Posted on 04/01/2026 7:11:25 PM PDT by bitt
Guest Post by Matt Van Swol
I think I know why everything sucks…
…and it’s because everything is fake
We are getting fake college degrees that cost 4 years and six figures that teach you fake education and get you fake jobs.
We are eating fake food, with fake ingredients, funded by fake research.
We are scrolling through fake lives, with fake relationships, who take fake, curated vacations to promote brands that make fake products.
We are voting for fake candidates, who run on fake promises, inside a fake system that was never designed to fix anything.
We are raising kids in fake schools that teach fake history, fake science, which quietly produce fake adults who can’t think for themselves.
We are watching fake news, about fake crises, produced by fake journalists, for fake outrage.
We are borrowing fake money that was printed from nothing, to fund a fake economy that would collapse in an afternoon if people stopped pretending it was real.
We are buying fake organic food that’s just a paid label, and drinking fake juice with two percent juice in it, and putting fake cheese on cheeseburgers that’s just “cheese product” on fake burger meat.
We are donating to fake nonprofits where the moeny never makes it to the people and then funding fake foreign aid that buys real weapons to prop up fake governments.
We are going to fake therapy that teaches fake coping skills instead of telling you hard truths.
We are buying fake furniture made of fake wood that’s actually compressed sawdust and glue that looks like wood, ships in fourteen boxes with instructions written in a fake language that isn’t quite any language, requires tools it doesn’t include, takes 4 hours to build, wobbles on day 1, and is totally destroyed in 6 months.
We are downloading fake “free” apps that charge a subscription after three days for AI features that don’t work, hidden behind a paywall we didn’t see, protected by a privacy policy we didn’t read, buried inside Terms of Service written by lawyers specifically so we wouldn’t read them, that we agreed to by tapping a button the size of a thumbnail, that gave a company we’ve never heard of the right to sell our data to companies we’ll never hear of, to build a profile on us we’ll never see, to influence decisions we’ll never know were made.
IT. IS. ALL. FAKE.
And we all yearn for what was once real.
Don’t you remember? Did you forget?
There was a time with a simple handshake between men was a contract.
When bread went stale because… well, that’s what real bread does!
When kids played outside all day until it was dark, and nobody tracked them.
When a family could live off a single income.
When music was made by people who LIVED something real and you could feel it.
When schools was HARD… and that was the point!
When doctors knew your name and your family, they even came to your house,
When you bought something once… and it was yours forever.
When the chair your grandmother bought once lasted 70 years and she passed it onto your dad.
And now nothing is real, and that’s why everything sucks.
Now I work from home, like a lot of other people. In the five years I’ve had the second pilot, I’ve only put about 45k miles on it. Less than half the driving. Fine by me!
OK - a lot of this is true enough, but that’s not why everything sucks - these are symptoms, not causes. Everything sucks because Satan sucks.
Ha ha! Very good point! Oops. Pun not intended.
My folks just celebrated their 75 th anniversary. The went on their honeymoon in a brand new 1950 Hudson.
Bkmk
Nice car in 1950.
My parents married in 1940. They hitch-hiked the 300 miles form Chicago to Hayward, Wisconsin. My fathers parents were scandalized.
They were married over 65 years, until my father died at 88, in 2006.
All I can say in my own defense is that I had outpatient surgery this morning. Proprofol, fentanyl, several other things. I guess there's a good reason they tell you not to drive for 24 hours.
“When was the last time you had to file the points.”
You never file the points as that removes a specially
designed coating, so now they fail quicker.
Just retro fit with electronic ignition.
Unless it is a “Show car”.
Y’all don’t drive them all that much.
If you are still using Grandpa’s
1955 F250, convert it to electronic ignition
and save a lot of un-necessary grief.
No problem! Hope you’re feeling better. I guess I misunderstood - I kinda miss carburetors and starting fluid - I got pretty good at starting old cars
Well maybe y’all are.
I just laid freshly cut old growth Douglas Fir floors from British Columbia in my 100 year old house. My widows are coming next week from Marvin in Minnesota custom built from Douglas Fir to match the totally failed 100 year old windows, size for size, stick for stick.
I eat vegetables I grew in my garden, deer I shot, lamb my nephew raised and milk from a 3 cow “dairy” on an island in the salt water. Dinner was spaghetti from scratch with local pork Italian sausage, herbs from my garden etc. I buy cheese from a silent old man from the Willipa Hills.
I am wearing real wool clothes made in America from one state over. The leather boots on my feet were made there too. I made my own belt from leather.
Across my living room is a handmade in America Martin D-18 guitar. My 40 year old furniture was made in North Carolina by craftsmen. My rug was woven in 1960 Iran in a village.
And on and on and on.
Y’all can go with the fake. It’s highly available and cheap.
Or, you can pay some damned attention.
But have you got bearings for the muffler?
Sad. People need to break free of the illusory fakeness. Many are!
LOL! Very good!
In the 1950s you bought your car with cash. Today you finance it for six years. It damn well better last longer!
Exactly.
Would this guy be willing to live without air conditioning, $8 lattes, no dish washer, a 1800 sq ft house with no garage, not 76 types of cheese at the grocery store, 3 or 4 TV channels, oh and a TV would cost $2700 in todays dollars and probably only be 19 inches ....
Many live rather extravagantly compared to those in the past, but complain things are unaffordable.
I agree except for today’s paint. There’s a DeSoto on blocks near me that has better paint than my 2013 Tacoma.
Toyota has cheaped-out on paint. My 2024 Tacoma looks stupid with plastic bits that don’t look right.
That's the whole thing, 11th_VA. Ben Franklin warned us about debt. It sounds SO simple, but it truly is the thing that makes you free.
My parents followed that credo in the '70s and '80s. They bought an old house they could afford and we all had fun and learned a lot fixing it up together. We had dependable cars, and if one went south, there was usually a family friend who wanted to unload his ride at a reasonable price, and would even come over to the house to help fix anything that went wrong with it. My folks cooked and barbecued A LOT with good food that fit into the budget. We even had enough left over for Summer vacations into the American Heartland which all of us now-adult kids remember as some of our most cherished memories.
What's happening now is people spending FAR beyond their means for things they don't really need, who try to keep up with the "Joneses" they see on reality TV. It's a shame. Real life is a lot more fun, and -- amazingly! -- actually so much easier to do!
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