I used to fantasize about doing this.

When it got to a point that I was making careful plans for how to effectively remove all traces of my existence before walking into the sea or something, I realized that it was probably not a good thing that I was fixating on this "fantasy" and how attractive it was becoming, so I went to a nice little family mental health clinic in walking distance.

I was diagnosed with depression, PTSD and general anxiety disorder. A few years and a few rounds of therapy and medication later and I'm... still struggling. But at least I'm not planning my exit. There's a lot to live for, but you can't see it when your brain starts running away with your mental narratives. Don't ruminate, don't fantasize. Get some help and do something new with your lives.

The works of Roger Penrose have shown that it's conceivable or potentially even provable that at the very largest scales of time and space, there is no meaningful difference between the accelerating "cold" end of our universe and the collossal expansion that began the universe as we know it, and in fact those two states are perpetually cycling, birthing new universes from the explosion of old ones. This is based on the idea that when there is no more physical mass in the universe, you can look at the universe from a reference frame that only looks at the geometry of the energy expanding through space and it's identical to the beginning states.

I would recommend PBS Spacetime youtube channel for a lot better explanations of conformal cyclic cosmology than my feeble mind can try to relate.

How do you think all the stuff managed to get there in the first place?

You're still thinking like a meat-monkey. There are stranger states out there than one can imagine, and that's not hyperbole. There was no causality before expansion, because there was no meaningful interactions or spacetime in which interactions can occur.

You're always going to have a hard time imagining this, because again, you are a human. We all are, none of us can imagine states of the universe without time and space.

I’m going to immediately distrust the motives.

Additionally, the data is self-reported surveys with questions like "Have you ever been contacted by someone from a company or corporation?" and... yeah? This part shouldn't be surprising to any platform that allows private messages. And "Have you ever seen someone promoting a product?" and most people are going to either shrug or already have a strong opinion, it's not very scientific for actual data on the actual traffic from bots and corporate shills, more how the human users feel about the platform.

I would much rather see an independent investigation from a technical point-of-view, which tracks the comments and timing of user comments to determine how many are actually bots just quietly gaining karma with innocuous comments, or how many are just programmed to go to certain subreddits at certain times to push a narrative.

You are so cool for being able to point out political ideology you don't like, you're cool.

edit: I also love how I just said "nazis and sexists" and this clown goes "Oh yeah, the left is bad too!" Bruh, doesn't that say something right there that you assumed it was a political attack?

Average american level of critical thinking.

Sadly I am not exaggerating.

The public voting system is massively flawed when it comes to websites and sharing content. Since anyone who really wants visibility can just pay any number of services to boost their posts and comments, you have no idea what's real and you have no idea what the general public actually supports.

For the average person who doesn't think about what's going on behind the scenes, it looks like an accurate representation of society's interests and leanings. This is probably why we have a sharp uptick of far-right assholes and why so many young guys are turning towards sexist, racist figures online. The very same people who also proudly talk about how good they are at manipulating people. Hmmn.

So far a lot of the people I've interacted here have been more dense than reddit, I mean, a lot of the people here have been banned from reddit after all.

I mean, so was I. But it was for quoting someone's use of a slur so they couldn't edit it, then evading that bullshit ban. Apparently when you actively call out nazis and sexist assholes the powers that be will find a way to make you regret it.

The average middle-class capitalist moron view of economics is when you get rich the government fires up it's money machine and delivers you sacks of cash. The only thing keeping us all from getting our own sacks is momentary inconveniences and they too will be rich one day just as soon as they [fill in a thousand blanks.]

A billionaire has deprived vast numbers of people of something. You do not hold onto a billion dollars in your hand without the knowledge that some... or most of that would have paid for medical procedures, some of that would have been baby formula, medicine, overdue rent payments, gas to get to work for a struggling family, heat and water bills and so on. But you have found ways to skim that money from enough people that few notice. Because you don't miss something that was intercepted before it made it to you.

You simply cannot ethically hoard money.

So it's boomers surrounded by bots that praise them and share things with them and reward them when they do good. Got it.

This is all just preparing us for when we put artificial nurses and other robots in charge of taking care of our delusional elderly.

Yeah that sounds so much like post-hoc justification that I'm seriously surprised that it's being swallowed by anyone.

I mean, great if it DOES help with such a terrible problem, it's just I have seen this thing being talked about before and it's NEVER been discussed in terms of helping trafficking victims. This is the first I've heard of it. Almost every time you see this kind of narrative being discussed it's either 99% of the time a bunch of sweaty incels online whinging about how women aren't really pretty and just want to trap guys or some other dom/sub kink fantasy nonsense to validate their depression and self-loathing, OR about 1% of the time it's an actual empowering discussion talking about unfair hollywood beauty standards.

The various platforms with their various advertiser-friendly stances have all but maimed the english language. Had someone I know talking about a death in their family and they legit said "unalive" once without realizing it.