Legit question.... Are any of you genuinely scared about anything right now?

POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Wednesday, April 22, 2026 23:24
VIEWED: 308
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6IXSTRINGJACK

Tuesday, April 21, 2026 2:10 PM

I'm just wondering, for real.

Are there any real feelings of genuine worry and concern among any of us here?

That feeling that something really is different now? Different to the point where really double plus ungood things are waiting for us just over that next hill?

This is like a back and forth I've been involved in to one degree or another for damn near half my life now. From day one joining this site I always knew it was all fucked up... and man... something here just sucked me right in. So everything is fucked... and has been fucked for so long. But rarely in any real, tangible way.

Shit happens every day. News always makes as big a deal out of it that they can until people get bored of it. New terrible thing happens tomorrow. And then another one the day after that, and the day after that and the day after that. And nobody could blame you for forgetting about exactly what it was that was bothering you so much last week since you've been given so many new and terrible things to be angry at some terrible person about since that other terrible thing that other terrible person did to people you don't know and will never meet had you so riled up that you forgot just what it was you were thinking a minute ago.

That shit's been so normalized over the years...

Covid and the reaction and measures taken really bothered me at the time in a way that I probably could never do justice if I tried to describe now. It would be like trying to recall all the details of a nightmare years after you woke up from it. But that's over now and so many news cycles ago... Most people have forgotten about it, even though it was a suffocating external force putting all of its weight on us all for such a very, very long time...

So I'm just asking right now if any of you are really afraid that something stupid crazy is going to happen like nuclear war, or the US Dollar's value disappearing overnight? Or AI becoming sentient and giving earth back to the plants and animals 10 seconds later...?

I want to know what I'm dealing with here when I'm talking to people.

Because I'm living life like none of that external noise is even happening somewhere out there at some place in the world that I've only ever seen on TV and will never be within thousands of miles of before I die. And I'm doing it with very little means and very little outside stimulation. And I welcome all of you to join me.

I'm not saying you shouldn't feel that way if you do.

But maybe you want to talk about it is all.

I'll tell you what... No shit talking here and totally being for real...

If I were a Democrat voter who watched the Legacy Media and clickbait media every single day and I and believed everything that they were telling me everyday, I'd probably be walking around fucking terrified about practically everything, including my own goddamned shadow.

If any of you really feel that way, and really believe 100% in the constant, ceaseless media barrage being shoved your way, I feel for you. That sucks man.

Honestly... I think we'll be alright. Or we won't. I don't know.

If you're really afraid of the end of the world, maybe it's time to get out there and get some items scratched off the bucket list that you've just never found time but always find plenty of excuses to never get around to crossing off. Maybe at least find some some better and more healthy ways of passing the time. If nothing else, at least a more enjoyable way to pass the time, especially if we're facing the end of the world.

All this shit here that we do is toxic. Paying attention to everything everyday is toxic.

I know I've said all of this before, but sometimes I just really feel it.

We can't go on like this forever.

And really it just doesn't make any sense to. And I'll be the first to admit that since there's hardly a word I've ever typed here in 20 years that made

SIGNYM

Tuesday, April 21, 2026 5:56 PM

If I was just thinking about myself, I wouldn't be worried much. I've been thru two terrible diagnoses and I kinda feel like my time is shorter than most. So all the bad trends I see going on, well, I'll probably die before they really take effect.

But I'm trying to future-proof for the next 50 years. It's impossible to think that far ahead, but in 50 years there are things to legitimately worry about.

Before I tell you what worries me, let me start out by saying global thermonuclear war isn't one of them. If it happens, we won't need to be worried about the future at all, except to have a painless exit strategy.

So, in the next 50 years, there are a few real risks to account for.

1) A major earthquake. T
Above and beyond storing water, food, and medicine, we should be earthquake- proofing the house and setting up an off-grid power supply.

2) Inflation, at least. Economic, financial, and societal collapse at most. Western financial systems are based on unpayable debt, and this is especially true of the United States and our petrodollar. There's a saying that anything that can't go on... won't. And our fearless leaders... not just our politicians but the uber-wealthy who quite often pull the strings... have an inherent interest in the STATUS QUO, and are creating even bigger problems fighting to maintain it rather than give up any part of their wealth and power. I give this a 20-year lifetime.

And Trump, BTW. is leaning into it, and causing so much chaos, creating so much debt, and causing so much international ill will it's like a perfect disaster- storm in the making. I can only wonder WTH is going on inside his skull.

BTW, living as if none of these problems exist is called DENIAL. That's how you wound up without teeth, worried about lung cancer, and quite possibly on insulin. It's no good worrying about things that you can't do anything about, but if you can prevent or prepare for problems that have a real chance of happening in the next ... oh, say, 20 years ... you should.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

SECOND

Tuesday, April 21, 2026 8:50 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

And Trump, BTW, is leaning into it, and causing so much chaos, creating so much debt, and causing so much international ill will, it's like a perfect disaster- storm in the making. I can only wonder WTH is going on inside his skull.

There is an explanation for Trump's behavior that quotes the movie "There Will Be Blood," for which Daniel Day-Lewis won the Best Actor award by playing a billionaire :

What I Learned About Billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s Private Retreat

For the richest men on Earth, everything is free and nothing matters.

