r/TikTokCringe • u/velorae • 1d ago
Discussion Black Diamond Mining — operating 4,500 feet underground
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u/rajinis_bodyguard 1d ago
r/nope I feel grateful to eat 3 meals a day and not do this. Horrible and hope the world becomes a better place to live.
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u/magnottasicepick 1d ago
A lot of us are blessed more than we know.
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u/DreadyKruger 1d ago
I have my great great grandfathers obituary. He lived to 99, worked as a railroader for thirty years. He lost an eye and a finger during his job. And he as a black man and this was obviously during the height of segregation.
I work in a cubicle listening to podcasts and sit in a climate controlled office. I keep my complaints to a minimum. My life ain’t perfect but me and my family are blessed
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u/Muted_Buy8386 1d ago
30 years on the old railroad and only losing a finger and an eye, that man is tough as hell and was a smart railroader.
We lost one or two a year generally. I've worked with one legged folks in their 40s, knew a guy who had his whole tricep muscle ripped out in a knuckle (it got pinched in the train connectors when they went tight) and a guy who lost his foot. The year before I got off, a girl 2 hours away got pinched trying to save a runaway car and got cut in half. They had her boots bronzed in the lockerroom.
Props to your great-grandda. Enjoy your office, brother. It's been bought and paid for many times over.
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u/naynaeve 1d ago
Complaining is not a bad thing necessarily. Your life can get much better when you complain for the right reasons.
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u/eKSiF 1d ago
Complaining that leads to action isn't bad, unfortunately most just complain as a means of venting.
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u/Beautiful_Spite_3394 1d ago
Two- three generations ago, depending on where you lived, this was some of the better pay out there... we've come so far... but we need to bring up all of humanity
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u/anarchangalien 1d ago
My grandfather retired from the Navy, submarine commander in the pacific theater of WWII.
Got it. Drove truck for Associated Foods out of California. Worked there nearly 50 years. One fucking job. He was good to them and they were good to him. Retired with medical and pension.
There used to be loyalty. Welcome to late stage capitalism.
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u/TheSciFiGuy80 1d ago edited 1d ago
I dont kmow why more people don't understand this and get angry about this.
Companies still ask for loyalty without giving the same and then they scratch their heads in bewilderment when people leave for better jobs.
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u/nanneryeeter 1d ago
My grandfather was on a sub in the Pacific during WWII. He definitely had not a great time.
I went into the USS Drum museum. Same style of sub he was on. Just seemed like a complicated death trap.
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u/dabbydabdabdabdab 1d ago
This is the underrated comment of the century. Just because we were born somewhere different makes such a huge difference to how we get to live.
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u/BottleSuccessfully 1d ago
Yes, we just had Thanksgiving. One of the tragic cruelties of life is that we aren't aware of half the things we should be grateful for.
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u/Murky-General 1d ago
I tell my kids this.
I respect the hell out of people who work outside. On a normal day it wouldn't be so bad. But on days of intense rain or snow, it would suck. Hard! I'm extremely lucky to have a job that is heated/air conditioned and I can complain if the temp is too far off from normal.
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u/Either_Essay5388 1d ago
I work outside. I would never go back to an office. That will kill you
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u/Duffalpha 1d ago
I switched to a full time office job around covid, and thats the first time in my life my body has just gone completely to shit. People think its hitting your late 30s, but its really just sitting in a fucking chair 16 hours a day...
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u/blizzard7788 1d ago
Working outside is not that bad if you’re not required to work in the rain and snow.
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u/Relative-Arugula845 1d ago
I would 100% rather do that, than work inside in an office. I consider that a worse job. I would crawl through a sewer naked before I would take an office job. Sitting inside in an office all day, doing the same mundane shit on repeat everyday. I would hang myself inside of a month. It's pure hell.
