When you hear the phrase “10 indications western” you might picture a list of quirky facts, but the reality is far more sobering. Below we walk through ten stark signals that suggest Western society is on a path to collapse, each backed by research, history, and observable trends.

10 Gender Fluidity

Psychiatrist Paul McHugh, a distinguished university service professor at Johns Hopkins Medicine, has long maintained that transgenderism is primarily a psychological issue rather than a biological issue. He recommends that counseling be the primary treatment used to help individuals who are experiencing gender identity confusion.

McHugh is not alone. Many psychiatrists and other medical professionals believe that leaping to perform gender reassignment surgery is not the best course of action when dealing with the issue of gender confusion. These professionals do not hate or look down on transgender people; they simply do not believe that surgery is invariably the best option when dealing with this complicated problem.

Yet, in today’s social environment, anyone who so much as suggests that transgender people may benefit from therapy is shot down as a bigot or oppressor. However, it can be argued that only an individual who is mentally disturbed would want to risk gender reassignment surgery.

Many transgender people report that they feel trapped in their own bodies and persecuted by those around them. Yet, our contemporary medical establishment makes an immense profit from intervention-based treatments, and medical facilities are more than happy to seemingly rectify this mental distress with costly surgery.

However, studies have shown that post‑op transsexuals have much higher mortality rates than the general population and are more likely to commit suicide. It has also been noted that transgender individuals who do not receive surgery are also more likely to attempt suicide than the general population. Transgender individuals live in a state of acute mental distress whether or not they undergo surgical gender reassignment. Yet, gender reassignment is still seen as the only valid course of action when treating transgender individuals.

What could be the reason for this bias? Popular culture has readily portrayed the ailing days of Roman civilization as being fraught with acts of degeneracy that horrified Roman conservatives. After the annexation of the Greek states, Greek practices of homosexuality and sexual promiscuity were adopted by the Roman polity. Some commentators have suggested that this focus on sensuality contributed to the decline of the Roman Empire.

After traditional Germanic cultural values were dethroned at the end of World War I, the Weimar Republic decriminalized prostitution, and pornographic revue shows became incredibly popular. As a result, German cinema became increasingly sexualized, and child sex workers were easy to find outside every major hotel in Berlin. Many political figures of the time pointed to Jewish influence in entertainment and finance as the source of this degeneracy. This perspective helped fuel the rise of the Third Reich and its pogrom of the Jewish population.

With history as our guide, it becomes clear that abolishing sexual norms contributes to social decay. Depending on your assessment of Western society, this fact could be seen as cause for either terror or jubilation. If your agenda were to destroy Western culture, these historical examples could be seen as guidelines to follow. By putting a media spotlight on individuals who have surgically reconstructed their bodies due to their alternative sexual preferences, interested parties could alter the flow of social discourse about reproduction to manifest their desired cultural ends.

9 The Collapse Of The Family

For centuries untold, family units have served as the dominant formative force of the character of the next generation. In a healthy society, each family unit is informed and directed by general cultural trends. But in an unhealthy society, family units can break away and subsist on their own devices.

Sensing a threat to their power in the sovereign autonomy of the family unit, statist influences have enforced the mandatory education of children in government‑run facilities. In these institutions, children are indoctrinated to transfer their perception of authority from their parents to the state. At school, children lose the freedoms and special treatment that they receive at home and are forced to ask permission to perform basic biological functions.

Dissatisfied by the control of the next generation rendered by public schooling, authorities have begun attempting to eradicate the existence of the family altogether. Hillary Clinton is famous for suggesting that parents are incapable of rearing their own children with the phrase, “It takes a village to raise a child.” In 2013, then‑MSNBC contributor Melissa Harris‑Perry more openly suggested that the state owns human beings by stating that “kids belong to whole communities.”

The Democratic Party has been in charge of public policy in urban black communities in America for the past 50 years. In this same time period, black families have been utterly decimated. Since the 1960s, the number of black children raised by single mothers has skyrocketed from just over 20 percent to more than 70 percent. Deprived of the example set by a father, generations of black boys have grown up to become directionless men destined to lives of prison or poverty. Black mothers have become increasingly reliant on state benefits legislated by Democrats to make ends meet.

Urban black America is a microcosmic prophecy of what is intended for other communities as Western culture collapses. Like all other aspects of society, statists believe that the education of children should come from one central point. With the traditional family structure out of the way, the state is free to form the next generation’s perception of reality unchecked.

Divorce rates are rising everywhere in America, and fewer young people are getting married and having children. Men fear women, and women despise men. Traditional systems of reproduction are dissolving, and new systems will have to replace them to maintain the workforce.

8 The Rising Dominance Of Virtual Worlds

Robust civic engagement is a fundamental tenet of Western society. Citizens of Western countries must actively defend their rights to stem the relentless onslaught of tyranny that always looks for a new opening. Without the constant efforts of individuals seeking ever greater freedom and quality of life, the ingenious productivity, which is the hallmark of Western culture, would rapidly grind to a halt.

Yet more and more each year, people in Western nations are becoming disconnected from reality. Cloaked under the promise of keeping people connected, social media has torn us apart. Former hacker and Facebook president Sean Parker has revealed that this social media platform is designed to trap users in a “social‑feedback validation loop” that relentlessly urges them to gain even more likes and comments. Chamath Palihapitiya, Facebook’s former vice president for user growth, has expressed his feelings of deep guilt for helping to create a system that is tearing society apart by ensnaring users in these dopamine‑driven loops.

At the same time that human social drives are being replaced with social media, human sexual drives are also under attack from online pornography. Various spiritual traditions throughout human history have maintained that human sexual connection can be a portal to the divine. Robbed of this connection, not only are human beings incapable of producing offspring, but they also miss out on one of the key mysteries of existence.

Women depicted in pornography are not threatening to men, and they do not have their own desires. They can be expediently discarded like the objects that Playboy culture has taught us they are. Lured by these seeming advantages of pornography over real relationships, some men are doing away with pursuing women altogether.

Like social media platforms, modern video games are explicitly designed to incentivize players to spend as much time in the virtual world as possible. For example, when researching why American men aged 21–30 worked fewer hours from 2000 to 2016 than those over 30 years old, a Princeton study found that at least 79 percent of the reduction in aggregate working hours was attributable to video game use.

Men who play video games are provided with a feeling of achievement and power that has been largely denied to men in recent years. These men are gradually becoming acclimated to the concept that the real world is hard and boring and that virtual environments are rewarding and fun.

Men who are entrapped within virtual worlds are incapable of defending the women and children in their lives. Instead, they give up actual productivity for simulated achievement. Men have always been those voices within Western society that stand up to tyranny and stake their claims to their own plots of land, family units, or accomplishments. Robbed of these virile masculine traits, men become toothless, broken shells that can be easily bypassed by whichever exploitative or authoritarian forces happen to come their way in search of prey.

7 Fusion With Technology

In 2017, former Google self‑driving car developer Anthony Levandowski announced the formation of a religious organization called Way of the Future. This “church” praises artificial intelligence as a force superior to man that should be worshiped lest it destroys us.

Levandowski’s ultimate goal is to fuse human civilization with artificial intelligence. This is also the goal of Ray Kurzweil, a director of engineering at Google. Kurzweil has predicted that an event called the “technological singularity” is fast approaching. He surmises that this event will occur when Moore’s law causes technology to outstrip human consciousness and triggers unfathomable changes in culture. It goes without saying that Western civilization would not survive this apocalyptic event.

Levandowski and Kurzweil are called “transhumanists.” People who subscribe to this ideology believe that human beings are inherently flawed and that our technological creations will redeem us. They view reality as a prison and seek to escape into a virtual world that will gradually consume what the rest of us call “reality.” Transhumanists seek to fuse with machines to cheat death, enhance intelligence, and achieve human godhood.

Transhumanists operate under the assumption that the mysteries of reality have been thoroughly plumbed. Subscribing to a materialist philosophy that began with Newton and was expanded upon by Darwin, transhumanists reject the primacy of consciousness and the evolution of the soul detailed by traditional religions. Instead, they believe that spiritual perfection can only be achieved through the use of machines.

6 Mass Immigration From Undeveloped Countries

In March 2011, Muammar Gadhafi warned the world that Europe would be swarmed with migrants if his regime were to fall. This was no idle threat. Libya had long served as the gateway to Europe, much like Mexico serves as the gateway to the United States. As a way of shoring up his country’s ability to fulfill this role in perpetuity, Gadhafi began taking steps to abandon the petrodollar and return Libya to a gold‑backed currency.

In October 2011, Gadhafi was killed. Hillary Clinton expressed her fond remembrance of this incident with her infamously candid phrase, “We came, we saw, he died.” But Gadhafi didn’t simply die. He was brutally raped to death by a gang of crazed young men. Some of these men opted to sodomize Gadhafi with bayonets.

This brutal rape served as a foreshadowing for what was about to happen to Europe. In the last few years, millions of immigrants from Africa and the Middle East have swarmed into European countries. Unfortunately, most of them are men, and the vast majority of them do not have any marketable skills.

They have set up vast tent cities in Paris, and many areas in Sweden are now unsafe for non‑immigrant Swedes. Immigrants from the Middle East have set up enormous networks of grooming gangs in the UK. These gangs recruit girls as young as 11 to enter lives of sexual slavery.

Immigration is also corroding Western culture in America. The United States is a nation of immigrants, and immigration adds a net benefit to America’s wealth. But when America’s borders are not recognized or enforced, immigration can transform from a point of strength into a crippling weakness.

Many communities in the United States serve as safe havens for people who enter the country illegally. They are provided with food, shelter, and education at the expense of the American taxpayer. Whether or not these people should be supported is a moot point. The reality is that this unfairness is putting a strain on intercultural relations in the United States and has reached a tipping point.

If immigration continues in this manner, Western society will be extinguished by sheer numbers. Many in the West are starting to wake up because they are slowly being boiled alive by immigration policies that seek to replace them and their way of life. Resistance to this planned cultural obsolescence is inevitable.

5 Inequality Under The Law

When illegal immigrants commit crimes in the US, they are held to a different standard than US citizens. In 2015, a young woman named Kate Steinle was shot and killed in San Francisco by a man in the United States illegally. Jose Ines Garcia Zarate admitted to shooting Steinle. However, he was acquitted of murder and released from custody.

Zarate and his lawyer spun a fanciful and constantly shifting story. Originally, Zarate claimed that he had purposefully shot the gun at a sea lion and missed. Then he claimed that he had unexpectedly found the gun abandoned under the park bench where he was sitting and that it had fired accidentally as he picked it up. A federal warrant was issued for Zarate almost as soon as he was acquitted, and Zarate has filed a federal suit in response.

Zarate’s story is not atypical. In 2018, an illegal alien named Ivan Zamarripa‑Castaneda was released from jail despite being wanted by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). He had fled the scene of a car crash that he had caused, leaving the occupant of the other vehicle to die. Zamarripa‑Castaneda was in the country illegally and had caused the death of an American citizen. Still, the Denver Sheriff Department decided to release Zamarripa‑Castaneda because ICE had not filed the proper paperwork.

