Housing Bubble 2: Return of the Ugly

Thank fuck it’s not real.. but also fuck for it being believable

Can I print these out to put on benches around my city? We get a lot of tourists and I want to fuck with them.

I was gonna say this looks like satire. If nothing else, the zip ties and painted metal give it away.

Okay this is pretty good art I definitely got mashed 👌👌

I sympathize with your view. We can I understand that their situation is a result of conscious policies and not their own moral failings while also expressing frustration at the heavy imposition their neglect imposes on families and neighbors that also had nothing to do with their situation.

Liberals love to mythologize the unhoused suffering as some noble burden to deflect from the gross injustice that it is.

But if you think about it, those people didn't magically appear there. They came from somewhere before being homeless....they came from homes. Those people are sometimes drunk or drugged and pissed at the same time. Because they used to have a house. It could have been your neighbor at some point. You could be homeless one day. Our system allows that and works towards that...a revolving door between the haves and the have nots...but it's a one way churning door. You know get to go towards haves not.

The state spends tons more money on making it harder for these people than it does on making them easier. If that reversed, this would not be an issue.

At least where I live, homeless people are a menace.

It's possible there are more around that you can't see. I check out r/homeless subreddit occasionally, and the people there say that the obvious, mess-making and rude homeless population gives the rest a bad name. Many unhoused people choose to stay out of sight, stash their belongings somewhere and then clean themselves up when going out and about. Many even have jobs.

And yeah, more funds should go towards getting housing and other help to all homeless people, regardless of who they are and how they act.

That's the difference between facing a problem in real life, versus discussing a problem in the abstract online. The ugly truth of the situation is quite often a lot more difficult to face IRL than it is from the comfort of our couches. It's easy to say "defund the police", it's quite another thing to face the mentally ill who refuse all of the services offered after defending the police, who desire nothing more than to shit on the sidewalk in front of your condo, and yell at the street signs all day.

I mean, the bench is painted. Paint isn't usually known for being an electrical conductor. While conductive blends exist, I don't think they'd be very viable nor cost effective for an outdoor application such as this. That's just speculation though. There are also the safety and liability issues with something like this, for insurance if the electricity were turned on by accident during hours it should be safe.

If a city government can pay $20k extra per unit to ensure it causes needless suffering to homeless ppl (and get away with it), I wouldn't hold my breath on them not spending it. That said, we should probably reserve our ire for actual anti-homeless atrocities committed by PDs and city councils. Art projects making an apt social commentary are thought provoking but should be recognized as such.

Of course, as you mentioned it's entirely possible something like this exists already. I haven't seen any proof of that, but in such a case it would probably be easier to just not paint the bench and leave it at that.

Yeah, any good art is provocative. It's not so much that people are gullible enough to believe it. It's that it's so possible that you have to think about it in the first place.

So you're basically saying "I can't be bothered to think or do anything beyond knee jerk reactions to images. I can't even take a minute to check comments or other sources to see what this image is about. I'm going to blame everyone else but me for me believing this. In the future, instead of me taking a moment to quell my knee jerk reactions, the internet should spell things out for me."

Not to be a negative ninny, but I dont think that's gonna work out. Instead, I recommend checking sources before having knee jerk reactions to things on the internet, especially images. It really makes life easier to navigate.

I genuinely don't believe this is real. If it was something as simple as "spikes extend at 11 pm" or something I might, but electrifying? No way.

Idk, but fake like how? The image is fake and made by AI? Or it is a real bench with a real sign but the information on the sign does not reflect reality? Or some other combination of fake? I'm too lazy to read past your comment to find out.

This IS saving the image. Screenshotting it would’ve not produced the watermark.

Reddit's app adds the watermark when you save on mobile, it's not a screenshot of the app.

I remember that there was an option that was enabled by default, when you save the image it would add the watermark automatically.

I'm surprised i have to say it, but apparently i do:

Don't believe every image you see on the internet.

Putting signs on random benches is probably petty vandalism.

To believe everything you see so readily? I dunno!