My Mom's favorite internet people are idiots
I know this isn't a unique problem, but my Mom is fairly smart about some stuff, but she's also a Boomer Prepper. Something about the Cuban Missile Crisis broke her brain, and she, along with tons of other Boomer-era preppers stockpile bullets and buckets of dried eggs, desperate for something to happen so they can have an excuse to sit on their porch and pop some shots off at anyone they don't like.
I recently learned that my Mom's favorite internet forum is one called TB2K - DDG search for it and you'll find it. She claims to like it for the homesteading tips on things like canning.
Everyone on there is a genuine idiot. Their predictions are always as wrong as could be - as it evidenced by the forum being based on end of the world stuff around the Y2K bug. Their motto should be "Consistently wrong in public for 26 years!"
Their analysis of geopolitics and US politics is worse than nothing at all. They're into the categorically dumbest conspiracy theories, and love them. They are proud racists, many seem to be die-hard maga fools, and would sell their own kids if it would mean Hillary Clinton stubbed her toe. Every one a "good christian" that glorifies violence and death. It's not even the worst cesspool of humanity online. It's a self-selected collection of idiots propping each other up. And then 2 or 3 threads about seed storage that are OK.
I can't find the user, but, I swear to you that, according to my Mom, the most accurate person on the whole site is an Irish lady that gets a hankerin' for corn before a big earthquake. So, maybe she's on Lemmy, too - has anyone correlated corn memes and earthquakes?
Anyway, it's stupid and dumb and I needed to vent. Thanks for reading.
32 replies
Yep. My parents are the same way. My mom probably gets her news digest from Adolf1488 and my dad only watches videos about how men’s problems are all caused by women, and certainly not themselves.
Oh, the Irish lady apparently just says "I'm eating popcorn! Lookout somewhere on earth!" It's a brilliant play - earthquakes are common.
I have a friend who joined a forum like that. She left after she started a thread asking for tips organizing community gardening/farming and people were like why the hell are you asking us?
Yeah the moment she introduced the possibility of community and not just hyper individualised eschatological fetishism, she outed herself as someone who was open to solutions and not just constant problematisation.
I saw a video made by someone who's mother had fallen down the Qanon rabbit hole, and something that was very effective at getting her to chill out a bit was making a note of all the predictions, and bringing them up when they didn't come true.
I wonder if something similar would work here? Make a note of all these predictions, and remind her of them after they don't happen.
Yeah, she's aware is the thing, and rationally knows it's a lot of misses. Then....emotions take over and suddenly she's down her own rabbit hole. I've touched around this before... eh. 40% of the time, it works ever time.
Do you think that would work with blueanon lemmings? Right now they're claiming Russia created a super-virus that escaped containment but is covering the whole thing up.
My experience suggests they literally do not care, its like boomers with AI slop validating their views; they genuinely don't care whether its true, it simply feels good to them.
Yeah so this is like screaming "I am a moron! Nothing I could ever possibly say should be taken seriously!"
Also I'm on this platform a lot. No one is saying that but I suspect you know you're lying.
First result when I search "virus", You are free to scroll the comments, but once again, this will do nothing to change your view because you don't care if its true or not.
the thread that has comments like this one:
yeah, totally full of conspiracy nuts...just checking: have you taken your meds recently?
That's obviously not one of the comments I am referring to.
checked the top 10 or so comments, 0 hits. below that they're at <20 votes.
what the fuck ARE you referring to?
I told you what I'm talking about; the comments in the thread talking about bio weapons and wider outbreaks.
Newsflash: people make idiotic comments on the Internet. You'd know nothing about that. That thread definitely proves conclusively that there's an epidemic of conspiracy wack jobs with no brainpower whatsoever except to blindly VoTe BlUe.
Now that you pointed this out I've no choice but to vote for Russian asset Jill Stein
What?
I mean, that's the result of someone's wars and policies over the last year or two. People should plant gardens and raise chickens anywhere all the time, not only because times are getting bad.
The website you mentioned is full of idiots for sure, and I would normally say that prepping is also pretty dumb. But given the current oil and gas crisis/fertilizer shortage, super el-nino, climate change, the depletion of the ogalla aquifer, and all the other droughts across the US. It's likely that there will be wide spread food and energy scarcity within the next 10 years.
I think stockpiling food is smart move right now. Not in the sense that you should dig a bunker to fill up, but my family have stocked up a 3 month supply in case of emergency. Its mostly just extra staples we already eat, we rotate the stock as we normally eat through those goods in our day to day.
I honestly hope we're just being paranoid about things, but I'd rather be safe than sorry. Plus it doesn't really cost us much to be prepared. A few 50lb bags of rice and beans can sustain a person for quite a while and costs less than $100
The way Americans do preppring is dumb. You can't eat bullets or plant and harvest MREs. The best prepping for the apocalypse people can do is be politically active and live on a commune.
I agree with you for the most part, but what I'm saying is having 2-3 months extra of your regular foodstuffs is just good preparedness I don't have cases full of MREs, I have a shelf in my basement that has some canned goods, dry beans, rice, quinoa, and other assorted shelf stable foods. It's all stuff we regularly eat anyways . Forget about all the end of the world nonsense; natural disasters happen, wars happen, droughts and famines happen. Yes be politically active, and build community support groups. But it also never hurts to be prepared for an emergency.
Oh, for sure. And I don't mean to shit on preppers - I would consider myself a prepper to some degree as well, it just frustrates me how poorly most Americans prep.
I had to teach my mom how to raise chickens and garden. We've always had horses, and my parents' plan if SHTF, is to just "ride off into the mountains." They're 80 and my dad is morbidly obese. His horse is so old, they're on the verge of having it put down all the time. It's delusional, but they honestly think they're killing it.
Try cooking some of your beans sometime. You'll need a pressure cooker if they're real old.
yeah having a full larder. heck I try to make sure I have enough in case one of the crazy bad freak winter storms makes doing things next ot impossible for a period. bunker prepper level. nope. if it gets to that it don't matter what you did. to prep for that level I just need a bottle of the appropriate pills.
Beans get pretty tough to cook after a year.