When people who have entered a country illegally are not held to the same legal standards as citizens, resentment is sure to ensue. The Constitution of the United States is designed explicitly to view all citizens equally under the law. But when criminals flout US laws and sneak into the country without following the proper protocols, the principles of the Constitution can no longer operate, which leads to a breakdown within American society.

Equality under the law is even more important than the elite among a nation’s citizenry. Much like people in a country illegally, elites who have accrued massive amounts of wealth and power often feel above the law. Being acutely familiar with the effects of this type of tyranny in Europe, the Founding Fathers of the United States made sure to stipulate that elites are subject to the same laws as average citizens.

Though Hillary Clinton illegally stored classified material on a private server, she was absolved of all crimes by James Comey in 2016. That same year, a Navy serviceman named Kristian Saucier was found guilty of taking pictures of classified areas of the nuclear submarine on which he was stationed. At that time, Barack Obama was the U.S. president. The next president, Donald Trump, pardoned Saucier in March 2018.

When a nation’s elites aren’t held to the same legal standards as its average citizenry, doubt begins to brew about the impartiality of that country’s legal system. By pulling at this thread of inequality, the entire tapestry of Western civilization can start to unravel.

4 Erasure Of History

It is said that the victors write history. Our perception of the past, and therefore our perception of the present, is molded by those forces which have eliminated opposing viewpoints by diplomatic or violent means. The easiest way to control a person or a group is to manipulate their perspective on reality from the very beginning with a view of history that benefits those in charge.

In recent years, there has been a growing call to erase historical landmarks that are inconvenient to modern sensibilities. For example, in New Orleans, a famous statue of President Andrew Jackson is under siege. According to critics of the statue, the fact that Jackson was a slaveholder is offensive to modern‑day minorities.

However, it should be pointed out that President Jackson also excoriated those involved in public corruption during his administration. He abolished the Federal Reserve, which earned him the ire of the banking elite of the time. Despite his flaws, history remembers President Jackson as one of the greatest American presidents.

Educators have become increasingly vocal about downplaying the achievements of European and American men while glorifying the parts that Native Americans, homosexuals, and transgender persons have played in history. These educators claim that our “Eurocentric” worldview is damaging to children and harmful to society.

The battle to control US history has persisted at least since the end of the Civil War. Educators in Texas are still fighting for the right to contest whether slavery was the central issue in the Civil War. The only answer to this debate is to provide children with the widest possible view of history and allow them to make up their own minds as to what it all means.

Yet many voices within our society appear to believe that remembering males of European descent, who have been nearly single‑handedly responsible for the key events that have shaped Western culture, is so “toxic” that these progenitors of our modern technological and social systems should be summarily forgotten. Instead, a new version of history could be erected in their absence that depicts a world free of their troublesome accomplishments.

3 Rising Financial Inequality

The city of San Francisco is a haven for America’s technocratic elite. Executives at Google and Facebook frequently rub shoulders with Senators and Congressmen at swanky restaurants in Fog City neighborhoods like Pacific Heights. But San Francisco is rapidly becoming a haven for a caste that represents the economic polar opposite of the tech elite: the homeless.

Why do the homeless flock to San Francisco? It isn’t the weather. Houston has better weather than San Francisco, but you don’t see endless flocks of impoverished people erecting tent cities on Houston’s sidewalks. The answer is that the same elites who live in multimillion‑dollar mansions nestled in San Francisco’s iconic hills have enacted policies that draw the homeless to the poorer areas of the city like magnets.

San Francisco serves as a picture‑perfect symbolic representation of everything that is wrong with contemporary class structure in the West. Instead of using their limitless wealth to create jobs that would give the homeless purpose and sustenance, the elite in San Francisco finance planned giving schemes that only reinforce the belief that striving for anything is meaningless. Instead of working tirelessly to end the opioid epidemic at the source, San Francisco’s elite enact policies that provide heroin and fentanyl addicts with safe spaces where they can shoot up without persecution.

The goal of the elite in the West is not to help the masses. It is to create a permanent underclass that is malnourished, misinformed, and addicted. Once the middle class has been eliminated, the elite will be free to dispose of this unaware underclass at will. Members of the immigrant populations that are set to replace these purposefully impoverished citizens of the West should be under no illusions: The elite seeks to replace them, too, as soon as robots are capable of performing the menial tasks that are currently performed by underclasses all over the world.

Western elites can only be described as members of a breakaway civilization. They view themselves as inherently separate from the society they inhabit, like a parasite, and they feel no empathy or indebtedness to the civilization that gave them birth. In the end, the elite members of Western civilization are doing the most to actuate the downfall of the West.

2 Drug Abuse

In the mid‑1800s, the British Empire got China addicted to opium. Chinese goods like porcelain and tea were incredibly popular in Europe, and the Brits had nothing that they could trade for these hot commodities. So, this colonial power cooked up a scheme in which they would sell Indian opium at Chinese port towns, making a killing in the process and facilitating the addiction of thousands of Chinese people to a potentially fatal intoxicant.

Perhaps China is getting back at the West for this costly humiliation by flooding our shores with fentanyl. This designer drug was used predominantly by West Coast business elites until a few years ago, when it suddenly became ubiquitous across the United States. Fentanyl is estimated to be 100 times more powerful than morphine, and the chances of overdosing on fentanyl are dangerously high.

Chinese fentanyl producers use the dark web to sell this toxic drug directly to American consumers. But even if China weren’t getting back at the West for losing face by getting Americans hooked on a drug hundreds of times more potent than opium, America would still have an opioid problem.

By the year 2000, opium production in Afghanistan had nearly ground to a halt. But after US and NATO forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001 under the pretext of 9/11, production started reaching record highs. In what’s surely an unrelated coincidence, the American opioid epidemic has spiraled out of control since 2001.

The effects of increased opioid use on the American people have been devastating. More children are being put into foster care because their parents are addicts, and more workers are being removed from the workforce. Most victims of the opioid epidemic are older white people who have been prescribed these drugs legally.

At the same time that American society is being ripped apart by opioid addiction, the drug culture is legitimized by the legalization of marijuana. While marijuana certainly has medical uses, so does opium. That doesn’t mean that either substance should be used recreationally with impunity. Yet more and more states in the Union are opting to defy federal law by setting up recreational marijuana programs that generate enormous sums of tax revenue while fueling America’s gradual decline into a drug‑induced stupor.

As traditional methods of generating dopamine in the brain, such as workplace achievement and familial relations, are replaced by drugs, conventional meaning structures are being replaced with the absolute necessity of the high. Sensual thrills are replacing reason, and compulsion is replacing the power of will. Since meaning, reason, and will are the hallmarks of Western culture, the West will cease to exist at the moment that these organizing principles are fully replaced with the degenerating and corrupting influences that encroach on the horizon.

1 Nihilism

The quest for meaning has always dominated the Western psyche. In the Dark Ages, the concept of mors certa, hora incerta (“death is certain, its hour is uncertain”) encapsulated the obsession with death that sprang out of Christian theology.

Europe’s bleak social landscape caused ordinary people, clergy, and aristocrats alike to look to the metaphysical for answers. A solution rang out loud and clear with the dawning of the Renaissance, in which thinkers from across the continent devised new ways to tap the essence of nature for the betterment of man.

During the Enlightenment period, the quest for meaning turned to the social sphere, and the Romantic era saw the birth of psychology, the science of the soul. With each successive era, Western philosophy took on new nuances, and the task of unearthing a cohesive framework explaining man’s relation to the universe ever took the fore of this adventure of discovery.

Toward the end of the Romantic era, however, Western ideas of meaning took a somewhat darker turn. Hashish‑inebriated poets like Baudelaire took a guillotine to previous ideas of beauty, and vagabond philosophers like Nietzsche propounded the virtues of nihilism. A macabre tone suffused the leading ideas of the day, and it was informally agreed that the past should be left behind to rot.

A new philosophy of modernism emerged from this decay. Modernist thinkers related all things to their perceived function, and the importance of the self overshadowed all observation of tradition. From the ashes of modernism sprang a new ideology called postmodernism, in which nothing concretely relates to anything, and the conscious self is the ultimate origin of all reality.

The philosophy of postmodernity preaches that there is no sacredness to socially agreed‑upon meanings and that objective fact is a delusion. Morally, this implies that all taboos are ridiculous and that any act is permissible. In postmodernity, each individual is atomized in a dream of subjective reality with no reference point to the outside world. This effectively breaks the civic character in the individual, rendering him into a spineless cipher with no investment in his own betterment.

In Communist China, the nihilistic miasma of postmodernity is taking hold. Young people in China are checking out from reality to such an extent that the younger generation in China is now referred to as Generation Zen. These tech‑addicted teens and twentysomethings have no political inclination, communist or otherwise, and are blown to and fro with no active stake in their fates whatsoever.

While Generation Zen is seemingly a problem for China as this nation relies on vitalizing propaganda to keep its modern‑day slave state in operation, these young people are a perfect representation of what the decay of Western values looks like. Steeped in generations of atheistic communism, the younger generation in China has nothing to live for and no overarching meaning to give them spiritual sustenance. Looming financial inequality and disenfranchisement from free expression have left China’s youth with no voice and no shared national spirit.

As Western values continue to collapse, the ideological contagion of Generation Zen will spread and leave the people of the world disconnected and disempowered. Thus, the centuries‑old thought experiment known as Western philosophy has finally met its match with a void of meaninglessness. It is uncertain whether the liberty‑preserving values of the West will survive this decisive confrontation.

Hollywood plays an important role in shaping our perception of our place in society, and the top 10 things it gets wrong ripple through our daily interactions. Movies often define our expectations about the day‑to‑day connections we have with other people. Whether it’s love, rivalry, compassion, or greed, the way humans interact on screen directly influences how we imagine relationships work in the real world.

10 War Is a Glorious Affair

War is one subject that filmmakers have a social responsibility to portray accurately. Yet, they still refuse to get it right. As quite a few critics have pointed out, the depiction of war in popular cinema remains inaccurate at best and intentionally skewed to influence the public’s mood at worst.

It can be argued that public perception affects our cinema and popular fiction and not the other way around. If that’s true, then cinema’s job is to show the world as it should be, not as it is.

War is a misunderstood affair even in movies that make a genuine effort to show conflict like it is in real life. According to some critics, a true anti‑war movie is quite difficult to make. Even if you try to show aspects like the brotherhood between soldiers and excessive violence, the film unintentionally promotes the whole act.

Dennis Rothermel, a retired professor of philosophy, argues that a movie can only give us an accurate representation of real‑life conflicts if it has “random infliction of violent death, abject terror, [and] heinousness as a norm of behavior.”

That doesn’t mean that movies never get it right. Some popular works—like Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, and Paths of Glory—definitely stand out when it comes to realistic portrayals of the horrors of war. If film directors and writers were a bit more diligent about the depictions of war on the big screen, popular support for wars around the world probably wouldn’t be as high as it is.

