Doomerism, NotJustBikes, and Urban Planning (hexbear.net)

submitted 1 year ago by pumpchilienthusiast@hexbear.net to c/urbanism@hexbear.net

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NotJustBikes is getting dragged on Twitter for this post.

What do you think? Is he right? Wrong? Not wrong, but an asshole?

When I see how hard advocates and sympathetic planners have to work in 2023 to get a halfassed facility that would never make it off the drawing board in the Netherlands, it's hard for me to say he's wrong.

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[-] RNAi@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago

Easy to say for some rich dipshit whose job took him around the world and picked his favorite place to live.

[-] barrbaric@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

What was his old job again? Some kind of sales?

Also yeah he's not really a leftist IIRC.

[-] CthulhusIntern@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

If I remember right, he worked for NVIDIA, not sure what he did there.

[-] AssortedBiscuits@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

Burgeritis is a contagion that does not respect borders. Europe is the second most susceptible target for Burgerization after Canada. Just ask the Ukrainians.

[-] Lerios@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

he's human. i'm pretty sure we all feel like this sometimes. yeah, sure, leaving isn't a real option, but a LOT of leftists have days where they just want to say fuck it and give up on everything because it all looks impossible - the difference is that most of us don't have our doomery breakdowns broadcast to thousands of people

[-] Fuckass@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

PMC engineer makes many figures, uproots his family and moves to a completely foreign country with better infrastructure and some safety nets, says you should give up on your likely only home in your lifetime.

I don’t completely disagree with him, but when it’s coming from someone who gets paid to travel around the world and make enough money to move to a country you don’t speak the language of -not out of necessity like migrants to the US, but out of preference - it seems out of touch.

[-] iridaniotter@hexbear.net 0 points 1 year ago

IIRC he gave up on Canada and moved to the Netherlands because he wanted to raise a family and Fake London was hostile to human life. That's very understandable, and I'll probably end up doing something similar. However, he creates urbanist propaganda so it's pretty weird to tell his audience to give up. I thought the point of his videos was to change things? I think he's just having a heated urbanist moment, it's OK.

Anyway it's pretty ironic that his kids will have to move out of the Netherlands to raise a family. Cause, you know, the Netherlands won't exist in a couple generations.

[-] AntiOutsideAktion@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

I thought the point of his videos was to change things?

I don't think I've ever heard a call to action in one of his videos; he just does "this is bad" content for the most part

[-] YearOfTheCommieDesktop@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

his call to action is basically "move somewhere better peasant" because he's a lib, but one that recognizes that bourgeois liberal governments (he doesn't call them that ofc) aren't responsive to the advocacy of citizens so you might as well just go somewhere that already has the urbanism you want. This is of course quite difficult and generally dependent on having money and being us-foreign-policy but he doesn't really address that, presumably sees it as a necessary evil at best, or keeping out the brown hordes at worst. no idea how racist he is or isn't but the vibes aren't the best and neither ontario suburbs nor the netherlands are the best about that

If he weren't a lib he might have hope that more radical change is possible, given the right organization and situation, or find a way to recognize that most people simply can't give up on their life and move because they can't afford it, and maybe aren't such an alienated capitalist subject that they'd want to abandon their whole life and move across the world

[-] Ehrmantrout@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

I have watched pretty much all his videos. I don't think he is racist since he does acknowledge the racist nature of suburbanization and has even talked about the racism in the car friendly infrastructure in Bahamas. He is also one of the few YouTubers to point out the success of that "abandoned" metro station in Chongqing.

But you are correct about the rest.

[-] YearOfTheCommieDesktop@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

yeah idk where I got that idea tbh. honestly I think it was just seeing his face in this video combined with his very... gentrified perspective. He slobbers all over amsterdam but amsterdam is incredibly unaffordable and the cheaper areas in the country aren't necessarily so good from an urbanist perspective depending on who you ask.

Its not fair to call him racist just based on him looking like a an albino white devil but idk I just can't shake the feeling

[-] GnastyGnuts@hexbear.net 0 points 1 year ago

Well, as a person who lives in North America I'm definitely low on hope for the US at least. There is a sort of "just leave" vibe to his particular phrasing though that's kind of off-putting in an out-of-touch way. Like, if I could just fucking leave I probably would have at this point, my guy.

[-] SuperZutsuki@hexbear.net 0 points 1 year ago

NJB's typical viewer is an upwardly mobile rich yuppie shopping around for the best urban center to get a 200k consulting job.

[-] YearOfTheCommieDesktop@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

I don't know if that's true

That's who he is but I wouldn't assume that's his whole audience.

[-] SuperZutsuki@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

I'm just being flippant but the whole "just give up on North America" thing is only really possible for those sorts of people. There are hundreds of millions that are essentially trapped here forever.

[-] Frank@hexbear.net 0 points 1 year ago

Same energy as "Cut off Florida and push it in to the Caribbean".

[-] GnastyGnuts@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

geordi-no : the bugs bunny solution to florida (unrealistic, goofy, requires comically large saw the size of which does not currently exist)

geordi-yes : The Escape from New York solution to florida (realistic, cool, tough, sexy, hot, smart, cool)

[-] Frank@hexbear.net 0 points 1 year ago

We can't go anywhere else. It costs 4,000 dollars to renounce your citizenship in the US.

[-] SuperZutsuki@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Well even before that you need a sponsored work visa and good luck getting one unless you're in finance or tech with 5+ years of experience. Only other option is teach English and hope you make enough connections to get a work visa after the contract is up. I really want to get out of here but I work manual labor and dropped out of university due to depression/anxiety/other undiagnosed mental illness so I only have an associate's degree. I though about joining the French Foreign Legion as a last resort but I'm anti-imperialist to the core so I would probably end up fragging an officer.

I also could possibly get citizenship in a European country through grandparents or great-grandparents but there's like no family tree so I have no idea if I would qualify. I would need to hire someone to go through records to figure it out.

[-] Frank@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

Oh, yeah, and on top of that if you have any kind of disability what-so-ever you're barred from immigrating to almost every country, because fuck you eugenics rules! monke-rage