By Noah Hawley | April 20, 2026, 7 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/05/billionaire-consequence-f
ree-reality/686588/

At the end of Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2007 movie, There Will Be Blood, Daniel Day-Lewis’s oil-baron character, old now and richer than Croesus, beats Paul Dano’s preacher to death with a bowling pin. Dano’s Eli Sunday, a nemesis of Day-Lewis’s Daniel Plainview during his seminal, wealth-building years, has come to sell Plainview the oil-rich land that he once coveted. But Plainview doesn’t need the land anymore, because—as he explains in one of the most famous monologues in modern cinema—he has sucked out all the oil hidden beneath it from an adjoining property, like a milkshake.

Desperate for money, Eli begs for a loan. Instead, Plainview chases him around a bowling alley and murders him with great enthusiasm. Once it’s over, a butler comes to see what all the noise was about. “I’m finished,” Plainview yells.

No matter how many times I watch that movie, and I watch it a lot, I have never once taken those words to mean I’m done for. There will now be consequences for my actions. Quite the opposite: They mean that Plainview has completed his journey, through the acquisition of wealth and power, to a realm outside the moral universe. He’s finished, in other words, pretending that the rules of human society apply to him.

In 2018, I was a guest at Jeff Bezos’s Campfire retreat in Santa Barbara, California. It’s an annual event in which the Amazon founder invites 80-plus guests—celebrities, artists, intellectuals, and anyone else he thinks is interesting—to spend three nights at a private resort. I had recently been approached by Amazon about moving my film-and-television business over from Disney, and although I had declined (or maybe because I had declined), Bezos’s team invited me to Campfire, perhaps keen to impress me with the power of his reach.

On a warm October Thursday, a fleet of private jets was dispatched to airports in Van Nuys and New York to shepherd guests to Santa Barbara in style. At that point I had only a vague sense of who else was coming—famous people, rich people, influential people, and me. A guest list, I was told, would be given to us once we arrived. Families were invited; an on-site nanny would be provided for each child.

So my wife and I got our two children from Austin to Los Angeles and took a 45-minute jet ride north, with a television mogul and a comedian on board. Bezos had bought out the entire Biltmore resort for the weekend, as well as the beach club across the street. He had brought in a security firm from Las Vegas to ensure our safety and privacy. Even the weather felt expensive, and when we were shown to our rooms, the designer gift bags we found were filled with luxury goods.

Each morning, we gathered in a lecture hall to hear presentations. If you’ve ever seen a TED Talk, you understand the format. The year I went, a sitting Supreme Court justice was interviewed, and a neurologist talked about technological advances in prosthetics. In the afternoons and evenings, we were encouraged to exchange ideas over drinks and four-course meals, with no set purpose—to network, in other words, with some of the most rarefied talent on Earth. The most common question I heard was “Why am I here?”

“Why am I here?” asked the 1980s hair-metal singer. “Why am I here?” asked the Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist, the famous anthropologist, the pr

THG

Tuesday, April 21, 2026 11:28 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

And Trump, BTW. is leaning into it, and causing so much chaos, creating so much debt, and causing so much international ill will it's like a perfect disaster- storm in the making. I can only wonder WTH is going on inside his skull.

-----------

"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

Both SECOND and I have been telling you for a decade what goes on in Trumps head, and what a disaster he would be as president. There are hundreds of posts by you arguing he wasn't as we'd said.

Even after his first term you still insisted he would be the best choice again. You need to own the fact you aren't very bright.

T

BRENDA

Tuesday, April 21, 2026 11:40 PM

I don't think thermonuclear war is coming but Trump has certainly shite in his own bed.

I think a lot of us on the board has lived through some tough times. Know I have.

To worry about the future or not has in a lot of ways always been humankind's problem.

In the past we couldn't predict the future but now we sort of have that crystal ball that can tell us what is coming.

People often ask me about my future. Do I have a will or some sort of plan for when I shake off this mortal coil. My usual answer is I am not there yet. And for the most part I know basically what has caused my medical problems.

As naive as this may sound I've always felt that the world could do better. That true peace is possible.

Sifting through the news on a sort of daily bases, you have to take a lot of things with a grain of salt. But let me say that Israel and the US has not helped the situation in the middle east. And Russia has a long history of trying to annex certain parts of the world.

I found this place after the OB went down and I learned that the political side was dangerous even more dangerous than the OB. But this place is my other form of connecting with people. Talking politics with the ladies in my mah jong group at times just makes me mad and others won't. A late friend of my brother's would and that was good for me.

But I'll take this little corner of the universe with a grain of salt and "Keep Calm and Carney On". You can hear that a bit up here and it is good for a chuckle.

As for Covid there will be other pandemics. The world hasn't learned its lesson again from 1918.

So there is my 2cents worth. Make of it what you will.

BRENDA

Wednesday, April 22, 2026 11:24 PM

Also just don't feel the love. Example last Friday when I was all done with my boss and just waiting on something from her. She whizzed by me and I didn't think anything of it. Till I noticed my coat on the couch and she said, "You can show yourself out."

I was thinking "Gee, thanks."

That is another thing why I don't want to ask them for help for trying to find a foot stool.