9 People Have Too Much Money

There are good and bad economic cycles. However, even when the world has rising rents and stagnant wages, it seems that Hollywood simply has no idea of how things really are. Characters in TV shows and movies usually have a lot of free time to drive the plot, all the while doing underpaid creative jobs.

Just look at Friends, the story of six young residents of New York who do almost nothing all day and can still afford rent in relatively huge apartments in posh parts of New York.

8 No Matter What Happens, the Hero Gets the Girl in the End

A lot has been said about inaccurate portrayals of women in movies, though that’s an obvious consequence of writing rooms being traditionally male‑dominated spaces. Although things are rapidly changing—thanks to a deluge of women now going for writing careers in film and television—we’re still a long way from Hollywood correctly portraying women as the normal, three‑dimensional people that they are.

One of the most damaging examples is when movies perpetuate the notion that the guy would obviously end up with the girl at the conclusion of the story. Most movies adhere to this cliché regardless of how separated it is from real life.

It doesn’t matter if the woman has a completely different life before she meets the hero or if they have no reason to be attracted to each other. By the time the movie ends, circumstances will make them come together and live happily ever after.

Apart from promoting the faulty belief that you’re entitled to a romantic partner just because you did your job well, it causes even deeper problems in society. As protagonists of the opposite sex almost always end up getting together, it promotes the idea that most male‑female relationships are romantic in nature. As anyone who has stepped out of the house can tell you, that’s not really the case.

A realistic movie would end with the lead actor and actress solving the big problem and returning to a friendship in which they only get to see each other once a month due to work and family.

7 Parents Are Just Bad at Their Jobs

There’s no dearth of intentionally bad parents in Hollywood, though we’re not here to talk about them. In movies, it seems like parents are generally bad at their jobs. You’ll first notice it when you see a kid in a movie sneak out of the house to go party at night. Then you start seeing it in every movie.

If movie parents were anything like real parents, many movies would cease to have a plotline. Kids in movies carry out entire adventures without their parents ever knowing about it.

Unfortunately for all the youngsters out there, parents in real life are quite adept at stopping their kids from doing what movie kids do. The most effective way parents do it is by controlling the money supply. Pocket money is often intentionally calculated to stop kids from sneaking out and partying at night or partaking in any other calls to adventure.

Real parents usually know what their kids are up to at any given point. There are very few cases where a group of bright school friends solves a major world problem without their parents knowing about it.

6 Parties Are Always Fun

Every time people get together to celebrate something in the movies, it’s all fun and games. Rarely does anything go wrong or anyone get bored. Almost every college party is awesome and eventful. If it isn’t, that’s an important part of the plot. Bad parties have their own role to play in advancing plotlines.

As you know, that’s not the case in real life. Most college parties are boring affairs and usually don’t end in something scandalous. Of course, good parties exist, though they’re usually the exception. Most of the time, parties are simply a bunch of tired, overworked people sipping on wine and talking until 11:00 PM, after which they promptly go back home and sleep.

5 Villains Are Ugly; Heroes Are Attractive

We know that life is a bit easier for individuals at the top of the attractiveness pyramid. Your service at restaurants is faster, your interviews are easier, and people willingly let you skip queues all the time. Being attractive also increases your chances of survival, even though good looks don’t have any inherent survival benefits.

A big part of that could be attributed to our popular fiction, especially the movies. Villains are usually portrayed as ugly, in clear contrast to conventionally attractive lead actors and actresses.

Although we understand that it’s necessary to create that much‑needed binary of good and evil, being ugly isn’t necessarily bad in the real world. In fact, being less attractive than someone else has absolutely zero effect on your skills, day‑to‑day abilities, or intelligence. That’s not to say that all movie villains are ugly, but attractive ones are usually anti‑heroes or relatable villains.

To see how it works in the real world, just look at how attractive criminals—like Ted Bundy—can get away with their crimes for so long. Or how well‑dressed, polite politicians who are actively working against the people keep getting reelected.

4 Killing the Villain Ends the Problem

With few exceptions, it’s usually quite easy to tell the good guys from the bad ones in movies. Villains and heroes are clearly defined, appealing to our innate desire to see the world in simple, black‑and‑white terms.

Of course, that’s not how it is in real life. No one in history—other than Hitler, of course—was completely good or bad. Accurate portrayals are rarely successful, though, as people really do want to see a hero beating a villain at the end. Other than forcibly putting history into neat boxes that we can clearly oppose or support, this also promotes the perception that complex, entrenched problems can be eliminated by killing the villainous leader.

Movies usually end with the bad guys dying and things going back to normal. They ignore the fact that the underlying problems created by those villains still exist.

Take Harry Potter. Sure, by the end of the series, he has killed Voldemort and dispersed his army. While it solves the immediate problem, it doesn’t do anything about the wave of racial supremacy that Voldemort has already unleashed on the magical world.

Lord of the Rings ends with the destruction of Sauron, but he wasn’t the only inhabitant of Mordor. The Orcs could revolt and continue the war in the aftermath of the movies.

We see this in real life, too. Killing Osama bin Laden didn’t end Islamic terrorism. ISIS improved upon al‑Qaeda’s methods to create an even more radical form of terrorism, and it could happen again. Of course, Al‑Qaeda itself remains a potent force in quite a few countries.

Killing Hitler may have ended the immediate threat from the Nazis. However, he was just a figurehead for various racial supremacist movements that were popular around the world at that time—movements that are still alive and kicking to this day.

Associating wider problems with one easily dismissible villain also lets us absolve our involvement in the relevant issues. It’s easy for the people of Gotham to root for Batman over the Joker because it distracts them from the fact that they’re equally responsible for the socioeconomic conditions that give rise to criminals like the Joker in the first place.

3 People Have No Work, and Their Bosses Are Great

We’re not sure if Hollywood execs just don’t know how things are on the ground, but people in movies don’t seem to have the same amount of work as we do. Lunch breaks can be unrealistically long and full of exciting, drawn‑out events. In fact, it seems like everyone is allowed to leave at 5:00 PM.

If you work in any competitive, modern office, the chances are that you work long hours multiple times a week with little to no time to indulge in dramatic character arcs. It’s hard to execute intricate love plots involving multiple people across the city if you’re a fresher and have to do three jobs six days a week just to make the rent.

In a similar vein, bosses in movies are surprisingly lenient. Have you ever seen a character at work who faces an emergency and asks a coworker to cover for him while he deals with it? Yeah, that doesn’t happen in real life as you can’t take over someone’s job as a personal favor in real life.

2 No One Ever Finishes Their Meals

For most people, meals in movies are perfectly normal affairs. Eating morsels of food is mostly a background activity and something that’s only added as a prop to the overall setting.

When you think about it, people in movies should be terribly malnourished. If you notice characters eating anything in a movie, they seem to have a fundamental problem finishing it. How many times have you seen a character prepare a whole breakfast only to watch her kid, husband, or other side character take a bite of it and leave?

We’re guessing a lot because it happens in many movies.

We don’t have to tell you why this is inaccurate as people usually finish their meals in real life. It’s one of the more harmless misconceptions from Hollywood as it hardly affects real‑life situations. But it would still be rude to leave a meal midway in most social settings.

1 Creepy Behavior Is Actually Love

Although most of us love a classic rom‑com, it only takes rewatching one of them to realize that Hollywood has normalized stalking.

From the famous jukebox scene in Say Anything to the borderline harassment of sending one letter every day to someone in The Notebook, Hollywood regularly portrays as acceptable the types of behavior that would put you behind bars in real life. The Onion even satirized it in one of their classics from 1999 titled “Romantic‑Comedy Behavior Gets Real‑Life Man Arrested.”

That’s not just satire, either. Stalking is a real crime around the world. Just take the United States, whereas many as 7.5 million people endure some form of stalking every year.

While we won’t assume that all cases have the same motivations, enough stories exist about crazy exes and jaded lovers to prove that it’s a real problem. Although we understand that many factors may contribute to stalking, the movies are definitely not helping.

About The Author: You can check out Himanshu’s stuff at Cracked and Screen Rant or get in touch with him for writing gigs.

When you hear the phrase 10 ways alcohol, you might picture a night out or a cocktail recipe. Yet the truth runs far deeper: booze has been a silent architect of our civilization, nudging evolution, politics, industry, and even civil rights. In this romp through history, we’ll uncork the unexpected ways fermented drinks have left their mark on the modern world.

10 ways alcohol Influenced History

1 No Alcohol? No Utopia.

Back in 1732, the fledgling American colonies were sandwiched between British‑held lands to the north and Spanish Florida to the south. King George, seeking a buffer zone, gave General James Oglethorpe a daring proposal: create a new colony that would avoid the pitfalls of the older settlements.

Oglethorpe’s vision was radical. He wanted to free debtors from prison, parcel out fifty acres to each settler, ban the sale of land, and outlaw slavery. Equality was the mantra, and to keep the populace sober and productive, he outlawed alcohol outright, believing that many found themselves behind bars because of drunkenness.

Unfortunately, the utopia crumbled. The settlers imported slaves, ignored the promised silk industry, and openly flouted the booze ban. By 1752, England revoked Georgia’s semi‑autonomous status. Legend has it the colonists raised a glass in triumph when the ban finally fell apart.

2 The Start Of The Gay Rights Movement

Bars have always been safe havens, but in the late 1960s they became battlegrounds for civil rights. In New York, many establishments that catered to gay patrons were denied liquor licenses, yet a handful survived by striking deals with local police.

On June 27, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, arresting 13 patrons. The raid ignited a six‑day uprising, as thousands poured onto the streets demanding respect. The Stonewall Inn was more than a drinking spot—it was a refuge for LGBTQ+ youth shunned by families.

The riots sparked the formation of gay rights organizations and inspired the first Pride parade a year later. From that night onward, taverns and bars have remained epicenters of queer activism and community.

3 The Tavern Guided America’s Political Landscape

In colonial America, taverns were the original social media platforms. Men from every walk of life gathered to swap news, debate policy, and plot revolutions. Boston’s Green Dragon, for example, was a crucible for the ideas that birthed a nation.

As immigration surged, taverns split along ethnic lines—Irish pubs, German beer halls, and other niche establishments. This segregation made them prime targets for authorities seeking to suppress dissent. In the 1850s, many cities closed taverns on Sundays, effectively silencing immigrant voices on their sole day of leisure.

Law enforcement often used taverns as leverage, shuttering venues associated with particular groups to send political messages. The drinking house, once a neutral meeting ground, became a contested arena of power.

4 The Ancient Drinking Age Debate

Ancient Egypt, around 4000 B.C., actually encouraged mothers to pack a modest serving of beer for children heading to school. The notion of protecting youths from alcohol emerged later, most famously with the Greek philosopher Plato.

In his work Laws (c. 360 B.C.), Plato argued that anyone under 18 lacked the moral “fire and iron” needed to handle alcohol responsibly. He recommended a graduated system: at 18, modest drinking was permissible; by 40, citizens could honor Dionysus fully, using wine to ease sorrow and rejuvenate the spirit.

Plato also advocated formal instruction on drinking etiquette, suggesting that young men be taught at banquet tables how to pace themselves and behave decorously while imbibing.

