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Jake Wiskerchen's avatar

Jeez, that was good. In my professional work I have long bemoaned the disappearance of authenticity into artifice, driven by what you describe here. Your reference to "culling themselves" has inspired me to write a piece about this with an analogy to suicide, which I deal with daily.

I'll be sure to give proper attribution, of course, but you've hit on something I thought only a scant few of us in the mental health world were noticing, which is the overall bunting of human experience.

Thank you.

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Judson Stacy Vereen's avatar

Very kind of you to say and thanks so much for reading it. Please do send me your piece, I am curious what you will write when you get to it.

I get into these thoughts by way of being an artist and am glad those feelings can come across to people with different backgrounds/professions, etc.!

Thanks Jake!

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Jim McCraigh's avatar

Sobering essay...

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Judson Stacy Vereen's avatar

Thanks for read as always, Jim.

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Paul Kirwin's avatar

It’s odd to hit the ‘like’ button after reading something that brings such feelings of loss. I suppose I ‘like’ the article because I see that you also see the things that are disappearing from not just stores but from humanity itself. Maybe we don’t all have to rage against the machine? A simple honest smile goes a long way to bring people out of their self-imposed prisons.

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Judson Stacy Vereen's avatar

Precisely. We should cut one another some slack and remember to default to kindness whenever we can. Also, forgiveness. We need that as well.

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Kimberly Lackey's avatar

Wait. Butterfinger BBs are discontinued?

I recently saw a homemade video taken at the last day of someone’s senior year of high school in the 90s and what got me was the comments. So much longing! But the interesting part was that many of the commenters hadn’t lived through the 90s. They were lamenting that their childhoods had been lived on a screen and marveled that these kids were actually interacting with one another.

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Judson Stacy Vereen's avatar

Right. Exactly, that is that type of “Nostalgia for the unknown” I am referring to here!

The BB’s were discontinued in 2006!

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Judson Stacy Vereen's avatar

To give readers a sense of what I mean, you can visit here:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/awlQR8vmXnA

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Michael Woudenberg's avatar

I did notice that when legit analysis fell your way you did avoid it. Makes me think you're after got takes.

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