My situation was a slightly concretized example of the OP. It sits within the OP’s conceptual space. It’s not justification.

You are now too defensive and emotional to reasonably interrogate or express this level of idea. It’s not worth my time to try to fight past that emotion. Have a nice day.

Maybe as he loses support, Vance will resign ‘in disgust’ and the congress will finally impeach him. American Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, becomes President Johnson for 15 minutes. The Republicans try to ride the wave of righteous anger to get the ‘moral’ Americans to support a return to ‘wholesome values,’ saying Trump ‘swindled the Republican party just like he did America.’ Trump dies awaiting a court date. He’s old, so no one calls foul play. Vance riles up the same anti-whatever-you-think-is-bad sentiment, but not as well, and is supported by AI billionaires who use their GPUs, left idle because they only have three customers willing to pay what it costs to run them, to pump out pro-Vance and ‘anti-woke’ propaganda. He tries to become President Vance. He hopes for two terms because he resigned before he could be succeeded into the presidency. The democratic party rolls out Joe Biden in an iron lung to run again. America looks at the options and organises the biggest mass shooting in history, in the form of an enormous mass suicide. The survivors blame the dead and vote for Biden ‘to teach the Republican Party a lesson.’ Nothing changes.

I see you are among those who are incapable of reasoning by analog.

The hypothetical is all there is when discussing a hypothetical. The metaphorical room is eternal and all encompassing because once you leave the ‘room’ you are outside the hypothetical. So, yes, you are ‘trapped in the room’ if you are going to engage in the OP’s hypothetical. If you want to deny the premise, you are trying to pretend you are playing the game but ignoring the rules of the game. In other words, you are lying, whether to us or to yourself. Don’t get pissy when people call out your ignorance of how to play, willful or otherwise.

Given the point of the comic is that the kid is stupid and won’t stop wasting money on stupid things, shouldn’t their OSs be reversed?

Thanks for pointing this out. Blocking it now.

Think that through. You are in a room with only people dumber than you. How are you learning anything? They don’t have anything good to teach you. If you try to bring new knowledge into the room, they will likely not reward you for it, and quite possibly actively attack you for it. How long do you think you could maintain your intelligent view of anything when everyone around you is dragging you down with every interaction? You try to discuss science, they call you a nerd and tear up your textbooks to roll blunts. You try spending time ignoring them to study the construction of the walls of the room, but eventually you need some company. No one can survive in complete isolation. They tell you you’re the idiot for trying so hard, for caring about these things that no one else in your world cares about. And you hate to admit it, but they’re kind of right. You can study everything you want. You can write down findings for the rest of your life about the room, but when you’re gone, they’re just going to roll them into blunts. Even if you resist at first, they’ll outlast you because you need people to maintain your sanity. They’ll wear down your values as they, without even thinking about it, use operand conditioning to get you to use their slang, play their games, value what they value, disregard what they disregard. It happens all the time.

Somehow I don’t think all the people dumping on him here are aware of who he is, what his preferences might be, etc. Maybe some, but a lot of them are just being assholes.

It’s not an excuse.

So we’re just making fun of some kid for how he looks now?

Diarrhea?

Tears of joy? Nothing, ever. But this moth is really cute.

The game was likely written as commentary on, or at least influenced by, the experiences of its creators. But the loss of trust and cohesion is nothing new. People have been talking about it for decades, with varying ideas of the cause and the cure.

‘Drama’ seekers and what I might call drama-pigs. There are a lot of people who think relationships are ‘supposed’ to have drama. They see versions of relationships, romantic or friendships, in dramas and romances written to be interesting from the outside and absorb it as normal. The result is deleterious. The other side of this is the drama-pigs, people who feed off of the real-life dramatics of people’s lives as entertainment. They read AITA posts or watch drama vlogs as though the people involved were characters in a story rather than real people who are dealing with real problems.

It’s not free, and it has some limitations. You have to spend years in the military, risking being killed and agreeing to murder people for that money. If you’re a woman, there’s a significant risk of rape as well. Then, if you went to school before joining, but didn’t get it in writing that the military would pay for all your student debt, they won’t. Then, finally, if you survive, come out the other side in good enough mental condition to not off yourself, and go to school, your tuition is limited by certain stipulations. Depending on where/what you want to study, it might not even be enough.

Oof, losing the moral high ground to Ford…

If I’m the smart one, I have to do all the work I can’t trust to idiots, run the team or be on a team run by an idiot, be the most responsible according to any outside observer, and my success will still be mostly reliant on idiots.

If I’m the idiot, at worst I’d be mocked, but maybe I’d be too stupid to notice. At least the work would be more likely to be successful.

The versions of historical american presidents seen in the american mythology. The world could use a president as great as the George Washington patriotic Americans think he was.

More of a Chirlie Kark.

It’s real, but it frames it as though it’s the employees fault for not doing self-promotion rather than the manager’s fault for not keeping track of all the team members it’s his job to support.

To save time, we (as in the world of English speakers) are not on the same page regarding woke.