> Militarily, the US is allied with most EU powers (including France)
Wouldn’t this be an argument for preferring TikTok over YouTube?
There is literally nothing China can do to me as long as I stay firmly in the West. On the other hand, I could very well be sold out by Google to the US government, which could easily have me extradited from the EU.
I mean if you want to foster anti-america content all you really need to do is leave TikTok alone. It’s my generation’s version of Tumblr only on a bigger scale. You don’t really need manipulation when the user-base skews young, activist, and unironically anti-capitalist.
Which I think is awesome personally but I get how some people will see all of that as huge red flags.
I mean the trope of colleges turning people into leftist hippie communists is older than my parents.
But K-12 in the US tries to hammer so much “so misleading it might as well be false” pro-America propaganda during exactly the age that kids are generally rebelling against anything authority tells them that’s it’s not all that surprising that during a major economic downturn that’s only benefiting those with capital that people would start to have a distaste for the system that produced this mess.
There’s something wild about being so liberal that people assume you’re conservative. I’m very much vaccinated and also upset that our government left the out most vulnerable people with $1400 and a thumbs up, fucked over out healthcare workers, pushed people back to work rather than give any meaningful assistance and put everyone at risk, did basically nothing to control housing costs all while the stock market posted record returns for already wealthy capital holders.
I just think it’s weird to attribute the things you are complaining about to ‘capitalism’, and that if you are going to make such broad statements, then it’s weird to claim there are no benefits to those ‘without capital’ when there plainly are.
I happen to also be critical of most of the things you are criticizing. Blaming ‘capitalism’ doesn’t seem to offer anything. The word has become interchangeable with ‘the bogeyman’.
In a lot of ways I don’t think that’s a totally unfair assessment. But “fuck capitalism” has become somewhat of a rallying phrase for people who are upset at a number of economic problems and their non-solutions that are largely underpinned by the mostly individualistic but fundamentally capitalist way of thinking that is both wildly held in the US in general but specifically held among those in power who are personally unaffected by the systems they create.
> underpinned by the mostly individualistic but fundamentally capitalist way of thinking that is both wildly held in the US in general but specifically held among those in power who are personally unaffected by the systems they create
I largely disagree with the first half of this, and agree with the second half. I think ‘individualism’ is a chimera and not a cause.
I do agree that Americans are generally more suspicious of the state than people in most other countries, but that’s to be expected given both the founding and history of the country, and the experiences of minorities.
On the other hand, the disconnectedness of those in power and the lack of solutions is definitely evident.
My dislike of ‘anti-capitalism’ is that is just a complaint, but without any solutions.
> There is literally nothing China can do to me as long as I stay firmly in the West.
There are numerous Uyghurs in the West who would disagree with your assessment given the harassments they have had to endure. This will only become worse as China continues to become more powerful.
Wouldn’t this be an argument for preferring TikTok over YouTube?
There is literally nothing China can do to me as long as I stay firmly in the West. On the other hand, I could very well be sold out by Google to the US government, which could easily have me extradited from the EU.