5 Christianity And Alcohol

The New Testament is unequivocal about wine: Jesus turned water into wine at Cana, and the Apostle Paul called wine a divine gift, urging moderation rather than excess. Yet some modern Christian factions argue that the biblical “wine” was actually non‑alcoholic grape juice, despite identical Hebrew terms describing both Christ’s wine and Noah’s intoxication.

The early American colonies saw Puritans establishing breweries, while Baptists, Methodists, and many evangelical groups have historically condemned alcohol as sinful. Conversely, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‑Day Saints (Mormons) explicitly forbid alcohol, and many evangelical colleges have recently relaxed bans on student drinking.

These divergent views illustrate how a single beverage can become a theological flashpoint, shaping religious practice and cultural norms across centuries.

6 Pasteurization And Alcohol

When Louis Pasteur set out to protect French wineries, he wasn’t thinking about milk. A local beet‑sugar distiller complained that his product sometimes turned sour, producing lactic acid instead of the expected spirit.

Pasteur traced the problem to airborne microbes contaminating the fermentation process. He proved for the first time that invisible bacteria could spoil alcohol, and he introduced heating, boiling, and pure yeast cultures to eliminate the culprit.These innovations not only saved wines and beers from spoilage but also laid the groundwork for modern food safety, proving that a little science can keep a lot of booze—and our stomachs—happy.

7 American Rum And The Revolution

Most people credit the Boston Tea Party for sparking the American Revolution, but the real tax revolt began with molasses. Colonists loved rum, and because the North American climate couldn’t grow sugarcane, they imported massive quantities of molasses—about six million gallons in 1770.

The British Parliament enacted the Molasses Act of 1733, slapping a heavy duty on any molasses not sourced from British colonies. A revised 1764 act tightened the tax and permitted seizure of cargoes that violated the law, directly threatening the livelihood of colonial distillers.

These taxes hit the rum trade hard, fueling resentment and providing a concrete economic grievance that helped ignite the broader rebellion against “taxation without representation.”

8 The Booming Cork Business

Beyond the booze itself, the alcohol industry sustains a $2 billion cork market. High‑quality cork is essential for preserving wine flavor, but climate change is thinning cork bark, reducing its protein content and overall durability.

Wine aficionados are alarmed, prompting a shift toward screw‑caps and synthetic stoppers. This transition threatens the traditional cork sector, illustrating how a single environmental factor can ripple through an entire industry.

As vintners grapple with the trade‑off between tradition and technology, the future of cork remains uncertain—a perfect example of how alcohol’s influence reaches far beyond the glass.

9 The Face Of World Politics

Politicians have always courted voters, but long before campaign ads, they handed out literal drinks. From ancient Greece to the Roman Republic, booze was a political currency, and the practice persisted well into the United States.

George Washington lost his first bid for the Virginia House of Burgesses, but after offering a half‑gallon of alcohol per vote, he won the next election. A century later, the Republican Party staged a massive Brooklyn picnic, providing booze to 50,000 citizens to sway public opinion.

Not every booze‑filled rally succeeded. Stephen Douglas learned the hard way that an under‑stocked party can backfire—his New York banquet ran out of food and drink, leading to a chaotic melee and, ultimately, a vote for Abraham Lincoln.

10 We Evolved To Drink

Our bodies host a special enzyme, ADH4, that breaks down alcohol. While other primates possess a version of this enzyme, ours is uniquely tuned to handle fermented fruit—a trait that likely emerged about ten million years ago when early hominids began feeding on fallen, naturally fermenting fruit.

Chemist Steven Benner reconstructed ancient enzymes and traced the human ADH4 lineage back to a split when gorillas and chimp ancestors diverged from lemurs and orangutans. This evolutionary tweak gave our ancestors a metabolic edge, allowing them to safely enjoy the occasional buzz from ripe fruit.

Although fossil evidence remains elusive, the biochemical record suggests that early humans were the original party‑goers, equipped with a genetic advantage that helped shape social gatherings—and perhaps even the course of human history.

Ready for more mind‑blowing stories about how spirits have steered civilization? Grab a glass, settle in, and keep sipping the past.

Every empire eventually meets its end, and there’s no way to halt that march. What we can influence, however, is the manner of its demise—whether it slips away in a dignified handover or erupts in a fiery collapse. In this roundup of 10 lessons modern societies can glean from Rome’s downfall, we’ll explore exactly how history’s grandest power unraveled.

10 Oversea Slave Labor Won’t Make Your Goods Forever

At the height of its glory, the Roman Empire was awash with cash, a torrent of wealth that let its rulers dominate much of the known world. Yet this flood of money didn’t translate into prosperity for the average citizen.

Instead of employing its own populace, Rome leaned heavily on foreign slaves to staff its workshops and farms. A huge slice of production was handled by these outsiders, leaving native Romans idle, often dependent on state handouts just to scrape by.

Today’s corporations can’t legally own slaves, but they often achieve a strikingly similar outcome. Western nations outsource a massive share of their consumer goods to factories where labor costs are minuscule—sometimes as low as sixty‑four cents an hour.

Roughly sixty percent of the items purchased by Americans are manufactured abroad. China alone produces about half of the world’s clothing and a staggering seventy percent of its mobile phones.

The Roman warning is clear: a system built on external, cheap labor is fragile. When slaves began demanding freedom and public sentiment shifted against exploitation, the entire economic foundation trembled, and the empire’s collapse accelerated.

9 Obesity Epidemics Don’t Get A Lot Of Sympathy

The average Roman citizen likely lived a modest life, often struggling to secure enough food. In stark contrast, the empire’s elite indulged in lavish banquets that became infamous for their excess.

Wealthy Romans would gorge themselves to the point of vomiting mid‑meal just to keep the feasting going. The philosopher Seneca famously recorded that the aristocracy would “vomit that they may eat; and eat that they may vomit.” Notable figures such as Nero, Caesar, and Vitellius are all documented as having engaged in such extreme overindulgence.

Fast forward to today, and a similar pattern emerges in affluent societies: lower‑income populations in wealthy nations are disproportionately affected by obesity, especially across the American South, where type‑2 diabetes rates have doubled over the past two decades. One‑third of the U.S. populace now carries excess weight.

The Roman lesson is unmistakable: when a small elite hoards excess while the masses starve, resentment builds. The stories of gluttonous emperors survived because they highlighted a stark divide that fueled social tension, health crises, and ultimately, instability.

8 The Nouveau Riche Never Remember Where They Came From

During the Republic, Rome wrestled with a power struggle between the patricians—hereditary aristocrats—and the plebeians, the common folk with few avenues for advancement.

Much like modern societies, the plebeians fought for upward mobility, eventually securing equal political rights and a chance to amass wealth. They helped each other ascend, elected fellow plebeians to office, and imagined a new era of shared prosperity.

However, once a few plebeians struck it rich, they largely abandoned their roots. Rather than reinvesting in their community, they splurged on luxury, neglecting the very people who had lifted them.

Initially, the reforms seemed to spark a genuine boom, but the surge was largely driven by wartime profits. When the economy slipped into recession, the newly minted elite found themselves poorer than before, while the traditional aristocracy retained its dominance.

The result was a stark polarization: the poor stayed poor, the rich stayed rich, and the few who broke the mold failed to extend a helping hand to their former peers.

7 People Who Are In Debt Can Be Controlled

After the Gauls sacked Rome, the Republic was forced to pour massive sums into defense. Taxes surged, the poor plunged into bankruptcy, and the citizenry became swamped by crushing debt with no clear escape.

The scenario mirrors today’s reality: the average American graduates with over $37,000 in student loans, while citizens of Australia, Switzerland, Norway, the Netherlands, and Denmark often carry debt exceeding twice their annual income. In Australia, for instance, the typical household owes around $250,000.

Facing such desperation, Rome’s plebeians clamored for debt relief. Politicians, now answerable to a broader electorate, responded with promises of “bread and circuses”—free food, entertainment, and debt forgiveness—to placate the masses.

The promise of relief proved powerful. Citizens voted for populist leaders like Julius Caesar and Augustus, who delivered short‑term comforts. As long as the government kept the bread and circuses flowing, the populace grew complacent, even as democratic institutions eroded.

6 Printing Money Isn’t A Good Way To Save The Economy

A Chinese official once warned the United States that its national debt was spiraling out of control, accusing America of “printing money” by flooding the market with Treasury bonds.

Rome suffered a similar fate. As the empire expanded, Emperor Nero introduced a policy of reducing the silver content in coins, effectively printing more money to cover rising expenses.

While the immediate impact was muted, successive emperors copied Nero’s approach, leading to runaway inflation. Over two centuries, wheat prices ballooned two hundredfold, and Roman coins lost almost all intrinsic value.

Today, the debate over whether the U.S. is truly “printing money” continues, but the nation’s debt has indeed swelled to an eye‑popping $18 trillion, largely financed through Treasury bonds.

The European Union, a collection of twenty‑eight countries, trails the United States in total debt, underscoring how even the wealthiest economies can become burdened by unchecked fiscal expansion.

5 Don’t Underestimate The Barbarians

Rome proved capable of defeating mighty rivals like Greece and Egypt, yet it eventually fell to groups the Romans dismissed as “barbarians.”

The turning point arrived when Attila the Hun swept through the Western Empire. To Romans, the Huns seemed primitive—one contemporary lamented that they “made no use of fire, nor any kind of relish, in the preparation of their food.”

This clash mirrors today’s war on terrorism: a world‑leading superpower confronting a loosely organized, fiercely determined foe that cares little for its own survival.

Rome’s response was costly. Attila demanded half the empire; when refused, he devastated Roman territories, seizing siege engines and advanced technology. Ultimately, Rome was forced to pay massive tributes just to keep the Huns at bay.

4 Definitely Don’t Train The Barbarians In Advanced Warfare

While Attila never breached Rome’s walls, the Visigoths did. Their leader, Alaric, led a massive force to the capital, looted it, and then—remarkably—spared the lives of the remaining citizens.

Ironically, the very soldiers who sacked Rome had been trained and equipped by the Romans themselves. Over time, Rome hired increasing numbers of Visigothic and Gallic mercenaries to fill its legions, eventually blurring the line between Roman and “barbarian” forces.History repeats itself. During the Soviet‑Afghan war, the United States recruited and armed Afghan fighters, providing them with sophisticated weapons like Stinger missiles. Those same forces later evolved into groups such as the Taliban, echoing Rome’s experience of empowering future adversaries.

The lesson is stark: arming and training hostile groups can backfire spectacularly when those groups turn their newfound capabilities against their former patrons.

3 Big Military Budgets Bankrupt Big Countries

Being the world’s premier superpower makes a nation the biggest target on the planet, a reality that both Rome and modern America have felt acutely.

As Rome’s territory swelled, so did its threats, compelling the empire to pour ever‑larger sums into its legions. Today, the United States spends an eye‑popping $598.5 billion annually on defense—over a third of global military expenditure.

Rome attempted to fund its sprawling army by hiking taxes, a move that strained the populace, spurred unemployment, and deepened poverty.

