Comment on Man Alarmed to Discover His Smart Vacuum Was Broadcasting a Secret Map of His House

• BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Americans are conditioned to do a lot of things without thinking about it, but if they ever really stopped to consider it, they’d be outraged.

  For instance, those heart-tugging ads for St Jude’s Children’s Hospital. It’s a great thing they do, taking in cancer kids, and covering all the expenses, even housing and food. They show grateful parents crying, because their kids have a chance because of the charity of St Jude and the viewers, and viewers shed a tear and donate.

  It never occurs to anyone that in almost every other country in the world, such a place wouldn’t be necessary. Their cancer kids would simply be taken care of. No pomp about it, no commercials begging for donations, curing cancer kids is just business as usual.

  But in America, your kid will just DIE unless you’ve got good health insurance (which is about to get a LOT more expensive), a lot of money, or hit the charity lottery.

  But that never occurs to Americans watching that ad. They will dig into their pockets to send money to St Jude, before they will give money to a progressive candidate to change our health care system so it doesn’t require tear-jerking marketing to operate.

  source

  • Manjushri@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It never occurs to anyone that in almost every other country in the world, such a place wouldn’t be necessary.

    Yep. It reminds me of this .

    Every heartwarming human interest story in America is like “he raised $20,000 to keep 200 orphans from being crushed in the orphan-crushing machine” and then never asks why an orphan-crushing machine exists or why you’d need to pay to prevent it from being used.

    source
  • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    For instance, those heart-tugging ads for St Jude’s Children’s Hospital. It’s a great thing they do, taking in cancer kids, and covering all the expenses, even housing and food. They show grateful parents crying, because their kids have a chance because of the charity of St Jude and the viewers, and viewers shed a tear and donate.

    What really gripes my ass more than anything else is how all these horror stories are twisted and presented as “feel good” stories that should make us all go “Awww, isnt that wonderful?!”

    Like the stories about 6 year olds putting in hundreds of hour of labor to earn the money required to pay off their classmates student lunch debt (and don’t even get me fucking started on the abysmal fucking evil idea that that created the idea of student lunch debt to begin with)

    Or those “feel good” stories about someone with a wheelchair thats in complete shambles and a hardware store or something cobbles it back together and fixes it, for free, so the owner isnt stuck sitting somewhere with no mobility.

    Or someone coming down with cancer, and their coworkers donating vacation days to them so they don’t lose their fucking job and the insurance they need to pay for the actual fucking treatment.

    Like…

    How are these feel good stories?

    These are fucking the most egregious failure of civilization horror stories.

    and Americans, ever indoctrinated, see these stories and smile and feel emotionally uplifted because of the “good” that was done.

    source
  • Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I would say this is true of most (all?) countries/cultures.

    My issue with this thread’s OP was the portrayal of some US TOS scheme as having legitimatcy. It does not, it’s just a local criminal/corruption scheme (every country has them to one degree or another).

    source

    • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      hell most TOS shit isnt even legal in America.

      But most people are stupid, and those that arent don’t have the money to engage a lawyer to fight it.

      source