In the latter half of 2025, a phrase began circulating widely on Chinese social media: “The Kill Line” (杀线). It is not a slogan invented by policymakers or academics, nor a meme meant purely for ridicule. It is a sharp, unsettling, and revealing metaphor used by ordinary Chinese commentators to describe how American society appears from the outside. The Kill Line names an invisible threshold in the United States: a point at which a single shock, medical, financial, or legal, can push an otherwise productive middle-class citizen into irreversible collapse.
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The Kill Line exposes how deeply American culture has internalized the idea that survival must be earned continuously, without interruption. It reveals how quickly empathy collapses once someone falls out of productivity. It shows how social trust erodes when people know that one misstep can erase decades of effort.
A large portion of US citizens don’t care about anybody beyond themselves or their tribe. It’s the entire reason the country is where it is at the moment. The most individualistic country in the world doesn’t give a shit about its citizens is just exactly what one would expect from their way of life.
While I obviously wish people could see that it’s all bullshit, we are basically getting brainwashed to compete with each other the moment we are born here. It’s ideals that are subjected on us. I realize it’s possible for people to see through it eventually cos I have but with education the way it is here, a lot of people just unfortunately aren’t smart enough and are just full on in the cult of American capitalism or they are benefitting and happy they’re getting theirs. It’s a fucking mess.
Spot on. A measure of individualism is great, but taking it to the extremes that US culture has is clearly toxic. There’s essentially zero communal egalitarian spirit in most scenarios these days.