To think people nowadays are fooled easily by what they see?

No better example of this is the celebrities jumping on a cause bandwagon. And general public then applauding them for being oh so virtuous. It’s publicity, people. Nothing more.

Much of social media is inhabited by fools being followed by fools.
It's the scourge of modern life.

I want to look like this.
If I buy these products, I'll look like this.
If I make my home look like this I'll be so much better and happier.
If I do this with my children, I'll be a better parent.
If I live my life like this I'll be a better person.
If I follow this lifestyle, I'll look amazing and everyone will love me more.

I despair.

Instagram should be just for pretty things like plants, cats and dogs catching treats.

I have nit a single influencer on it. Because most of them lie. And I swore never to follow any after having to deal with trillion of "I have 5k followers on instagram and I would just loooooove to promote your place. Only thing I ask for is free lunch for myself & a friend xoxo". Fuck off

It works the other way too. People assume we are hard up because we live modestly. Reality is we live beneath our means. Looks can be deceptive.

People don't think deeply. They respond on a surface level to all the surface stimulants they see. It's the same with politics. It's disappointing that people don't question and assess against the framework of reality they experience.

I mean, my teenage boys know women don't look like the women in magazines. How? They see women on the bus and walking down the street. That's reality.

It's always been like this. In the old days, it was movie stars with their heavily edited life stories and airbrushed pictures in the film magazines.

Go and take a listen to some "true" ghost stories on YouTube. It's fucking hilarious.

Quite entertaining.

Listen to the video. Try to spot the ripped off/partially ripped off/slightly altered/mish mash of various horror movies and common literary tropes of the genre. Look out for the character name changes, familial relationship switches and sudden wild plot developments. Also, watch out for the staggering number of people who clearly remember being three years old, despite the passage of one or more decades, so well that they can tell you everything they observed, right down to what the exact time on the clock was when they saw the ghost/demon/shadow.

For an epic finale, read the comments and see just how many people completely bought that big steaming pile of horse shit.

If you ask me, today's young people in particular, need to learn how to employ a healthy dose of scepticism before the world eats them alive.

Oh yes to this. I have an early 20s sister and she used to always be saying to me “have you seen this car so and so has bought” or “I can’t believe this girl can afford all these amazing clothes and to be out all the time”

She used to think I was a right Scrooge when I pointed out that a lot of it was probably on finance and credit cards and that Instagram wasn’t always to be believed. She’s definitely starting to see the truth now she’s older and has a job and is starting to realise how much things cost

It’s like a version of keeping up with the Jones’s.

Only it’s not that you have to have the new car, the best gear, the nicest false nails. Nowadays it’s more that you have to ‘look like’ you have these things. So a leased car instead of the same bought is fine etc.

It’s a very materialistic society nowadays. Everybody wants everything. They want it now. They don’t want to pay for it but if they do they want it on interest free credit. They want it in a ridiculously large glass with the latest fashion colour of this season on the wall, while wearing the gear some poncy little fuckwit tells them to wear.

Nobody has a mind if their own.

You lot sound amazing. So smart. I wish I was like you rather than all the stupid people you see online.