• owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca
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    6 months ago

    Can confirm. Here in Canada, nobody works. We all sit at home and play video games instead. There’s no industry, no shops, no hospitals. Only video games.

    • TwinTitans@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Yeah, most people I know don’t have jobs! We just run extension cords between our igloos to power our video game machines. If it weren’t for them we could totally be like the States. 🤦🏻‍♂️😂

    • NocturnalEngineer@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Can confirm, only video games in the UK too. Certainly not the 6th largest economy in the world worth £3.84 trillion. Nor a labour force with 74.9% in employment, that would be silly!

      • P1nkman@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Norwegian living in Denmark. I moved from Norway because everyone was just gaming, but I wanted to go to gigs, so I moved. Turns out everyone games in Denmark all the time too! It must be why the Northern European countries score so high in the happiness rating: all we do is game all day. It’s not like these countries have any money, especially Norway.

        • MBech@feddit.dk
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          6 months ago

          I am so fucking tired of gaming, could someone for the love of fuck get rid of my healthcare?!?!?! I wake up, gaming. For lunch I game. Dinner? You guessed it, gaming. At night I just constantly game. I don’t know how I get out of this, but at least my health is fucking fantastic!

        • anomnom@sh.itjust.works
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          6 months ago

          Wait, isn’t Norway mostly rich from oil?

          I’m glad they use it for the good of its citizens, but it’s kinda fucking the rest of us.

    • xavier_berthiaume@jlai.lu
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      6 months ago

      In Québec we all own a state mandated PS5 (no Xbox’s allowed, that would be illegal) and play a variety of Fifa, Marvel Heroes and Valorant because it’s said to sharpen our skills and better society. Many women knock on my door saying they want me to grant them children, but knowing that my KDA might suffer from their demands I know not to give in, and to instead keep grinding until my next government granted dialysis appointment. Mon dieu que j’aime le Québec 🙏

    • This is fine🔥🐶☕🔥@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Exactly.

      Even before computers, we Indians were happily playing Chess until Mughals invaded us.

      And then we showed them Chess, got them hooked, and then Brits invaded us.

  • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Or, what if their healthcare continued to be free so they wouldn’t have an incentive to find a way to live on $700 month?

    I know one of those young men playing video games, and he REALLY wants a job, but no matter how he works the math, the medication that keeps him alive costs more than what he’d make. So, his only choice is to budget around permanent poverty or die.

    • Default_Defect@midwest.social
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      6 months ago

      Same reason I’ve been unemployed for a long while, my disability and medicare covers so much of my costs that working would likely result in less money in my pocket.

      • HeyJoe@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        What are you going to do after all this is over, and it’s either even harder to get or just completely gone? Im sorry you have to go through any of this…

        • Default_Defect@midwest.social
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          6 months ago

          No idea, I have a good support structure, so I’m probably not completely fucked if/when it comes down to it. Also my doctor has implied he has some way of helping, should the shit hit the fan, not sure what that could possibly entail though.

  • Gowron_Howard@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    This is absurd, considering Mike Johnson doesn’t work for a living. None of these government officials do anything worthwhile but still get paid for it.

      • Stupidmanager@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Pays well too. The price of their morality for a lifetime of pay and free healthcare. Because let’s face it, these idiots get FEHB healthcare for life for being in congress because they made it so. They get a salary AFTER they served too, after Min 5 years, but they get 80% of their salary as part of a pension. Insane nonsense if you stay for 20 years compared to what we get.

  • CurlyWurlies4All@slrpnk.net
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    6 months ago

    They targeted gamers.

    Gamers.

    We’re a group of people who will sit for hours, days, even weeks on end performing some of the hardest, most mentally demanding tasks. Over, and over, and over all for nothing more than a little digital token saying we did.

    We’ll punish our selfs doing things others would consider torture, because we think it’s fun.

    We’ll spend most if not all of our free time min maxing the stats of a fictional character all to draw out a single extra point of damage per second.

    Many of us have made careers out of doing just these things: slogging through the grind, all day, the same quests over and over, hundreds of times to the point where we know evety little detail such that some have attained such gamer nirvana that they can literally play these games blindfolded.

    Do these people have any idea how many controllers have been smashed, systems over heated, disks and carts destroyed 8n frustration? All to latter be referred to as bragging rights?

    These people honestly think this is a battle they can win? They take our media? We’re already building a new one without them. They take our devs? Gamers aren’t shy about throwing their money else where, or even making the games our selves. They think calling us racist, mysoginistic, rape apologists is going to change us? We’ve been called worse things by prepubescent 10 year olds with a shitty head set. They picked a fight against a group that’s already grown desensitized to their strategies and methods. Who enjoy the battle of attrition they’ve threatened us with. Who take it as a challange when they tell us we no longer matter. Our obsession with proving we can after being told we can’t is so deeply ingrained from years of dealing with big brothers/sisters and friends laughing at how pathetic we used to be that proving you people wrong has become a very real need; a honed reflex.

