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I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.
Like… if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you’re a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.
The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.
| just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success… I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.
Hell, the drama right now about the devs running out of funds and people refusing to donate because of their association with .ml might accelerate lemmy’s demise before it can even get big.
One of the reasons reactionary content tends to endure and progressive content fails (in Western countries, anyway) stems from the far-right having deeper pockets and a far more pliant creative base.
You don’t see Tucker Carlson or Candice Owens ever really going away, because they’ve got these sugar daddies that always pony up. The fucking Adelsons will keep shoveling naked antisemites money, just so long as they toe the economic orthodoxy.
Meanwhile, Lemmy admins associating with Lemmy developers is unforgivable, because the OG developers won’t let you say “I hope someone murders Xi Jinping with a rusty spoon” on their bespoke instance without getting banned.