Person attempting to justify an injustice they also suffer, without even a thought about whether it being "how it is" might actually be connected to all the people saying dumb stuff like "Well, that's just how it is."
This is one of the few acceptable ones IMO. Sometimes, something is bullshit, you know it's bullshit, everyone else knows it's bullshit, but you have no ability to fix or avoid said bullshit, so... it is what it is.
Person who I used to consider a friend was relentlessly posting anti-vax and anti-lock down stuff constantly. I would continually refute what he posted, with references and data etc but he wouldn't listen.
Highlight was when he posted pictures of an anti lock down protest in "Lisbon" and I went to the lengths of finding the pictures that had been stolen and they were of a dance music festival he attended.
Even though I cross referenced his own photos with those that had been posted, including one that showed him next to someone who was in on of the pictures from the supposed protest, he still wouldn't listen to reason.
Worked with one a while back. She was trying to get out. Her whole family abandoned her. She finally went back and agreed to the arranged marriage temple leadership was demanding. Was immediately pregnant after the wedding. Forced to quit her job to be a stay at home mom.
Firmly believe such behavior should be in our modern concept of slavery.
Well my mother said that she would forgive me for rejecting her religion (JWs) if I came back to the church. I was 18. I threw that letter out and haven't heard from her in the 27ish years since.
Pro tip kids: conditional love is not love - it's control.
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler
In class we somehow got into a debate of politics and it went as you expect. Teacher asks if abortion should be legal, which she agrees but the two guys in the class disagree. The idiot guy starts arguing that the anti abortion laws are warnings for """"the girls who can't keep their legs shut"""". Even when the teacher tried to give examples of rape cases, he just kept repeating it like he was right. The girl, which I'll call Jessy, tore his shit up. Teacher stops the debate and we take a break. I have a lot more respect for Jessy.
:::
I sincerely don't understand how someone can be that fucking deluded, and not see a problem with it.
They don't care. They are so deep in their cult, nothing can pull them out. If tomorrow, Trump came out, completely lucid, and admitted everything was a hoax, his supporters would just shift to another cult leader.
Also, at one point, they referred to themselves as Centipedes. They probably got tricked into it, but they still did it proudly. Calling them Magats isn't much different.
Can you tell me how to say that differently? If people from America are Americans, people who believe in Catholicism are Catholics, people who believe in MAGA are what exactly? It isn't Republican, because they are a subgroup, like Jacobites. It isn't to dehumanize them, it is just what they would be called from what I would expect.
Maggots has a different spelling, which is what i know you are referring to, but maybe they should have choose a different name/slogan to go under
I meaaan, there is no pandemic in 2024. We fucked the whole thing up and it's just a regular ol' endemic disease killing people every year that could have been prevented. Weeeeee!
Less people using public libraries (and reading books to learn stuff) around me because 'who needs to read books when there is everything on the Internet and I can Google anything'?
And, at least as saddening and frightening to me, seeing more and more people willing to censor whatever book, author, or idea, they hate or even they just don't agree with (most often, without even reading it). It's even worse when I see librarians supporting that — it doesn't matter how 'good' their motivation is, censorship's only success is in the promotion of stupid ideas (if not of sheer ignorance), hate and fear.
On a related note, I think libraries do need a bit of a facelift, and not just be "the place where books live". It's important to keep that function, but also expand to "a place where learning happens". I know lots of libraries are doing this sort of thing, but your average person is probably still stuck in the "place where books live" mindset, as you allude. I'm talking stuff like 3D printers, makerspaces, diybio, classes about detecting internet bullshit, etc.
My brother got fucked up psychologically from murdering Iraqis and Afghans and then came home and started "self-medicating" with meth while spending all day sitting in his house alone while listening to far-right propaganda like OAN. He tried to check himself in for treatment at the VA but they committed malpractice which nearly killed him, and he responded violently, which put a flag on his record making it difficult for him to get help in the future, while at the same time giving him a deep distrust of doctors. He was incredibly paranoid and accused everyone of being part of some sort of conspiracy against him and would make violent threats, veiled just enough to not be actionable. Eventually, he went over to someone's house with a gun, but the cops had been watching his house and they showed up, he pulled a gun on them and got shot in the arm, which he lost the use of, but he eventually recovered somewhat on account of getting off the meth while in jail. He's still a fascist and still listens to all the same shit, but he's at regular fascist levels of paranoid-schizophrenia now.
I don't give a shit about him but the pain he put my family through, a memory is burned into my mind of tears in my mother's eyes as she gets another text and it's another crisis and she can't enjoy even a single night out at dinner because she has to act like a 911 operator 24/7 - and whenever I think about any of the people responsible for the stupid, pointless wars that caused all this, Bush, Obama, Biden, Trump, and all the rest, I remember that we got off incredibly easy, that our suffering was absolutely nothing compared to the actual victims of our country's wanton slaughter and pointless wars of aggression, and I multiply the pain I felt in that moment and the trauma throughout the whole experience by a thousand, a hundred thousand, by as much as my mind is even capable of comprehending which is still only a tiny fraction of the reality, and I focus it into pure hatred directed towards all the people responsible for the wars.
