Seriously, what has gotten into human beings lately?? Why does it seem like everyone is on such an incredibly short fuse and ready to blow? Just the other day, some guy in a car behind me started going off and honking at me for pulling over and parking in front of the house I was going to. He got so furious, he turned his car around and came back honking again. Then, today on the national news, a driver opened fire on another driver because windshield cleaning fluid splashed his car from the car next to him. Now, just a few hours ago, someone was gunned down in my town after getting into an argument over a fender bender. WTF.
Why are people so unhinged is what I'd like to know. It's like if you step on someone's toes by accident, they might just murder you. Actually, I did recently see a video where someone began cursing another person on a train for their bag being set on their toes and it turned into physical punching and being thrown off. Like everyone is flying off the hook over more and more trivial things. A minor inconvenience turns into absolute rage. I'm seeing this everywhere. I don't like to mention it, but I even notice similar eruptions occurring on this forum from time to time. I just don't understand. Why can't folks chill out? What are they putting in the water to cause all of this insanity?
1) violent crime is down statistically, the media overblows it. it's at its lowest point since the 1950s.
2) stop watching the news lmao
3) when people are stressed they take it out on shit that doesn't matter. if you're stressed and can't change your circumstance, there's some relief to getting pissed at things that don't matter in the long run.
i am a delivery driver. i get the brunt of some of the worst of idiots on the road. like, for my job, i gotta go fast(~!!!). it's part of the job description. it's how you make money.
but the same asshole who tips well for fast service... is the same fuckface who screams SLOW DOWWWWNNNN NKASDMSAKDMASDKMA when you speed past their house... for someone else.
what really blows my mind, is how i go by shops... mostly pawn shops... that are very openly politically divided. like, they're intentionally putting it out there... pawn shops all around me have these trump stickers plastered everywhere, countdowns til the election, their business signs say shit like "CORRUPT MEDIA DON'T BE THE SHEEP" and just... insane shit. and it's like... they're willing to cut a huge portion of their business out... just to declare their political alliance? it's fucking crazy. honestly, i'm pretty obviously a transsexual, it makes me feel insanely unsafe (altho i've not been a victim of violent crime despite the dangerous job and the kinda obvious gayness/transsexuality)
this election is a nightmare, it's gonna be a clusterfuck. this town i now deliver in is fucking insane. people drive crazy af (i've nearly wrecked about 10 times in the four days i've worked here because people just do not give a shit). the amount of people barking crazy conspiracy shit left and right is insane.
kinda honestly just wanna leave the states because i don't honestly think things are getting worse per se, i'm not blind to the statistics put out, but like... like... wtf. people are going a little nuts.
but yea i think it's mainly just stressors in everyday environments, i mean, the recession is mostly over, but it left its problems behind.
edit: and this isn't like... i'm not like... talking shit about someone's political alliance necessarily, i don't want a political debate, but i have NEVER seen shops be so blatantly antagonistic before, so willing to alienate their clientele to make a statement. it's fucking bizarre.
Hmm.... well, pawn shops tend to be owned by gun type guys, and they are very pro-second amendment. Games are usually a small percentage of their business model.
I'm a bit cynical in that I tend think the problem lies more with just the nature of human beings rather than politics. Folks can't simply disagree, instead they get super angry that someone thinks differently than they do. It's the reason why political debates need to be discouraged even here on VGC. That's the problem imo, is that the immediate response to every tiny inconvenience results in some form of alcoholic rage, or attack on someone else. If this is how people are dealing with their stress now, we're in bad shape. Physically attacking or trying to kill random people is not a good way to do that, obviously.
I've not ever had a single traffic infraction. Not a single accident. I use turn signals, I drive the speed limit, I use caution when necessary. Yet, I get the maniacs and dangerous drivers - the people cursing and threatening me, twice this summer for no good reason. This is a small town too, not a big city. Maybe it's drugs? I don't know, I've never used drugs. But people are really bumming me out this year, lot of bad stuff going on. Maybe it is political tensions, I dunno.
Wish we could collectively just get everyone to accept the fact that the person in your path is probably not the reason why you're seething, and what they think is not a slight to the human species if it happens to conflict with your own thoughts or preferences. People just need to chill out, calm down, and learn to deal with stress in a more productive way. Maybe consider that an opinion is not worth an assault or murder?? Maybe getting cut off in traffic isn't the end of the world? But I don't see it happening, not this year anyway.
If Earth really is an intergalactic experimental reality TV show, I don't think we're in danger of being cancelled anytime soon.
yeah, cynical is how i'd put it heh.
i have to drive A LOT. i live in the second or third biggest city in my state (it is no new york/atlanta metro, but it's growing every year~!!!! 8DDDDDD fuck) but i deliver to one medium TOWN and a very small isolated town (look, this town has a fucking burger king and a bojangles and a pizza hut and one grocery store and three convenience stores).
and i have mad road rage, because most the people in my path affect my wallet, lmao.
but it's not even... how to put this.
you know how people play online. you know people online treat other people online like absolute fucking dogshit. most of the time, it's not even the person in the car you're mad at--it's just their fucking car. one considers their car an extension of their private property, like their house, kinda. it's not the person inside, so much, it's just their fucking vehicle. my road rage explosions are usually over SUVs and trucks--i can't see around them, i can't see over them and i swear to all shit, people in coupes and sedans don't pull the absolute insane bullshit that has nearly killed me in a wreck that people in trucks and SUVs pull. those things aren't known for their acceleration power, yet people just ignore my del sol (a fucking death trap on four wheels) and pull right out in front of me... almost exclusively in SUVs and trucks. i don't know the person inside them, but my immediate thought, after years of dealing with on-the-road bullshit, spending about 5+ hours of my day on the road at least 5 days a week for the past year, has been "SUV and truck owners, especially those with newer models, seem to think they own the fucking road and fuck anyone else". my father did not help this, with his "whatever, they'll slow down" and texting and driving... in a highlander.
basically, uh, people see cars the same as they see your character in a game. they'll call your gamertag out publicly, they'll talk to your gamertag and avatar online like it's you, but they're not actually talking to you. they dissociate the person-in-the-car from the car-itself, just like they dissociate the person-behind-the-gamertag from the gamertag-and-avatar combo.
on the other hand, i'm not that big a cynic. i'm bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, i guess (or i've just dealt with a lot of utter bullshit in my life...) but i don't really see the faults in other people. some people are fucking insane. some people shoot other people over nothing. on the other hand, that's pretty rare. it's gotten rarer. and honestly, i've gotten more help from random strangers and such in the past year than i have from people i've known personally (family and all), so yeah, i don't tend to have such a downcast look on the future of the human race.
as for pawn shops, a huge margin comes from electronics in general. tvs and such. and whereas guns can almost exclusively be found in pawn shops in some areas, poorer people tend to buy their tvs and such at pawn shops. poor people--and this comes from dealing with the ghettos a lot, i have delivered to, in my time, about 15 miles (circumference, not diameter) of ghetto--tend to be staunchly anti-trump. so you bet your ass it would cut into their sales. if my local pawn shop i bought my tv at was very outwardly pro-trump, i wouldn't have bothered. they also get a lot of sales from jewellery, and poor people also tend to get their jewellery from pawn shops and thrift stores. it's just a bad business decision imho.
tho the most bizarre thing was seeing that one line, the "corrupt media" line, which, of course the media pushes what they push, they are owned by people, and people are rarely impartial to a fault, but that's the kind of shit i remember my mother going on about in an alcoholic stupor and it just blows my mind that i'm seeing it pedalled so... unashamed.