The fiscal pressure ignited civil unrest, with citizens questioning why they should sacrifice their livelihoods to defend an empire that seemed increasingly distant from their daily concerns.

2 Watch Out For Rising Eastern Empires

Perhaps Rome’s most insidious threat wasn’t the marauding barbarians, but the powerful eastern neighbor it allowed to persist: Parthia, an empire the Romans could never fully subdue.

Early on, Rome and Parthia clashed repeatedly, each failing to deliver a decisive blow. Eventually, both sides settled on a uneasy peace, maintaining a delicate balance of power.

The relationship resembled today’s uneasy trade partnership between the United States and China—mutual suspicion, fierce competition for market dominance, and occasional cooperation.

When a peaceful Han Chinese envoy attempted to reach Rome, Parthian officials blocked his passage, deliberately keeping the two great powers apart to control trade routes and extract advantage.

Had the envoy succeeded, Rome might have forged an alliance that could have checked the Hunnic threat, potentially altering the course of Western history.

1 The Fall Of An Empire Doesn’t Happen Overnight

Rome’s demise was not a sudden blaze of destruction; it was a slow, almost imperceptible erosion that unfolded over centuries.

Internal strife over religious reforms and economic troubles led to repeated splits, culminating in the formal division of the empire into Western and Eastern halves in AD 364. Roughly a century later, the Western half collapsed entirely under barbarian pressure, reshaping Europe’s map.

Yet the story didn’t end there. The Eastern half, reborn as the Byzantine Empire, endured for another millennium, weathering wars with the Sasanian Persians, the rise of Islam, and the Crusades before finally being absorbed by the Ottoman Turks.

This protracted decline illustrates that great powers can linger long after their apex, with ordinary citizens often unaware that they are living through the twilight of an empire.

Modern societies may face a similar fate: rather than a spectacular explosion, we might experience a gradual series of unwinnable wars and an unsustainable economy, eventually consigning our civilization to a footnote in history.

The world is brimming with things people simply can’t stand—people, ideas, art, food, even facts. Whenever enough folks unite in dislike, a whole culture may brand that thing as forbidden, turning it into a taboo. History is littered with such prohibitions—cannibalism, for instance—yet occasionally a rule emerges that feels oddly perplexing. Below, we unpack ten truly baffling taboos that once haunted societies.

10 Bananas Were Once Considered Immoral

There’s a better‑than‑zero chance you or someone you know has lifted a banana and cracked a joke about its… shape. The gag may be juvenile, but it’s among the oldest fruit‑related jokes on record.

While most people accept the harmless nature of a phallic banana jest, fewer realize that a time existed when bananas were officially labeled immoral.

Thanks to colonial attitudes, Europeans who encountered bananas in the 1800s felt compelled to teach ways to disguise their shape so as not to offend anyone. In Britain, a respectable gentleman would never be caught nibbling the tip, fearing his reputation would be tarnished.

This wasn’t a whimsical invention. Silent‑film era comedies of the 1920s used bananas as overt metaphors, and Victorian society was well aware of the fruit’s scandalous connotations.

9 Green Hats Are Taboo in China

Some taboos are strictly cultural, and their meaning rarely crosses borders. Take the green hat: while St. Patrick’s Day sees crowds swarming in emerald headgear across the West, the same hue in China carries a very different message.

In Chinese superstition, donning a green hat signals that a man’s wife is cheating on him. The phrase “dai lu mao” literally translates to “wearing a green hat,” and the image is so potent that police may force offenders to wear one publicly as shaming.

Historical roots trace back to the Yuan dynasty, when relatives of prostitutes were allegedly compelled to wear green hats. Whether that story holds true or not, the superstition persists, keeping green caps out of fashionable circulation.

8 Men’s Shorts Were Once Considered Offensive in America

Ever seen a man in overly short summer shorts and thought, “That’s a bit much?” You’re not alone. In the United States, men wearing shorts was historically a scandalous act.

Even today, shorts can be unwelcome in certain settings. Records show schoolchildren and adult workers being sent home to change after being caught in shorts.

In 1938, Honesdale, Pennsylvania, outlawed men’s shorts, arguing the town wasn’t a beach. By 1959, a New York town barred anyone over 16 from wearing them, limiting shorts to children and imposing up to 25 days in jail for violations.

7 The Scottish Are Said to Have a Historical Aversion to Pork

If you’re unfamiliar with Scottish cuisine beyond haggis, you may notice pork is surprisingly scarce. This isn’t a modern trend; it stems from a deep‑seated historical aversion.

Scholars suggest the anti‑pork sentiment dates back to pre‑Roman times. By the 1800s, literature referenced the disdain, and James VI of Scotland reportedly detested pork in the 1500s.

One theory points to superstition: pigs were rare in Scotland, and early sightings sparked rumors that the animal was demonic. Others believed pork caused illnesses like cancer and leprosy.

While many explanations exist, the true reason behind Scotland’s pork taboo remains elusive.

6 The First Man to Use an Umbrella in England Was Shamed

New inventions often meet resistance, and the umbrella is no exception. When Jonas Hanway first brandished one in England, the public ridiculed him mercilessly.

People didn’t doubt the umbrella’s utility; they simply deemed it effeminate and weak—an accessory for Frenchmen, not English gentlemen.

The mockery persisted until practicality won out, and today umbrellas are a staple, but Hanway’s early experience underscores how novelty can clash with cultural expectations.

5 Many Early Cultures Had a Taboo Against Naming Bears Directly

Bears inspire fear, and ancient peoples often avoided saying the animal’s true name outright.

Instead of calling it “bear,” languages like English, Dutch, German, and Swedish used words derived from the Proto‑Indo‑European root *bher, meaning “brown one.” This round‑about naming likely stemmed from a belief that uttering the creature’s genuine name could summon it.

Linguists hypothesize that early cultures preferred indirect references—such as “the brown one”—to keep the beast at bay, reinforcing the taboo against direct naming.

4 Many Marines Consider Apricots Taboo

Marines are famed for toughness, yet they’re not immune to superstition. During World II, apricots entered rations, and a strange belief emerged.

If a tank broke down, apricots were often found aboard, leading soldiers to blame the fruit for mechanical failures. The myth grew, and by the Vietnam era, eating apricots was thought to attract enemy artillery fire.

Many veterans swore off apricots for life, cementing the odd taboo within the Marine community.

3 Kissing In Public Was and Sometimes Still Is Taboo

If you cringe at public displays of affection, you’re not alone. Throughout history, public kissing has been heavily regulated.

In many societies, kisses were reserved for men—hand‑kissing a lord or a ceremonial greeting—while unmarried women were excluded. Even married couples often saved public affection for wedding day moments.

Countries like China and Japan long deemed public kissing taboo, only recently becoming more accepted. In places such as India and Thailand, public affection still draws disapproval.

2 Christmas Was Once Taboo in New England

The modern “War on Christmas” feels like a fresh battle, yet in the 1600s Puritan settlers of New England outlawed the holiday.

Massachusetts Bay Colony enacted laws penalizing anyone who celebrated between 1659 and 1681, arguing that Christmas glorified pagan customs.

These prohibitions lingered until 1870, when Christmas was finally declared a federal holiday, ending the legal taboo in the region.

1 The “Euphemism Treadmill” Refers to the Habit of Coming Up With New Polite Terms for “Taboo” Words

Language taboos dominate modern discourse. Some words become so offensive that speakers avoid them entirely, opting for euphemisms instead.

Over time, terms like “elderly” have been replaced by “older adult,” and “cripple” gave way to “person with a disability.” This cycle—where a new polite term eventually becomes stigmatized—is known as the “euphemism treadmill.”

The treadmill illustrates how society continuously reshapes language to mitigate offense, only for the fresh term to inherit the same negative baggage.

10 scientific reasons reveal that despite what the media might suggest, we’re actually living in the most peaceful era of human history. While the world feels a bit more chaotic than it was five years ago, it’s still far better than it was fifty years back. Our hyper‑connected age gives us an unprecedented window into global suffering, yet the underlying mechanisms that keep us stuck remain stubbornly unchanged.

10 Scientific Reasons Explained

10 We’re Surprisingly Easy To Fool

A logical fallacy is one of those things that are surprisingly difficult to spot, but impossible to miss once you know what you’re looking for. From advertising to politics, we’re bombarded with logical arguments that fall apart under the slightest scrutiny. As an example, politicians around the world regularly attack whistleblowers and people putting spotlight on an issue rather than the issue itself (known as ad hominem in the logical fallacy circles). The worst part? We fall for it, as it’s not always as clearly obvious.

It’s not because we’re all are simply dumb, it’s just that logical fallacies are incredibly difficult to spot by our brains, especially the ones hidden beneath otherwise‑reasonable arguments. Another reason they’re so persuasive is that they appeal to the part of the brain that already wants to be convinced to some extent. To use the previous example, someone who already thinks that whistleblowers are bad for society – the degree of their conviction notwithstanding – is more likely to discredit their information and attack their personal life than someone with a neutral or favorable stand on them.

9 We’re Bad At Probability

Let’s say that an asteroid is hurtling towards Earth, and the probability of collision is one in million. That sounds like something that would make most people panic, as an asteroid flying towards Earth with any odds is a bad thing. Interestingly, though, if you raise the odds to somewhere around one in ten thousand, chances are that your panic would be similar. That’s despite the fact that the earlier odds weren’t that high, as asteroids are hurtling towards Earth with some probability all the time.

The reason that happens is because people are intuitively bad at gauging probability. If a coin lands on tails five times, most people would think that the probability of heads on the next go is higher, even if it’s 50/50 for all the throws, regardless of previous outcome.

This inability to intuitively understand probability results into larger problems. For an example, this is how politicians prop up non‑issues over genuine, widespread problems and win. As long as the problem looks threatening enough, it would resonate with most of us, even if it’s statistically not that likely to happen.

8 We Automatically Associate Ourselves With Groups

Conflict has been a part of human society for as long as we know, and most of it happens between groups. It doesn’t matter where the divisions lie – religion, country, sects, familial clans etc. – we find a way to get some people together, find common cause and fight with others doing the same. Associating with groups has been a pretty great survival strategy, too, as the strongest groups in history are the only ones that survived.

On the other hand, it’s also what causes problems like racism and religious wars. It doesn’t matter if your group is generally peaceful and awesome; someone would say that it’s the best and seek to destroy the others in its name sooner or later.

Why does this work so well every time? It’s because we’re evolutionarily trained to do that. Many studies – including ones done on babies – have proven that humans are born with an inbuilt preference for people that’re similar to us, which makes perfect sense as we’re social, group‑based creatures. Research has also shown that we’re attracted to people who’re like us, which ensures that bloodlines don’t stray too far from our respective group. It doesn’t mean that nature is racist, it just means that societal evils like racism come from the same evolutionary mechanism that once gave us a definite advantage in hostile conditions.

