old school punk forum. It’s niche enough that with its own problems there’s still a community.
Eh. I don’t think it’s actually as easy to be a “poser” as old purity obsession tropes (I admittedly was a bit skewed that way when younger). What is it isn’t “punk” is purely subjective. Basically, requiring willful appropriation of subcultural signs and aesthetics for profit without any desire to engage or contemplate the community or philosophies (Good Charlotte, looking at you). To me, it’s about love and anarchism (the no gods, no kings, no masters mindset of equality) not having a mohawk, a pair of Docs, and chucking molotovs at riot cops (to be fair, it takes all kinds).
Amazing, thank you for your comment
The federated nature of Lemmy makes it far more resistant to Reddit’s fate, but I still feel a sense of inevitability that there is a timer on how long this can last
Hell, the drama right now about the devs running out of funds and people refusing to donate because of their association with .ml might accelerate lemmy’s demise before it can even get big.
One of the reasons reactionary content tends to endure and progressive content fails (in Western countries, anyway) stems from the far-right having deeper pockets and a far more pliant creative base.
You don’t see Tucker Carlson or Candice Owens ever really going away, because they’ve got these sugar daddies that always pony up. The fucking Adelsons will keep shoveling naked antisemites money, just so long as they toe the economic orthodoxy.
Meanwhile, Lemmy admins associating with Lemmy developers is unforgivable, because the OG developers won’t let you say “I hope someone murders Xi Jinping with a rusty spoon” on their bespoke instance without getting banned.
That’s beautiful.
And I’m like, Twitter was a good thing for like 15 years.
See, I was going to say that Twitter was a bad thing for 15 years.
But then it was just stupid, it wasn’t a Nazi bar like today.
Peter Thiel, the Adelsons, the Mercers, and the rest of the Trump crowd were sponsoring reactionary fascist content on the site long before Elon bought it.
Twitter was equal opportunity - willing to take money from all the highest bidders to promote any kind of commercialized content - prior to the buyout. But plenty of that content was fascist af.
I feel like the concern with Bluesky is that Bluesky could enshitify much faster than Twitter, in part because market conditions push for a faster path to profitablity.
Yeah, I won’t claim Twitter was great, but it was widely considered too good (to its users) to be profitable. That was possible during that early investor optimism when the internet was still new, but I also don’t see that happening now anymore.
A social media platform needs to decouple from the typical company structure and democratize its improvement, otherwise investors will necessarily make it as bad as they can without immediately losing all users.
Twitter was never a good thing, AND I was never a Twitter user so i can actually say that.
like it actually did permanent damage to our culture
Misses the point of marriage, but other than that it’s an awesome glimpse into a more sane future
"If you’re not growing. You’re dying "
Happily Ever After only exists if you happen to die at the happiest moment of your life.
This reminds me of a friend who opened a bakery. The business was successful, and the food was good, but she decided to give it up after a few years when she and her husband started a family.
I don’t consider that a “failure” by any definition. For her, it was a great experience that had run its course.
But she didn’t make infinity+1 dollars so what was even the point
What happened to the bakery? Did she sell it or transfer ownership to someone else?
She didn’t own the building. Last I saw, there was an ice cream shop in the space. It was a good one, too. I think that location is lucky.
Yeah. I would usually see a business as failed only if it is going through bankruptcy.
If you “close” it, it’s because it failed. Successful business are transferred or sold, because a loyal customer base and a successful business model have a lot of value.
Same for 90% of the other things mentioned. If you do a hobby for a while and you abandon it, it’s by definition a phase. Etc.
Not really true. Plenty of mom and pop shops close because no one wants to run it and they don’t want to ruin the reputation of their family business by selling it to someone who might not run it well. I worked for a few places where this happened.
Who are these people that decline tens of thousands of dollars/euros/pounds for their image? Must be nice being that rich…
Plenty of otherwise successful businesses could not be sold for tens of thousands of dollars just for the name. Several are in business solely because of personal connections with other small businesses. Once that element is gone people go elsewhere. At least in my community/experience.
That’s freelancing then, not really a business, isn’t it?
- Freelancing is a valid business. I don’t know why there’d be a distinction in this case.
- I don’t think people would be considered freelancers just because they have personal relationships with other small businesses.
There was a dessert business I used to do work for that catered a lot of local businesses events. She got plenty of work there and then had a loyal customer base because of the introduction to her desserts at these events. That seems like a valid business to me. She retired and moved to be closer to her kids and that was it. No one to take her place. I don’t know what you consider freelancing but she put her kids through school off of it so I don’t know why it wouldn’t count as business even if she technically never had long term contracts. She had her stuff in stores in the area because she made a name for herself and her products. People liked her and her story as much as the food so I don’t think people would’ve kept buying it if they found out she didn’t own it anymore.
I think you might not be aware of how many people have small businesses. 10% of American workers are self employed. I have done a lot of work for small businesses and it’s very different than what a lot of people who had a teacher and a factory worker as parents think.
