Mencius Moldbugman

You have to PHYSICALLY be in the room to do your wash otherwise the sensor turns everything off. People have huge arguments when others are late for their slot/do too much washing/don't clean the washing machine afterwards (you’re obliged to clean the machine fully after use).

The constant battle for slots actually dictates peoples lives and schedules. Can you imagine living under such a regime? You'd be considered a dangerous free-thinking maverick if you bought your own machine or attempted hand-washing. You would probably be shot.

With all the - ahem - recent added diversity into Sweden, you can just imagine the fun this creates when you have such a system and one adds some free-thinking immigrants to the usual mix of Swedish NPC clothes-washing automatons.

When I’ve told people about the Stalinist clothes washing machine that exists in Sweden, I’m normally met with disbelief. Let me share the statements of others as accompanying proof: http://welcometosweden.blogspot.com/2014/10/moving-to-sweden-laundry-room.html?m=1 …

"I jumped out of bed ready to tackle the day. And by tackle the day, I mean do my laundry. I had scheduled a laundry time for 7am. That’s a silly time to do laundry, I know, but I had zero clean pairs of underwear and zero clean pairs of socks. Don’t judge me."

My favourite: an entire website devoted to passive-aggressive angry notes left in Swedish laundry rooms: http://www.argalappen.se/tvattstugelappar/ …

After all that hell involved in washing your clothes, you probably wish to go out, but some alcohol, and have a nice drink to relieve the stress, right? Easy, right? No. Fuck you. This is Sweden.

Alcohol in Sweden is purchased at a brutalist dystopian store that seems like it was taken from Yevgeny Zamyatin’s “We”. It’s a government monopoly called “System Bolaget” or "The System" for short. A name straight from a Soviet dystopian novel for sure.

Sweden’s nanny state doesn't think that it’s population can handle the normal sale of alcohol. Presumably because due to the darkness and everything closing at 5pm the Swedes would just spend their evenings drinking themselves to death with lack of anything else to do.

The government strictly regulates the sale of alcohol. All alcohol, with the exception of light beers with an alcohol content of less than 3.5%, can only be sold in one of the state sponsored off licenses delightfully known as The System.

The System is the alcohol store equivalent of America’s DMV. These shops make it as difficult as possible to purchase alcohol - a deliberate government policy (you can look all this up). Opening hours are 11am till 4pm and they don't even open on a Sunday.

Hence you can only really buy alcohol on a Saturday (unless you take a day off work) and it shows: there were huge lines of people stood outside The System when I went on Saturday like peasants queueing for potato’s during the final days of the USSR.

There are no promotions, no deals, nothing. All alcohol is kept behind glass cases and has a number printed beside it. You then have to remember the number, go to the counter, and tell them for example "I would like a bottle of 1765 and a can of 88427" which they then give you.

Supermarkets and other stores in Sweden are also weirdly socialist and fucked up. You have to do the cashier's work for them. I first discovered this when I went to an Asian supermarket to buy some noodles for self-catering since I couldn’t even afford a modest Swedish restaurant

The cashier threw a fit at me for just putting my basket on the check out conveyor belt and shouted at me to take everything out. At first I thought this was just a crazy autist, but it turns out that there is a set protocol to how you are supposed to behave at a Swedish cashier.

You are supposed to take all your items out of the basket and line them up in a neat row on the conveyor belt with the barcodes facing outwards. This is so that the barcodes can scan themselves automatically as they pass the scanner and the cashier doesn't have to touch the items

Then they fall into the tray at the end and you pay 5 fucking euros per plastic bag or some ridiculous near-equivalent and bag them up yourself.

I asked why the cashiers won't touch the items & was told it is to prevent carpal tunnel syndrome in cashiers if they are forced to perform small repetitive movements all day like slightly raising bags of peas to a scanner: so for their safety you have to do the scanning yourself

Fuck it. I mentioned bedsheets in Sweden already but I need to go back to them. Alongside washing machines it is the thing that most stands out from my stay in Sweden.

I said already that some hotels force you to fit the bedsheets yourself in some Janteloven attempt to bring you down to the cleaner’s level. Well it gets worse. Some places make you rent them rather than being included in the room price.

I asked why I had to do this and was told it was for "female safety". Also, do you know that fitted bedsheets do not exist in Sweden? Really, they don't. Instead you just have a "bed-size" sheet which you lay on top of the mattress which inevitably falls off during the night.

I repeat: There are no fitted bedsheets in Sweden!l No non-white bed sheets either which for a country which prides itself on its increasing diversity is astonishing.

Another weird thing is that they don't give you one big duvet for a double bed but instead give you two single duvets because Swedish couples don't like to share duvets. This is the only thing that kinda made sense to me given the autism of this country.

In all places I never once had darkness in the hotel room. Each room had an annoying floor light which kept the room aglow and couldn't be turned off. I enquired about and apparently they are standard & for "my safety". The TV monitors in 1984 couldn't be turned off either.

A lot of the nonsensical things I have mentioned above stem from Sweden’s traditionally high-trust homogenous society. However when you add a whole lotta low-trust immigrants from swarthier countries, things really take a turn for the worse.

In keeping with Sweden’s policy of impoverishing its citizens - everywhere in Sweden is laughably mean in regards toilets & wifi. No doubt due to dusky freeloaders. There is no free wifi anywhere except the bloody airport - which you'll need when you have nothing to do after 8pm.

Restaurants and bars are unbelievably cheap - even though you have paid a small fortune for the pleasure of drinking one of their over-priced coffees, you often have to pay extra to get the wifi password! Same goes for toilets: public toilets do not exist in Scandinavia.

The toilets in malls/stations/etc cost 2 euros a go and restaurants 100% keep toilets locked. If you’re a customer you can ask for the key, but even when you've bought a meal they sometimes charge extra to use it. Even in McDonalds you have to pay 1 Euro for a toilet coupon.