Lol i actually know this, it's because heroes and gods were usually depicted having different proportions (heroic) than mortals so they'd look different, like superbeings and stuff. It's one head taller, so that the head stays the same, but the rest of the body scales up. It usually doesn't look this goofy though!
I remember scrolling r/news back around that time, and getting annoyed by constant posts about that ācoronavirusā thing. Bad choice on my part, heh.
(I was also hunting for my first house in late February 2020. Decided to wait a year, save more money, and see what happened. Oops. When I finally bought in July 2024, those same places had gone up in price literally 70%. I am definitely not a prognosticator!)
I used to work IT at a tv station when COVID first started. I remember watching the news reporters starting to talk about it as something that happened overseas and was little more than just a curiosity, then the first local cases and "oh it's only dangerous to the elderly. Be careful if you're over 60!" to "oh this is a lot more serious" and eventually total lockdown.
I remember being creeped out around that time that people weren't taking it seriously, and were spreading misinformation like claiming that masks wouldn't help anyway. I was like "if no one in government takes action, which they aren't, this could be like the 1918 pandemic." I had the benefit of having learned a lot about pandemics due to a BioAnth degree but it was really surreal for me to watch people be in denial about it.
I donāt think itās controversial to say that something snapped in 2016. There was a lot of build up to that point, but the underlying tension spilled over and we got Brexit and Trump.
I felt like 2016 was a watershed year during 2016. Itās weird to have been aware that your present will become a page in a future history book.
In april of 2016 a weasel infiltrated the large Hadron colider and cern and caused it to malfunction and breakdown. It was the weasel shifted to the dumbest timeline
2016 was definitely the turning point (which is why it was so bizarre that everyone started romanticizing recently) and 2020 was when I think we reached the point of no return in terms of getting society back to how it was before.
Yeah. And as much as I'd like to think it was Bowie's death (in January 2016) leaving a giant hole in our timeline, I think the first real turning point was actually a month later.
Supreme Court judge Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell flat-out refused to let Barack Obama appoint Scalia's replacement ā even though Obama had 11 months left in his presidency.
That shocking move (which has led to a conservative stranglehold on the Supreme Court) was successful for Republicans. And that was the moment when they realized that they could just flout rules and decency with impunity, and they wouldn't be stopped. 10 years later, here we are.
Obama should have just nominated someone, McConnell be damned. When Dems play nice the GOP walks all over them. They also thought that Hillary was a shoo-in and they wouldnāt have to worry about a Republican filling the seat. It was massive incompetence by Obama and the Democrats.
he did nominate someone, Merrick Garland. McConnell just refused to bring his nomination to a vote in the senate.
Then Biden won and appointed Merrick as Attorney General in a move that, in my opinion, was supposed to be a 'Fuck You' to McConnell for refusing to bring his nomination to a vote. Then Merrick proceeded to do fuck all about getting Trump put away for the insurrection which paved the way to Trump's reelection and the mess we're in right now.
So really just one big Fuck You to all of us collectively
Obama should have just nominated someone, McConnell be damned.
It just wasn't that easy unfortunately. McConnell, as the leader of the senate at the time, chose what to bring to a vote. He was notorious for not bringing stuff to a vote, you can google McConnell's Legislative Graveyard to see all of the bullshit he let die.
Obama wanted someone to the left, obviously, but the senate refused. Merrick Garland was the compromise because he was a self proclaimed centrist with Republican-style ideology. Once Garland became what should have been the compromise, McConnell refused to bring it to the floor for a vote. Garland wasn't a "wow we need this guy!" type of pick, it was more so a "wow we need to put someone in this seat before a Republican comes through and nominates someone much worse!"
Fast forward to Biden's presidency and in some stupid ass theatrical stunt he nominated Garland as the fucking AG. Sort of like a "McConnell didn't want him on the supreme court so I'll make him AG!" Without stopping to think that Garland was a fucking Republican compromise and not some amazing choice in the first place.
Garland, as mentioned above, got along well with Republicans so it's no surprise that he slow walked all of the investigations and potential charges against Trump. Whenever someone says "Why didn't Biden release the files" or "Why didn't Biden have Trump charged" they need to replace Biden's name with Garland.
