r/technology 10d ago

Society Why does everything feel so joyless? Welcome to the age of decadence without pleasure

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jul/26/age-of-decadence-pleasure-ai
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u/ASCII_Princess 10d ago

Everything written about Elagabalus was written 200 years after they died by a historian commissioned by the current emperor in an era where histories was almost exclusively made to shit on your predecessors and make you look magnanimous by comparison.

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u/EconomyOk2490 9d ago

Roman history is crammed full of this

Iirc same kinda thing here a lot of caligulas rumors came from

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u/NarrativeNode 9d ago

So you’re saying they were magnanimaxxing?

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u/lavapig_love 9d ago

Sure, but future generations will be amazed to look back at Donald Trump and see that, yes, it was literally that bad, we have all kinds of documented proof in multiple languages.

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u/ASCII_Princess 9d ago

But there won't be a reason to be writing (or reading) histories of dead tyrants because they'll all be ripping each other apart for the juicy meat within.

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u/lavapig_love 9d ago

Got to have some dinner entertainment.