Pacify This! – The Weird Side of the Internet

Pacify This! – The Weird Side of the Internet – by Liam Sweeny.

Stress relief is big. That’s because in our world, stress is big. In fact, I would wager that in all of recorded history, we probably have the most stress as a species. Hear me out, because I know you’re going to say, “You’re forgetting the Dark Ages there, Sweaty.” No I’m not. I’m not saying life is shittier now, or has more life or death threats. I’m saying that the world is so complicated that we can’t figure out how to start dealing with the advanced clusterfucks of modern society. Yes, an angry bison and starvation were stressful, but throw a large enough stone at the bison and you just killed  two birds. Or one bison.

The stress we have never actually ends, and we do anything and everything to get a handle on it. Valium is big. Alcohol is bigger. And cannabis might just end up the biggest prescription at your local psychiatrist’s office. Not to mention the healthier options of exercise, cutting out caffeine, knocking down your digits from the arm cuff, and Himalayan salt lamps. But in China, young people are coping with something I can’t wait to see in America – adult pacifiers.

Really. Adult pacifiers. Plastic, put them in your mouth and suck on them. They go for anything from a buck and change to like seventy. And there’s really no trick here, they just pop them in their mouths and suck when they’re stressed.

Doctors in China explain it thus: when people go through intense stress, they mentally regress to an earlier stage of development. But China, how stressful are you?

Those same doctors caution that repeated use of an adult pacifier can cause issues with your temporal mandibular joint, cause issues with opening your mouth, and also issues with the inside of your mouth, also with the possibility of suffocation, should you go to sleep using it.

Sounds stressful.

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