Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

codastory.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 96 posts

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#51

Post by mensetmanusman »

techwiz137 wrote: post #2

The curse of Eastern Europe, to die and empty out. It's the same in my country. Life in the UK and Germany > at home. And it's an exponential process, for every 1 person, 5 probably leave. My hometown was nearly 100k in the 80s, down to 50k if that by now. And it's mostly elderly, children, who grow up, go to the capital or just immigrate.

These are the growing pangs of globalization.

Abandoned cities will be everywhere over the next century. Especially after the population collapse in Asia.

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#52

Post by soared »

I would like to read another article on this with perspectives from Albanian. I don’t doubt that gangs/etc are taking advantage of immigrants, but the language used to describe innocuous things (rather than “growing cannabis” it’s “adding chemicals” etc) feels like they’ve exaggerated on points.

Additionally, though clearly unfair - 1-2 years of labor with pay seems like a reasonable trade off for the rest of your life to be significantly improved? Making immigration legal or at least legitizming parts of it even if the immigration remains illegal seems like it’d be a huge step.

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#53

Post by soared »

mschuster91 wrote: post #18
noah_buddy wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fall of communism was one of the largest drops in quality of life and lifespan ever recorded, IIRC.

To add a bit of context for those not too well versed in Eastern European history (from someone with a Croatian background): Back in the real-sozialist/communist era, the people didn't have much rights (especially not those that were against the dictators), but in exchange at least the government took somewhat of a care of providing everyone with a life worth living (notable exception: the remote areas of Russia that…

> society is crumbling … many people struggle with survival every day

What locations are you talking about? Even from the article above in a remote poor town in Albania that sounds pretty bad, their society is definitely not crumbling and while poor, not struggling to survive every day.

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#54

Post by e-master »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #51
techwiz137 wrote: post #2

The curse of Eastern Europe, to die and empty out. It's the same in my country. Life in the UK and Germany > at home. And it's an exponential process, for every 1 person, 5 probably leave. My hometown was nearly 100k in the 80s, down to 50k if that by now. And it's mostly elderly, children, who grow up, go to the capital or just immigrate.

These are the growing pangs of globalization. Abandoned cities will be everywhere over the next century. Especially after the population collapse in Asia.

My personal experience is quite the opposite - globalization allows capital to move to the lesser developed and cheaper places, bringing jobs and education, and over time an improved quality of life, so that people who were before desperate to leave no longer feel it’s necessary. Sure, it’s not as simple, but just wanted to mention it, since it’s not as straightforward as it seems.

On a slightly related note, I’d rather point the finger at urbanization - in my short lifetime I’ve witnessed multiple small villages (1.5 - 2k population) pretty much disappear as the younger generation moved out for multiple different reasons.

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#55

Post by wddkcs »

wiseowise wrote: post #47
wddkcs wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse than the fall of the Roman empire, the decades of black plague, and ancient cataclysms that wiped out entire nations? Wow

> one of the

It was lost in the sarcasm, but I was trying to emphasize the disparity. The fall of communism wasn't close in loss of life or resulting affects to any of those of hundreds of other events.

What's more, how many people did Soviet 'communism' itself crush? What was the life span of a Ukrainian farmer in Soviet Russia? Did that go up after the fall of communism? I can't see any decrease in quality that can be directly and singularly tied to the fall of the USSR, except for perhaps the dictators at the top of the heap. Arguably, those same class of dictators are responsible for repressing quality of life even after the dissolution.

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#56

Post by mensetmanusman »

e-master wrote: post #54
mensetmanusman wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are the growing pangs of globalization. Abandoned cities will be everywhere over the next century. Especially after the population collapse in Asia.

My personal experience is quite the opposite - globalization allows capital to move to the lesser developed and cheaper places, bringing jobs and education, and over time an improved quality of life, so that people who were before desperate to leave no longer feel it’s necessary. Sure, it’s not as simple, but just wanted to mention it, since it’s not as straightforward as it seems. On a slightly related note, I’d rat…

The abandonment of rural areas and the mess that left behind were the seeds to populism growing in my part of the world (US). It was an unforeseen aspect of winner-take-all globalism-driven economic growth.

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#57

Post by wddkcs »

supazek wrote: post #46
mschuster91 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add a bit of context for those not too well versed in Eastern European history (from someone with a Croatian background): Back in the real-sozialist/communist era, the people didn't have much rights (especially not those that were against the dictators), but in exchange at least the government took somewhat of a care of providing everyone with a life worth living (notable exception: the remote areas of Russia that…

You really skipped over that “didn’t have rights” part. How many people were in Gulag? And you think there was no corruption in the ruling communist class? Corruption is a feature of any political organization and should be stopped, but money was just as much a motivator for the communists as it is for the capitalists. The only difference is that it wasn’t available to the working class so they weren’t incentivized t…

People love to pretend that it wasn't the Soviets themselves that ended the USSR.

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#58

Post by woleium »

paxys wrote: post #50

I was just reading an article about an agency that rents out fancy penthouse suites, supercars and private jets by the hour to social media "influencers" who want to promote their baller lifestyles and amass a following. I see posts of this kind in my feed every day even though I have no interest in such content or the people behind it. It is a wild industry. 100% smoke and mirrors, yet teenagers and young men and wo…

Sadly it's all getting rather Douglas Adams.

Maybe Elon can send them all to Mars, along with the telephone sanitation technicians.

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#59

Post by paxys »

illwrks wrote: post #14

As sad as it is, it's no different from any country at any other point in time. In the past it was letters, postcards, phone calls, now it's just tictok AND youtube, facebook etc. Even in the UK the young move from less prosperous areas to more prosperous ones. Globally, people need to be educated on the reality of what's behind the camera not the illusion portrayed in front of it.

Social media's sheer reach and algorithmic targeting makes it way more lethal than postcards.

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#60

Post by jmrm »

illwrks wrote: post #14

As sad as it is, it's no different from any country at any other point in time. In the past it was letters, postcards, phone calls, now it's just tictok AND youtube, facebook etc. Even in the UK the young move from less prosperous areas to more prosperous ones. Globally, people need to be educated on the reality of what's behind the camera not the illusion portrayed in front of it.

Totally true. In Spain happened the same in the from the 50s to the 70s with thousands of people emigrating to France, Germany, and other European countries, talking about how well they could live and how they can eat every day, but excluding how they live in mass in barracks away from local people, and how most of local people made an effort to avoid them to integrate (like making them go out of bars and buses).
Post reply on HN