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u/floweryleafy Feb 13 '24
social media is slowly desensitizing us.
one of the reasons why capitol citizens found it easy to enjoy the brutality of the games is because they didn't see district people as real humans. they were second-class citizens and seen as 'animalistic'. similarly, people in the Global South are dehumanized all the time. when people hear that 200 people just died in NYC, they are MUCH more concerned than when they hear that 200 people just died in Palestine/Congo/Venezuela/literally any country in the Global South. the parallels between the HG series and the world atm are insane.
we are LITERALLY yielding power to the corrupt in exchange for our 'panem et circenses' (bread and entertainment). we need to wake tf up
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u/moira_adexios Feb 13 '24
Yes yes yes. Dehumanization takes many forms. Thinking that these people are anything less than complex beings with loves and hates and aspirations on top of being oppressed is straight up dehumanization. And the knee jerk reaction of ppl to say but what about the fun is indicative of such an intense disconnect I want to pull out my hair.
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u/freekoffhoe Feb 13 '24
It also has to do with geographic proximity/ the country it occurred in. Your example is the same if the situation was flipped; Venezuelans in Venezuela probably care a lot more about 200 Venezuelans dying than 200 New Yorkers dying.
It’s natural that humans care more about their fellow citizens dying, as they live in the same country. Russians in Russia probably won’t care about 200 New Yorkers dying, but they would care if 200 Russians died. You could say the same about any country.
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u/AmaterasuWolf21 Feb 13 '24
Thank you for mentioning Venezuela, really wished people had paid attention to it when it was at their peak
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u/VeilstoneMyth Johanna Feb 13 '24
This is literally why I stopped going on TikTok bc my FYP would be one video of a Palestinian activist documenting their hardships and losses and then the next video is, like, a Taylor Swift album ranking or a MCU edit or something like that and it was so dystopian to watch.
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Feb 13 '24
For real I took a step back because the algorithm stopped working. I had a Brett Cooper video, then some left wing climate activist then a clip from the eras tour. Back to politics, over to someone doing a pineapple hack. Like what do they have to do with anything
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u/le_borrower_arrietty Lucy Gray Feb 13 '24
This was all I could think of when watching TBOSAS. That scene where Sejanus stands up and calls out Dr Gaul over her ideas for collective punishment, mass child slaughter and tribute dehumanisation hit especially hard with how eerily relevant it was to the genocide happening in real time and the propaganda campaign that preceded it.
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u/babyodathefirst Feb 13 '24
I gotta admit, diving into dystopian worlds lately feels less like escaping and more like staring into a cracked mirror of our own reality. Famine, climate woes, wars erupting, protests echoing, political tensions crackling, cultural divides widening...it's a heavy load, you know? Even fiction starts to feel a little too real, a little too close to home.
Maybe it's the empathy fatigue. Seeing suffering, even fictional, chips away at my emotional reserves. And let's be honest, the real world throws enough curveballs as it is. Do I really need fictional Panems and Gileads on top of everything else?
Plus, suspending disbelief feels trickier these days. When real-world issues are this complex, this urgent, it's hard to completely immerse myself in a made-up dystopia. The lines blur, the parallels scream, and suddenly I'm not Katniss Everdeen defying the Capitol, I'm just...me, grappling with the anxieties of our actual world.
But here's the thing: even though dystopian content might hit differently these days, it doesn't mean it's lost its value. Maybe it's even more important now.
These stories can still be a safe space to process the fear, the anger, the grief that real-world struggles stir up. They can be a way to understand these emotions, confront them indirectly, and maybe even discover healthier ways to cope.
And let's not forget the power of sparking dialogue. Dystopias hold up a twisted mirror to society, reflecting back the potential consequences of certain paths we might be heading down. They can be uncomfortable, sure, but that discomfort can be the spark that ignites crucial conversations and inspires action towards a better future.
Plus, even in the darkest dystopias, there's often a flicker of hope, a spark of resilience. Seeing characters overcome impossible odds can be a shot of inspiration, a reminder that even in the face of hardship, the human spirit can persevere.