In all fairness I went there to see what the issue is, the top post was about ants and most things that popped up were good memes. Which communities are you referring to? I'm guessing not c/earth or something..
Threads like this, with highly upvoted comments like
americans are more propagandized than they think citizens of the DPRK are
They also use sarcasm try to push the narrative that North Korea is actually just fine, OK?
Guys you don't understand; the West has spoken; we MUST hate North Korea, our governments have already decreed it so.
Many of them are also seemingly physically incapable of communicating without hexbear's custom reaction images, which is a weird behavior common to many cults. Makes it harder to communicate with the outgroup.
I think LW is defederated from them (or vice versa) so you can't post over there, but for further examples, try making an account over there and saying that maybe, just maybe, Putin did a bad thing by invading Ukraine, and they're defending an imperialist.
There are six companies that control a very large percentage of the media consumed by Americans. They are all mega corporations. The media Americans consume is mostly corporate propaganda, and it's invisible to us. It's the water we swim in.
Whatever opinions the oligarchs want us to have are dictated to us.
It is not a coincidence that all our national political races come down to a wire, that we are divided almost 50/50. We are being intentionally divided so that we don't unite and challenge the oligarchy.
It's not just the news. It's TV shows, movies, books, periodicals, commercials - even music. The oligarchs have massive influence over all of it and can manipulate the public at will.
You can hardly blame them. It's a 24/7 onslaught of propaganda and it's incredibly difficult to break out.
And even when I initially woke up out of it I frequently questioned my sanity. Is this real? Is this actually what's happening? How can nobody else see this?
And then I wanted to go back to not knowing because of the incredible weight that knowledge puts on your shoulders, but it's impossible. There's no going back, at least for me.
That shit is so scary. Those people were ready to exterminate others out of pure hate and brain washing. It made me think about how the more extreme MAGA people today refer to liberals/Democrats. It's like they're heading down the same path. It's insane that that many people can fall into that type of mentality with the freedom of information we have today. They've been trained to only believe a certain narrative, but instinctively disbelieve and see as enemy anything that goes against it. Freedom of thought is not an option for them. Crazy af.
My ex got radicalized on Stormfront and accused me of "muddying his bloodline".
And yes he did eventually realize that some of that was bullshit, he is not like he was before he got propagandized but not as bad as he was in the thick of it.
White power nonsense. He ended up speaking a whole language I didn't understand. Was absolutely convinced he had some deep understanding of reality that I did not. I think he still holds on to some of it but quitting alcohol helped and getting a job helped, he sort of had to hit bottom to bounce back.
I left when he tried to choke me in bed (woke me up, not sex play), then realized what he was doing and stopped and freaked out.
When we first left my older kids said they wouldn't even go to his funeral if he died. They have since reconciled but certainly are not close - they and I appreciate that he's trying now, but I have to say that when I left and my life got so much better while his got so much worse I did feel a sort of happiness about it. A breakup is never one sided, I did also do and say things I regret, but time kinda proved he was the problem.
I guess everyone has a crazy ex but I honestly did not see that coming, we had over 15 good years before he lost it. And I absolutely blame the right wing fascist conversion machine.
COVID, MAGA, Q Anon, support by poor people for defunding of schools and infrastructure even as bridges collapse and water systems are becoming poisonous while supporting building new tactical nuclear weapons that the country doesn't even have a use for unless the intend to start nuking Mexico which would mean more refugees, not fewer....etc.
The COVID denial was strong in so many people. I remember some stories where people would go to the hospital with extremely low oxygen saturation, be told that they have COVID, and for them to go into a blind panic about getting microchipped or tortured by experimental government treatment, and immediately discharge themselves - only to drop dead pretty much immediately after they left.
Well, they're dead, so not much else outside of that.
It goes to show just how effective the brainwashing is, though. So many people were afraid of what is essentially science fiction. If we could inject nanobots into someone to control their mind and body, holy shit we've made one of the craziest scientific breakthroughs in a century! They were so afraid they ignored the fact that they were incredibly ill and tried to leave on the assumption that they had been attacked.
I met a guy who believes the government wants to turn the country communist, ban meat, and make everyone eat insects. He seemed to have fallen for every Facebook boomer conspiracy theory, but these were the highlights. He just talked and the conspiracy theories kept coming out. He couldn't think of much to say that didn't tie into a bizarre narrative.
