alt Hacker NewsI don't know how sincere this comment is, but if there are others thinking this way, it's a mistake. Nihilism is a dead end (or political cynicism/fatalism, whatever you want to call it).
Social media is a veil of manipulation, engagement maximization, and bots. Do not misconstrue it as any kind of real or productive politics. There is a signal there amongst the noise, but it's hard to make sense of if you do not have a coherent world model or belief system. You have to learn to cut through it if you want to keep your sanity.
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>Nihilism is a dead end (or political cynicism/fatalism, whatever you want to call it).
Nihilism is a popular, vague pejorative today but philosophically it's a serious answer to exactly the manipulation, engagement-bait and juvenile techno-optimism of our age. Whenever you're at the end of some moral or social period active, not resentful or passive nihilism, is a palate cleanser and necessary condition for revaluation of all values.
The kind of middle aged men that tend to fall into despair or suicide in these times are usually people who rely on some identity provided to them that then crumbles. Job, money, house, status, 'how to be a man' etc. There's something they're supposed to be like and they're not, stability they took for granted just stops.
And we're in a period like this across many dimensions, political, technological etc. And if you want to be sane a dose of nihilism is fairly important so that you can go on and construct some sovereign answers to all these issues.
Read my other comment in the thread. Why would I post a non-sincere comment on this anyway? My belief is that all of us, no matter our gender, religion, age or social standing, are prey for the political and "elite" class. And not only we aren't holding them accountable, we are fighting their fights for them in several fields of our lives in form of "political discourse".
My country has a very serious housing crisis, both the left and the right are contributing to it because both parties have multiple people who are "serial landlords" with several properties, so they only make laws that benefit the landlord. This is a known fact and there are huge protests ongoing about it to the point emergency elections have been called.
Yet, saying this simple stance just as I did now, that both of them are guilty, will have people call you an "ultra" or call you a conspiracy theorist, that you are a fence sitter, that you don't know what you are talking about, and so and so on. Like you have some ulterior motive or are a paid shill from the other side or making the logic leap to thinking you support the far-right for not choosing one of the two existing "teams". Everything has gone crazy.