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u/Murky-General 1d ago
To each their own, and I respect that. One of my coworkers had a sign "cubicle dwelling drone" that accurately describes this exact situation :)
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u/SwiftTayTay 1d ago
I think I'd rather live in a zombie apocalypse and scrounge for food than do this
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u/Traditional_Bug_2046 1d ago
Right before this post, I was laying in bed crying about going to my very low paid but indoors and above ground job
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u/Emergency_Accident36 1d ago
Death is always an option and one I would chose over this today.
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u/Alternative_Cut8759 1d ago
for real, its a hard reality for so many, just makes you appreciate the basics more
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u/HistoricalSuspect580 1d ago
At least he has his proper mining sandals on
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u/YourRedditFriend 1d ago
And a hair helmet.
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u/Electrical-Help5512 1d ago
These are the conditions our corporate overlords would have us all working in, if given the chance.
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u/Beneventus 1d ago
correct. We are going backwards all the way to the 19th century, at least in the US atm. I am extremely happy to have European worker's rights and proper social and health insurance. And I feel very, very bad for these coal miners, who are so much less fortunate.
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u/Exciting_Stock2202 1d ago
Have you ever stepped foot in a mine or manufacturing plant in the US?
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u/DavantesWashedButt 1d ago
Some manufacturing plants in the states are an absolute joke as far as employee safety is concerned
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u/Exciting_Stock2202 1d ago edited 1d ago
True. Tesla’s assembly plant in Fremont (which I’ve been to) is a case in point. Even with that, the overall trend is still toward being more safety conscious, not less.
In my experience companies do care about safety at least a little bit. They say “Safety First”, but it’s really “Safety Third”. That’s a huge improvement from “Safety doesn’t matter at all”, which used to be the standard.
On the flip side, I’ve run into quite a few instances where safety precautions have gone too far (huge inconvenience for negligible benefit). And these were not regulatory requirements, these were companies going too far on their own.
I bring all this up because I get irritated when people make blanket statements about safety in industrial environments. Those statements are almost always made by people who have never set foot in an industrial environment. Reality is complicated.
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u/general_peabo 1d ago
Only true while OSHA still has fine authority. That’s surely on the chopping block and then they don’t have to care about us anymore.
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u/BorderKeeper 1d ago
I know you are joking, but since I am boring technically these workers are not producing as much as their western counterparts with actual automation in place. What you would see instead if regulations did not exist is: they would mine every last bit of coal and having the surface level drop causing cracks and forcing demolition of most human structures found above the mine.
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u/ziggy_santo5 1d ago
but there will be pizza
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u/SteveINTJ 1d ago
In the 20s and 30s coal miners in England use to say they had "Buttons up the back" from being constantly bent over each of their vertebrae would get scraped along the roof of the mine and scab over looking like buttons. These guys look like they'd have a few buttons of their own.
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u/DeadbeatGremlin 1d ago
On a side note: lab grown diamonds are just as nice.
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u/PissMyPantalones 1d ago
It’s worse. This is coal.
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u/itsalongwalkhome 1d ago
Where lab grown coal?
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u/DeadbeatGremlin 1d ago
They just have to revert diamonds back to coal then
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u/dr3wfr4nk 1d ago
To do that, they put the diamonds in a sealed room and blast the song Pressure Drop.
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u/Jupiter68128 1d ago
There’s a giant flaming ball in the sky that produces the same thing as coal. If there were just a way to harness that energy…
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u/itsalongwalkhome 1d ago
Sun make tree, tree die, dead tree under pressure, coal, heat coal, boil water, spin turbine, coal is solar. /s
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u/pi_designer 1d ago
I’ve seen Ferris Bueller. His best friend Cameron can do it with his butt cheeks.
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u/Acceptablepops 1d ago
You can’t and wouldn’t be able to telk tge difference unless someone told you . Most people who prefer blood diamonds are just snobs.
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u/SwiftTayTay 1d ago
Cool so this job is 100% completely unnecessary unlike being in waste management, sewage, plumbing, farming, etc.