My step brother got turned into a redhatter. Trying to stick magnets on my arm where I got the covid shot, the crazy pizza shop basement q thing, it's so bad it's like he has an earpiece in his ear being told what to say by rightwing media
Not anyone I know, or even the most brainwashed, but I did watch this video last night on YouTube that was pretty disturbing and although the events are now 15 years ago they ended not long ago and the court case only ended last year.
Guy who is extremely good at manipulating people ends up manipulating like 6 or more of his daughters college friends into somehow dropping out and living with him and forced to do all the requests he has.
Idk if it's hindsight bias or what, but I feel like if some guy called my place of work claiming to be a cop and told me to rape my 14-18 year old coworker I would suspect something is up
Idk if it’s hindsight bias or what, but I feel like if some guy called my place of work claiming to be a cop and told me to rape my 14-18 year old coworker I would suspect something is up
I do too, but then you look at society, and the individual and mass abuses and atrocities that have been and still are committed (or even just not objected to) under the influence of one or a small group of manipulative exploiters (some with little other power, but some who control the very systems that govern our lives), and you realise that if nothing else, you have to be constantly aware and vigilant to their manipulations, and even then, no one is immune.
Wait, what? I've seen the movie, but didn't know about this. Will have to look it up.
E: ok so saw Williams plays the caller in it, think I'll pass, I don't need that memory of him in my brain lol but good to know it made the show either way.
Yeah it's essentially a cable tv episode of Compliance. Definitely dark Robin Williams. He's really good at it. I would also recommend One Hour Photo if you want to see the best creepy Robin Williams.
Yeah, I've seen One Hour Photo a few times (also Insomnia and The Final Cut), it's how I know he did creepy so well and probably why I know to avoid that episode lol
I think the worst thing about it is that it works every day, in so many different ways. Appeal to authority (not the fallacy, just the act of) is an enforced value in most societies, and it will drive people to do the most horrific shit. Always question authority.
I've met a couple Mormons that were reaaaally deep into the shit and talked and acted like robots just parroting all the religious nonsense they'd been fed. But to be fair, I've also met some cool Mormons who were less into it and generally just good people.
I've seen people who would act like the sky isn't blue if they had so much as a friend say it wasn't. Sadly the same friends who would go on to successfully erase people's innocence out of existence via gossip, in contexts that rank up there with asking for someone's ID at a bar out of skepticism and then getting the ID and saying "I don't care about your ID, you're still not in the required demographic". And these channelers of peer pressure who outweigh the issue of cults wonder why I am deep into misanthropy.
They genuinely believe some random guy is god incarnate so they tormented him his entire life to try and get him to kill himself,
Nothing in wicca allows any of that, so far as I'm aware.
That's SO far off base with what I understand of the basic tenets of wicca that it'd be like an humanist atheist vegan suddenly signing on to work as a halal butcher and then deciding animals aren't enough, it's time to butcher people instead.
Yeah, while there are dozens or possibly hundreds of flavors of "wicca". The first tenent is almost always some variation on "do no harm". Normally phrased something like "as it harms none, do as thou will"... Which is odd phrasing for something written in the last century.
The main exception is those who follow Crowley. His whole deal was "do what thou will shall be the whole of the law".
Crowley was mostly in it for the shock value.
And again, Crowley's "ancient wisdom" is newer than the invention of photography. We even have recordings of him speaking.
US Democratic voters unwilling to recognize systemic faults, perceive how they apply to their chosen politicians, or reason their way to incremental action beyond voting and virtue signaling. They're the third of the country that watches while one third kills another third.
US Conservative voters unwilling to recognize systemic faults, perceive how they apply to their chosen politicians, or reason their way to incremental action beyond voting and virtue signaling. They're the third of the country that kills one third while another another third watches
im telling you seriously its not the same statement. whil it demonstrates that the entire country is at fault, but with a nod to those who are pulling the majority of the triggers in the human killing devices.
I think it was clear what I meant: what is the point of repeating the exact same phrase. Your explanation was quite halfassed. Anyway I was asking so to understand American politics better as a non-American. You have not brought me any closer.
There is no point here as very few conservatives are reading this. It is likely that most of them are enlightened enough to see the faults in their own side. As opposed to the large number of democrat voters here who cannot see the flaws in their own side. There are of course democrat voters here who can see the flaws in their own side, but lemmy is in general an echo chamber of "left wing" and a large number cannot see their own flaws.
Seems counterintuitive, but I've had more productive arguments with conservative vs. liberal friends. By productive I mean to say, the conservative often changed his view, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, sometimes a complete reversal. In any case, they listened to my points and would reason with me. They would often shift my thoughts or, at worst, I came away understanding, if not agreeing.
If one's only experience arguing a political point is online, well, your mileage will vary.
Liberals, on the other hand, often won't engage in real life arguments, at all. "This doesn't bear discussion. I'm right, you're an idiot, I'm out." Try arguing a conservative take in a room full of liberals. You're getting shouted down, and you're not getting invited back. Winning hearts and minds here guys?
