Kid A

Banned.

I was so disappointed by the first episode of the new season. So much hype and people claimed it was old South Park brought back to life, and then I got pretty much everything of what imo has made the show worse and worse since the turn of the millennium. I liked South Park when the kids were just being kids and went on funny adventures…

This made me think of this dark monologue from the Norwegian TV series Exit: «Just look around, you know. It just makes you want to scream. Look at all the people who lie and pretend day and night. It just makes you want to grab a baseball bat and start smashing. Everything is constructed. Everyone follows the rules so that society won’t fall apart. You’ve been trained in how you’re supposed to behave… It’s not YOU, or your needs or your genetics or… We live according to inherited, consensus-based guidelines that make it so absolutely NO ONE can be who they really are. It’s exactly as awful as it sounds. You’re not consensus, you’re an individual. People are depressed for one single reason, and that’s that they can’t be themselves. They’re trapped by the worst thing that exists: shame. Inherited shame they can never escape because they’re biologically programmed with a desire to belong. And worst of all: you’re trapped in the desire to live. It’s been welded into your DNA through millions of years. It’s not a good deal, you know, Pål. And somewhere between offense, woke, politics, norms and thousands of years of religion, shame, consensus and evolution, we’ve been destroyed. Lost.»

Lack of integration isn’t the main problem here. I don’t think natives are much better at making friends as adults either. In Scandinavia, your friends are people you grew up with. The ability to make new friends seems to be something we lose as we get older. The fact that we’re so dependent on alcohol to socialize should tell you a thing or two about how dysfunctional the social culture here is. It’s absolutely terrible and needs to change.

I can confirm this 100%. Not prioritizing having female friends has been one of the really really big mistakes that I’ve made in life.

🤣 Seriously though: Once, I gave my then-girlfriend some insight into how attracted we men are to women’s looks. She was really shocked and I knew immediately that I had made a huge mistake. The relationship didn’t last long after that… I’ve also been top honest about other (non-sexual) things to other women I’ve dated and they lost attraction permanently. My impression is that it usually doesn’t take much to give a woman the ick, and there’s usually no way back from that, so I think it’s a good advice to be careful with truth if you don’t want to lose her.

This discussion made me rewatch this one. Not so much focus on personality in itself, but it seems like at least 50% of it is genetic. The rest is due to individual experiences, like friends etc. How your parents raise you and the home you grow up in are basically irrelevant for your personality, except in some very rare cases. It's pretty logical really. Just think about how different personalities siblings often have even though they grew up in the same home and share 50% of their genetics.

Because our minds aren’t adapted for the rejections we experience in modern society. Our emotions are adapted to a pre-historic society, where rejection was something that could lead to isolation and thus death. No wonder why it hurts like hell.

Isn’t it obvious that this is really individual and depends on your genetics, personality, circumstances, interests, tastes etc.? One thing’s for sure: nothing makes me feel more alienated from my friends than when they claim that high school is the best time in life.

Jesus. It never ceases to amaze me how bad Reddit is.

This makes me think of Javier Hernandez, a Mexican footballer who earlier this year went on social media and accused women of exterminating masculinty and said something like that they should stay at home and serve men. It just made so much sense to me that he would do this, because he has always been famous for being short and having a babyface. It’s so characteristic in his case that he is called «Chicharito» (little pea). That look is almost exactly how I imagine certain someones on this forum with similar views on women…

In other words: The rich and powerful always crush the poor and weak. Not my thing! (Yeah, I know it’s more fair in the NHL than here in Europe, but still)

This. I see way too many MBTI references everywhere and way too few Big Five ones, which is scientifically far superior. I guess Big Five just isn’t as fun to talk or vibe about… Here in Norway, there is a podcast where they talk to a celebrity in each episode about their results after taking the Big Five. It’s so amazing.

No, you’re not. You’re just pointing out why you personally don’t like European culture. How’s that debunking? I personally disagree with you on this and I bet most people here do too.

