391–400 of 634 posts
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why the hell does a TikToker need a spokesperson at all? ego boost?
when you make money by manipulation and lies you're gonna have to hire a spokesperson at some point to manage your web of lies. See politicians, institutions of the state, corporations, tiktokers, etc
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Do you live somewhere that is being overrun by homeless? Like the west coast for example? Because it is really, really hard to be empathetic with the homeless folks here, based on how they behave.
It is almost as if forcing people who need professional psychiatric help out of the psychiatric clinics and putting them to their 'freedom' somehow has diametral effects on societal health. Maybe you shouldn't put these people in the same category. Not everyone living in the street is the same. Some are just poor. Some need medical and/or psychiatrical help. Some may be on the street by choice (see: Hobos (meant in t…
A couple of weeks ago I had to avoid an altercation with a woman who talking to herself on the subway, she didn't like the way I "looked" at her as I was doing my best to mind my own business. She starts mad-dogging me and then darts off the train.
Every so often a transient blocks the stoplight at a large, 6-lane intersection near my house, because he decided to ignore the crossing signal, and sometimes even the crosswalks.
My young sister doesn't feel safe walking home on certain routes as there are groups of disheveled men hanging out doing nothing in particular. I've counted over a dozen of them, blocking the sidewalk and sometimes a lane or two on the street.
The strip mall near my house has had to fence off certain areas open spaces because they had a habit of hosting impromptu bike chop shops.
A woman who owns a local tasting room at said strip-mall has told me multiple stories of shenanigans with the local transients, as they like to get into trouble in their outdoor bathrooms, and her business has the closest key.
Last week a man was sucker-punched because he asked a transient, who was sleeping in his car, to leave. (The man who got punched needed to drive to work.)
Last year a woman was stabbed with a needle by a transient while waiting in line at a drive-thru.
My city's local subreddits are rife with complaints and specific altercations. Most city parks are or have homeless encampments, and you can find them pretty much anywhere that there is unattended open space. My city even opened a safe zone for unhoused to camp, with police supervision and outreach resources available, and had to shut it down due to lack of use.
City police generally do nothing; they are underfunded, understaffed, and still butthurt from the BLM protests and imposed COVID policies. Some of the videos that have been posted online have been downright childish.
I know that not everybody is the same, and there are a handful of locals that I see repeatedly and know to be decent folk, but it is extremely difficult to be charitable with a narrative like this. And I am aware of other cities around here that have it much worse.
There are areas of town that I used to enjoy walking through, but now they smell of a shit and piss. People are not quite as destitute as some of the South American cities I've walked around, but it feels like we are getting closer to that.
If the homeless, as a group, would control/behave themselves people might have a different attitude. But they don't, and it takes a long time to recognize whether a specific individual is worth helping or not.
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> " I really don't want to be that guy and wade into it with a "well, actually". " Be that guy; what's your criticism about Mr Beast's generosity? He does a lot of content which could be fake; like giving his friends $20,000, but ones which look more serious and genuine and costly include: - Opened a "free bank" where he loaned money into six figures to local people, then surprise! it's not a loan, they can keep it:…
I don't know how to explain it - if you make your living by being charitable, then the whole act of charity is somewhat lessened, no? It's like when nestle announces they are going to plant 1 million trees - like yeah, it's very generous of you, no doubt - but you are doing it as a marketing exercise. Mr Beast is making money this way. I am extremely far from saying that there's anything wrong with it - but it's not…
I share an unsettled feeling about this. I think it is because things like this are a visceral reminder of differences between the rich and poor. A life altering struggle for a poor person is a solved by ten minutes of amusement from a rich person - "here, take my card and buy whatever you need."
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Used for profit without consent can very well feel dehumanising.
If this headline went: "Woman used for profit without consent", wouldn't you consider it a bit of a clickbait upon examining the actual content of the article? (Not technically untrue, I give you that)
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Virtue signaling has similar effect as vice signaling: it signals to others what you think is good thing to do. It is statement toward rest of word.
The signal it sends is that appearances and whatnot matter more than actual substances, that appearing to do something is more important than doing something. Bragging about how your food is cruelty free when you don't really care about the food, you care about being able to say that it's cruelty free doesn't make you against animal cruelty except by some absurdly expansive definition of "against". And there's also 8…
All in all, it rewards primary doing and saying nothing. Everyone else can be accused of virtue signaling.
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Yeah to me he seems genuinely generous. Obviously there is a part of it being done to attract more viewers (Otherwise he could simply not upload the video at all) but from my, granted limited, experience of his videos a lot of the money he makes goes in to making (I.e. donating more) new videos. Very different from getting millions of TikTok views for the price of a flower bouquet.
The discerning questions are: would he do this a) with his own money and b) if no one is watching? I think both are no.
Not to suggest he's operating in any way like a non-profit, but they all receive money and then distribute that money in ways that either increase the future money they can use for their mission or directly on the mission itself. The fact that he's built a self-sustaining model for helping individuals without merely forking over his own assets is impressive.
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>> Even car accidents... I hate when a real car accident is attributed to a drunk driver when it was not. There are plenty of wrecked cars from actual drunk driving, you don't need to lie to get an example. Some people think their intentions justify their actions, even when their actions can accurately be described as "lie" or "cheat" or "for profit" or some other dishonest thing. This may be effective in many cases,…
My wife and I, individually, and on various occasions over the years, have paid for random strangers' shopping. We don't do social media, we don't even tell anybody, except for this one time, right now to support your point, so I think it's appropriate in this case. We've told each other because we talk about our finances and it's reasonably to discuss why the grocery bill was double triple, etc what it would have be…
The reason this act breaks a moral boundary is that it subverts a principle of "ends" [1]. A genuine random act of kindness cannot occur if it's being filmed. Filming the act turns it into a virtue display. It also turns the subject into an object of utility, a means and not and end in themself. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Ends
Isn't a limitation of Kant's view that intention is all that matters? In other words, neither context or outcome change the morality of the action?
Our planet has seen its fair share of saviors, liberators, purifiers, improvers of all sorts. And they've left us with a culture rich in clichés and aphorisms that teach us that although you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs and the ends will eventually justify the means, the roads to hell remain paved with good intentions.