Both sides are religious in their online echo chambers, ears firmly plugged, "You will toe the party line, comrade!". (Point goes to the online liberal, they're a bit more lenient.) The echo is so strong around here, posts get down voted for having the impertinence to ask a clarifying question or so much as explaining a conservative view, even if not holding it. Fuck me, I've seen dozens of buried posts, posts that only stated a single, inconvenient fact. Hell, I check the negative posts because I often find an interesting take or new thought. Watch the down votes roll on this post merely because I related positive personal experiences with conservatives. No value judgements, just stating what I've seen in real life.
(Here I'm going to ramble around a bit, hoping I can get back on track at the end...)
Funny story, I was at a house party and wandered upstairs to find my dad moderating a debate (I forget the topic) in a room full of drunk college kids. After a few minutes he called a halt. Pointing to the debaters, he said, "You're going to argue his view and you're going to take his. Switch sides." Momentarily taken aback, they wholeheartedly jumped into their new roles. I suspect dad timed that to teach me a lesson, he often said, "If you can't argue both sides, you don't know what you're talking about."
Pre-Obama, I used to be fairly conservative, thought I was anyway, listened to talk radio while delivering or eating lunch. One afternoon I realized dad would be ashamed to hear that I got all my views from one side. So I started reading CCN, that hotbed of radical-left boogeyman I had heard so much about. Let's see what these liberals have to say. Well, CNN was anything but a hotbed of whacky liberalism, even back then. Terrible journalism, yes, opinions rampant in every "news" story, but nothing like the bias I had been listening to. (And here we are, back to experiences differing in real-life arguments vs. online, or on-air as the case may be.)
About the same time, Limbaugh turned me off like a light switch, never listened to another word after snapping off my radio. A caller was relating his experience with purchasing and installing a wind turbine at his home. Rush laughed, on cue, at the silly liberal notions of clean energy. OK, that sucks, but to be expected. The caller starts talking about the expense and hassle of hooking it to the grid. Limbaugh went off, over and over again, "You mean to tell me the windmill needs power to function?! Har, har, har!" The man was only trying to explain that he wished to pump excess back into the grid, get paid, but all in all, the system was a loss for him. Rush was a very intelligent man, knew exactly what the caller was trying to say, knew if would be construed as a benefit, cut him off every time he opened his mouth to explain. Fuck you Rush.
That last anecdote seems to contradict earlier statements. I guess what I'm getting at it that conservatives are close-minded when they're in their echo chambers. Confronted with a live human being, they're mostly pleasant to argue with. Bet money that, one-on-one, Rush would have argued in good faith. When contradicted, liberals come with "tell it to the hand".
i put left wing in quotes for that reason. when you have two sides - republicans and democrats - then in the us the democrats are the left. However there are a large number of different issues and it is safe to say no two people agree on 100% and so dividing into two sides is wrong. Still calling the democrats left wing is often a useful simplfication even if not very insightful.
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What is the most severe case of brainwashing you have seen? | Spyke
"Well, that's just how it is"
Person attempting to justify an injustice they also suffer, without even a thought about whether it being "how it is" might actually be connected to all the people saying dumb stuff like "Well, that's just how it is."
I learned recently that there's a word for this, which is "thought-terminating cliche"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A9
Its all good, man
It Is What It Is
This is one of the few acceptable ones IMO. Sometimes, something is bullshit, you know it's bullshit, everyone else knows it's bullshit, but you have no ability to fix or avoid said bullshit, so... it is what it is.
And it ain't what it ain't.
Fuckin way she goes.
Ok Yogi
And now you're going to notice them all over the internet.
Uggghhh, nothing is more infuriating than hearing "life's not fair" from people in a position to make a situation more fair.
I just respond "if that wasn't how it is there'd be nothing to talk about."
Have you tried being less of a crooked, dishonest Deep State?
5G tracking chip?
Pandemic.
Person who I used to consider a friend was relentlessly posting anti-vax and anti-lock down stuff constantly. I would continually refute what he posted, with references and data etc but he wouldn't listen.
Highlight was when he posted pictures of an anti lock down protest in "Lisbon" and I went to the lengths of finding the pictures that had been stolen and they were of a dance music festival he attended.
Even though I cross referenced his own photos with those that had been posted, including one that showed him next to someone who was in on of the pictures from the supposed protest, he still wouldn't listen to reason.
He is no longer a friend or even an aquaintence.
I'm so sorry.
Jehovah's Witnesses, who rejoice in the deaths of children. The whole thing is utterly bizarre.
Worked with one a while back. She was trying to get out. Her whole family abandoned her. She finally went back and agreed to the arranged marriage temple leadership was demanding. Was immediately pregnant after the wedding. Forced to quit her job to be a stay at home mom.
Firmly believe such behavior should be in our modern concept of slavery.