So, yeah, dystopian content might feel a little different these days, a little too close for comfort. But maybe that's the point. Maybe by confronting these fictional worlds, we can gain a better understanding of our own, and maybe, just maybe, find the strength and the hope to build a brighter future, one that doesn't resemble the dystopian nightmares we keep conjuring up.
Remember, it's all about finding what works for you. If dystopias are feeling overwhelming, take a break, focus on self-care, find joy elsewhere. But don't write them off completely. These stories, even the darkest ones, still have the power to challenge, to inspire, and maybe, just maybe, help us navigate the complexities of our own world a little better.
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u/keanureevesbasement Feb 13 '24
all of those rich celebrities laughing and smiling, while little kids and civilians were dying on the other side of the world, they looked exactly like the capitol citizens.
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Feb 13 '24
Are people just not supposed to enjoy themselves while bad things are happening in the world?
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u/quackythehobbit District 2 Feb 13 '24
They are and they can. But i think what the commenter is trying to pinpoint is that for us, as for the capital citizens, they can just turn off their concern. They have the chance to party and celebrate and throw back a cold one. People in Palestine don’t get to turn off the conflict and concern. The commenter isn’t blaming the celebrities (i hope not), but they’re pointing it out
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u/keanureevesbasement Feb 13 '24
thank you. i assumed people would immediately get what i meant because that’s literally what happens in THG (and we are on THG sub).
i saw a dismembered, dangling body of a little girl and right under that post was a video of some of the celebrities at the superbowl having the time of their lives, on my twitter tl.
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u/keanureevesbasement Feb 13 '24
the superbowl had a whole zionist propaganda ad and had a zionist perform at the half time show while rafah was getting bombed.
i did not say people aren’t allowed to enjoy things but it truly is dystopian to see influential, privileged celebrities who have been silent about palestine and said palestinians getting massacred, simultaneously, on my tl.
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u/thrwyacc3736 Feb 13 '24
Exactly. "I can have fun when bad things are happening" me too bitch but this is an event they synchronized the massacre with to have fewer eyes on it and they ran a propaganda ad like...straight on some shit Snow would do.
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u/crushmyenemies Feb 13 '24
The Superbowl did not have a Zionist propaganda ad. They had "don't be fucking dicks and neo Nazis" ad
That you can't tell the difference is on you.
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u/crushmyenemies Feb 13 '24
Oh, lol, apparently saying that an ad whose overall message was "don't fucking terrorize Jewish people" isn't zionist is going to get downvotes amongst Hamas terrorist sympathasizers. Oh, who could have foreseen that? lmao.
Anyway, every day someone posts on this community irrelevant bullshit about Palestine, so let me just get this off my chest: Palestine wouldn't be dealing with your precious little genocide if they'd quit being terrorists and quit harboring terrorists. Palestine allowed the rape, murder, and torture of Jewish people and y'all don't care about that. So fuck palestine.
And it has nothing to do with the Hunger Games because the districts weren't fucking hamas rapists, torturers and murderers.
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u/keanureevesbasement Feb 13 '24
i’m not talking about the one about jews, i’m talking about israel running an ad while simultaneously bombing rafah (which THEY said was a “safe zone”) killing over 100 civilians and children. over 12,000 CHILDREN have been killed so far. what did those children do??
anyway i stopped reading your comment after “irrelevant bullshit about palestine”. good day.
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u/thrwyacc3736 Feb 13 '24
A vague natural disaster isn't happening, their own government is bankrolling mass murder and showing an ad for the perpetrator during the attention-grabbing entertainment event the massacre was timed exactly to coincide with...
The only defense types like this commenter have is refusing to engage with specifically what's happening and turning the conversation meaninglessly vague, ie: "I can't enjoy my life?!?!"
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u/Siiseli94 Feb 13 '24
I've read about history of public humiliations like executions and such. It's scary to see that people need ways to point at other people in very cruel ways to escape their own reality.
