There was that one summer no one would shut up about Riverdance.

I fear that it's going require tribunals and gallows, and I have serious doubts we'll have the political will to get there.

That's 100% what this is.

He’s Past the Event Horizon There’s no coming back. No recovery. Only escalation, pulling the world into his abyss.

I'm with @thegaslightreport.bsky.social on this. He's entered some sort of state of narcissistic gravitational collapse.

frankgeorge8675309.substack.com/p/hes-past-t...

Every second we don't give up and join him in his delusions is another narcissistic injury.

Down on the Upside was their first album I was able to purchase on release, as I came into the fandom a few years late. It's the soundtrack of the last half of my senior year in high school. Burden in My Hand is somewhere in my personal top five Soundgarden songs.

Maybe a large contributing factor of the vibecession is that not only is COVID still out there killing people, but many are suffering from post-viral syndromes - some minor enough that they're trying to pretend otherwise? But, individually AND collectively, we still know something is WRONG. End

How many of us also suffer thusly, but at lower levels? Too low to really be fully aware of what has happened? How much of the vibecession is from people being mentally impacted by a pandemic the vast majority are trying to pretend never really happened and everything's fine, now? 12/?

So, I have dumped my Long COVID story fully online for the first time to reach this observation: If my Long COVID is so bad, yet I still work and make great money and do very well for myself right now...but my brain is broken and my mind is awhirl with misery and inactivity... 11/?

Look, I just messed up the count/numbering of the post above, only nine posts in. That is the life I have lived since the COVID lockdown - no medical answers, just my doctors doing my best at trying whatever we read about online. And I am only aware of my situation because of how bad it is. 10/?

So, while my lockdown experience wasn't great; it was the last time I was WELL. I have been sick for five fucking years straight. I spend entire work weeks screaming in my head to just DO SOMETHING and can't manage it. All my PTO goes to the days I can't cover for or can't sit upright, now. 8/?

I have since moved on to a better, higher paying job that is still WFH. But despite medication that prevents The Stupids version of brainfog for me, my executive function remains so wrecked that I sometimes go weeks without doing anything for my job, then rush to catch up...if I can 8/?

I am simply not as smart as I was in November 2020, anymore. Despite grabbing the vaccine and staying up to date and continuing avoidance protocols, I have since also caught Delta (just as bad), Omicron, and possibly two other unconfirmed minor variants. I'm a COVID magnet 7/?

I was so bad off, my boss required me to log in briefly three times a week for video chat wellness checks. It took three weeks before I was strong enough to walk downstairs from my third floor apt. And I developed Long COVID. The brainfog still hasn't fully gone away. 6/?

I was so horribly, wretchedly brainfogged I only now, in retrospect, realize how very close to redlining my system I got, by myself in that apartment. I got the two weeks paid COVID leave, and I'd already put in for two weeks Xmas/NewYear leave. A whole month which I spent in recovery 5/?

As a high functioning introvert living in a small but luxury apartment at the time, I was stressed and worried but also weirdly thriving. Then, at the very start of Dec 2020, I caught COVID. It never got into my chest, so I never felt close to hospitalization, but 4/?

with the perfect excuse to stay feet away from the few people I saw, with a mask hiding me from the obligation to do more than nod from a distance. Then, days I didn't have to work late involved quiet, solitary evenings doing whatever I wanted. 3/?

I was kept a touch too busy to really worry about the isolation, while, at the same time, working late some days meant there was a LOT of leeway to go, "I know it's 2PM, but I worked til 10 last night and I need to go get groceries." And I got to shop in a practically empty store 2/?

My job was very suited for WFH, and my team actually got hit with a prolonged bout of high workload for most of 2020. My work-life balance suffered, but I also developed a certain mastery in that particular type of work. I got a lot of recognition and a chonky raise during it. 1/?

It's combined into a disillusionment state where money rules, not the voters, and its representatives do not share the concerns the populace have. They believe status is competence and continuously try to impose a false reality on us; while social media forces us together but prevents community 2/2

I suspect that a lot of dangers we didn't want to admit were building have all mixed to produce a, for lack of a better term, 'enshittification of society'. Anti-intellectualism, the decline of competence, inequality, epistemic bubbles, continuous comparison of lifestyle...they're all mixing. 1/2

So, it's open like it was open last week? As expected.

Yep, he got a tiny bit of good news and has decided that all the bad stopped and he's now back to only good can happen. The comedown from this high when something snarls up this afternoon is going to be equally delusional.

Oh, so we're just in outright delusions-land this morning. Got it.

Freedom is the right of all sentient beings.

...these are all lost downstream from this mass acceptance of "You don't have to bother listening to the experts/elites/eggheads. Your gut instinct is as valid as the ongoing and updating accumulation of human knowledge to date. It doesn't even have to be judged against others' arguments!" 2/2

I think that's a symptom of the larger overall problem. Critical thinking, the ability to consider an argument you don't agree with to analyze its merit, just to listen and look at the words someone else is saying rather than what you think they'd say... 1/2

I'm just some dude, but I'm starting to suspect that any deMAGAfication efforts will also need to include an overdue acknowledgement of the massive victory the anti-intellectualism movement scored somewhere in the last few decades, with plans to reverse that corruption as well as the political.

He just responded to the trigger word "Europe" with his anger over being denied Greenland. Didn't even hear the rest of the sentence, most likely.

His brain's deteriorated down to reacting like a caged, rabid animal being poked by a stick.

It's starting to feel like reality decided to start reasserting itself over the online world some time in the last month, without issuing a warning.