This shit should be documented for court and the temple leadership can lead the jailhouse from inside from then on.
Well my mother said that she would forgive me for rejecting her religion (JWs) if I came back to the church. I was 18. I threw that letter out and haven't heard from her in the 27ish years since.
Pro tip kids: conditional love is not love - it's control.
You are very wise. Thanks for the tip.
Happened recently actually.
TW: Talks of SA, Maga
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler In class we somehow got into a debate of politics and it went as you expect. Teacher asks if abortion should be legal, which she agrees but the two guys in the class disagree. The idiot guy starts arguing that the anti abortion laws are warnings for """"the girls who can't keep their legs shut"""". Even when the teacher tried to give examples of rape cases, he just kept repeating it like he was right. The girl, which I'll call Jessy, tore his shit up. Teacher stops the debate and we take a break. I have a lot more respect for Jessy. :::
I sincerely don't understand how someone can be that fucking deluded, and not see a problem with it.
Does dehumanizing them help?
Edit: From the downvotes it seems that most people here think "yes!"
I don't think so, because dehumanization is kind of their whole mantra, and I'd rather not stoop so low.
They're people, just not very bright people.
They don't care. They are so deep in their cult, nothing can pull them out. If tomorrow, Trump came out, completely lucid, and admitted everything was a hoax, his supporters would just shift to another cult leader.
Also, at one point, they referred to themselves as Centipedes. They probably got tricked into it, but they still did it proudly. Calling them Magats isn't much different.
Can you tell me how to say that differently? If people from America are Americans, people who believe in Catholicism are Catholics, people who believe in MAGA are what exactly? It isn't Republican, because they are a subgroup, like Jacobites. It isn't to dehumanize them, it is just what they would be called from what I would expect.
Maggots has a different spelling, which is what i know you are referring to, but maybe they should have choose a different name/slogan to go under
Maga is mainstream Republican now
Covid. People are still pretending there's no pandemic in 2024.
I meaaan, there is no pandemic in 2024. We fucked the whole thing up and it's just a regular ol' endemic disease killing people every year that could have been prevented. Weeeeee!
MAGA.
Came here to say this. Well I would've said Trump, but same idea.
Less people using public libraries (and reading books to learn stuff) around me because 'who needs to read books when there is everything on the Internet and I can Google anything'?
And, at least as saddening and frightening to me, seeing more and more people willing to censor whatever book, author, or idea, they hate or even they just don't agree with (most often, without even reading it). It's even worse when I see librarians supporting that — it doesn't matter how 'good' their motivation is, censorship's only success is in the promotion of stupid ideas (if not of sheer ignorance), hate and fear.
On a related note, I think libraries do need a bit of a facelift, and not just be "the place where books live". It's important to keep that function, but also expand to "a place where learning happens". I know lots of libraries are doing this sort of thing, but your average person is probably still stuck in the "place where books live" mindset, as you allude. I'm talking stuff like 3D printers, makerspaces, diybio, classes about detecting internet bullshit, etc.
100%.
I went to a library the other day to do some work on my laptop. I had A2 prints I was transcribing notes for.
How is it not going to a library because of brainwashing? Who is doing the washing?
pro tip for anyone who wants to read books but doesn't have access to a library
https://annas-archive.org is the largest library on the internet, 100% free
Koodo Reader is a eBook reader for PC
Librera is another eBook reader but for Android
everything linked is completely FOSS
To be fair, you can find nearly any book for free online.
My brother got fucked up psychologically from murdering Iraqis and Afghans and then came home and started "self-medicating" with meth while spending all day sitting in his house alone while listening to far-right propaganda like OAN. He tried to check himself in for treatment at the VA but they committed malpractice which nearly killed him, and he responded violently, which put a flag on his record making it difficult for him to get help in the future, while at the same time giving him a deep distrust of doctors. He was incredibly paranoid and accused everyone of being part of some sort of conspiracy against him and would make violent threats, veiled just enough to not be actionable. Eventually, he went over to someone's house with a gun, but the cops had been watching his house and they showed up, he pulled a gun on them and got shot in the arm, which he lost the use of, but he eventually recovered somewhat on account of getting off the meth while in jail. He's still a fascist and still listens to all the same shit, but he's at regular fascist levels of paranoid-schizophrenia now.
I don't give a shit about him but the pain he put my family through, a memory is burned into my mind of tears in my mother's eyes as she gets another text and it's another crisis and she can't enjoy even a single night out at dinner because she has to act like a 911 operator 24/7 - and whenever I think about any of the people responsible for the stupid, pointless wars that caused all this, Bush, Obama, Biden, Trump, and all the rest, I remember that we got off incredibly easy, that our suffering was absolutely nothing compared to the actual victims of our country's wanton slaughter and pointless wars of aggression, and I multiply the pain I felt in that moment and the trauma throughout the whole experience by a thousand, a hundred thousand, by as much as my mind is even capable of comprehending which is still only a tiny fraction of the reality, and I focus it into pure hatred directed towards all the people responsible for the wars.
https://hexbear.net/
In all fairness I went there to see what the issue is, the top post was about ants and most things that popped up were good memes. Which communities are you referring to? I'm guessing not c/earth or something..
