[fragmede]

Is that based on any sort of actual data or are you just going off the scientifically supported totally unbiased data collection method known as ~:/vibes/:~ ?

I imagine the future looked pretty bleak during world war I, and then again during II, and maybe something else during the civil rights movement, or there was also the cold war. Cynics and optimists have existed since there was something to have feelings about. what's different about today to say that the cynics outweigh the optimists, in a way they never could in the past before?

[ajkjk]

Of course it's vibes. How would you even get data on that? But just going through life, most of the people you meet now, or met then, are not silicon-valley idealists. Maybe they were if you lived in Silicon Valley? Living elsewhere, everyone I ever knew rolled their eyes at it, and maybe transparently parroted it for the money if their job required it.

But every once in a while you came across a person who seemed to genuinely believe the corporate kool-aid they were saying, usually working at Facebook or Microsoft. These people are horrifying: completely manipulated, willing to not only say but believe whatever it took to, basically keep earning their money. I have no doubt that if the winds in America turned towards some kind of communisty cult-of-personality thing they would be first in line: a true believer of anything that it's convenient to believe in.

(and I'm thinking of the USSR-type of cult here, the type described in Milan Kundera novels here. Trumpism is rather different.)