China’s Youth Are Quitting the Rat Race to ‘Let It Rot’

So.. there'll be a lot of great Chinese punk music soon?

It's interesting because people are people and it doesn't matter where you are born.

If you look at it from a birds eye view you will see a younger, smart generation trying to fight it's own governments.

It's not USA vs China vs Russia vs Europe etc. it is the younger generation vs the old generation. Currently each generation is fighting it's own government and slowly realising how poor they have done in the last decades.

Nobody wants war.

Amazing arc, like watching the last 120 years in the US compressed down to a couple decades. From rural to industrial powerhouse to the kids going “fuck this shit”.

What’s next?

摆烂 bai3lan4

A slang term that means "stop striving", I'd say it's loosely akin to the phrase "quiet quitting" but a bit more general.

The problem with The Rat race is, even if you win, you’re still a rat.

This is not how I want to read an article.

One of the behavioralist psychologists, I think it was Pavlov, ran an experiment on dogs where he shocked them for both bad behavior good.

Eventually, the shocks had no effect.

They have an interesting strategy where they workout expenses for the year if they lived minimal. It might be 9k. So they work for a few months and save up that money then quit their job and "lay flat" for the rest of the year.

GLOBAL GENERAL STRIKE, A BLOB CAN DREAM.

I really enjoyed this story format. It showed the strength of photographic journalism

let it all rot

Warms my heart to see the youth choosing to walk the Rebel Path.

Funny, people in the USA have been doing that for 20+ years

Fuck the rat race all over.

Late stage capitalism is a blight of humanity, there's gotta have to be some sort of revolutionary changes to society at the rate this is all headed. The world is not healthy right now.

Can a Chinese speaker clarify something? "Let it rot" in other sources is 摆烂 (Bải làn) which translates as "showed away" When I translate "let it rot" I get either 让它腐烂 (simplified) or 讓它腐爛.

What's the difference? How does showed away become let it rot?

They just like me fr

Great phrase, much more impact than quiet quit. I have plenty of sympathy for them, though that dipped substantially when one of the people they profiled became a "certified life coach" oh my god.

Actual article:

https://archive.ph/bu1kA

This message keeps being spread. Wonder how significant it is or if it's like a handful and propagandists are making it out to be a trend?

I thought this was kind of an old meme by now? I seem to remember it being reported on in english media by the late 2010's, like 2018/2019, and the half-life of memes is pretty bad anyways + I would assume english media would get around to these things somewhat after they'd been spent anyways.

My bad, I was thinking of "躺平", lying flat, as mentioned in the article.

In any case I think there's definitely like, an element of this reporting that is, you know, relatively obvious in the amount of bias. You might compare this to, say, if china reported on like, growing incel movements, or something, as evidenced by the spread of andrew tate. Or, maybe better, the quiet quitting movement. They're not technically incorrect, and those are pretty significant problems, but it's also, you know, there's a reason why they're choosing to report on that, and not like. I dunno, something else. Say, toxic work culture. Sigma male grindsets. The total inverse, you will rarely see reported on by, you know, the fucking wall street journal. I have a skepticism for the motives of the media, is basically all I'm saying. I agree with the memes though the chinese government and chinese society et large kind of blows chunks, similarly faulted as is most of modern society broadly.

Crazy when an authoritarian country like China that can just execute people when they don't stay on message, get way off message and say shit like this. Boomer's who bitch about people not wanting to work anymore, this lets me truthfully respond with "even with a gun to their head, today's hopeless work is probably worse than death"

Edit: Looks like I pissed off some tankies, too bad fuckers, China is an evil country with black souled sons of bitches at the helm, and that's as an American with even more disgusting darker souled miserable sons of bitches at the helms of our branches of government. Get real and get over it. Xi is a Winnie the Pooh looking CUNT that can go fuck himself!!!!

Nonworkers if the world unite!

There’s also the after-translation term of laying flat

Almost as if China is no exception...

Good shit. Proud of them.

I hate the Chinese government with the heat of a thousand suns, but I love the actual people of China equally. They have been completely fucked over by the Cultural Revolution and deserve much better.

Could you create one?

Could it be that everyone despises exceptionalism. Treating the average person like an exploitable consumer or a cog to wear out in a machine is wrong. It is the consolidation of wealth and power that is the problem. Disenfranchise and decapitate the the problem of the billionaire class and everything gets better for everyone around the world. The efficiency of exploitation from the ultra wealthy is bad for everyone.

Pretty sure this is happening all over, not just in China.

I think a lot of people got rated by a username?

lol what the fuck is this “article”? A picture book ffs

This is not correct. Young people have stopped doing typical 9-5 jobs but started businesses and are highly successful.

Love how lemmy, has mini summary, followed by mid summary and then long summary in same post. Structure of posts need changing IMHO.

I have a theory that part of this is due to the dying out of religion as a way to keep the masses in line.

Ahh yes. Lemmy's favorite. Another "China bad" article. This is the same shit as "no one wants to work anymore". Non news, ignore this shit.

This is becoming a real perennial story, from what I gather the lay flat movement isn't really very significant it's probably less influential in China than incels are here, or a smaller niche that's harder to think of - maybe like the nofap community or something. Big in some weird online spaces but pretty much unheard of out of it.

It's an interesting one, kinda like Ken Keasy but without the acid.