Threads like this, with highly upvoted comments like
They also use sarcasm try to push the narrative that North Korea is actually just fine, OK?
Many of them are also seemingly physically incapable of communicating without hexbear's custom reaction images, which is a weird behavior common to many cults. Makes it harder to communicate with the outgroup.
I think LW is defederated from them (or vice versa) so you can't post over there, but for further examples, try making an account over there and saying that maybe, just maybe, Putin did a bad thing by invading Ukraine, and they're defending an imperialist.
Yeah these things sound awful. Thanks for the pointers.
There are six companies that control a very large percentage of the media consumed by Americans. They are all mega corporations. The media Americans consume is mostly corporate propaganda, and it's invisible to us. It's the water we swim in.
Whatever opinions the oligarchs want us to have are dictated to us.
It is not a coincidence that all our national political races come down to a wire, that we are divided almost 50/50. We are being intentionally divided so that we don't unite and challenge the oligarchy.
John Stewart did a great bit where station after station reads the exact same script over and over again. It's unsettling.
It's not just the news. It's TV shows, movies, books, periodicals, commercials - even music. The oligarchs have massive influence over all of it and can manipulate the public at will.
Indeed. But most normies will gladly tell you they are not easy to manipulate while buying something the media has told them to. Its shocking.
You can hardly blame them. It's a 24/7 onslaught of propaganda and it's incredibly difficult to break out.
And even when I initially woke up out of it I frequently questioned my sanity. Is this real? Is this actually what's happening? How can nobody else see this?
And then I wanted to go back to not knowing because of the incredible weight that knowledge puts on your shoulders, but it's impossible. There's no going back, at least for me.
Do you realize you just quoted the first matrix movie nearly verbatim? ;)
And yes, I get that. It feels weird af.
The Goebbels speech for total war:
https://youtu.be/DRmHOSnehTk
That shit is so scary. Those people were ready to exterminate others out of pure hate and brain washing. It made me think about how the more extreme MAGA people today refer to liberals/Democrats. It's like they're heading down the same path. It's insane that that many people can fall into that type of mentality with the freedom of information we have today. They've been trained to only believe a certain narrative, but instinctively disbelieve and see as enemy anything that goes against it. Freedom of thought is not an option for them. Crazy af.
MAGA
My ex got radicalized on Stormfront and accused me of "muddying his bloodline".
And yes he did eventually realize that some of that was bullshit, he is not like he was before he got propagandized but not as bad as he was in the thick of it.
That was super dangerous for you, I'm glad you are ok.
So dehumanizing.
Can you explain what Stormfront is? I don't want to get put on a watch list 😅
White power nonsense. He ended up speaking a whole language I didn't understand. Was absolutely convinced he had some deep understanding of reality that I did not. I think he still holds on to some of it but quitting alcohol helped and getting a job helped, he sort of had to hit bottom to bounce back.
Jebus! He's lucky that you stayed IMO, that's some crazy kill your family brain washing.
I left when he tried to choke me in bed (woke me up, not sex play), then realized what he was doing and stopped and freaked out.
When we first left my older kids said they wouldn't even go to his funeral if he died. They have since reconciled but certainly are not close - they and I appreciate that he's trying now, but I have to say that when I left and my life got so much better while his got so much worse I did feel a sort of happiness about it. A breakup is never one sided, I did also do and say things I regret, but time kinda proved he was the problem.
I guess everyone has a crazy ex but I honestly did not see that coming, we had over 15 good years before he lost it. And I absolutely blame the right wing fascist conversion machine.
COVID, MAGA, Q Anon, support by poor people for defunding of schools and infrastructure even as bridges collapse and water systems are becoming poisonous while supporting building new tactical nuclear weapons that the country doesn't even have a use for unless the intend to start nuking Mexico which would mean more refugees, not fewer....etc.
The COVID denial was strong in so many people. I remember some stories where people would go to the hospital with extremely low oxygen saturation, be told that they have COVID, and for them to go into a blind panic about getting microchipped or tortured by experimental government treatment, and immediately discharge themselves - only to drop dead pretty much immediately after they left.
Dafuq is wrong with these people?
Well, they're dead, so not much else outside of that.
It goes to show just how effective the brainwashing is, though. So many people were afraid of what is essentially science fiction. If we could inject nanobots into someone to control their mind and body, holy shit we've made one of the craziest scientific breakthroughs in a century! They were so afraid they ignored the fact that they were incredibly ill and tried to leave on the assumption that they had been attacked.
