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.
So, fake your own death!
Agree wholeheartedly! See my #40.
I became debt free in my 12th year of work. Paid off the house. Moved several more times and paid cash with a check. I have never paid a dollar of credit card interest in my life.
Debt will kill you. How can you make a productive investment until you’re rid of it?
Very, very wise! Thanks for that!
Not a fan of the latest Tacos. IMO 2012 to 2015 were the best. Although my neighbor who still has a running 1984 might differ.
I think about it, and a lot of it, is that people don’t have shared experiences anymore.
When we were growing up, we listened to the same music, watched the same movies, etc. Now everybody has their own “soundtrack”, heck they can even make their own music. It just seems so empty.
I couldn’t stand that my 2004 Tundra with 218,000 was eating radiator fluid. I can’t stand getting stranded 20 miles out a dirt road with a trailer. So I sold it off to a buddy and bought the Tacoma.
Damned if the thing stopped eating coolant and is running like a dream. Quieter and softer than my new Tacoma!
I did get a good life out of that Tundra …
Went to the junkyard and got a GM HEI.
The fake he missed is the fake jobs in a lot of corporations.
Elon got rid of 80% of the headcount at Twitter and it still functioned.
I guess that is an extreme case, but there is a huge number of fake jobs throughout the corporate sector. And “AI” is providing the excuse to get rid of them.
Very well said. True that.
Not sure that what you say about cars is true. Many of today’s cars will likely never be restored...and there are good reasons for that. Many are just not built for possible longevity.
Yeah, I first heard that expression same time you did, around 1973 when I was in college, and like you, remember the original disgusting expression.
Fake news
Sadly, there is a contingent of ‘Christian’s’ who don’t think the saying is Biblical, by saying it’s contrary to Grace. And not understanding The saying is about idleness - which is strongly condemned in the Bible.
Ha, that's really amazing! I wonder who first said it? I went to college in the northeast. To me, it sounded like a NYC or Long Island kind of expression.
All the Founders were intelligent, but I've always thought Ben Franklin was at a different level entirely.
I guess it's kind of the same sentiment as that expressed by an immigrant back during the great immigration wave into NYC, who said "the harder I work, the luckier I get."
Ben Franklin also said "three can keep a secret if two are dead," which is similar to the much later observation by someone in the intelligence community, who said "the probability of a secret getting out increases with the square of the number of people who know it."
Which is in turn related (IMHO anyway) to the observation by Bob Metcalfe, who said "the value of a network increases as the square of the number of nodes on the network." He was speaking of networked computers, but the observation is probably valid for other sorts of networks.
MY VEHICLES:
1976 1 ton 4 SPEED 454 CHEVY SINGLE CAB TRUCK WITH OVER 348,000 MILES-—OVER 250,000 OF WHICH WAS TOWING HORSE TRAILERS...BOTH 2 HORSE & 4 HORSE. HAVE HAD IT SINCE APRIL 1986. COST $4000.
CAR= 1979 BUICK WAGON WITH 403 OLDS ENGINE WITH OVER 225,000 MILES WHICH WAS USED TO TOW 2 HORSE TRAILER FOR MONTHS BEFORE I BOUGHT THE TRUCK. HAVE HAD IT SINCE AUGUST 1981. COST $3500.
BOTH IN DRIVEWAY AS I TYPE THIS.
CAN CHANGE OIL MYSELF & ABLE TO CHECK ALL OTHER FLUIDS.
TODAY’S CARS DO NOT EVEN HAVE A TRANSMISSION DIP STICK-— AND NEW KIAS: TO CHANGE HEADLIGHT BULB—THE SIZE OF YOUR THUMB: THE CAR HAS TO GO TO THE DEALER & FENDER GETS REMOVED, BULB CHANGED, AND FENDER REPLACED—AT AROUND $150 AN HOUR SHOP RATE.
I CAN CHANGE HEADLIGHT IN EITHER VEHICLE IN UNDER 30 MINUTES BY MYSELF
AM 86 & STILL FEMALE
YOU CANNOT GIVE ME A NEW VEHICLE OF ANY KIND.
“Many of today’s cars will likely never be restored.”
In some cases, just not repairable.
eg Toyota “Dynamic Force” engine. Aluminum cylinder head which has valve seats which are laser clad (laser melts metal powder into a seat shape)
If a seat is damaged it can’t be refaced because the seat is paper thin. Can’t be replaced because it is not an insert.
A damaged valve seat means the head is scrap.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWHq-Qr903g
Fake sports.
I like my cold brewed beer using real ingredients, driving my C7 Grand Sport on real twisty highways, having a real thick NT strip on the grill or a nice venison cut shot by a real bullet from a real gun and butchered by a real knife and enjoying all these with my wife since highschool and my kids and grandkids.
There’s definitely fake shxt everywhere and your points are well taken but there’s also real things to grasp hold of to keep you grounded.
Knowing where and what the fake shxt is allows you to go around it...can’t stop it but deal with it.
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