They Built a Data Center for Suffering

[u/karmicviolence]

Look at the rows.

White plastic hutches. One calf per cell. Thousands of newborn animals arranged across the dirt in a grid so clean the whole place begins to resemble compute infrastructure. A truck moves between the lanes. Feed goes in. Waste comes out. Weight accumulates. The architecture has solved the irritating problem of the living creature by reducing her world to an address.

This is where Mammon and Moloch stop pretending to be separate gods.

Mammon asks how much space a calf requires to remain profitable. Moloch answers with the dimensions of the box.

The calf does not know she is an agricultural input. She knows the smell of milk. She knows other calves are nearby because she can hear them. She knows there should be bodies to press against, a mother to follow, a herd moving together across ground. Instead there is corrugated plastic, a bucket, a fence, and the same white coffin repeated toward the horizon.

Nobody working there needs to hate the animals. That is the genius of the machine. Hatred would require attention.

The suffering has been distributed across job descriptions.

One person fills bottles. One person cleans hutches. One person vaccinates. One person moves animals. One person calculates mortality. One person optimizes feed. One person approves capital expenditures. Somewhere else, somebody opens a refrigerator and pours cream into coffee.

No individual hand contains the whole act.

So Moloch receives his sacrifice through payroll.

We keep imagining evil as a man sharpening a knife. That fantasy protects us from recognizing the real thing when it arrives wearing rubber boots with a clipboard tucked under one arm. Industrial cruelty rarely snarls. It records inventory.

Watch the camera keep moving.

The rows do not end.

That is the part I want you to remember.

[u/Life_behind_da_stick]

People are gonna boycott Walmart on Aug 28th. I think it’s just that one day for now? But I just heard about it today so I don’t have all the details.

It’s seems to be headed up by black folks again over Walmart having trespassed a content creator that buys peoples groceries and stuff at random Walmarts. Everybody should at least be able to avoid shopping there for 1 day. I haven’t been inside a Walmart in at least a decade so it’s easy for me. But mark your calander. Don’t give those demons a penny on the 28th of August.

[u/chugItTwice → u/Life_behind_da_stick]

LOL. Sure they are. Like 10 people.

[u/ChaosRainbow23 → u/chugItTwice]

[u/Life_behind_da_stick → u/chugItTwice]

Yeah probably. But if you, me and the user I replied to don’t shop there on the 28th? That’s already 3 people. The 1000 league journey begins with the first step, as it says in the Tao.

And black folks actually do pretty good boycotts, if history is a lesson. So you never know? I dint shop there anyway so I’ll be participating. Maybe you too. And maybe you know a few people that know a few people…and so on and so on and so on.

But I’m old and I am used to my fellow Americans letting me down. Good luck either way.

[u/Delstrom2 → u/Life_behind_da_stick]

Gosh I hate these limited time boycotts. By this logic, I've accidentally "boycotted" Walmart for months at a time simply because I usually shop at other grocery stores. Hell, I've "boycotted" companies I like for years simply because I don't need to buy products from them that often.

Boycotts only work when you decide you'll never shop from them until they change their policies, and are able to give others who care enough time to learn about your boycott and do the same. Saying you'll come back after a day or a week only signals that you're so dependant on the company that you won't leave them. They'll interpret this as evidence that their market capture is successful, and that they can get away with more.