Any religion.
What about that one that's real
Humans haven't found it yet, that happens in 2115.
Every religion claims to be the sole guardian of a revealed truth and they are all, without exception, liars and charlatans. Every. Single. One.
Religion makes them feel better for being so shitty to others.
I met a guy who believes the government wants to turn the country communist, ban meat, and make everyone eat insects. He seemed to have fallen for every Facebook boomer conspiracy theory, but these were the highlights. He just talked and the conspiracy theories kept coming out. He couldn't think of much to say that didn't tie into a bizarre narrative.
My step brother got turned into a redhatter. Trying to stick magnets on my arm where I got the covid shot, the crazy pizza shop basement q thing, it's so bad it's like he has an earpiece in his ear being told what to say by rightwing media
Not anyone I know, or even the most brainwashed, but I did watch this video last night on YouTube that was pretty disturbing and although the events are now 15 years ago they ended not long ago and the court case only ended last year.
Guy who is extremely good at manipulating people ends up manipulating like 6 or more of his daughters college friends into somehow dropping out and living with him and forced to do all the requests he has.
https://youtu.be/3aDaKemM7fY?si=GVvY4P-scF8ZUr9a
That reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strip_search_phone_call_scam, which is so fucked up on so many levels.
What a terrible day to be literate.
Idk if it's hindsight bias or what, but I feel like if some guy called my place of work claiming to be a cop and told me to rape my 14-18 year old coworker I would suspect something is up
Also, that caller must've had OJs lawyer.
I do too, but then you look at society, and the individual and mass abuses and atrocities that have been and still are committed (or even just not objected to) under the influence of one or a small group of manipulative exploiters (some with little other power, but some who control the very systems that govern our lives), and you realise that if nothing else, you have to be constantly aware and vigilant to their manipulations, and even then, no one is immune.
Best episode of Law and Order as well. Robin Williams was a fantastic actor.
Wait, what? I've seen the movie, but didn't know about this. Will have to look it up.
E: ok so saw Williams plays the caller in it, think I'll pass, I don't need that memory of him in my brain lol but good to know it made the show either way.
Yeah it's essentially a cable tv episode of Compliance. Definitely dark Robin Williams. He's really good at it. I would also recommend One Hour Photo if you want to see the best creepy Robin Williams.
Yeah, I've seen One Hour Photo a few times (also Insomnia and The Final Cut), it's how I know he did creepy so well and probably why I know to avoid that episode lol
What did I just read! Wow that was a wild ride, thanks for sharing. Someone could write a PhD thesis on how this worked
I think the worst thing about it is that it works every day, in so many different ways. Appeal to authority (not the fallacy, just the act of) is an enforced value in most societies, and it will drive people to do the most horrific shit. Always question authority.
People who build their entire identity around X.
X = Ammosexuals, MAGA, Muskrats, Gamers™, Christo-Facists, Corporate Bootlickers, etc.
I see a lot of westerners always decrying Christo-Fascists and I always wonder whether they can hold a candle to the Muslim-extremists I know
What is Muskrats?
Elon musk fanboys I guess
I've met a couple Mormons that were reaaaally deep into the shit and talked and acted like robots just parroting all the religious nonsense they'd been fed. But to be fair, I've also met some cool Mormons who were less into it and generally just good people.
Well, one day I walked around outside in America... and that's the story
Oh edgy, got any new material?
Wow condescending, got any new tones?
Geez light hearted, got any new gems?
Geez duck, got any grapes?
Hey bartender , got any nails?
I've seen people who would act like the sky isn't blue if they had so much as a friend say it wasn't. Sadly the same friends who would go on to successfully erase people's innocence out of existence via gossip, in contexts that rank up there with asking for someone's ID at a bar out of skepticism and then getting the ID and saying "I don't care about your ID, you're still not in the required demographic". And these channelers of peer pressure who outweigh the issue of cults wonder why I am deep into misanthropy.
Ginni Thomas.
I'm not allowed to say.
What in the actual fuck are you on about?
Nothing in wicca allows any of that, so far as I'm aware.
That's SO far off base with what I understand of the basic tenets of wicca that it'd be like an humanist atheist vegan suddenly signing on to work as a halal butcher and then deciding animals aren't enough, it's time to butcher people instead.
Yeah, while there are dozens or possibly hundreds of flavors of "wicca". The first tenent is almost always some variation on "do no harm". Normally phrased something like "as it harms none, do as thou will"... Which is odd phrasing for something written in the last century.
The main exception is those who follow Crowley. His whole deal was "do what thou will shall be the whole of the law".
Crowley was mostly in it for the shock value.
And again, Crowley's "ancient wisdom" is newer than the invention of photography. We even have recordings of him speaking.
I'm somewhat critical of wicca and I don't even know what the fuck they're talking about.
