Translation: you have a fulfilling career and an actual life, rather than e.g. health issues that required some downtime as I did over the past year:-).

But I went through similar shock multiple times in my life, finding out that people are not what I thought they were. This recent USA election was yet another one, and the one that originally elected DT as well. It helps me understand people, which might be good I dunno, but it also makes me lose faith in the entire democratic system, especially in this post-information, disinformation age. It is like the system is under the assault of a foreign agent, which causes cancerous growths, yet we seem to have had zero immune system response to it. At which point this “body” is not “ours” anymore, it has been taken over. And yet, this is also the way that it has always been - e.g. predating the Civil War - but we were just fooling ourselves to think otherwise, again and again.

Anyway, back to the kids: they think differently than we did growing up, and also we ourselves did not pay attention at the time, but we too thought differently than others around us. That’s the reality to have to deal with, or else change careers.

A look at video games is instructive: before I was born even there were more “frustrating” games (that still persist today) like D&D where you go to all the trouble to make a character, then they die in some campaign, which gives people a “sad” feeling. Hence, most games don’t do that, preferring instead to build characters up and keep reintroducing them even if they leave, to really tell a STORY where they are the main character(s). Anyway, back to people irl: they prefer not to feel any sort of frustration at all - and btw if they do, it is the school’s fault (No Child Left Behind said so) - and instead just want short, simple, straightforward hops right into the magical “job-land”, where jobs are passed out like candy, yet do not involve doing the 4-letter word “work”.

Also, we could totally be surveilled by corporations here - everything is free and open to the public, including these very words I say right here & now. It is just that their surveillence does not dictate our user experience, as it did on e.g. Reddit, before we left it. And ofc they don’t want to resist - they hope to get jobs IN that very corporate hegemony!

Speaking of capitalism, the phrase “Make America Great Again” keeps reminding me of how the top marginal tax rate was like 90%, so the literal thing that made America GREAT was basically socialism, and government regulation reigning in the worst excesses of capitalism, i.e. I mean the slavery part. Unions were strong, protections were put into place, but then we (collectively) forgot, so now we’re losing them. It’s our own faults:-(. However, rather than return to the greater level of socialism that we had then, to make America truly GREAT again - an example could be to limit the purchasing of housing by corporations that have zero plans to actually live inside of them - we instead will turn to fascism, b/c that always ends well in history I suppose (by those who refuse to learn either “from it” or even “it” to begin with).

Get those thoughts out of your head: it will never happen. I am not saying that resistance is futile (hehehe), just that it needs to not be naive. The Democratic campaign we now see was not savvy enough to function, and if we were smart enough and could be open enough to have seen that, then we could have tried other things - e.g. perhaps Kamala Harris could have risked angering the extremely wealthy in a more desperate bid to keep DT from the throne, rather than act assured that she would win regardless. What the Fediverse is good for though - imho you understand ofc - is not to be subversive, and rather to enjoy, as you say, out from under the bootheels of corporate advertising. NO ADS is a fantastic selling point, even to those of us who use ad blockers to begin with.

BTW the mealtime videos moving has nothing to do with hexbear - it’s really a complicated situation that has little to do with anything toxic, and much more to do with how it would be preferrable to not have every single community on the entire Fediverse located at Lemmy.World. But if it is hexbear drama that you want, here is a perfect post to read: https://discuss.online/post/13387124. TLDR: they aren’t “leftist”, they are trolls who only pretend to be thus, exactly like the MAGATs that claim that they are “defending” (rather than overthrowing) democracy. And what’s more, they know it - they just don’t want you to say it, exactly like a toddler seeing what they can get away with.

Don’t forget the guy in The Matrix who CHOSE, nay BEGGED to be put back in. Apes Humans just want to “be comfortable”, it would seem. The thing that seems to get people out of that is pain, as the mother of innovation and all of that. 1984/Animal Farm. People are Sheeple. Like a drowning victim, you cannot help someone who refuses to be helped: you can only encourage / try to motivate them to try to change their own direction.

Which is why I think you will be a good teacher: b/c you care! Either that or a bad one, if you allow everyone to take advantage of you along the way and then break from the strain - b/c man is that whole system becoming predatory these days! Please, PLEASE take care of yourself - whatever you have to do in order to make that happen.:-)