If you haven’t seen them yet: Check out the “Lego Scandal” videos by Reckless Ben.

While some of his methods are certainly questionable, and he does misrepresent certain things to boost the production value, what he experiences seems to me to be indicative of the state of the entire U.S. system.

While all of this happens on a relatively small scale, his observations appear to me to be the rule rather than the exception in this country.

The latest attempt at chatcontroll was rejected as recently as April 3 mainly due to massive public opposition. They will try again, and someday they will succeed if too many people succumb to defeatism.

So it’s pretty counterproductive to say that it wouldn’t make any sense anyway, because that’s not the case.

Oh, right, sorry, I completely forgot that this guy has amazing tech-genius superpowers and works as hard all by himself as millions uppon millions of us pathetically useless plebs put together…

Also /s, of course :)

So Meta wants its own army of unsuspecting spies?

I can’t for the life of me imagine that this is legal. Maybe in the U.S., since the legal system there is so completely broken, but in Europe, the mass surveillance of millions of people by a private company seems likely to be a criminal offense.

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I’d say it’s the consequence of a lack of consequences.

I am firmly convinced that most of the problems facing humanity can be traced directly back to billionaires like him.

It’s quite simple: you can only become that rich if you are an utterly inhuman, unscrupulous monster. Unfortunately, it is precisely these monsters who rule the world, and they have created systems that require you to be a monster in order to succeed.

I’ve had many positive interactions with other users on Lemmy and piefed—across various communities.

I really appreciate the Fediverse, but unfortunately I’m also familiar with the phenomenon where people go along with the majority and downvote comments or posts just because the opinion expressed doesn’t match their own.

I think the developers of reddit clones like Lemmy should change the system so that downvotes are only available to users who have already contributed helpful posts or comments.

The requirements for this should be left to the community.

In my opinion, this would significantly reduce the burdensome negativity of apps of this kind, and the discussions would be better. This is all the more true in the Fediverse, since it is much easier here to create multiple accounts to influence the discourse.

It would likely also prevent the inevitable misunderstanding that downvotes on reddit clones like Lemmy are not intended to express disapproval, but rather to flag a post or comment that are unhelpful, nonsensical, offensive, deceptive, or malicious—in short, not conducive to the discussion.

If you feel that way, social media is no different at all from what legacy media used to be. The only difference is that you don’t want to pay for that content and take all of that for granted.

That in no way contradicts what I’m saying: People don’t want to be confronted with reality.

The problem with that, however, is that burying their heads in the sand instead of joining forces to change the situation doesn’t help anyone—it actually hurts anyone.

An excellent example of what happens when people don’t band together to put a stop to those who harm everyone out of ruthless self-interest is the U.S.

It is simply wrong to resign oneself to injustice. People can change things together—there are more than enough examples of this in history.

To say, “That’s just the way it is,” is the worst thing you can do, because that is exactly what the powerful of this world want—and they want it because they are so vastly outnumbered.

I say this myself above, and unfortunately, it’s because I’ve pretty much given up hope— because even on the most niche platforms, you’re still confronted with people’s hedonism.

Well, I would say that it is an insurmountable systemic problem if the system allows—or rather, explicitly provides for—the idea that those who don’t have enough money are not entitled to justice. This contradicts the fundamental principle of any democratic state governed by the rule of law. And that is precisely the starting point of Ben’s videos: someone is clearly being robbed, but cannot defend themselves because they have less money than the criminal.

This fact alone shows how absurd the U.S. system is—and that’s just the beginning of the first video. Everything that follows is the reality of this system, which allows—or rather, makes it a logical consequence—that the U.S. president is the person he is.

This is not due to tribal affiliation or the like. It is the result of a constitution written by large landowners for a country where slavery was legal. By the way, in case you didn’t know: The U.S. Constitution is the hardest to amend of all the democratic countries in the world. That is why it is also the least-amended democratic constitution in the world. In other words: It continues to cement the conditions of 250 years ago to this day. What U.S. citizens are experiencing today is merely the consequence of that.

Added to this is just how corrupt the legal system and the executive branches are.

All in all, this results in a state of injustice, which should be perfectly obvious to everyone today. I mean, the U.S. president is obviously more of a mafia godfather than anything that could still be called a politician with a mandate to represent some interests, let alone the people.

This country is an oligarchy that has as little to do with democracy as Russia does.

Ben’s video demonstrates this in a way that should make it quite obvious to everyone. This is not the exception, it is the rule.

Well, unfortunately, that’s just the way it is. If people would sacrifice their own entertainment just a few times for the greater good, organizations like FIFA wouldn’t exist. Unfortunately, though, they don’t—not even when it comes to things as utterly dispensable as sporting events. The result is the world we live in today.

Edit: On a smaller scale, you can actually observe this effect even on Lemmy as well: just look at how many large communities have imposed the absurd “no politics” rule on themselves. Obviously, this rule is so broadly defined that it opens the door to arbitrary censorship and can only lead to arbitrariness, since there is nothing that isn’t political in one way or another. Yet people insist they don’t want to be confronted with reality—not on showerthoughts, not on asklemmy, and not on many other communities. They then say, “Post in a political community,” meaning somewhere where no one will see it. That’s just how the world is, that’s how the majority of people are, and that’s why we have to live the way we do.

Sorry for the rant.

The only soccer team I’m a real fan of is the Fuck Fifa Team.

As a European, I find Reckless Ben’s “Lego Scandal” videos quite revealing, because they illustrate very well—albeit on a smaller scale—just how utterly corrupt the U.S. system really is. It’s obviously the same on a larger scale, though the corruption and the outrageous injustice are carried out using the same utterly mindless methods—by truly mindless people whose only distinguishing feature is that they are so incredibly unscrupulous and selfish.

If you haven’t seen the Ben’s Lego videos yet, check em out. They really do a great job of showing how the world works in the US.

Edit: Just to be clear: Some of Ben’s methods are certainly questionable, and some things are misrepresented for the sake of production value. Nevertheless, the videos are very compelling and entertaining, even though it’s frightening just how irreparably broken the U.S. system is.

Thank you very muc! I’m not really into jazz, but even I know these songs. It just goes to show how timeless they are—and how well-known they are, even among people who don’t know the first thing about jazz.

Aww, that’s such a classic. It seems to me that there aren’t many new, heart-felt love songs like this one anymore - not the over the top flashy ones, but rather those with a down-to-earth, relatable charm. But maybe I’m just out of the loop :)

Oh yeah, that’s great, but I’ve always thought the Ventures’ version is the most badass.

Yes, Yusuf Islam is truly timeless, even though he probably wouldn’t be very successful in the U.S. today under his new name

As relevant today as ever

No, no, I mean songs that stand the test of time because they’re so catchy. “Son of a Preacher Man” is definitely one of those songs. I actually hadn’t heard “Just a Day” by Feeder before. Probably because alternative rock was never really my thing - but I can see, or rather hear, the timelessness in this one too :)