US Democratic voters unwilling to recognize systemic faults, perceive how they apply to their chosen politicians, or reason their way to incremental action beyond voting and virtue signaling. They're the third of the country that watches while one third kills another third.
US Conservative voters unwilling to recognize systemic faults, perceive how they apply to their chosen politicians, or reason their way to incremental action beyond voting and virtue signaling. They're the third of the country that kills one third while another another third watches
What's your point by repeating this for conservatives?
its not repeated.
I'm asking seriously
The initial post says Democrats are the third that watch while one third kills the other third. The Conservatives are the third that does the killing.
im telling you seriously its not the same statement. whil it demonstrates that the entire country is at fault, but with a nod to those who are pulling the majority of the triggers in the human killing devices.
I think it was clear what I meant: what is the point of repeating the exact same phrase. Your explanation was quite halfassed. Anyway I was asking so to understand American politics better as a non-American. You have not brought me any closer.
How did the original comment enlighten you?
There is no point here as very few conservatives are reading this. It is likely that most of them are enlightened enough to see the faults in their own side. As opposed to the large number of democrat voters here who cannot see the flaws in their own side. There are of course democrat voters here who can see the flaws in their own side, but lemmy is in general an echo chamber of "left wing" and a large number cannot see their own flaws.
Seems counterintuitive, but I've had more productive arguments with conservative vs. liberal friends. By productive I mean to say, the conservative often changed his view, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, sometimes a complete reversal. In any case, they listened to my points and would reason with me. They would often shift my thoughts or, at worst, I came away understanding, if not agreeing. If one's only experience arguing a political point is online, well, your mileage will vary.
Liberals, on the other hand, often won't engage in real life arguments, at all. "This doesn't bear discussion. I'm right, you're an idiot, I'm out." Try arguing a conservative take in a room full of liberals. You're getting shouted down, and you're not getting invited back. Winning hearts and minds here guys?
Both sides are religious in their online echo chambers, ears firmly plugged, "You will toe the party line, comrade!". (Point goes to the online liberal, they're a bit more lenient.) The echo is so strong around here, posts get down voted for having the impertinence to ask a clarifying question or so much as explaining a conservative view, even if not holding it. Fuck me, I've seen dozens of buried posts, posts that only stated a single, inconvenient fact. Hell, I check the negative posts because I often find an interesting take or new thought. Watch the down votes roll on this post merely because I related positive personal experiences with conservatives. No value judgements, just stating what I've seen in real life.
(Here I'm going to ramble around a bit, hoping I can get back on track at the end...)
Funny story, I was at a house party and wandered upstairs to find my dad moderating a debate (I forget the topic) in a room full of drunk college kids. After a few minutes he called a halt. Pointing to the debaters, he said, "You're going to argue his view and you're going to take his. Switch sides." Momentarily taken aback, they wholeheartedly jumped into their new roles. I suspect dad timed that to teach me a lesson, he often said, "If you can't argue both sides, you don't know what you're talking about."
Pre-Obama, I used to be fairly conservative, thought I was anyway, listened to talk radio while delivering or eating lunch. One afternoon I realized dad would be ashamed to hear that I got all my views from one side. So I started reading CCN, that hotbed of radical-left boogeyman I had heard so much about. Let's see what these liberals have to say. Well, CNN was anything but a hotbed of whacky liberalism, even back then. Terrible journalism, yes, opinions rampant in every "news" story, but nothing like the bias I had been listening to. (And here we are, back to experiences differing in real-life arguments vs. online, or on-air as the case may be.)
About the same time, Limbaugh turned me off like a light switch, never listened to another word after snapping off my radio. A caller was relating his experience with purchasing and installing a wind turbine at his home. Rush laughed, on cue, at the silly liberal notions of clean energy. OK, that sucks, but to be expected. The caller starts talking about the expense and hassle of hooking it to the grid. Limbaugh went off, over and over again, "You mean to tell me the windmill needs power to function?! Har, har, har!" The man was only trying to explain that he wished to pump excess back into the grid, get paid, but all in all, the system was a loss for him. Rush was a very intelligent man, knew exactly what the caller was trying to say, knew if would be construed as a benefit, cut him off every time he opened his mouth to explain. Fuck you Rush.
That last anecdote seems to contradict earlier statements. I guess what I'm getting at it that conservatives are close-minded when they're in their echo chambers. Confronted with a live human being, they're mostly pleasant to argue with. Bet money that, one-on-one, Rush would have argued in good faith. When contradicted, liberals come with "tell it to the hand".
/rambling-nonsense
The Democrats are not left wing.
i put left wing in quotes for that reason. when you have two sides - republicans and democrats - then in the us the democrats are the left. However there are a large number of different issues and it is safe to say no two people agree on 100% and so dividing into two sides is wrong. Still calling the democrats left wing is often a useful simplfication even if not very insightful.