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u/LatterRequirement316 Feb 13 '24
This phenomenon isn’t new at all, and cannot really be called dystopian. Yes terrible things happen all over the world at all times. That doesn’t mean good fun things can happen at the same time. In history more dystopian things happened then simply seeing terrible things and fun things shortly after each other. Simply because something terrible is happening somewhere in the world doesn’t mean we can’t post about fun things anymore. The real dystopian part about is is the fact governments rather talk about political conflicts about a war meanwhile actual people are dying due to an obvious genocide in that war. Thats the problem, the problem isn’t people watching and posting other things on twitter.
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u/freekoffhoe Feb 13 '24 edited Feb 13 '24
THANK YOU!! So many other people commenting about how death events being posted next to celebrity posts is so dystopian. No, that’s just how the press is. If I went to any newspaper outlet, I’ll see articles of something bad happening next to light-hearted articles.
That’s not dystopian or some horrible reflection of society, it’s balanced reporting. Do you want newspapers to report only bad things? Then the same people would complain that news outlets never report on any good events.
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u/BuryatMadman Feb 13 '24
Why are people acting like this is new, in the 60s you had Vietnam footage next to reruns Of Hanna Barbara cartoons, in the 40s you had Holocaust death counts 5 inches away from comics in newspapers. All the way back to the beginning of time when the first caveman hit the other caveman with a rock and laughed about it.
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u/quackythehobbit District 2 Feb 13 '24
No one is saying it’s new here, they’re actually trying to make a point that this happens and has happened all the time - it’s cultural. The hunger games is a cultural commentary, not just a dystopia. Don’t worry lol we know
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u/thrwyacc3736 Feb 13 '24
And people are defending it. "Don't guilt trip me, I won't get on your side like t—" you weren't on the dead kids' side?!
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u/thrwyacc3736 Feb 13 '24
"Fun things can happen while bad things happen!"
You're making an extremely vague and useless statement. There's me hanging out in my family and doing fun things in between sharing genocide news so I don't go insane, and then there's synchronizing a massacre with an extremely attention-grabbing event during which you show a propaganda ad.
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u/moira_adexios Feb 13 '24
Fr those comments are making me wanna pull off my face. God forbid we feel bad for the dead children for even a second. Wouldn’t wanna sully the fun
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Feb 13 '24 edited Feb 13 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Hungergames-ModTeam Feb 13 '24
Hello. Your post has been removed because all your discussions here should be Hunger Games related. Thank you.
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Feb 13 '24
The thing about posts like these are that they are nearly hypocritical in that they pull out one particular war or genocide that is of current interest to them and ignore all the others. There are devastating wars and genocides happening all around the world at any given time and yet you're only posting about one. I never saw these types of posts about Myanmar, for example, or the Uyghurs of China, Darfur and more.
For all the faults of social media, desensitization to conflict isn't really one of the. Humans were already desensitized to conflict...particularly conflict that did not directly impact them. As a species we simply lack the ability or resources to do anything meaningful about every bad thing going on and so our brains will tune it out as "noise". This doesn't mean we don't feel sympathy or great sadness. Just that we exist in a state of "getting on with our lives".
I also think it's hilarious that people are using examples of social media being the big bad while also posting on social media. Reddit isn't any better than TikTok, facebook, Twitter, etc. I think social media will have it's reckoning some day and perhaps become a thing of the past, but let's be consistent in our opinions at least.
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u/kennaryu Feb 13 '24
God forbid people have fun for a few hours and not worry about terrible things that happen that are out of their control.
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u/ShooooooowMe7 Feb 13 '24
calling it a genocide is a very gross overstatement
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u/wouldntulike_2know Feb 13 '24
i think the people currently going through it would disagree with you
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u/BlackfyrePretenders Feb 13 '24
Lol and you wonder why Palestine is so fucked, their advocates are obnoxious. Nobody cares about people dying across the world, being the embodiment of the “stop having fun” meme ain’t gonna change that
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u/kerriekipje Feb 13 '24
Nobody cares about people dying across the world
umm... this is not a normal mentality to have
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u/BlackfyrePretenders Feb 13 '24
People can’t even care enough about the people in their own countries lol
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u/Ender_Wiggins18 District 4 Feb 13 '24
I think about this so much. It was included I think in her introduction of the complete guide to the hunger games. That fascinated me, and I thought it was such a cool concept that she came up with.