Microblog Memes

Yeah, you weren't going to be the same person regardless. But also, things like that change you, a lot of things will change you. Life is about accepting where you are and making the best choices you can moving forward

It's something I'm sure the internet can't possibly relate to: brilliant and amazing, life changing innovations that by any metric should make life better in every way made into their worst selves as a means to maximize profits.

Like canned goods are amazing. In the same way advanced grain stores are the difference between starvation and survival in bad years, canning is the difference between a rough year of crap food and malnutrition. And in some contexts canned food introduces a level of convenience that's worth the cost to nutrition and flavor. Canned beans are awesome. My wife and I consider "cream of x" soups to be Midwestern roux and see them as useful tools in our kitchen.

Then there's the microwave and refrigerator that had genuinely huge benefits to everyday life and convenience.

But also everything you said is true. It permeated and destroyed our culture and communities. And our culture needed drastic changes, some of which they got. But it's just like how women did need to enter the workforce for our safety and equality, but it should've been in such a way that each parent splits the professional and domestic labor rather than wages plummeting and now both parents need to work full time.

Just as I dream of a socialism in which the trains aren't billboards but are instead a public good, I too dream of a world in which my casseroles can be made with cream of mushroom soup, not because Campbell's taught my family to cook with their ingredients but because it's a recipe where that's the ingredient that works best. And because I'm very Midwestern, and casseroles are how we show love.

Oh, you are absolutely right. The whole concept of advertising as an industry happened during this period.

There is a pretty great documentary by Adam Curtis on this titled The Century of the Self, which focuses heavily on the influence of Edward Bernays. We are still dealing with the fallout of his impact on society:

Bernays used ideas of his uncle Sigmund Freud to help convince the public, among other things, that bacon and eggs was the true all-American breakfast.

There were real concerted efforts not just to get people to buy things, but to change the way people thought about things, and they were surprisingly effective.

And as far as the gilded-age cyberpunk distopia goes, I think All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace is a good follow-up. Curtis shows the overlap and collision of Randian philosophy (which influenced Alan Greenspan), the new field of ecology, and the growing digital computer revolution.

Taken together, I think these documentaries explain a lot of how we got where we are today.

Cigarettes with asbestos filters