I was referring to closely guarding shit online mostly. In real life it’s just kind of absurd.

Ah yes, online, where you can keep everything closely guarded…

What are you even talking about? Keeping something “closely guarded” online is perhaps more absurd than trying to do so in real life, where at least the people had to show up physically.

Any popular libertarian movement is destined to be co-opted by larger groups if it’s not closely guarded, and libertarians suck at being exclusive to ideas.

Ya dont say.gif

Who would’ve thought that “rugged individualism” doesn’t scale well, and that collectivism of any sort in politics (a fucking popularity contest with real world stakes) will obviously trounce individualism politically? /s

“If not closely guarded”? What does that even look like? A tiny political party destined to get 0.25% of the vote? Politics is a numbers game, it’s not your favorite indie band, or a recipe handed down from your grandma.

It reminds me of political posturing on other issues, like everyone says they believe the climate scientists but they sure as fuck ain’t acting like it.

Here too it really seems like those sounding the alarm aren’t alarmists at all. Trump is a fascist. But everyone’s still pretending like it’s completely fine to lose to him.

We did it everyone!

One of his better nuggets for this crowd is his suggestion that they “take the guns away first and do [sic] process later”.

What, pray tell, do you expect from online denizens in general? We aren’t generally on here to organize a revolution or counterrevolution, we’re on here to kill thirty minutes on break from work.

And you’re on here too. If this shit is so important why are you here on memeville posting it up instead of actually doing anything about it?

At what point do Americans use that 2nd Amendment against tyranny as it was intended? Or is that difficult because the wrong party and classes have most of the guns?

People advocating for leftists to go out into the streets with firearms forget recent history:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killings_of_Aaron_Danielson_and_Michael_Reinoehl

The supreme court just made this type of thing entirely legal as well. Not that it mattered. I have to Google the incident everytime because it didn’t even register as a blip on the national radar, but the feds likely executed this guy.

I unfortunately don’t know what the answer is or if there even is one, but this country historically and certainly recently doesn’t take kindly to armed leftists.

Humans are not the problem, capitalism is the problem.

Oh yes, that magical system that was created by ghosts or ghouls or something other than a human.

Humans are the problem and have always been the problem. Hell, we even invented the word problem to describe all of the problems we have, and cause!

It’s funny how similar AI generated images are to accompanying drawings for “what are ten things that are wrong with this picture?” style questions in an IQ test.

In general, the “debates” have always been a nationally televised pissing contest for as long as I’ve watched them.

I’ve never seen a debate where the moderators did a fact check.

During the one Obama Romney debate I remember Obama asking for a live fact check of some sort and getting it. So it’s happened before.

This guy did the math…incorrectly.

Time to bone up on your fractions again bud.

Yeah I’ll remain ignorant because I didn’t read some poorly composed wall of text written by some random stranger on the Internet.

You know what? You’re right after all. This is a great community. I can feel the sense of belonging already. 😆

I ain’t reading all that.

The top plop of shit is just as indistinguishable from the rest of the shit, it was just plopped more recently.

That seems like the problem and what’s creating the perception making you agree with this.

No, you just personalize everything.

Again, I’m not making up the statistics. I’m not writing the books or doing the analysis. People who spend their whole career doing this stuff are doing it, and you find it easy to dismiss all of it because you agree with the “criticisms” section of a wikipedia page, have a confirmation bias, and you like the little tech bubble you live in…so it must not be a problem overall if it doesn’t affect you personally.

I put myself as a top plop on the pile, friendo.

I’m convinced I’m pretty immune to being sucked into a cult, but aside from that I consider myself about as stupid as your average people.

EDIT: I also don’t think of us as “sheep” or “glassy-eyed automatons”. I think we, as a species, are a different type of stupid. We spend most of our lives deluding ourselves into thinking that we’re somehow above (or the winners of) the natural order. We spend enough time in denial to buy a second home there. Our true nature isn’t all that much different from a monkey picking flies off of its shoulders in the jungle…just with more zoom calls.

Mass media has been pivotal in expanding and inflating the reputations of larger-than-life individuals (real and imagined).

I mean people belong to cults. I don’t think they joined because of the news (which doesn’t even cover them). People are idiots.

Its strange to see the American right

I’d agree full stop right there. They’re a strange beast. In a way it’s possible (though not something I’d bother with) to feel somewhat sorry for them…what with them being so anti-immigration in a country teeming with nothing but immigrants.

I’m sorry you’re struggling with loneliness, personally I’m definitely not and I can’t say I know anyone who is.

It has nothing to do with me personally. I’m a bit of a hermit myself. I’d say my social needs started to not be met around 2022 (after approximately 2 years of near total isolation due to COVID) but now I’m completely back up to baseline again.

It has to do with the country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone.

The data also doesn’t tell the story you’re telling anecdotally here: https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2024-06-26/loneliness-most-prevalent-for-bisexual-transgender-adults-in-america-cdc-research-says

Yes, it’s possible for people in marginalized communities to reach each other digitally using the Internet; it’s also possible for them to encounter more hatred and bigotry online than they used to in real life (albeit with hopefully less dire consequences).

Sounds like we’re just measuring mental health awareness, plus the rise in boomers using the web and often exposing people to their alienating rhetoric.

I don’t think I’m “just measuring” anything. If you want to plug your ears and pretend that I’m not talking about real problems, that’s all fine and dandy. Go ahead about your day and enjoy your dating apps, but social media isn’t all roses.

There is research indicating that, for one thing, these platforms cause real harm to girls in adolescence specifically: https://www.noemamag.com/social-media-messed-up-our-kids-now-it-is-making-us-ungovernable/

Reagan wasn’t hit by Iran Contra until '87, and it nearly sank the Bush '88 campaign for President.

My apologies for getting the timelines slightly mixed up. In my defense I was 4 at the time. However, Bush winning in '88 despite being neck deep in an administration full of openly admitted liars doesn’t exactly bode well for your argument that US voters aren’t pretty A-OK with corruption.

The idea of a single all-power Ubermensch Superman isn’t a socialist view.

Nah, it’s a human one, and one that’s extremely common in the US despite our governmental structure all but guaranteeing that one guy alone can’t fix things.

We love simple power structures, because we’re simple beings. It’s also why I think there is more to horseshoe theory than people want to admit. Communists claim to want gay space communism but seem A-OK with some stupid asshole being basically a dictator as long as its their type of stupid asshole.

Once we formed up larger civilized order, it took us millennia to conceive of a different type of governance aside from “what one stupid asshole says goes”.

Time and again, large cooperative campaigns of mutual aid provide better outcomes than the public putting all our hopes on a handful of aristocratic elites.

I somewhat agree? I think? But I’m not sure it has much to do with anything we’re discussing.