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The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

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Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#71

Post by latchkey »

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…

Wait a second, are you saying that "accidentally" torching Ferrari F8's, is a culture that won't last?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXi-CV--Wq0

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#72

Post by wiseowise »

wddkcs wrote: post #55
wiseowise wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

USSR collapse was disastrous whether you agree with it or not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Soviet_conflicts

And on top of that go over what every post soviet republic went through after USSR collapsed. Those countries were under dysfunctional system for 70 years and suddenly they're being thrown in a 180 turn economy without any institutions. Also keep in mind that majority of republics were left on their own and had to become satellites of Russia if they wanted to survive.

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#73

Post by 542458 »

goodbyesf wrote: post #63
542458 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d like to see a source for that. I don’t really see how it could compare to WW2 or the Three Kingdoms War or Taiping Rebellion or Great Chinese Famine or Black Death or either the Justinian or Antoine plagues.

In comparison to ww2, the fall of the soviet union was worse than ww2. https://www.rferl.org/a/life-expectancy-cis-report/24946030.... To put it into perspective, after ww2, the russian population recovered in a few years. The russian population today is still below their 1990 levels. In terms of population, life expectancy, quality of life, etc, ww2 (as horrible as it was ) was an insignificant blip. The fall of the…

I disagree on how you scoped the discussion on the fall of communism. Why are we scoping down to just Russia? If you scoped broader to include the other post-Soviet counties you’d include all the countries where life expectancy has significantly increased since then.

There’s also the matter of scoping WW2: I would argue that WW2’s direct effects on thousands of millions of people deserve more weight than the fall of communism, which affected hundreds of millions. If we don’t take this type of scoping into effect I could claim that one person’s cancer diagnosis was a worse quality of life drop than WW2, and the discussion gets a little absurd.

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#74

Post by raincom »

Europe's Cocaine Tsunami[0], a documentary by VICE, is about Albanian Mafia and Columbian clan del gulfo. Here, you can hear about how Albanians in UK are 'enslaved' by Albanian mafia families, and how many young Albanians from Northern Albania leave to work in the cocaine field.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTOwZxRT5Qc

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#75

Post by user3939382 »

tristor wrote: post #66
user3939382 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OPs point was completely valid. > same old cliched anti-imperialist anti-“West” rhetoric while adding nothing of substance > lazy advocacy This characterization you're making is what's wrong. It's definitely arguable that Belgium enjoys the prosperity it does today because of centuries of economic exploitation of other countries. You may disagree, but the behavior of HN both in its programming and users to erase vali…

> There are political trends on HN but they don't necessarily fit neatly into left/right, especially given that defining those terms is extremely problematic in the first place. That’s because politics has two axises. HN is definitely left-leaning, but in support of social democracy. Hacker News is first and foremost populated by /hackers/ and we don’t go for authoritarianism. We know that as left-leaning as we are,…

> HN is definitely left-leaning

As I was saying, defining "left" is problematic, different people mean different things by that term. To me, left means anti-establishment, anti-censorship, pro free speech, anti war. I see tons of people on here defending censorship of social media ("they're private corporations"), pro Ukraine war. I see much less defense of the women's rights movement on HN than I traditionally associate with the left. I mean the comment I just responded to is a perfect example -- the guy is tearing someone down for pointing out imperialism from the Belgian government. "HN leans left" isn't something you can substantiate in my view.

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#76

Post by illwrks »

paxys wrote: post #59
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.

100%. It's pure exploitation/manipulation of the gullible, ill-informed and uneducated.

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#77

Post by wddkcs »

wiseowise wrote: post #72
wddkcs wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

USSR collapse was disastrous whether you agree with it or not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Soviet_conflicts And on top of that go over what every post soviet republic went through after USSR collapsed. Those countries were under dysfunctional system for 70 years and suddenly they're being thrown in a 180 turn economy without any institutions. Also keep in mind that majority of republics were left on their own…

How do all of those conflicts compare to the 61 million people killed during the halycion days of the USSR?

https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/USSR.CHAP.1.HTM#:~:text=In....

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#79

Post by reisse »

lr4444lr wrote: post #29
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.

Curious why you think that is. I understand that a higher standard of living can be had abroad, but there is there not investment interest in the country given its relatively well-educated but low wage workforce? The tug of wanting the familiar? Think it'll ever equilibrate and reverse?

There is no low wage workforce to invest into, because the job market is the whole EU. People (especially educated younger generation) won't work for low salary at home if they can earn more euros for the same work on the other side of the fence. Local businesses have to pay competitively.

And the fact countries can't use protectionist measures inside EU does not help either.

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#80

Post by KRAKRISMOTT »

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…

> People going to college and getting jobs nowadays are "NPCs", and the only true way to live is to go on luxury vacations and drive fancy cars full time.

What do you expect when there are no good jobs left over for college grads between the double whammy of a pandemic and LLM automation threats? Not everybody can be software engineers and most other entry level jobs simply don't pay well enough for a decent life in most cities. It's no wonder that the average non-STEM major are turning towards "hustling" on tiktok when their future contains either prostituting themselves on OnlyFans or being a perpetual serf in the service industry.

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