r/TikTokCringe • u/Girl-Understood • Aug 22 '26

Discussion This mother has gone viral vlogging her experience during the ongoing Gary, Indiana Blackout, people angered by the GoFundMe support she's attracted decided to report it and doxxed her.

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u/wildtwindad Aug 22 '26

The real issue should be that Electrical Engineers have been SCREAMING warnings on the state of the US powergrid for DECADES.
The last full scale build out was in the 1970's.

Yet no one has mentioned this, at all.

Profits taken, yet no will to modernize/update/upgrade the backbone to modern life on the part of the corporations that use/degrade the infrastructure decade over decade.

So.....it is gonna be a huge TRILLION dollar bill and noone wants to be the first to take a bite of the HUGE white elephant iin the room.

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u/Duane_ Aug 22 '26

The last time the government tried to subsidize buildout, it was for cable/internet infrastructure.

Rather than actually do the work, companies built lines to nowhere, incomplete sections that were not connected to the main high speed grids anywhere, and just straight-up kept the money without providing the work in most cases.

A lot got spent on buybacks, and then Time Warner became Spectrum. Cable infrastructure should have been ripped from them and nationalized after they failed to deliver and left the US with the bill.

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u/ClashM Aug 22 '26

The Trump controlled FCC just ditched their goals to get the nation's internet speeds up too. They claim what we have now is more than fast and reliable enough, and making terrestrial internet faster would be unfair to satellite providers like Starlink. A government that only represents corporate interests.

It's also kind of funny though that they're doing this as other corporations are trying to get us used to the idea of not having physical media or, in some cases, hardware. The cloud future they imagine where we own nothing is going to be harder to sell if this is the best our internet is ever going to be.

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u/MrDeadbutdreaming Aug 22 '26

It's because many of those places are potential Starlink customers for Elon's grift for complete control.

Seriously, look it up, Starlink is the one benefiting from that shit, plain as day corruption.

T-Mobile is now using Starlink satellites as well as Comcast and Charter.

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u/UpstairsRain6022 Aug 23 '26

I mean us politicians havent been exactly subtle about the corruption. It is interesting to see how they can do what ever they want with no consequences. Didnt Trump just announce that with 100k per month he will share insider trading information to subscribers? Like come on now

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u/[deleted] Aug 23 '26

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u/MrDeadbutdreaming Aug 23 '26

I doubt it they signed a major contract with starlink for exclusivity a few years back, and after Elon went full mask off, T mobile just stopped mentioning who's satellites they were using in the commercials.

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u/[deleted] Aug 23 '26

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u/Hour_Section6199 Aug 23 '26

He showed everyone who he really was - "Mask off"

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u/Duane_ Aug 22 '26

The amount of countries that were under threat of additional tariffs unless they allowed Starlink to operate there was/is insane. The sheer level of in-groups and crony capitalism we're experiencing isn't just unprecedented, it's one of the most destructive forces working against humanity that has ever existed.

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u/Facky Aug 23 '26

Yup. Capitalism sucks.

I genuinely see no benefits to it for ordinary people.

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u/halconpequena Aug 23 '26

Cuz there isn’t, it’s just a race to the bottom

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u/Aethermancer Aug 22 '26

If you don't have access to information/education, they are happy with that too.

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u/TurkeyBLTSandwich Aug 23 '26

Its worse than that, they want to redefine high speed internet because the current definitions are "too aggressive" believe it or not it was originally 1 gb then it was pushed to 500 mbps, to now 100 mpbs.

If telecomms had their way itd be 10 mbps which is what most 4gLTE networks can do. So they can pocket the high speed funding and continue to build out 5G and let satellite internet do the rest

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u/Karjenner4eva Aug 23 '26

DE is supposed to be the first state to have internet ran to every house. Walkie talkie got the contract. It's slow going. Literally every little farm house on back roads are having lines ran to it. Can't wait til they get to my area, I hate satilette.

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u/TooLazy2Revolt Aug 22 '26

I mean, he’s right, especially with something that ages out as quickly as internet connectivity does. Cable used to be the gold standard, now fiber is way faster and cheaper.

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u/TheBSQ Aug 23 '26 edited Aug 23 '26

Yes, Trump ditched it, but a lot of the failed stuff about building useless stuff (or just not building at all) happened under Biden.

