Modern Life Kayfabe

(and by Kayfabe, I mean, the things everyone pretends everyone might do but no-one actually does)

I bought a Pokemon Booster pack for my kid and on the back it has the addresses of the USA and European Pokemon companies and there's a little note that says "Retain these addresses for your records"

Who the fuck is going to do that?

We've all got smoke detectors in our houses. Great, they save lives etc. But Official advice is to go and press the button to test that they are still working once a week. Once a fucking week. Who the fuck is doing that? How many people actually have a calendar reminder to go and test their smoke alarms once a week? Probably hardly anyone. But it costs the guy at the fire brigade nothing to make that the official advice even though they know no-one is going to follow it and then ultimately we're all left with the slight nagging feeling that we should be testing our smoke alarms more than we do.

And what bugs me is the misaligned incentives, where someone can 'recommend' you do something without having to account for the millions of other things you've already been recommended to do, because making modern life make sense isn't their problem, so they recommend something and then we've just got another thing on the stack that probably isn't actually worth doing that often when you look at it in context of the cost/benefit of balancing the time of your whole fucking life. But they've recommended it anyway.

You know all that flatpack furniture in your house? You're supposed to check regularly that all assembly fastenings are properly tightened and retighten when necessary.

So we're then stuck in this modern kayfabe where we're supposed to get 8 hours sleep a night and drink 4 litres of water and excercise and take time to relax and clean our home and work and maintain friendships and read newspapers and check the attic for leaks and check the car oil and the check your tyre pressure before any significant journey. Agree to the EULA. Not stick cotton buds/q-tips in your ears.

It's all bullshit m8.  None of us were meant or built to live like this.  To cope I try to live by the following mantra:

  On 10/2/2023 at 1:13 AM, zazen said:

We've all got smoke detectors in our houses. Great, they save lives etc. But Official advice is to go and press the button to test that they are still working once a week. Once a fucking week.

I never do this. but for some reason, these devices, in numerous places I've lived, will have their 9V battery run out in the middle of the night. when this happens, the device emits a single beep, which repeats every minute or so. I've been awakened many a time to hear that lone beep somewhere in a room in the house. at like 3:38 am. then the mission begins to find a chair or something to climb up to whichever one is making the beep, yank it out of its plastic housing without damaging any wires, and get that battery out of there asap... I seem to recall at some point, one of these things went rogue on me, and kept beeping without the battery attached. so then next mission is to find a closet or pillow or something to hide it in, return back to bed. then I can't fall asleep, and lay their thinking how it's totally my fault for not checking the batteries...or why do I even need a smoke detector at all? like won't I know if the fckin house is on fire? I sleep horribly any way. think I'd smell the smoke. yeah gas leaks, sure, but no natural gas at my place... ah, yeah, it's all pointless one way or another. modern society lol