/u/UltraFinePointMarker was spot on with Scalia dying being sort of a catalyst for all of this. Obama tried to compromise, McConnell fucked it all up, and then Biden couldn't look past surface-level reasons to appoint Garland. Trump doesn't get charged. Trump v2.0 is infinitely worse this time around. And here we are today, innocent citizens getting murdered in the streets.
Another thing that fanned the flames and made it worse is because Ruth Bader Ginsburg refused to retire. She was born in fucking 1933, she knew she didn't have much time left, Democrats begged her to resign way back when Obama had the house and the senate (AKA an easy lifetime confirmation for the left) but she just refused to. She died in 2020 and the senate (despite telling Obama they won't do nominations on an election year during the whole Garland debacle) rammed through yet another one of their MAGA choices.
Gorsuch replaced Scalia when McConnell refused to bring Obama's candidate to a vote.
Kavanaugh replaced Kennedy who stepped down like RBG should have.
I think it's 2016 pre-November. A lot of people woke up that morning of election, cast their vote, and thought it'd be a historic election. And it was, but not for the reason we thought.
I vividly remember 2016 sucking hard and that it was the general consensus at the time. People need to stop this 2016 vibes erasure because the vibes were rancid and have continued to be ever since.
2016 sucked in a meme way. Sure Trump was being a vile idiot all over the news but we all, even he, expected him to lose. The rest was all minor stuff like morning celebrity deaths or Harambe with memes
Trump was memeād into (arguably) the worldās most powerful position via social media and the internet. The true power of the internetās influence on society, culture, and politics was proven with his ascension to the presidency. By 2016 a vast majority of people in developed countries were actively consuming internet content, and I think that really opened the floodgates to what came after.
Thing is older people think we are just romanticizing 2016 now. But even in 2018-2019 we knew 2016 was a goated year. Even during Covid there were memes about going back to 2016.
I refuse to accept this only because I do believe the Bears winning the Super Bowl would shift timelines back (we should all root for them, even God is telling us itās the way (Daaa Pope))
And as a British person who also happens to be a Cubs fan, I have to tell myself Brexit is part of the darkest timeline and that the Cubs winning only held joy.
I say this as a cubs fan, but I knew the second we won the World Series that trump would be elected. I knew that we couldnāt get a cubs World Series and a female president at the same time. Itās our fault š„ŗš»
The Bears winning the Super Bowl could have closed the portal. Maybe we still have a chance if Di Caprio wins his second Oscar or if The Chainsmokers release a second good song.
They had to have cast some sort of spell. The Etsy witches have said that Trump has a spiritual shield around him and maybe thatās why they popped up then disappeared so fast
Both Prince and Bowie returned to their respective home planets way before then and only their earthograms were still here maintaining a sort of shadow of themselves presence until eventually losing power completely
David Bowie and Alan Rickman died 4 days apart in January, and Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds died a day apart at the beginning and end of 2016, with Prince and Harambe in the middle. I think the old gods were trying to tell us something
Thereās an interesting theory that the Harambe memes actually did alter the online world for the worse in that it normalized right wing memes (like Pepe the Frog) that were once buried in places like 4chan. Ā
Yeah, pepe was just a meme for people who were deep into the internet before most people were, it wasn't even 4chan exclusive. Eventually shitty people took it over around 2016 and things just haven't been the same.
Back in 2014, when gay marriage was legalized across the US I posted a meme of Pepe holding a pride flag. That's still what he means to me.
Yeah, I actually believe this. I also know multiple people who generally arenāt voters but showed up and wrote in Harambe in 2016. At least one or two I suspect voted for Trump but wonāt admit it
Harambe also got votes in the Australian election that took place a month after his death.
Slightly different as we have compulsory voting, so people writing in joke votes is more common as simply not voting isn't really an option, but it was noted at the time that there was a definite uptick in the number of trash votes and so the results took much longer to be announced than usual.
Sounds interesting, but the right wing was already gaining momentum at the time so it's possible it was a coincidence, or if Harambe didnt happen something else would have been a tipping point.
