i feel like this is a pretty regular topic on here, but a recap of mine: arab american child during the bush administration, us government is openly a white christian supremacist plutocracy that lies and kills for profit. then obama wins, cool young guy, first black president, supposed to fix everything. he doesn't, weakens civil liberties even further, cracks down on whistleblowers, bails out the banks. and somehow the people that hated bush still love him. Trayvon Martin is killed. PRISM is exposed. nothing seems to change. I learn about history, both in school and on the internet. how there used to be pitched battles on American soil waged against the workers by the bosses. Sacco and Vanzetti. I learn about the Nakba and about Vietnam. Leaving home gets me out of my upper class bubble and makes me realize just how fucked most people are.

On a personal level I was a basically unhappy kid who became an unhappy and neurotic adult. I was browsing 4chan a lot and steeping in the ambient bigotry of the site, but with my liberal upbringing, i was only able to stand it as long as i could believe that it was all just a joke. i quit when gamergate happened and i realized that some of these guys have real issues with women and black people and also think the jews are coming for their toys. Besides being morally odious, it was too clearly a tantrum. Cringe. Helped me self-reflect. Spent a lot of time on tumblr, read some cool posts, even read actual books where before all i read was scifi novels. Became anarchy.

If there's a theme, it was realizing that things are worse than I previously thought, that everyone already knows, and they don't care. I'm not sure if that still works for young people. Now, everybody cares, no one ever shuts up about how everything is terrible. But also no one knows what to do or why it's all happening, and it's like their goal is to get back to 20 years ago when everything was fine, actually.