In Trump’s first term, there was a program called RDOF (Rural Digital Opportunity Fund).

The govt held auctions for grants and contracts to ISPs to build out in underbuilt areas, but there weren’t many safeguards & we ended up giving money to companies for random patches of places that didn’t need internet (no one was there) or even already had it, or for projects that weren’t viable. Too little oversight & rules. 

Then Biden came in & passed another program, BEAD (Broadband Equity Access & Deployment) which was also grants to ISPs, but sort of the opposite problem as Trump’s.  It was a state-by-state funding program that required a ton of planning & applications with a gazillion rules around environment, equity, union wages, performance, pricing structure & transparency in low-income options. The whole laundry list of everything a progressive would want that looked good on paper, but made for a bunch of puzzle pieces that became really hard to fit together & still follow all the rules.  It has also underperformed. 

So, basically, two attempts at giving money to ISPs to build stuff out. A GOP one that didn’t have enough safeguards to prevent giving money for dumb projects and a Dem one that was so overloaded with progressive wish list items that it became incredibly Difficult to do something that checked off all the boxes. 

And some say the fault is really the more fundamental issue that both are really just the govt writing checks to ISP corporations to do the actual work for them. 

Either way, both parties took their shot and both failed. 

There’s always a lot of dumb “the govt doesn’t actually want people to have access to information” kinda conspiracies, but both parties really did try, each according to their preferred ideology under the framework of “we’ll pay ISPs to build this out.  The GOP went with fee rules, simple auctions for contracts & Dems with lots of rules with all the ‘good’ professions d things grant-winners must do, but both failed to perform.

There’s an argument that what should have happened is the govt shoulda just built it itself. 

But politicians hate that kind of responsibility & don’t have the in-house expertise & resources to do it, so both parties just go the route of “we’ll write checks to the private sector” cuz no one wants to do the massive task of building up institutional knowledge & hiring out a workforce of experts since that’s very slow & costly, and, in theory, there should already be companies that do all this stuff and should be able to handle the projects but just aren’t because they’re not profitable, but if the govt subsidizes it, then they’d be willing to do it. 

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u/Human_Situation_2641 Aug 26 '26

ty. super informative. Thoughts on transferring investor owned utilities into public ownership?

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u/A_Nonny_Muse Aug 22 '26

They did the same thing in Iraq. First, they shipped about $300 billion to Iraq - Heavy hauler aircraft filled with palettes of $100 bills. Then they required an ideological litmus test for any contractors to operate in Iraq. If you were not a neocon, you couldn't be there. Next, an open vault policy where contractors could just walk in, fill duffel bags full of cash, and walk out. Sometimes without so much as a signature to show you were even there.

At first, contractors did some work, like string up some power lines. Then the wire would be stolen overnight. Eventually, they just stuffed duffel bags and disappeared. Of the 300 billion dollars, the GAO figured about 200 billion was outright stolen with no work done at all.

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u/Duane_ Aug 22 '26

The real conspiracy theory is that the same company rebuilt Iraq AND Europe post WW2 under the Marshall Plan. They also built out the entirety of Saudi Arabia's gas refineries back in the 70's. Same contractor restrictions.

The Bechtel Corporation.

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u/harveygoatmilk Aug 22 '26

But that would be COMMUNISM /s

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u/Duane_ Aug 22 '26

Privatized gains and socialized losses is already the worst potential element of communism, lmao. Republicans haven't had a good faith argument since before the second world war.

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u/KING_ARCH3R Aug 23 '26 edited Aug 23 '26

I remember that AT&T got a MASSIVE budget from the government for high speed internet and instead of building it, they fired ~3,000 workers instead. It was years ago for fiber wire. I want to fact check myself because it was so long ago.

After Trumps 2017 corporate tax cuts, AT&T received billions in annual tax savings after arguing that lower taxes would lead to more U.S. investment and jobs. AT&T said an additional $1 billion in investment could support around 7,000 jobs. Instead, the company went on to eliminate more than 23,000 jobs by 2019, and in 2020 announced another 3,400+ job cuts, including thousands of technicians who worked on its wireline and fiber networks.

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u/ChefAnxiousCowboy Aug 23 '26

It’s crazy how lack of regulation and oversight has seemed to turn every potential opportunity into a grift.

It reminds me of the videos in poor countries where people steal pieces of a freshly paved road but ours it rich people doing that instead