Know a guy.
This is anarchy in the usa
This is the most American thing I have read in my life. I have lived for more than half a century, some of it in several different US states.
Seriously, if anyone asks what the US is like, show them this post. It’s perfect.
I have a truck. I know at least two other people with trucks. Once the pizza is offered, and maybe some beers if it’s a big job, we’re there. It’s the truck code.
Is this that communism/neighborhood community thing everybody keeps talking about?
Yeah, I was Tony last week. But instead of pizza I was paid in beer. Good deal, would do again
Oh shit. Oh no.
Im that guy who fixes small engines and computers.
My cousin has become Kevin. She got a big old van for her 2 kids. It has split duty now. Although she doesn’t do any of the moving and the price is a full tank of gas.
At today’s gas prices you could get professional movers and still buy yourself a pizza afterwards :(
Oh, she rarely lets it get below half. She’s not trying to fleece us.
I fucking love these.
My favorite is the Waffle House: https://wandering-nobunaga.com/stories/a-waffle-house-at-three-in
There is more?! Thank you for linking this!
Can confirm. Until I threw my back in my forties, I was Tony.
I threw my back helping someone move an exercise machine. For someone else.
A pizza is the price. Two toppings is typical, or the everything special.
For a while I was also the guy with the cordless drill you could borrow.
I am the guy with the truck.
The truck is proof that Americans can and will accept socialism.
It’s brocialism.
I am also the guy with the truck. But I do not drive 5-speed manual very well. So the truck lives at the house of my friend who is good at driving manual. He’s kind of my Tony, I guess. The truck is indeed a community resource of anyone we are decent friends with.
A.k.a. community
"What if we had a system where people could get the assistance they need. We could call it… Communityism.
But see, it’s not fair if people just get what they need! You need to make sure people are paying for it!
We can make it part of the system that each person gets help according to their needs, but each person also gives help according to their abilities. Yes yes. This is now definitely capitalism because it’s transactions.
The crazy part is it doesn’t matter who you voted for, everyone on both sides would generally love to help their neighbor and would offer a hand. It’s just when people get involved in the macro sense that they get filled with hate and anger. Makes me sad. Let’s just all move couches.
Conservatives are often nice to people they know. The in-group. The problem is when it’s a scary other. So they’ll let Jose couch surf for a week while he sorts out his housing situation, because he’s a good guy down on his luck, but they’ll rage against Those People getting anything.
That’s my understanding too. It’s like empathy just ends at one’s own line of sight. If I can’t see it or touch it, there may be something wrong with it. It’s infuriating.
Can we do that without the latent ableism that comes along with it, like the idea that if you can’t help people move couches then you don’t deserve anyone else’s help either?
This especially effects people with invisible disabilities, who are already viewed as lazy, but who also might be the most helpless when it comes to moving their own furniture.
I think it’s kind of ablist to assume a disabled person has nothing of value to offer, like if they can’t move a couch then they are excluded. “Moving a couch” could be anything, it could be filing taxes or cooking a meal. Disabled people are good at stuff too. I think it’s really weird for you to make this assumption.
Honestly it’s both. Plenty of people with disabilities have plenty to offer. A lot actually don’t though, and they still deserve that helping hand.
A family aquatintance has some mental and physical disabilities. They’re just not going to be able to help in any way that isn’t superficial. And that’s okay. Their worth isn’t defined by their utility.Attaching how worthwhile it is to help someone to their ability to provide a service inherently says the person who can’t isn’t worthy of help.
We should be good to people because it’s the right thing to do, not out of the expectation of a future repayment. More pragmatically, we should help based on the assumption that the other person would, and that if everyone acted like that the world would be better.
I think the other person read a bit much into it, but their base point isn’t wrong.
What I think is ableist is that you would try to pretend that disabled people don’t get excluded due to society devaluing the things they can offer.
It’s also ableist for you to suggest that a disabled person should be expected to file someone else’s taxes if they need help moving furniture.
You just gave a master class in missing the point.
You better come with some jokes then. When I’m moving some bulky furniture upstairs and really not having a good time, sometimes a well-timed joke is exactly what we need to drop it and injure ourselves.
Was this supposed to be an attempt at a joke?
If you want to be included by people, try to be less of a dick.
This isn’t me talking about the wider disabled community, of which I am part of, when I say this btw, this is me talking to you.
Okay, while you’re jerking off the dicks driving big-ass little-dick trucks, I guess I’ll try being nicer to those assholes while they honk their horns at pedestrians, double-park or park on crosswalks, and all that other shit that they do and everyone knows they do because they’re doing it in big-ass trucks and it’s not subtle.