    Gamers are competative, hard core, by nature. We love a challange. The worst thing you did in all of this was to challange us. You’re not special, you’re not original, you’re not the first; this is just another boss fight.

  • hperrin@lemmy.ca
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    6 months ago

    That does make sense considering every other developed country has free healthcare and literally 100% of their young men spend every waking hour playing video games.

  • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 months ago

    …says guy who gets free healthcare and is paid by a public who he does nothing good for and billionaires who bribe him to hurt the public.

  • SabinStargem@lemmy.today
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    6 months ago

    Videogames are the cheapest and most durable form of entertainment, ideal qualities when you don’t have a job and resources to keep you busy. This fucker wants people to never escape being in misery.

    • rayyy@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      The goal is to get those “young men” out there in the job market struggling to make ends meet day after day so their boss can buy his second vacation home and new yacht. In the meantime Republicans will point to some group or minority as the cause of their woes. It’s a win, win for them.

  • athairmor@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    So, they want to take away healthcare young men don’t have so they’ll get jobs that don’t exist. Sounds like a conservative plan.

  • BarneyPiccolo@lemmings.world
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    6 months ago

    I’m not concerned about some young videogamer getting free healthcare. I’m more concerned with the DOGE GOBLIN getting BILLIONS in government contracts to build rockets that blow up spectacularly, wasting a billion dollars with every explosion, just so he can quip “Just a scratch.”

    That’s a billion dollar scratch that could have made a huge difference in thousands of lives.

    I’m not worried about American citizens getting health care, I’m worried about Foreign Sociopathic Oligarchs getting BILLIONS in government contracts, paid for by taxes on the working class, while calling those same workers/taxpayers “parasites.”

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      That’s a billion dollar scratch that could have made a huge difference in thousands of lives.

      Okay, sure. But consider that they didn’t earn those billions of dollars by sucking up to the right assortment of Wall Street financiers, rich family members, and ego-driven Presidential nominees.

    • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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      6 months ago

      His job is to spread lies and fear, so no reason for him to say something different, if he would know reality…

  • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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    6 months ago

    I don’t accept the premise that working a job to make someone else rich is axiomatically good.

    Many jobs make the world worse. I’d rather someone sit at home and play Tetris than build murder-drones, or work on some sort of AI powered stalking-ad company.

    Many of the jobs are just bullshit. Another “AI” company? Another product manager with no real decision making power? A few billion dollars poured into “the metaverse”? Waste of time and resources.

    That aside, most jobs make the owners rich while labor gets a few crumbs. You work all day making widgets. The boss pays you $10. They sell your widgets for $1000. That’s a bum deal. But there’s a thousand desperate people waiting to take your spot, plus union busters eager to betray labor and beat you up. Pay people the real value of their labor, and treat them with respect, and you’d likely get more people working.

    Johnson is a heretical, hypocritical, piece of shit. No one should take him seriously. His church should – wait, he’s southern baptist? The “we’re going to split off because we want slavery” sect? Not surprising. Those assholes suck.

  • Furbag@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Anybody who has ever been unfortunate enough to have to apply for any of these healthcare or food stipend programs would know that it’s not as easy as the government makes it seem. In fact, the amount of bureaucracy, means testing, and highly restrictive income limitations means that most people don’t qualify period and people who do qualify have to spend an inordinate amount of time waiting to hear back from the government to know if they have been accepted or not, all the while hoping and praying they don’t get sick and can manage their money long enough to continue feeding themselves.

    Case in point, my fiance is out of work right now and actively seeking work. She applied for both MediCAL and SNAP and was denied for MediCAL because she had earned too much already that year to qualify and the SNAP benefits totaled out to $20/month in food stamps, based on historical income, which is insufficient even for the most frugal of individuals to make work. This is for someone currently earning $0/month and being almost entirely supported by me.

    After a certain point, it becomes a massive drain on your time and resources that could be spent looking for a job, so you stop bothering with the system altogether because who wants to spend hours doing paperwork and submitting claims just to get enough spare change to buy a bulk bag of rice to feed yourself a struggle meal?

    I don’t want to hear shit about “handouts” from anybody. My fiance paid her taxes faithfully for years without ever having to rely on the program, so where are her benefits? She has undoubtedly paid more into the system than she will ever extract.

  • who@feddit.org
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    6 months ago

    Man collecting handsome salary and amazing healthcare in exchange for betraying his entire country tries to shift the public focus onto people trying to make their lives less miserable with video games.

    • Sonicdemon86@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Yeah just get disabled, unable to work, and get ssi, then all the free health care. Just have to live with being disabled and not really able to do much, and being poor and hoping that the government doesn’t turn off your ssi cuase it will save them money.

      • Mirshe@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Also, unless you’ve got a way to pay rent or a house you own, good luck getting on housing assistance. Most cities have a waiting list months or years long - I know last time I had to look into it for myself, it was something like 15 months of waiting for a potential open slot anywhere in the city.