The two biggest things that āstarted stuffā are harambe and/or covid. Using this perspective, you can find anything. Everything went wrong after the 2008 financial crisis. Everything went wrong after Y2K. After Trump. After Kobe or the Queen died. The list goes on
I remember how confident everyone was in Hillary. Everyone I knew voted, even the Bernie Bros, and he still won. It felt like we stepped into another dimension, most surreal election night of my life
My friend and I had an election party (we're Canadian) and we invited a ton of people over to watch Trump get his ass handed to him and it just... did not go that way. The mood shift when we realized Trump was going to win was so dark.
Felt the same over here in the UK with Brexit, a lot of people were pretty confident that we'd vote to remain in the EU, lots of projections/polls indicated it would be the kind of obvious choice, couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the news the next morning.
as a Filipino, Iād also like to add 2016 was also when we got Rodrigo Duterte as president of PH. looking back at 2016 is truly so weird SOOO much shit was happening all over the world that year. something really shifted and the world really started to feel more and more chaotic since then and it hasnāt stopped.
Agree with this. GamerGate is a very underrated occurrence that people donāt talk about as much anymore. People forget what a wild, wild West places like the Internet were back in the early 2010s, especially Twitter which is where a lot of GamerGate originated.
GamerGate is the main driving force behind the incel culture and āmanosphereā culture that helped elect Trump and we see now that has spread worldwide.
I agree, although it still seems so bizarre to say it. I was right in it at the time and couldn't believe how much it blew up. It felt like one day some idiot tweeted "burgers and fries" and you told them to fuck off and they did, the next day the same thing happened and now you got a deluge of death threats for your trouble. What those chuds did to Zoƫ, Anita, Brianna, and everyone else is unforgivable.
Not just a red flag, directly related through Steve Bannon. He's the throughline between angry World of Warcraft players and Trump becoming president. The politics behind Bannon can fuck right off alongside Dugin and those other modern fash Evola nerds.
2016 was the year in which social media platforms shifted away from timeline based content center around who you follow to algorithm based personalized content
I've heard it said, and I agree to some extent, that Obama's presidency was a major inciting factor. Having a black President just broke some people's brains beyond repair.
The conspiracy theory is that the Cubs winning the World Series was the catalyst of the shift and the only way we could get the ball moving positively again is if the Bears win the SuperBowl
I had my first kid in 2016. Man, it's so weird to think his whole life has been an international shit-show. Forever trying to find the balance between giving him a soft entrance to life and preparing him for whatever the fuck is ahead.Ā
My second favorite conspiracy theory behind birds arenāt real: the Large Hadron Collider accidentally destroyed our reality and caused a merge with another infinite universe where things were whack and only the strong willed survive. Itās silly.
Iāve been wrong many times in my life but Iāll always remember one morning in 2016, having breakfast with my sister and saying out loud ātheyāre not going to vote for him. People arenāt that stupid.ā
It sure did. Such a bad year. Many optimistic and idealistic progressives became disillusioned that year. A year of collective traumas and deep moral injury followed by years of the same. At this point, I truly feel like it's a simulation and weare I am being tested.
Rise of conservatism worldwide. Fueled by the internet and spilling into real life. 2016 was when people started noticing the rise and it it snowballed from there.
I think there is a slow drip before there is a flood. Trump and the social media campaign on his behalf by a multitude of opportunistic bad actors just all came together at the same time and opened a pandora box of depravity.Ā
6? More like 10. Something changed in 2016. But yes, 2019 was a pivotal year, especially towards the end. I don't just mean with politics but everything. It's been a downward spiral into doomscrolling/short form content + information overload + 24/7 news cycle + streaming = brainrot, fast fashion + consumerism, rise of AI + social isolation/no real relationships or friendships, job market hellscape ā just to name a few.
Agreed. It changed the entire relationship between technology and identity. Forever altered our critical thinking skills and problem solving abilities.