Especially the ones rolling coal and flying trump flags. Should I try to be less of a dick to them to? I don’t want to be included in whatever they’ve got going on. I certainly would never ask one to help move furniture. Their trucks are only for show anyway…
Are you in a lot of pain or in withdrawel or something? I’m struggling to understand where all this self victimising vitriol is coming from otherwise.
Yes, being disabled sucks, yes most people also suck, and everything is also fucking awful everywhere most of the time, and that sucks too.
But this is a comment section under a lighthearted post about moving furniture, so there’s obviously something else going on that has you so upset.
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My partner has disabilities and so they do not help lift the sofa. But they are a lot better at driving a manual truck than I am, so with a few pillows and adaptations in the driver’s cab that is what they do when someone needs a sofa moved. Some disabilities prevent you from driving the truck too, but it’s important as a group of sofa movers to make sure that everyone has something they can fulfill, even if that means planning the move. That can be incredibly helpful.
Anecdotes and exceptions don’t justify the erasure of marginalia.
Like, why don’t all blind people just become famous musicians so that they can be rich? Ray Charles did it.
No one in their right mind would think that means blind people don’t require assistance/accomodations.
Your partner has disabilities but can drive a stick shift? Great. I guess the rest of us disabled people just need to bootstrap a little harder?
We do socialism all the time.
Neighbors bring each other gifts. Friends feed one another. Someone is struggling and we give them what they need, no questions asked.
Technically, that’s no socialism though, because it’s not government enforced.
That’s not really socialism, given that it is not universally distributed but depends on one’s social connections. A socialist system would have impersonal mechanisms for catching those who fall through the cracks due to not knowing enough people to ask for and repay favours. (And those people do exist: “everyone knows a guy with a truck” except perhaps for a socially isolated shut-in or someone who does not speak the language, or someone who does not fit in with the community in their truck catchment radius.)
Yeah, in this case “everyone” literally just means “everyone who’s visible within my social radius.”
It completely erases everyone else, like the types of people you mentioned. It’s very in-group focused, and bears uncanny parallels to the fascist idea that outsiders don’t matter.
This is the best human interaction I’ve read about in a long time. Maybe ever.
Two decades later, I still regret the temporary back injury a friend sustained helping me to load my heavy desk into a truck I rented.
Can we not romanticize american truck culture? Those people’s heads are already swollen enough without telling them everyone around them relies on their condescension to help.
Sure, there might be a few decent people out there who have trucks, but they’re not the majority of truck owners. They’re also more likely to help their friends and family, maybe a friend of a friend, but hardly a stranger.
And if you’re viewed as an outsider or unliked? Forget it, you’re SOL.
Also, this expectation that everyone “just knows”, without being told, is unrealistic. It is real, in that people do expect that. And perhaps most normies do “just know.” But the social rejects, the neurodivergents, the new neighbors who just moved to this state, etc.? Life is made far more challenging to these people as a direct result of that expectation that everyone should “just know” without being told.
First of all this is a shitpost community.
When I moved states, we introduced ourselves to the neighbor and they offered to mow our lawn cause we didn’t have a mower yet. Gave em a bottle of wine, chill neighbors all the way until they moved out.
Most people are decent, even more than the 80/20 rule.
You’re really only acknowledging that you’re part of an in-group that can move to a new neighborhood and be immediately accepted. Not everyone enjoys that privilege, and you pretending that your experience disproves that only highlights the erasure.
It doesn’t disprove what you’re saying. I’m saying that coming into a shitpost community where the vibe is supposed to be fun and communicating negatively might be a symptom of not being able to communicate positively irl.
It can be hard and I’m sorry if it is for you, but what do you expect from people? Good vibes are contagious
“Good vibes” and toxic positivity are tools of fascism. I can’t talk about climate change around people cause they’d think I’m being a debby-downer.
Same thing with wealth disparity, poverty, starvation, disability, disease, conflict, displacements, etc. Can’t talk about these issues, serious problems in the world, cause everyone’s like “dude, good vibes only.” Can’t talk about corruption and fascism itself because people don’t want that “negativity.”
Maybe I’m cynical, but it’s not without good reason. Maybe if the world held space for more cynicism then we could actually start working on some of the problems we face. But no. Can’t have that. Good vibes, dude.
If I need to keep my mouth shut about all the bad things going on in the world in order to be accepted by others, then I’d honestly rather be an outcast…
this is a shitpost community
And I think this post is shit, so there you go!
Yeah fuck Americans! I hate all of them tbh, even the supposed “good” ones. Every single one is a pig and deserves to die. They should really learn to be more tolerant and not to hate people based on one characteristic that they think tells me everything they need to know about a person
Dude, I’m an american myself, and having grown up surrounded by americans I think I can say that it’s not always sunshine and rainbows like it’s depicted in the post.
