…whether it was by a cult, by propaganda, by an algorithm, etc…
And did the person ever recover from it?
“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”
Its all good, man
It Is What It Is
Ok Yogi
And it ain’t what it ain’t.
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.
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.”
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.
Maybe not the worst but the most recent one is my father in law. You know the type: baby boomer who had every advantage growing up but didn’t avail himself but still managed to eke out a comfortable life while working at the business his dad started and he inherited. He doesn’t take in the bucks but it allows him and my mil to own a comfortable home in an area that is only going up in value. Anyway…
As you can imagine super religious, super right wing, trump loving, gay hating (has a gay brother that he’s estranged from), you know… the usual. What gets me is remember trump did an interview a week or two ago where he said that all federal employees are “crooked and dishonest and must be held accountable”? He couldn’t agree more! Guess who my wife (his daughter) and I work for? Yeah…
Have you tried being less of a crooked, dishonest Deep State?
Magats
Does dehumanizing them help?
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.
The Goebbels speech for total war:
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.
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.
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.
Yeah these things sound awful. Thanks for the pointers.
Happened recently actually.
TW: Talks of SA, Maga
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.
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.
Guy who is extremely good at manipulating people ends up manipulating like 6 or more … to do all the requests he has.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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’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.
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.
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
