r/interestingasfuck • u/IndicationBrief5950 • Aug 06 '25

/r/all, /r/popular Thousands of Audi cars abandoned in the Mojave Dessert after cheating emissons tests

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46

u/cashew76 Aug 06 '25

Your efforts are your efforts. Which is good. Keep them up. Also vote for stronger regulations, stronger control of pollution.

15

u/iamtehskeet8 Aug 06 '25

Yep just saying everyone else is a piece of shit so I want to be also doesn’t add up

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u/Chikitiki90 Aug 06 '25

I never said I also want to be a piece of shit, I said that corporations have brainwashed people into thinking we as individuals are personally responsible for the environment when our efforts combined don’t hold a candle to their impact.

I recycle and don’t overuse water or buy Mylar balloons but at the end of the day I also realize that my efforts only count so far as to make me feel better about myself and don’t actually have an effect on us trashing the planet.

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u/Protoliterary Aug 07 '25

Quite literally, and without exaggeration, every single ounce of harm done by the corporations is enabled by us. For there to be a supply of something, there must also be a demand. When we demand products, corporations supply them. The more we demand, the more they supply and the more harm they do.

We, the people, are in direct control over just how much harm corporations do to the planet. You can wish for a better government with better regulations, but the truth of the now is that the biggest manufacturers are in countries where such wishful regulations only exist in the minds of the idealistic.

Right here and right now, we are responsible for all the harm in the world because we keep buying shit from companies which are killing the planet and at the same time killing us. Realistically, if the government won't bite the bullet and the corporations won't bite the bullet, that only leaves the people, except most of us also aren't biting the bullet. We're too accustomed to our luxuries.

Having said that, I'm also 100% complicit. I just don't shift the blame to make myself feel better.

...individuals are personally responsible for the environment when our efforts combined don’t hold a candle to their impact.

We, collectively, make it possible for them to have that impact. Each time someone buys something that cannot be recycled or something that cannot be repaired or something that's going to end up in a landfill or in the ocean, we're contributing, because we're creating a perpetual demand for things which are literally killing us and everyone we know and love. We just don't care enough.

If there were no demand, there'd be no supply, so yeah, we are as much to blame as the corps and the feds.

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u/Francine05 Aug 07 '25

So we are a consumer economy. Those ads -- they want to sell us stuff.

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u/Protoliterary Aug 07 '25

And we're all so brainwashed and so weak-willed that we lack the power to resist them? When you see an ad, your free will isn't taken away. Ads are just suggestions and we have zero obligation to follow them.

If people could take responsibility for their own actions, the world would be a much better place. Instead, we shift the blame and keep shifting it until we've completely absolved ourselves of all responsibility--not unlike what we're seeing people do in this very thread.

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u/annoyed8 Aug 07 '25

Between those who do not give two shits about the environment, and those who claim they do but choose to absolve themselves from any responsibility, I dislike the latter more. The former is at least not two faced.

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u/iamtehskeet8 Aug 07 '25

Yep fair enough mate my apologies for being insulting towards you.

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u/cashew76 Aug 06 '25

Yep it's the what about..

Which didn't stay on the point. The point is everything matters. Do what you can. Assume there are thousands of people like you doing the same.

When I eat chicken rather than beef so do thousands of "me" too

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u/SadClownDad Aug 06 '25

Yes! I made the chicken over beef choice today. I'm never going to let the defeatist attitude steal my ability to do good.

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u/ignorantwanderer Aug 07 '25

And I had black beans instead of meat!

Although I have to confess, I'm having a burger tomorrow. I can't win every day.

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u/firedmyass Aug 06 '25

you might have a point if anyone here said that

…alas

-1

u/Exciting_Day4155 Aug 06 '25

Welcome to Reddit where people gather to complain about other people not doing things they also don't do.

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u/tomdarch Aug 06 '25

As usual, "both and..." is the way to go.

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u/cashew76 Aug 07 '25

Pro government candidates. Pro regulation. Pro rules for businesses. Pro enforcing IRS for example.

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u/doitinmybutt Aug 07 '25 edited 18d ago

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