The people around me who drive trucks are the biggest assholes for miles. Rolling coal, denying climate change, flying trump flags, shining high beams in your rearview mirror. Pretending this isn’t a real pattern and a serious issue isn’t going to get you anywhere.
Sure, there are exceptions. Some people who drive trucks are nice people. They usually drive smaller, older, more beat-up and well-used trucks. But then again, lots of assholes drive those too. As for the big, shiny new trucks that never leave the pavement, there’s a reason people say they’re compensating for something. They’re more likely to run over a cyclist than they are to help you move a couch.
Thing is, like you say, they’re willing to help a friend of a friend, but frankly the bar for a friend is pretty low for a lot of people. As someone who’s also neurodivergent and has had approximately three friends on average for most of my life, but recently moved to America and so had a full reset, I’ve been reminded that the majority of people like to think they’re good people, even if they have questionable beliefs or cut you off in traffic or whatever, and thay extends to helping out people that they know.
Given I’ve been in the country a month, have autism, and live out of the city, I’m probably as in the group you describe as you can get, but I’m still fairly confident if I needed a neighbor to take me to hospital, or someone to help me move a couch, or whatever else, I could find them even through work or the neighborhood pretty quickly, as it just takes one connection to flip a switch in people’s brains from “fuck that guy” to “they’re in my tribe, I’ll help them”
as it just takes one connection to flip a switch in people’s brains from “fuck that guy” to "they’re in my tribe, I’ll help them
That’s the thing, not everybody has that connection, and the people who lack it tend to be invisible in these kinds of situations, and there’s always a lot of overt hostility directed towards those people whenever they point out that they don’t have this thing that everyone else seems to be pretending that everyone has, which is community support.
It’s great that you feel like you connect and have the support you need, but that doesn’t justify the erasure of people who don’t have that.
Yeah, I completely agree, but it also doesn’t mean that the people who don’t have that connection to you suddenly aren’t willing to help their community, it just means that you have trouble integrating into communities, which is very valid and I can completely relate and understand, as that’s kind of how being neurodivergent works.
As much as it sucks to hear, it’s absolutely an “it’s not them, it’s you” situation, and I’ve been in the same position, and still do get in the same position, where I’m feeling out of place, unsure what to do and unwelcome, and very sensitive to confirmations of that, which is part of at least my experience of being autistic, but I’ve learnt that a lot of the times you don’t actually have to pick up on social cues or whatever to make connections, as most people aren’t even that invested anyway, and to most people talking to someone, even if they’re weird, is better than talking to nobody. You may say “but everyone’s already got friends they’re always with” but even that’s just an autistic lens over it, as you’re just noticing when other people are having conversations but not you. And it doesn’t have to be everyone. Like you said yourself, being a friend of a friend goes a long way, so if you just have a few connections with people who are friendlier or more similar to you, then that just gets you into circles. You won’t exactly be neurotypical all of a sudden, but it definitely helps with feeling less different or isolated.
I do have trouble integrating into communities, that’s the whole point. That people like me experience erasure. Even now, as I point out that people like me exist, most replies I’m getting have been combative in trying to double down on that erasure.
Like, can we not just acknowledge that there are people who slip through the cracks of society and as a result face challenges that most people never even have to think about or consider? Things that most people view as so easy and simple, that suddenly aren’t so easy and simple when you have no friends or community.
But no, people don’t like that reminder, so they’re hostile towards it, which only reinforces the marginalization and erasure of people like me…
I think it’s harsh on to call it erasure, but completely understand that in effect it’s the same thing, because to me it seems people are hostile because what you’re saying doesn’t match their lived experiences, and so they’re saying “that’s not how it is” because they believe that you’re pre-judging situations based on how you think people will react to neurodivergent people, when that’s not the case at all. I like to think it comes from a place of good intentions, but yeah in reality it’s no different to saying “just cheer up” to a depressed person, when it’s really not that easy or how it works. The most important thing is that as irritating as it is, harboring resentment over this kind of thing helps nobody, and the best thing you can do is accept that they’re trying (badly) to help, and that they just don’t fully understand what the issue is.
I feel like this premise could make an entertaining movie if you figured out the 3 act structure
With that beautiful writing style? This prose would be lost on film.
Honestly, I thought this was an excerpt from some modern classic usamerican novel. I was fully expecting to find this comment section full of references and people talking about the book.
Non-toxic Masculinity
Except women also have those connections.
The price may be different, like a baby blanket for their neice.
Absolutely