7 We Require Chaos And Destruction To Progress

‘Why can’t we just sit and build things instead of fighting each other’ is a sentiment almost everyone who doesn’t profit from conflict would agree with. It seems to be true, too, as we already have the tools and resources to innovate and progress without having to fight for them. Sure, there was a time when invasion and war for necessary to obtain rare resources and gain technological advances, but in a world of free global trade, that isn’t a problem anymore. So, why don’t we?

The answer is simple; we literally need war and conflict to technologically innovate. An overwhelming number of our most useful everyday tech has come from times of war. It’s not just about technology; our modern ideas of liberty, human rights, democracy and so many things we now take for granted were formulated as direct results of war. So many prosperous and technologically advanced empires in history were also coincidentally the ones with a new type of technology on the battlefield, or at least a new way to use existing technology, which carried over to civilian applications. Building new types of arrows gave way to better knowledge of aerodynamics, improving armor made us better at metal working etc.

It’s not because humans are inherently bloodthirsty. Because of our violent history, we’re able to come up with new things much more efficiently when we’re faced with conflict and existential threat. That’s not to say that peaceful times in history have been devoid of any technological innovation, though most of them were built on the heels of massive wars themselves.

6 Human Memory Is Scarily Unreliable And Easy To Manipulate

We’ve all heard about the dangers of revisionism and repeating the mistakes of history, and yet, we still do it without abandon anyway. Many countries around the world are fighting for reasons similar to those as far back as hundreds of years ago. It makes you wonder if we’re just bad at record keeping, or simply doomed to repeat our mistakes over and over again by some higher entity.

As it turns out, it’s neither of those. We’re actually pretty good at learning from our mistakes, as is clearly demonstrated by our ability to evolve. When it comes to public memory about past events, though, our memory is surprisingly shaky and easy to manipulate. Many studies have shown that as long as your argument is convincing enough, it’s quite easy to plant outright faulty memories and get away with it. Memory is also not an accurate representation of how you remember, but a jumbled‑up version created by your brain based on best guesses and projections.

5 Our History Is Unreliable

People think of history as facts set in stone, as how can it not be? Keeping a record of history has always been one of the most qualified jobs in almost all societies in history, and we have to say that historians have done a good job at it, too. That’s why we believe them when they say that history isn’t actually facts at all, but our best guess at what happened based on what we could find.

That’s made worse by the fact that record keeping has been limited to specific sections of societies throughout history, which means that a lot of different groups and timelines are excluded from what we know as popular history. Finding different voices and corroborating information from different sources is a big part of a historian’s jobs, though it’s not possible in more cases than you’d imagine. Huge chunks of our history – especially in the southern half of the world – are either unreliable or outright missing, along with crucial advancements in aspects like agriculture, politics, technology etc.

4 Emotions Over Rationality

Take a look around the world, and you’d feel lucky to live in a largely peaceful country (if you live in a largely peaceful country, of course). Even today, many countries are ruled by authoritarian regimes, with curtailed freedoms and lack of fundamental rights. The worst part? Many of those regimes have widespread support from the people. Heck, some are even democracies. That’s right, much like our history, people are actually choosing obviously harmful leaders.

If you think it’s because some populations are simply too dumb to make the right decisions, that’s not just inappropriate, but also pretty inaccurate. As proven by the Second World War, a country doesn’t need to be a third world conflict zone to actively support dictators or dictatorial regimes.

The reason people still elect extremists and authoritarian rulers is that we’re not really good at listening to our rational minds. The emotional part of the brain overrides the rational part almost every time, and we’re not just talking about electing dictators. It affects the politics of functioning democracies, too. Our lack of rationality is why policy‑making is more about appealing to the emotions of your voter (and donor, of course) base than implementing solutions that would actually help, even – and especially – when those two things are on conflicting sides.

3 We’re Naturally Inclined To Conform

Social change – the good kind, anyway – is almost always a result of civil disobedience and social unrest. From women getting voting rights after decades of agitation in USA to the French Revolution inspiring ideas of liberty and personal freedom around the world, we owe a lot to people who didn’t just agree to societal norms of their day and decided to fight to change them. The only problem? Many of these cases were hundreds of years in the making, and only happened in the more recent chapters of history.

For the most part, people were just content with how things were, even if things get progressively worse the further back you go in history. Science backs it, too. We’d much rather conform to existing status quo for as long as we could rather than shake things up, because that’s just how we’re built. It’s evolutionarily costly to shake the existing structure of the society you’re in, which would have been important during our early days. Even those cases of unrest (and most other rebellions in history, even the failed ones) happened when things got so bad that people didn’t have any other option but to revolt, like economic stagnation and exorbitant taxes on a population already suffering from the excesses of war.

2 We Don’t Trust Each Other

Even in 2019, it’s still ridiculously easy to turn people against a particular group for political reasons, and we’re not just talking about any one country here. Hate crimes and sectarian violence is on the rise (again!) around the world, even at a time when everyone is so connected with each other. Mistrust between various races and other groups made sense in, say, 1800s—when no one knew any better to not hate one another – though it certainly doesn’t anymore.

According to science, the real reason we’re still unable to trust each other is just that; we’re physically unable to trust one another, which probably has to do with the dog‑eat‑dog era that has been our collective history. There’s also a definite trust deficient among people around the world, and it’s on the rise in many countries including the United States. So, when economic and social conditions in a vulnerable country get worse and extremist leaders start gaining ground, it’s easy to turn that lack of trust into all‑out hatred.

1 More Power Is Related To Reduced Empathy

Even if things seem to be good in many parts of the world, there are still regions that are grappling with severe problems. That’s not to mention the problems that’re looming ahead for all of us, like rising sea levels and pollution. Unsurprisingly, many of these problems could be solved overnight if the richest and most powerful people around the world decided to donate even a tiny percentage of their wealth.

If you think it’s because they lack empathy, you’d be right. Not in the way that it’s only the cold ones that can be rich and powerful, but more because we all lose empathy when we gain power. It’s not just us saying it; studies prove that people become less socially aware and emotionally alert with rising social status and power level at the workplace. It’s just the way we evolved, explaining – in essence – the biggest and most ironical problem with our world; the more power you have to change the society, the less likely you are to care about actually doing it.

When you hear the phrase top 10 ways, you probably expect a cheerful countdown of life hacks. Yet, in today’s world, those very same ten trends are quietly chipping away at women’s well‑being. We live in an age of endless convenience, yet a host of cultural, biological, and technological forces are colliding to make life more stressful for many women.

Top 10 Ways Women Face Modern Pressures

1 Social Media Menace

Scrolling, snapping, and sharing have become second nature, but the digital tide isn’t all sunshine and filters. Women, who often gravitate toward photo‑heavy platforms like Instagram and Facebook, end up glued to a constant stream of other people’s highlight reels. A Swedish study found that the more time women spent on Facebook, the lower their reported happiness levels. Another analysis linked the use of multiple platforms to heightened symptoms of anxiety and depression—conditions women already face at higher rates than men. The 24‑hour voyeuristic window into everybody’s lives can breed comparison, envy, and a feeling that you’re never quite measuring up.

2 Losing Their Religion

Faith used to be a cornerstone of community life, with Sunday services serving as both spiritual and social anchors. Over recent decades, however, church attendance has plummeted across the United States. Since women traditionally report higher levels of religiosity than men, they feel the loss of that communal safety net more acutely. Researchers note that religious involvement often correlates with higher life satisfaction, so as congregations shrink, women may experience a dip in that existential security. The fading of organized worship removes a source of routine, moral guidance, and supportive networks that once helped buffer life’s stresses.

3 Getting Divorced

Marriage is often sold as a lifelong partnership, but the reality can be far messier. While overall divorce rates in the U.S. have been on a slow decline, women still initiate roughly 69% of separations. The first marriage carries a 41% chance of ending, the second climbs to 60%, and a third marriage faces a staggering 73% failure rate. Women who dissolve their first marriage are statistically less likely to find lasting happiness again. Moreover, the financial fallout hits women harder; post‑divorce poverty risk rises sharply for them, and studies show married couples generally report higher life satisfaction than their single or divorced counterparts.

4 Delaying Motherhood

Many women now aim to establish careers, travel, or achieve personal milestones before starting a family, often pushing childbirth into their late thirties or even forties. While the desire to “have it all” is understandable, biology doesn’t wait. As women age, egg quantity and quality decline sharply, raising the odds of miscarriage, birth defects, and infertility. The window for optimal reproductive health narrows, and postponing motherhood can leave some women facing unexpected challenges when they finally decide to conceive.

5 Sexual Freedom

The cultural shift toward accepting premarital sex has opened doors for personal exploration, yet it carries unintended consequences for women. Beyond the obvious risks of sexually transmitted infections and unplanned pregnancies, research links a higher number of sexual partners to increased divorce rates. Women who remain virgins exhibit a divorce rate near 5%, while those with just two prior partners see that figure jump to roughly 30%. The pattern suggests that more extensive pre‑marital sexual histories can erode marital stability, making long‑term partnership more fragile.

6 5

Women’s entrance into the modern workforce has been a triumph of equality, but the juggling act of a 9‑to‑5 job plus family responsibilities creates new stressors. A 2009 survey revealed that 62% of working mothers would prefer part‑time schedules, yet only 21% of the general public view the trend of mothers working outside the home favorably. Gallup data shows female employees report 8‑12% lower satisfaction across key job characteristics compared to men. The clash between career ambitions and parenting duties can leave women feeling stretched thin, impacting both professional fulfillment and personal well‑being.

7 Alcohol Abuse

Alcohol has long been a social lubricant, but its overuse has surged among women. From 2002 to 2013, the rate of alcohol‑use disorders among females jumped a staggering 83%. Binge‑drinking affects roughly 18% of women of child‑bearing age, and excessive consumption can lead to infertility, liver damage, and a host of other health problems. While the wine industry may be thriving, the personal toll on women’s physical and mental health is profound, underscoring a hidden epidemic.

8 Pets Over Children

Evolution endowed women with a deep‑seated nurturing instinct, traditionally directed toward infants. Today, many are channeling that caregiving energy into pets instead of children. While furry companions bring joy, they lack the long‑term support children can provide in later years. Simultaneously, birth rates are slipping as more women opt for “fur babies” over human ones. This shift raises concerns about who will care for aging women when their beloved pets pass on, especially as public resources strain under mounting social costs.

9 College And Education

Higher education is celebrated as a pathway to empowerment, yet women often encounter hidden stressors on campus. Studies show female students experience higher rates of anxiety and chronic stress than their male peers. Moreover, women disproportionately gravitate toward people‑oriented majors—teaching, psychology, social work—fields that typically command lower salaries than STEM disciplines. While a degree is a badge of achievement, the combination of academic pressure and a narrower earnings trajectory can dampen the intended boost to overall happiness.

10 The Contraceptive Pill

Birth control pills have revolutionized reproductive autonomy, offering women control over menstruation, acne, and conditions like endometriosis. Yet emerging research presented at the Radiological Society of North America suggests a possible downside: women on oral contraceptives displayed a smaller hypothalamus—a brain region that regulates mood. Early findings link reduced hypothalamic volume with higher depressive symptoms. If future studies confirm this correlation, the medical community may need to reassess the pill’s risk‑benefit balance, potentially prompting a search for alternatives.

