This and other events are the source of the tech joke that AI stands for “Actually Indians”

There’s a type of dude who was a teen during Bush 2 and pins that time in his life as being a leftist because he hated Bush but it’s actually because he was just contrarian teenage boy who didn’t like someone telling him what to do. Guys like this are so politically and culturally irrelevant that they aren’t even worth engaging with. It’s always the dumbest guy you know from growing up who didn’t ever pay attention in class who now says things like “they shoulda taught us taxes instead of algebra!”

Plus influence operations are engaging with and creating memetic content to create the perception of mass movements — not writing 25 paragraph essays about Marxism.

I know we are all onto the whole “cops are publicly subsidized paramilitary who act on behalf of capital” beat but I’m genuinely shocked that stuff like killology training hasn’t made it obvious to more libs

Appealing to norms and traditions in a post-truth fascist society is something alright

As much as I love a good shitpost it may be time to bring sincere-posting to the forefront as an counterprogramming strategy given that the challenge of determining terminally online weirdo v. shitposter is becoming more and more of an impossible task.

And don’t forget to leave the Palestinian flags at home! We can protest that later on I promise!

There’s a weird phenomenon I have seen on the fediverse where posters complain about people responding to them with (usually minor) criticism as if their posts are personal property or something. It’s very bizarre behavior. If you’re throwing your opinion out into the void, others can and will respond. Often any pushback must mean you’re either MAGA or a foreign spy to these posters.

And it’s not like replies are always debate attempts either. Often when I respond to something it’s because I want the next guy thumbing through the thread to see a rebuttal or re-contextualization of the conversation because I know how much my view of the world has been influenced by random comments on the internet.

Personally I think lemmy is really cool and reminds me of a less shitty internet where there is more than a single allowed opinion per site/subreddit/platform. The calls for defederation just perpetuates the shitty internet we have now imo.

The escalation coming was obvious because pigs gonna pig but you gotta imagine the fever pitch of “more angry than scared” is coming soon. Stay safe out there friends

Genuinely that may do it. So much of the American ethos is being able to say whatever you want about whatever you want.

I grew up evangelical so I was just kinda raised to be that way. I fell into the Peterson self-help stuff as a 19 year old with no direction and some of his misogynistic stuff just echoed what I was raised with so I took it at face value. His vitriol towards trans people was what turned me off to him and the whole alt-right as a whole.

I had a trans coworker/friend in high school and the way he was treated in our town was horrific. I was a “I disagree with your lifestyle but I defend your right to do it”-type teenage boy. My politics could be summed up as “leave me alone” like a lot of young men and no one would just leave him alone. That was probably the catalyst for me not being a chud. It was all just too mean for no reason. I ran into him a couple years back and he is married and very happy.

I was raised to treat people with love and empathy and I really internalized all of that. So when I came of age and had to deal with the disconnect I chose my values of love and empathy over dogma. From there it was very easy to shift left. Solidarity with all marginalized people goes hand in hand with love and empathy.

I have known more than a few Hindutva guys who were deprogrammed through experiencing minority status in the southern US.

Hindu nationalism is interesting though, I think there is something to be said about how it can form a syncretic system with west coast liberalism despite holding opposed beliefs.