gemini://real-changeling.hispagatos.org/politics/fish-parasite

There's a species of parasite found in the ocean called "cymothoa exigua" or "tongue-eating louse". After it enters the fish through the gills and travels to the fish's mouth, it attaches itself to the fish's tongue. Once it does that it cuts the blood vessels in the fish's tongue which makes the tongue fall off. After it does this, it attaches itself to the stub of the tongue where it does the things the fish's tongue used to do, while feeding off of the nutriants from the fish.

Basically, before the parasite comes along, the fish was able to survive fine on it's own. After, it can not even swallow food without the aid of the parasite.

This is a common pattern human institutions follow towards people, and also a big reason many believe that those institutions are necessary.

This is such a common pattern in human institutions and social structures that it would be impossible to list them exhaustively, but this should be enough to learn how to spot the pattern more generally

Before the automobile industry came along, people in the US were able to get around with public transit. After cars started being mass produced, the automobile industry dismantled most public transportation and rebuilt cities to make driving far more convenient than walking or public transportation.

Before the automobile industry came along, people didn't need cars. After, they became a necessity in the US.

The prussian education system is a type of compulsory schooling who's primary purpose is to instill discipline, and obedience.

this kind of compulsery schooling is so traumatizing for people that so many are turned off from lerning in adulthood. This is a big reason so many adults think that kids wouldn't learn anything if they weren't forced to, even though most people admit kids are naturally curious.

Before streaming services like netflix came along, people who wanted to watch shows on the computer would usually torrent them. After, so many people switched to streaming services instead, that the knowledge of how to do it is not being shared nearly as widely as it was. The result of this is more and more people are now dependant on the streaming services to watch shows on their computers.

Before discord came along, most software projects would have a dedicated forum or wiki so that knowledge about it would be easily available, even long after the community left for other projects. Afterwards, so many developers switched to discord and didn't bother with forums and wikis anymore that if you want to know more about those projects, you need to use discord. and if the community moved on from the project, it is much harder to search through a chatroom for advice that was already talked about than the forums discord replaced

tongue-eating louse

some examples

car dependency

schools

streaming services

discord