Socializing with people who are not friends is too shallow and unsatisfying. How are you? I’m good. But you’re not good and nothing is good. Okay but that is just pleasantries and not even a literal question. Still it bothers. What’s better? Putting on a fake smile so that you can have idle, useless chatter with near-strangers because you happen to be proximate due to eating habits? Or not.

Satisfying would be to bond over common problems and share common joys. But again too surface-level if not even taboo. I swear it’s gotten to the point where AI or whatever the next doom is could take 5% of all jobs. And there would be talk like, oh poor Joe he lost his job and has no marketable skill. Yup. Yup. Any solutions? Any venting? No, just frustrating reminders of impotence.

The absurdity of going to work every day as a wage commodity, another line item for the bougies to increase profits, then go “consume” your wages so that your “disposable income” can go towards the impossible goal of increasing profits into eterntiy, then see advertizements about how consumers are ruining the planet by buying food that they have no skill, land, or means to grow. But why talk about that? You can’t, not even in a fabled “social democratic” society.

We could be talking about real problems. Just venting, or maybe educating each other, or maybe even doing something about it. Even strangers since we all obviously, as plain as fucking day, go through these bullshit motions every day. We see each other. But we can’t talk about it.