Good old «If something doesn’t fit my worldview, it can’t be true!» ChatGPT: https://files.worldhappiness.report/WHR25.pdf People in many Western European countries, especially the Nordic ones, consistently report the highest life satisfaction in the world. According to the UN-backed World Happiness Report, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden are always at the top of the rankings, showing that citizens in these countries experience life as more fulfilling than in most other regions. https://digitallibrary.un.org/nanna/record/4040333/files/hdr2023-24reporten.pdf?withWatermark=0&withMetadata=0&registerDownload=1&version=1 Western European countries consistently score highest on the Human Development Index (HDI), which measures health, education, and income. Countries like Norway, Switzerland, and Iceland have the top HDI scores globally, indicating that citizens have access to strong healthcare systems, high-quality education, and sufficient income to cover basic needs. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42495-025-00158-2 Research comparing welfare systems worldwide consistently ranks Nordic and Western European countries highest in terms of social security, equality, and access to health and education. These countries combine comprehensive social policies with effective institutional frameworks, resulting in reduced poverty, lower economic inequality, and higher overall living standards — showing that they have the most well-functioning welfare states. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11205-020-02565-8 Western European countries provide significant freedom for individuals to make their own life choices. International analyses measure “freedom to make life choices” and consistently show that countries like Finland, Norway, and Denmark score very high. Citizens in these countries enjoy both the economic and institutional conditions needed to decide independently how they want to live, from education and career to housing and lifestyle.

My problems with hockey, and pretty much all the other big team sports other than football, are the too predictable results (especially over a season) and way too many games. The more games, the more predictable the season becomes too, so they're related. Because of this, American football is the only sport besides football that I've been hooked on in the past.

Yeah, this video was definitely for us who are already fans. My girlfriend wanted to check it out after I sent her the link when she asked what I was doing, and she has never seen any of the other videos. I was not happy about that after seeing it!

This quote is 10/10.

I can never get over how similar Christiano Ronaldo and Homelander feel.

You pull out one thing you don’t like about European societies, present your extremely one-sided negative view of that thing, and then that’s supposed to be a good argument for why European societies can’t be more developed than the rest of the world? Forget that the people there are the ones who answer that they’re most satisfied with their lives of everyone in the whole world when asked, forget that they’re the ones who have their basic needs met to the greatest extent, forget that they have the most well-functioning welfare states, forget that the people there have the most freedom to live their lives as they themselves want: They have women in bikinis that make men horny, EWWWWW, shit societies!!!

If it's any comfort, you should at least know that it's not just you migrants who struggle to make friends here in Western Europe.

It is well-documented that Russia interfered in the American election in 2016 and has done the same with other Western elections through multiple troll factories to weaken Western democracies. Mueller Report (2019) - Documents the Internet Research Agency (IRA) troll factory that created hundreds of fake accounts and bought $100,000 in Facebook ads seen by 4-5 million Americans in a campaign favoring Trump and disparaging Clinton ( https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/dl?inline= ) Senate Intelligence Committee Report (2020) - Bipartisan 1,000-page report concluding Russia conducted an "extensive campaign" to sabotage the election in favor of Trump, with the goal of undermining "public faith in the US democratic process" ( https://intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Report_Volume2.pdf ) European Parliament Report (2022) - Documents Russian interference in Brexit, French, and other EU elections, stating the objective is to "undermine confidence in the electoral system and therefore in the democratic process itself" ( https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-9-2022-0022_EN.html) NPR's coverage of Senate findings on extensive Russian interference ( https://www.npr.org/2020/08/18/903616315/senate-releases-final-report-on-russias-interference-in-2016-election ) Carnegie Endowment analysis showing interference "geared towards undermining the effectiveness and cohesion of the Western alliance" ( https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/05/23/russian-election-interference-europe-s-counter-to-fake-news-and-cyber-attacks-pub-76435 ) Evidence of Voice of Europe troll network bribing European politicians ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_European_politics ) It's meaningless to claim that the West only has itself to blame when Russia is pouring gasoline on the fire to such a great extent as they actually do.

The algorithms of social media make people live in echo chambers where they are pretty much fed only one side of a matter. That's a recipe for imbalance and extremism. Also, social media like TikTok, with short video formats, are really suited for for example spreading political messages with very simple solutions, which you often find on the extreme ends of the political spectrum, both right and left. Complex solutions demand much more time than a short video. Extremism thrives on oversimplification.

I'll never understand how this became a common saying. If it ever made sense, it must have been many years ago...

I've never been prouder of my fellow citizens than earlier this year, when there was a national effort to remove all advertisement for his filthy party from public spaces. It was a great success! That guy is as trustworthy as the Kremlin.