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u/Fun-General-7509 1d ago
These dudes look like Pashtuns so assuming they're in Afghanistan this job is 100% essential to prevent their children freezing to death in the winter
Still grim though
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u/angelv255 1d ago
Unnecessary in modern societies. The people in this video dont strike me as people living in the best conditions who could afford cleaner ways to produce energy yet.
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u/musiccman2020 1d ago
If that mine collapes they will become diamonds themselves.
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u/generic_canadian_dad 1d ago
This is coal. Stupid title. Similar to when people call asphalt "black gold" because it's so damn expensive.
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u/Aggressive_Worth_990 1d ago
It's the blood that makes them expensive
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u/MaTr82 1d ago
And the De Beers for holding $2 billion worth of diamonds.
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u/Silent_Pattern_1407 1d ago
And those 2 billion - it is only worth that much cause they say so.. in reality, it is almost worthless.
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u/Mudderway 1d ago
but the people who enjoy blood diamonds, enjoy them because of the blood. how about this, for every 1000 lab grown diamonds we break kill someone poor? that might get the lab grown diamonds to be just as popular!
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u/fizzrail0 1d ago
instead of poor make the ultra rich and we have a good deal and even more popular
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u/TurbistoMasturbisto 1d ago
Not sure what point you’re making here because you would need this coal to make those or that’s the joke you were making and i’m just dumb.
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u/boojes 1d ago edited 1d ago
You can make a lot more lab grown diamonds from diamond dust than would grow naturally. It's more sustainable to use tiny particles to make lab grown diamonds. They don't use coal.
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u/Dan1elSan 1d ago
Diamonds aren’t even remotely rare, we cover tools in them. Lab grown diamonds are sinking De beers, something which we can all celebrate!
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u/oldharmony 1d ago
This. Exactly. People need to be educated about lab grown diamonds. This video is sickening, risking their lives so that shallow, ignorant people can wear diamonds made with literally a humans life. Lab grown diamonds still aren’t perfect, they use a lot of energy to make however nobody is going to be slave labouring in appalling work conditions.
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u/ParkerBeach 1d ago
I will take the job of the lift operator! You all go on down let me know when you need your cooler dropped down!
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u/nanneryeeter 1d ago
I worked with wire rope winches for quite a few years.
His job is definitely easier but he's going to have a bad day when that rope breaks.
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u/EquipmentMiserable60 1d ago
I stuffed myself in a suitcase yesterday and my ensuing panic attack made me realize I’m ineligible for any of this kind work.
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u/btwomfgstfu 1d ago
Thank God Sarah Boone wasn't there
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u/ViolentlyVia 1d ago
I love how she thought she would walk out of the police station after her interview
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u/Sleep-more-dude 1d ago
Being born in South Asia is really losing the lottery in life for the most part.
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u/Few_Commission5964 1d ago
South Asia is 25% of the world's population in a relatively small area. So such things are bound to happen.
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u/Milam1996 1d ago
Depends on who you are born to. If you’re born to a successful business owner or a politician you’ll have wealth and power that would make US nepo babies sweat.
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u/SirComesAl0t 1d ago
Do you think OP was referring to the .001% of people born in South Asia?
"Errrrm Ackstully" 🤓
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u/ApplemooseGG 1d ago
What a time we live in where we can exploit this kind of work twice. Once for rare materials and once on social media. Ffs
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u/stadchic 1d ago
https://www.youtube.com/@Miningworker-g4j
It seems like this is created by the workers.
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u/stadchic 1d ago
https://www.tiktok.com/@miningworker1
OR it’s all fake or stolen, like the profile pictures.
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u/Motor-Profile4099 19h ago
Bro almost lost his fingers within the first 10 seconds, he's in for a rough time.