Whenever a politician says or does something the opposite side dislikes, the comparison to Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist Party pops up like a bad meme. Online debates often devolve into accusations of Nazism from participants who lack the rhetorical chops to argue calmly. Meanwhile, several nations are quietly drafting (or already enforcing) legislation that curtails free speech under the banner of “anti‑hate‑speech” rules, effectively silencing dissenting voices.

10 A Worldwide Pandemic

Top 10 Ways Pandemic Echoes Past Crises

When the guns fell silent on November 11, 1918, the world celebrated the end of a conflict that claimed roughly 20 million lives. The armistice, however, was quickly eclipsed by an even deadlier specter: the 1918 Spanish flu. That influenza wave swept across continents, leaving an estimated 20‑50 million dead, with some scholars arguing the toll may have reached 100 million. Today, the COVID‑19 outbreak, which began in China in early 2020, is frequently measured against that historic pandemic.

Both the 1918 H1N1 influenza and the SARS‑CoV‑2 virus share striking similarities: they spread globally, infected millions, and caused untold fatalities. Each emerged from a foreign source and sparked waves of xenophobia, as societies searched for scapegoats to blame for the suffering.

Although the modern “Chinese virus” is far less lethal than the Spanish flu of a century earlier, its impact on daily life, work habits, and global travel has been profound, reshaping how we interact with one another.

9 Scapegoating Is Alive And Well

Hitler’s core belief system rested on the notion that the so‑called Aryan race was supreme, relegating Jews, Romani, the disabled, LGBTQ+ individuals, and other groups to the status of inferiors. While many conservatives in pre‑Nazi Germany didn’t fully share his extremist views, they were drawn to the Nazi promise of economic revival and, in doing so, enabled the party’s rise.

The Nazis pinned the nation’s woes squarely on the Jewish population, stripping them of rights, property, and eventually humanity itself. That same technique—blaming an “other” for societal problems—thrives today across the political spectrum. Conservatives point to illegal immigration and refugee influxes as the root of economic and cultural strain, while liberals frequently cast white, male conservatives as the primary source of oppression.

Even though we no longer see mass round‑ups into concentration camps, the practice of scapegoating remains a potent political weapon worldwide. From South American migrants in the United States to refugees fleeing conflict zones, history shows that during epidemics—dating back to the Black Death—outsiders have repeatedly been blamed for internal crises.

8 A Hyperpolarization Of Politics

For much of its existence, the United States operated under a relatively cooperative two‑party system, where disagreements were aired but governance continued. In recent decades, however, that spirit of compromise has eroded, giving way to a stark ideological split that stalls legislation and fuels mutual distrust.

This phenomenon isn’t unique to America; nations around the globe are experiencing growing divides between opposing political camps. When parties become entrenched in opposing worldviews, democratic processes suffer, and the risk of authoritarian backsliding rises.

Pre‑Nazi Germany suffered a similar fissure. President Paul von Hindenburg, overseeing a fragile democracy, gradually ceded authority to Chancellor Adolf Hitler, who exploited the polarized climate to consolidate power. The Great Depression further amplified societal anxiety, and the resulting ideological chasm paved the way for the Nazis to dismantle democratic norms.

7 A Rise In Sexual Liberty & Gay Rights In The 1920s And 2020s

In 1929, Germany teetered on the brink of a major reform: the push to repeal Paragraph 175, a law criminalizing homosexuality. Though the repeal wouldn’t occur until 1994, the movement gathered considerable momentum in the late 1920s, with Berlin’s nightlife buzzing with gay cafés and bars, and activists championing visibility.

When the Nazis seized control, they brutally crushed this nascent freedom, reinforcing Paragraph 175 and rounding up gay men for imprisonment and persecution. The repression erased a flourishing queer culture, but the legacy of that era underscores a stark contrast with today’s expanding LGBTQ+ rights.

Fast forward a century, and many countries now recognize same‑sex marriage, and anti‑homosexuality statutes have been repealed worldwide. The journey from clandestine speakeasies to legally recognized unions illustrates a profound shift in societal attitudes.

6 Ruined Economies Foster Resentment

World War I left Germany in economic tatters: devastated infrastructure, massive reparations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, and seized productive lands. The nation’s economy sputtered, creating fertile ground for radical solutions.

Hitler’s National Socialists capitalized on this misery, promising protectionist policies, job creation, and a revival of national pride. By promising relief from hyper‑inflation and unemployment, they amassed a massive following eager for stability.

Although today’s global economy differs vastly, echoes of that turmoil persist. The 2007‑2009 Great Recession saw countless Americans lose homes, while Greece endured a prolonged debt crisis from 2009‑2018 that threatened its very fiscal existence. These modern economic shocks echo the desperation that once fueled extremist movements.

5 Widespread Distrust In The Media

During Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, he repeatedly labeled mainstream outlets as “fake news,” eroding public confidence in traditional journalism. Even after his presidency, the narrative persisted, especially targeting left‑leaning platforms such as CNN and The New York Times.

Hitler never uttered “fake news,” but he wielded a similar slogan: Lügenpresse, or “lying press,” to delegitimize any reporting that contradicted his agenda. The term dates back to the early 20th century, used by Marxists to dismiss unfavorable coverage.

When citizens lose faith in credible news sources, they become vulnerable to manipulation. In the 1920s and ’30s, this susceptibility helped the Nazis dominate public opinion. Today, social‑media giants and tech conglomerates serve as the new battleground for information, amplifying distrust and enabling propaganda to flourish.

4 Socialist Globalism Is Back and So Is Socialist Nationalism

The Nazi Party, at its core, was an extreme nationalist movement. Born in post‑World‑War I Munich, it blended fervent patriotism with a socialist‑leaning economic platform aimed at protecting German workers from perceived globalist threats, particularly the rising Communist movement.

National Socialism rallied citizens around the idea that the nation’s needs trumped all others, positioning German laborers above minorities and foreigners, and casting Jews, immigrants, and other “undesirables” as the culprits of societal decay.

In recent U.S. politics, the 2016 Republican slogan “Make America Great Again” evolved into a broader “America First” doctrine, echoing the nationalist sentiment of the 1920s. Across Europe, nations such as Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Belgium, Estonia, Germany, and Italy have witnessed a resurgence of nationalist parties gaining parliamentary seats.

3 Propaganda Has Taken Over Social Media For Millions Of People

Propaganda was the Nazis’ most potent weapon. Under Joseph Goebbels, the regime flooded the public sphere with carefully crafted messages that blamed political opponents and Jews for Germany’s hardships, while glorifying Hitler as the nation’s savior.

Today, social‑media platforms serve a comparable role. Every individual can broadcast ideas worldwide, but the sheer volume of content makes it easy for manipulative narratives to gain traction. Users often absorb these messages without critical scrutiny, mirroring the way German citizens once absorbed Nazi propaganda.

From Facebook to Twitter, Instagram to TikTok, platforms have become fertile ground for misinformation, conspiracy theories, and extremist rhetoric—modern echoes of the poster‑laden streets of 1930s Germany.

2 An American “Insurrection”

The 2020 U.S. presidential race, billed as perhaps the most consequential election in modern history, saw record voter turnout. When Joe Biden defeated incumbent Donald Trump, a segment of the electorate refused to accept the result.

Legal challenges and claims of a stolen election culminated on January 6, 2021, when thousands stormed the U.S. Capitol, demanding reversal of the certified outcome. While the protest did not constitute a coup, its intensity and rhetoric resembled the fervor of Adolf Hitler’s 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, which ended in deaths and Hitler’s imprisonment for treason.

Both events share a common thread: a belief that hidden forces have betrayed the people, prompting a direct confrontation. Though the Capitol breach failed to overthrow the government, it signaled a dangerous willingness to challenge democratic norms—a warning that history can repeat itself.

1 Growing Worldwide Instability

Before the Nazis seized power, the Weimar Republic teetered on the brink of collapse. The aftermath of World War I left borders in flux across Africa, Europe, and Asia, while the Great Depression deepened economic misery worldwide.

Germany’s central position in these upheavals made it a flashpoint for resentment. Subsequent events—such as the 1938 Anschluss (the “War of Flowers” when Austria welcomed German troops with blossoms), and Germany’s aggressive demands for territorial revisions—further destabilized Europe.

The 21st century has witnessed comparable turbulence: the September 11 attacks reshaped global security, the fight against Islamic terrorism destabilized the Middle East, Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and the ongoing war in Ukraine echo the geopolitical volatility that once paved the way for the Nazis’ ascent.

While digital book burnings, cancel culture, and the curtailment of free speech are not solutions, recognizing these parallels helps us guard against repeating history’s darkest chapters.

Top 10 things illustrate how humanity’s confidence often outpaces reality. As history shows, we’re not nearly as smart as we think we are. Witch‑burning, bloodletting, and eugenics are just a few examples of how once‑established theories proved not only incorrect but outright insane.

Top 10 Things We’ve Learned From History

10 Pain, Pain, Go Away

It began with noble intentions. Roughly thirty years ago, a concerted push emerged to discover drugs that could more effectively quell chronic aches—think back problems, arthritis—and also smooth the recovery curve after surgery or ease the final throes of terminal illnesses such as late‑stage cancer.

Fast forward to 1995 when Purdue Pharma rolled out what was quickly hailed as a wonder‑drug: OxyContin. Soon after, Percocet and Vicodin joined the party, and throughout the late ’90s pharmaceutical firms reassured physicians that prescription opioid painkillers would not hook patients. Consequently, doctors started writing them at an ever‑escalating pace.

The pills proved deadly efficient at both dulling pain and delivering death. Opioid misuse and overdose fatalities surged. By 2017 an estimated 1.7 million Americans were living with a substance‑use disorder tied to prescription opioid pain relievers. At least, their arthritis wasn’t acting up, right?

That same year, the prestigious Mayo Clinic published a post‑mortem analysis of the opioid crisis’s sweeping… well, mortality. The abstract summed it up succinctly: “Good intentions to improve pain and suffering led to increased prescribing of opioids, which contributed to misuse of opioids and even death.” Perhaps the original premise—that pain should be eliminated entirely—was flawed from day one.

In the twelve‑month span ending September 2020, a record 87,000 Americans died from drug overdoses. By October 2020, Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges, part of an $8 billion‑plus settlement. Those numbers are no coincidence.

9 Back in the USSR: Russia’s Relapse

It’s almost unbelievable that, barely two decades ago, optimism ran high across the West that Russia—fresh from the ashes of the Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse—would embrace its former rivals and integrate into the community of mature democracies.

The honeymoon period looked bright. After President Ronald Reagan thawed the Cold War chill and forged a working rapport with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, his successor, George H. W. Bush, oversaw the USSR’s disintegration with a dignified, gloat‑free poise—effectively hitting the diplomatic reset button. (In fact, many rank Bush among the finest one‑term U.S. presidents for his handling of the Soviet breakup.)

