Online world is different from IRL

Online world is different from IRL

People are using the logic of online interactions in real life and it’s ugly.

Yes the college protests of Israel turned out to be right but their understanding of the genocide was shallow and I was right to be unimpressed by their efforts.

Sure a lot of MAGA are suffering but they are racist assholes who elected a madman and I don’t feel sorry for them.

California shouldn’t have a wealth tax cause rich people might leave.

If only the left had a Joe Rogan.

Yes, of course, there can be a synthesis of populism and abundance, and you can see it in somebody like Mamdani.

The thing about the online world is that one can argue back and forth and no one starves or suffers poverty. Not to be dismissive of people being cyber bullied but most interactions online happen in a safe, anonymous environment where one can always just turn off the phone or computer.

So in the online world, without real world consequences, insincerity is the crime. In the real world doing the right thing is much more important than your intentions for doing the right thing.

For instance Tahani ends up in hell because the Good Place scoring system does not give her credit for the charity work she did with the wrong motivations. In the real world if Tahani’s charity work feeds starving children it doesn’t matter that she was only doing it to impress her parents and get back at her sister.

In the online world if you are hurting and lash out inappropriately that’s on you — nobody asked you to go online in the first place. In the real world if you are hurting and use your vote to lash out inappropriately, that’s not solely your fault; options for ending your suffering are limited and a society with enough people suffering is at fault also.

In the online world we could endlessly debate whether the California wealth tax will long term make money for California or not (it will). In the real world it doesn’t matter, there is a plan, that might work, to save the lives of thousands and thousands of Californians and no one has a competing plan.

If only the left had a Joe Rogan. As if the only problem with the Democratic Party is its online messaging. As if 10% of voters were not in poverty.

As if wealth inequality were not out of control. As if the last Democratic president and a federal reserve chief he could have replaced didn’t stop government checks and tighten money and remove blue collar voters’ life lines for the sake of austerity.

Yes, of course, there can be a synthesis of populism and abundance, and you can see it in somebody like Mamdani.

Just what in the heck do neo-liberal Democrats think populism is? I can understand how in the online world a video like below seems populist.

But Mamdani lives in the real world where real New Yorkers are suffering and he is proposing policies that will help them. That’s not populism — just competence.

Here’s Tom Suozzi complaining about Mamdani last year and explaining how he would do better:

For too long, the promise of an ownership society has been out of reach for most working Americans. I will soon introduce the Share Plan Act, which would provide a 3% corporate tax-rate reduction to companies that distribute at least 5% of their stock to the lowest-paid 80% of their employees. This will give middle-class workers a direct stake in their company’s success, fostering financial security while creating incentives for better corporate performance. Not every good job requires an advanced degree. We’ll expand apprenticeships, technical training and business partnerships to open new career paths. This is how we can deliver for working families.

First working families didn’t even vote for Mamdani — college educated form Mamdani’s base. Second according to a 2026 report

2.2 million New Yorkers are destitute and Trump cuts will increase their numbers dramatically. So where in the online world Tom’s sniping is par for the course, in the face of the very real crisis New York faces this my plan is better than your plan bickering (the Share Plan Act never passed) is monstrous and insane.

Did we always have so little empathy?

To be eligible for SNAP (formerly known as food stamps) household income before taxes must be below a set percentage of the federal poverty level (FPL), generally 130%. That’s not a new rule under Trump — this rule goes back to at least 1990!

So under these rules if you are a family of 4 annually making $43,000 > 33,000*1.3 = 42,900 the United States of America, richest country in the world, refuses to help you buy food.

That despite being a country well under the replacement level of 2 children per woman — and probably still dropping.

Keep in mind that no one, absolutely no one, benefits by making it harder for a family of 4 making $43,000 a year to buy food. Billionaires actually benefit from food subsidies as that’s less money they have to pay workers.

For a rich society flirting with replacement level births, families should not pay for food (as defined by SNAP guidelines) — period. So in 1973 when the births per woman first fell below 2 that should have been the rule. The fact it wasn’t the rule means American empathy was already bankrupt over fifty years ago.

So while the rise of the online world might have made things worse the more likely direction is that the form of the online world was shaped by a society already lacking the ability to care for one another even at the level of basic reproduction.

The Roman food handout, known as the annona, was a state-run program that supplied free or subsidized grain to approximately 200,000 adult male citizens in Rome. This “bread and circuses” system supported up to 34% of government income, ensuring social stability by feeding the poor with wheat, which was later supplemented with olive oil, pork, and wine.

The American empire like the British empire before it, see The Poor Law Amendment Act (1834), simply failed to establish any kind of a “we”. Then there are churches and let’s use Interfaith America research at face value:

This data indicates that in 2018, 48% of U.S. congregations either had their own food-distribution program or supported efforts run by another organization, such as a food bank or food pantry.

Less than half of U.S. congregations are willing to help poor starving people. This study is informal and from an onliner but not unbelievable:

In the TikToks, she contacts churches as a struggling mother, asking for baby formula to feed her imaginary child. As of the 42nd video, only nine churches have pledged their support.

Plus even for churches that are helping with food security, the federal government being stingy with the starving and simultaneously funding churches to help is sinister:

On January 7, 2026, National Institute of Food and Agriculture announced that God’s Pantry was one of 13 organizations sharing a $2.8 million funding pool for community food projects.

God’s Pantry Food Bank in Kentucky is navigating record-high food insecurity in 2025–2026, with 1 in 6 residents facing hunger. The organization is expanding to a new 127,000 sq ft facility in Lexington to meet a 30% increase in demand, as CEO Michael Halligan calls for urgent action on the 2023 Farm Bill.

Nobody needs to go hungry in Kentucky or anywhere else in the United States. Much less we instead have this:

Food insecurity in the U.S. reached a near-decade high in 2024, with 13.7% of households (18.3 million) experiencing difficulty accessing adequate food. According to USDA data analyzed in late 2025/early 2026, 47.9 million people lived in food-insecure households, with 14.1 million children impacted.

What happened after 2024 maybe tricky to figure out cause:

The USDA terminated its annual Household Food Security Survey in September 2025 after 30 years, cancelling future data collection.

This is where the online world logic might really make things worse. The online world experience is curated to the stories each individual person wants to hear. Unfortunately its unlikely that the algorithm is going to pick up on your need to hear about starving Americans.

In the media of the old world one might watch an old fashioned show like CBS Sunday Morning and actually meet hungry people.

In the online world you can literally wish these people out of existence but not IRL.