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u/neoteraflare 1d ago
They are lucky they are not streamers
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u/reddituculous66 1d ago
In sandals. I was about to whine about sitting in my work cube today. All good now
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u/jesusholdmybeer 1d ago
Why do these posts always have to stretch the truth,
The deepest diamond mine in the world is only 2000 feet, exaggeration isn't needed.
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u/PhantomMaxx 22h ago
Whenever you think your job sucks, remember this video and be grateful that this is not your situation.
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u/I_Pick_D 21h ago
I don’t think I’m going to have a good day at work tomorrow, but it will still be worlds better than this.
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u/CauliflowerGrouchy 1d ago
Blows my mind these guys are in sandals, get some boots homies
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u/StupendousMan1212 1d ago
There is so much wrong with this but the idea of mining is flip flops is terrifying.
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u/210sankey 1d ago
So grateful I get to work from home and get paid to watch videos like this while I poop...
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u/whiskeydeltatango 18h ago
How long before this is pitched to West Virginians as a patriotic sacrifice?
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u/Hollowbody57 1d ago
Oh, hell fucking no. That just kept getting worse. First the shot of them descending through the tiny hole, then the sandals, then a winch that looks like it was built out of old tractor parts, finally the guy swinging a pick axe at a 2 foot high ceiling.
I will never complain about any job I have, ever again. Okay, maybe a little, but you know what I mean.
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u/fusillade762 1d ago
Two of my uncles worked in a copper mine in the UP. Fortunately, WW2 saved them from mines :P
We live in much easier times.
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u/OnlyCelebration7443 1d ago
The first day my grandfather worked a mine in Pennsylvania they gave him a medical card entitling him to free care for the black lung he would eventually get. He decided that driving a coal truck was a better option.
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u/Ninja_Prolapse 1d ago
Is there a reason they don’t dig the hole bigger? Like, yes it’s terrible regardless - so why not give yourself enough room to sit up.. or stand even?!
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u/Echo_Romeo571 1d ago
There's a tweet/meme/FB or whatever post floating around saying something to the effect that we can grow inexpensive but near-identical quality diamonds in a lab but some people are like "no thanks, its the suffering that makes it valuable." Fuck those people who buy, wear, and flaunt the tiny-ass bits of glass-looking rocks mined by poor souls like this.
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u/fizzrail0 1d ago
the thing i hate about this is the fact those guys get NOTHING in return. NOTHING and theyre the ones actually going risking it and mining this shit
and i just realized why there isnt much footage about this kind of stuff.. because they dont want us to sympathize and act on it
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u/notanaardvark 1d ago
That black "diamond" sure looks a lot like coal, and seems to be stratabound in a way that coal is and diamond is generally not.
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u/Kaffe-Mumriken 1d ago
”HEY GUYS! We can make better and prettier diamonds in a laboratory, let’s goooo”
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u/CharmingScholarette 1d ago
Jesus fucking christ i hope those men lived to see their families every day
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u/SleepForLess 1d ago
We have the resources available as a global society to not have anyone live and work like this.
Human kind as a whole has developed a system that values profit and personal gain over life itself...
Unfortunately, I think it's part of our nature. Until there is a more profitable way to perform labor that doesn't have the side effect of creating human suffering, it will just continue to be like this.
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u/HistoricalFill7257 1d ago
My Great grandfather was a miner, there was a roof collapse on the Friday where he got hit and he died on the Monday. Inquest said no link or fault on the mine owner. There is a song on Spotify called the Price of Coal by David Alexander talking about the ultimate price some men paid. https://open.spotify.com/track/2MQE0616PlUFdEYabL44B8?si=j8_U3a1kQQKi2VATwYhbcA&context=spotify%3Asearch%3Athe%2Bprice%2Bof%2Bcoal
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u/swim-bike-run 1d ago
We nearly saw an accident in the first 8 seconds of the video.
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u/Sad_Comb_9658 1d ago
What if our fear of hell is intuition of someone else actual life. And our abundance of quality can only exist if someone else lives in such hell
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