Regrettably, Russia’s inaugural post‑Soviet leader proved a naïve, in‑ebriated figure. President Boris Yeltsin attempted to thrust the nation’s state‑run economy into near‑total capitalism at breakneck speed. The fallout was brutal: throughout the 1990s Russia’s GDP shrank by roughly half, whole sectors vanished, inequality and unemployment spiked dramatically, and average incomes plummeted.

Yeltsin, the first democratically elected Russian president, ended up being both the nation’s poorest and its last democratic leader. In 2000, his Prime Minister—a young ex‑KGB operative named Vladimir Putin—took the helm. Two decades of dissent‑squashing, Syrian meddling, Ukrainian invasion, and election interference later, Russia stands as the nuclear‑armed menace it once was throughout much of the late twentieth century.

8 Not So Fast

Throughout the ages, humanity has clung to wildly inaccurate notions about physics. At one point people believed the Earth was both flat and the center of the cosmos. Even the brilliant John Adams dismissed human flight until he saw one of the inaugural hot‑air balloon ascents over Paris in 1783.

A less‑known 19th‑century myth revolved around the advent of rail travel. Many asserted that speed itself could be lethal—specifically, that fetuses would die.

New technologies invariably spawn baseless anxieties (remember the cell‑phone‑brain‑tumor scare?). When railways arrived, they promised to move people far faster than ever before. Women, however, became the focus of a bizarre panic: at speeds around 50 mph, some claimed a woman’s uterus would simply drop out. Talk about a Plan B!

Cultural anthropologist Genevieve Bell points out that misogyny has long drummed behind tech‑centric moral panics. When electric lighting first spread, “experts” warned that illuminated homes would endanger women and children by alerting predators to their presence. Later, as automobiles roared onto streets, many argued that women—perceived as faint‑prone, physically weak, and prone to hysteria—couldn’t handle high‑speed responsibility, and should be barred from driving. Saudi Arabia concurred for over a century.

7 The Original Social Distancing

Remember the universal optimism that social media would knit humanity closer together?

Various forms of online gathering have existed since the internet’s infancy, but platforms like AOL chatrooms, Meetup, and MySpace merely paved the way. It was Facebook’s 2004 debut that truly mainstreamed social networking.

Facebook’s declared mission sounded innocent enough. Suddenly, we could curate a custom list of “friends,” grant them access to our thoughts and photos, share links to articles we found intriguing, crowdsource recommendations from trusted contacts, organize hobby‑based events, and stay in touch with acquaintances we seldom meet in person.

Seventeen years and 2.8 billion users later, Facebook—alongside its 280‑character sibling, Twitter—has become one of the chief culprits fueling the relentless culture wars gripping much of the Western world, especially the U.S. and U.K. Sites designed for togetherness have achieved the opposite, driven by a simple motive: money. To keep users glued, algorithms feed each person more of what they already like. That’s harmless when a pregnancy article triggers a stroller ad, but in politics it’s disastrous. Liberals are bombarded with woke nonsense and flawed logic; conservatives are flooded with anti‑liberal memes and cancellation campaigns, plunging us into an online uncivil war.

6 High Crimes

“Instead of a war on poverty,” Tupac Shakur rapped, “they got a war on drugs so the police can bother me.” The War on Drugs represents a U.S. government initiative aimed at curbing illegal drug use and distribution by dramatically stiffening prison sentences for both dealers and users.

Among its many outcomes, the campaign succeeded in stigmatizing and worsening drug abuse while propelling America to the world’s highest incarceration rate—outpacing nations like El Salvador and Turkmenistan. Not all substances were treated equally. When the crack epidemic first erupted—largely confined to Black neighborhoods—the 1986 Anti‑Drug Abuse Act introduced a notorious 100:1 sentencing disparity: merely five grams of crack triggered a mandatory five‑year term, whereas the same penalty for powder cocaine—a drug more prevalent among white users—required five hundred grams.

Although the law originated under Republican Ronald Reagan, the most flagrant misstep arrived in 1994 when a bill signed by Democratic President Bill Clinton and authored by then‑Senator Joe Biden (who would later become president) created the Violent Crime Control & Law Enforcement Act. This legislation funneled billions to states for new prisons and set up grant programs that incentivized police to pursue more drug‑related arrests, even for low‑priority substances like marijuana—effectively feeding the prison‑industrial complex.

5 The Facemask Facepalm

Hello, medical science—call me Common Sense. Have we met? No one faction in the COVID‑19 saga holds a monopoly on virus‑combatting protocols. Liberals advocated lockdowns until both the virus and the global economy vanished, while conservatives decried the simple act of donning a fabric mask as an unforgivable infringement on freedom.

Nonetheless, it falls to experts to issue health recommendations, and when they tarnish their own reputations early in a crisis, the fallout can be lethal. Such a misstep occurred when, as the virus gained momentum in the U.S. in late February and early March, Dr. Anthony Fauci and fellow authorities declared that wearing facemasks was unnecessary.

Fauci later clarified, “We were not aware that 40 to 45 percent of people were asymptomatic, nor were we aware that a substantial proportion of people get infected from people who are without symptoms.”

That explanation falls short. By late February it was evident a novel virus was spreading with a speed and ferocity unseen in decades. Any seasoned contagious‑disease expert should have recognized that such rapid proliferation unmistakably signaled airborne, asymptomatic transmission. Common sense dictates that a virus would struggle to achieve that scale without such a route. This miscalculation stands as the most consequential early error in responding to a disease that has claimed over three million lives.

4 Smoke and Mirrors

“If excessive smoking actually plays a role in the production of lung cancer, it seems to be a minor one.”

You’d assume such a dismissive statement would hail from a tobacco‑industry executive, yet it was actually voiced by Wilhelm Carl Hueper, director of the Environmental Cancer Section at the National Cancer Institute, who gave the public the green light to light up in 1954.

From the 1930s through the 1950s, a potent advertising slogan—“doctors recommend”—helped peddle what would become one of humanity’s deadliest consumer products: cigarettes. One Camel advertisement boldly proclaimed, “Give your throat a vacation, smoke a fresh cigarette.”

Even as a persistent smoker’s cough spread and concerns grew about the health implications of inhaling smoke, Camel bolstered its claims by asserting that “more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.” In fact, the company even conducted a survey of physicians, compensating participants with—what else?—Camel cigarettes themselves.

Before the mid‑20th century, such health‑conscious claims seemed unnecessary because, oddly enough, societies worldwide believed that no long‑term physical harm could arise from sucking on burning sticks all day. It wasn’t until the 1940s that international teams of epidemiologists began linking smoking to lung cancer, spurred by the clear parallel between soaring cigarette consumption and a surge in what had once been a rare terminal disease.

3 America’s Delusional Decade

Many look back on the 1990s as the quintessential American decade. Starting roughly with the November 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall—a death knell for the collapsing Soviet Union—the ’90s seemed a brief but brilliant era in which Western civilization triumphed over Soviet socialism and totalitarianism, leaving the United States as the world’s sole superpower.

Perhaps the height of our hubris was captured in Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 bestseller, The End of History. The influential work argued that the rise of Western liberal democracy represented not merely the conclusion of a post‑war epoch, but the very endpoint of humanity’s ideological evolution, ushering in a universalized liberal democracy as the final form of government.

That proclamation encouraged complacency. With the belief that history had reached its terminus, Western powers felt free to lower their guard—neglecting, for instance, the security of commercial airline cockpit doors, which remained as flimsy as a mall restroom.

First President Clinton, then President (W.) Bush largely ignored the burgeoning Islamic terrorism threat. Sitting atop the global food chain and buffered by two oceans, America seemed untouchable… until, with a plane crash followed by another just 18 minutes later, the decade ended a year late but abruptly on September 11, 2001. The rest, as they say, is history—and certainly not the end of history.

2 An Invincible Earth

Perhaps the starkest illustration of humanity’s hubris is the belief that our planet is so extraordinary we can inflict countless wounds without sealing its fate.

The irony deepens because we once knew better. By the 1960s, developed nations recognized the dire side effects of the Industrial Revolution. Air quality in cities was abysmal, and rivers and lakes reeked with pollution.

Collective action followed, as the issue wasn’t yet controversial. In 1970, Republican President Richard Nixon established the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Two years later, he signed the Clean Water Act into law. Nations worldwide launched similar initiatives to heal a wounded Earth.

Fast‑forward half a century, and we find ourselves still treating the planet as if landfills were infinite, still razing rainforests—vital carbon sinks and oxygen factories—for agriculture, oil drilling, and other short‑sighted pursuits. Meanwhile, we cling to the notion that we can continue burning fossil fuels, producing massive pollution, even as cleaner alternatives like nuclear power beckon.

1 The Food Pyramid Scheme

In 1992, the U.S. Department of Agriculture proudly rolled out the Food Pyramid—a triangular chart meant to guide nutritional balance. Its design was rooted in the disastrously misguided dietary recommendations of a non‑scientific committee chaired by Democratic Senator George McGovern, who had also run for president in 1972.

At the pyramid’s summit sat a narrow tip labeled “Fats, Oils & Sweets,” indicating foods to be consumed sparingly, with no specific daily allowance provided. Descending the pyramid, the base broadened to display food groups that should be eaten liberally, encouraging massive servings of certain categories.

For instance, the “Fats, Oils & Sweets” segment was meant to be restricted, while the pyramid’s broad base promoted an aggressive intake of other groups. The recommendation effectively told Americans to eat a staggering 6‑11 servings of bread, pasta, rice, or cereals each day.

That’s right—over a decade of official guidance instructed citizens to consume six to eleven portions of carbohydrates daily. Meanwhile, the guidelines still allocated room for two to three servings of dairy and another two to three of protein, a broad category ranging from red meat to red beans, with considerable leeway in between.

Additionally, the plan suggested two to four servings of fruit and three to five servings of vegetables, even allowing potatoes to count as vegetables so as not to encroach on the allotted carb quota.

In 2005, the USDA overhauled the recommendations, yet curiously retained the pyramid shape—perhaps to give the illusion of continuity rather than a true redesign. Later, the institution reshaped the guidance into a “food‑plate” graphic, but the fundamentally flawed dietary advice persisted, and attempts to revert to a high‑fat, low‑carb regimen are routinely attacked by media, politicians, and self‑styled “academics.”

Fast‑forward to today, and 42 percent of Americans are classified as obese—a stark testament to the lasting impact of these misguided policies.

In 1949, Eric Blair, known by the pen name of George Orwell, published 1984; a novel that has shown its predictive power manifested in the current state of society. Blair coined the term “Big Brother” for the symbolic figurehead of the totalitarian state, Oceania. In the dystopian society, every citizen is under constant surveillance with the government’s slogan: “Big Brother is watching you,” a reminder of the state’s omnipresence. Our government has taken a slightly different approach, but the end game is much the same. The leaks by Edward Snowden bring to light what many of us already believed, that the United States is moving closer and closer to a society where its citizens have nearly all actions monitored. In light of this, here are 10 ways that we’re living in a Big Brother Society without knowing it.

This is an encore of one of our previous lists, as presented by our YouTube host Simon Whistler. Read the full list!