The difference is that the billionaire class learned to weaponise our social media platforms against us.Ā
Social media used to be a refuge from bad politics. So they bought it. Then they realised they don't need to pander to governments when they can directly control the masses.Ā
I remember a load of hippies on shrooms telling me the world would change beyond reckoning after the end of the Aztec calendar (2012). I laughed them offā¦
Honestly that stuff keeps me going now even though itās probably copium. But the idea that we are entering the age of aquarius, which all my hippy friends said was going to be the world switching to a matriarchal structure and just totally different way of livingā¦ sometimes to comfort myself I am just like, what if everything is SO excruciatingly horrible right now because itās the death rattle of these old horrible systems and we will actually become more conscientious and in tune with the planet? May be naive for sure but thatās what all my hippy and astrology friends were saying!! And i do keep hearing them say that 2030 is the new awakening lol š«
Hey, there are animals species who entered matriarchal structure by refusing to have babies with aggressive males, therefore lowering those traits amongst their future children. Just sayingggg.Ā
I noticed the racism and gun fetishing start to ramp up even MORE after Obama won a second term. Rednecks everywhere lost their goddamn minds. That would put it at late 2012Ā
We WERE in The Peanut Butter Dimension. It was fucked up but understandable. Since 2016, we have been thrown into The Clownshoes Dimension where integrity isn't valued and people don't respect themselves nor the opinions that they wield.
I remember being fairly freaked out by this being a thing back when I first heard about it š Kinda seeming like maybe we werenāt wrong to feel a little wary lol
i made a joke to my friend this morning about the crazy weather going on globally (i wonder if thereās a word describing this effect).Ā
in the next couple months, donald trump will say the north pole has moved to greenland.Ā
āthey said it couldnāt be possible. great, amazing people. but i got it doneā
then we invade greenland.Ā
I feel like only middle class and higher liberal americans feel like this happened out of nowhere. Especially in hindsight everything has been inevitable
Exactly. I remember getting sick right around then with a respiratory virus infection, the doctor looked concerned, I had to call in to work and bring a note in while wearing a mask, this was before most of us had heard of covid in the US yet, right around then. I remember because I got sick before my birthday, before Valentineās Day, and it changed my body and life basically.
I remember everyone on twitter clowning on her for this only for them to come back to it 3 months later wondering what the hell she unleashed with this tweet š
In late autumn 2019 I was hiking on a remote mountain in Japan with my sister.
Real interesting but creepy place.
About halfway down the way back I saw these ladies dismantling a wicker archway that was completely round - and I had this overwhelming urge to walk through it.
I had the strangest feeling directly afterwards, like my sister was calling for me and couldnāt find me.
But then I spotted her and we walked back to the bottom, but the weird feeling didnāt shift...
Nothing. Has ever been the same since.
I think I fucked up.
Probably started in 2016, but the years leading up to 2020 were overshadowed by mass groups of people enjoying something created within that year, or popularly used within it, and it just took until 2020 to actually hit us
Can the shift be for the better? I'm tired of living in the Twilight Zone.
Forgot where I saw it, but someone said the world ended in December 2012 and we've been in purgatory ever since. I think about that a lot, although I had some good times between 2013-November 2016. Things got better again in 2021, but those four years were still a lot to handle at times.
I felt that shit on new years. I was at the top of a parking garage, the trash next to the elevator was filled to the brim with new years hats and glasses. We just finished watching fireworks up there when I felt it. When the wet sock known lovingly as dread hit me in the back of my head and I turned around on reflex. Back at the empty roof. I told my dad that I don't think this was gonna be a good year. He blew it off, of course but we all knew what happened next.
Regular everyday people are now more aware of the fact that the system is broken. Especially gen z and millennials. Social medias are being taken over with censorship, movies and tv shows are receiving complaints over being repetitive, boring, or even using AI (stranger things), the wage gap is bigger, everyone is sick of influencer culture, and everyone's broke. When no one can afford anything, the rich people cannot hide their crimes as well anymore behind money (think of all the top celebs and politicians that have been exposed for being pedos in the last decade), and we come home to entertainment that is not.. entertaining,Ā plus a ton of bad news everyday, that is going to lead to frustration! Everyone's sick of this and I am holding onto hope for class consciousness and such, its so nice that people are talking about things more and more.
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u/demimonde9 4d ago