• sunzu@kbin.run
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    4 months ago

    Never heard of the term but YES!

    Since most people don’t click links:

    The orphan-crushing machine is luckily just a metaphor for the way media tends present the stories in which a person remedies the effects of sociopolitical injustice as “heartwarming” without questioning why said injustice exists in the first place. The metaphor satirizes these stories by comparing them to a person raising money to keep 200 orphans from getting crushed while nobody questions why an orphan-crushing machine exists and runs in the first place.

    The orphan-crushing machine can also be interpreted as a metaphor for late-stage capitalism, where useless products and infrastructure can be produced with the single purpose of further inflating business numbers and creating jobs.