Feminism isn’t just about women.
Toxic masculinity isn’t caused just by men.
Black Lives Matter isn’t just about black lives.
“Believe women” isn’t about blindly believing what women say.
“Christian charity” is the least charitable thing in the world.
“Defund the police” and “abolish the police” aren’t about eliminating police forces and letting crime run rampant.
AI is anything but intelligent.
“Global Warming” sounds tame for what’s actually happening: “climate disruption” and “climate catastrophe”.
A bunch of countries with “communist” or “democratic” in their names are anything but.
Words are stupid. Slogans are lazy. People lie.
Which is why I like the lyrics of ‘Enjoy the Silence’ so much.
Every single line item in your comment became ammunition for foreign agents to get into our culture over the last 20 years and just escalate the FUCK out of both sides of each idea there.
It was directly from the KGB handbook written over 50 years ago, that if you infiltrate a nation’s culture and just amplify the most radical takes of both sides of every issue, it will create so much chaos and completely destabilize a culture so that people tune out and stop trusting each other or any news story they read. This has the effect of making the population just default to whatever state media they see and stop caring about social issues entirely. It’s been shocking seeing how effectively it’s played out in the US.
I watched it happen, I was on the frontlines, managing a few social sites and moderating a huge subreddit about relationships. It was a creeping infection at first, but eventually it was like Helm’s Deep, but instead of orcs outside, it was astroturfers, crybullies, sea lions, and the entire goddamn ZOO of bad-actors and subversive chuds. For every horrible, shit-mouthed incel ranting about how women need to be put in cages, there was also some delusional, insane “feminist” screaming about how all men are rapists and men should never be left alone with children.
I gave up the fight, reddit banned me for being an involved human, but it continues to this day, getting worse by the day.
The fact that our species has a glaring weakness in identifying abstract threats, while at the same time we’re developing tools capable of performing the most abstract possible attacks on our free-will and agency, makes me feel a tad uncomfy about the near term future.
while the techniques were pioneered and written down by the KGB, I’m not even saying the blame lay on Russia alone. There are a lot of forces adopting this tactic, both foreign and domestic.
The craziest part here is that the primary goal of these movements isn’t to actually achieve their objectives, but to virtue signal. If all it took to get a huge chunk of the population on your side was to change your messaging a bit, then any reasonable movement would jump at such a low hanging fruit of an opportunity to advance their cause… but they don’t. These movements would really rather sacrifice optics and stall their movements than accept some criticism and adapt.
Hmm, this is an interesting line of thought. I’ve always thought these movements are dominated by left leaning people and the left usually understands the importance of inclusive wording. So why do they use such exclusive labels?
Surely many people do try to jump at that low hanging fruit and adopt more inclusive labels. But, I guess it’s not an idea that spreads so easily? These movements must rely on people with strong feelings on specific issues and have to target them with a label they can identify with. I guess the more moderate majority would associate with other terms, but don’t have the motivation to take much action in the name of it.
I suspect that all these slogans originated in more radical far left circles where extremism and purity testing are more rampant. Meaning that the face value meaning of the slogans is the intent. As the slogans became more mainstream, the moderate left tried to damage control by introducing alternate meanings to appeal to the public. However, that hasn’t really worked out because the average person doesn’t care about the extra nuance. They’ll just see the slogan and take the face value meaning as the intention. At face value, a lot of these terms are just bad and people rightfully oppose them. Having someone try to explain to them something along the lines of “ackhsually the slogan doesn’t actually mean what it says” doesn’t sound very convincing. Bad optics is a really a big problem on the left, and the crazy thing is that there’s a good chunk of the left that sees no issue with it.
Feminism isn’t just about women.
Toxic masculinity isn’t caused just by men.
Black Lives Matter isn’t just about black lives.
“Believe women” isn’t about blindly believing what women say. “Christian charity” is the least charitable thing in the world.
“Defund the police” and “abolish the police” aren’t about eliminating police forces and letting crime run rampant.
AI is anything but intelligent.
“Global Warming” sounds tame for what’s actually happening: “climate disruption” and “climate catastrophe”. A bunch of countries with “communist” or “democratic” in their names are anything but.
Words are stupid. Slogans are lazy. People lie.
Which is why I like the lyrics of ‘Enjoy the Silence’ so much.
Every single line item in your comment became ammunition for foreign agents to get into our culture over the last 20 years and just escalate the FUCK out of both sides of each idea there.
It was directly from the KGB handbook written over 50 years ago, that if you infiltrate a nation’s culture and just amplify the most radical takes of both sides of every issue, it will create so much chaos and completely destabilize a culture so that people tune out and stop trusting each other or any news story they read. This has the effect of making the population just default to whatever state media they see and stop caring about social issues entirely. It’s been shocking seeing how effectively it’s played out in the US.
I watched it happen, I was on the frontlines, managing a few social sites and moderating a huge subreddit about relationships. It was a creeping infection at first, but eventually it was like Helm’s Deep, but instead of orcs outside, it was astroturfers, crybullies, sea lions, and the entire goddamn ZOO of bad-actors and subversive chuds. For every horrible, shit-mouthed incel ranting about how women need to be put in cages, there was also some delusional, insane “feminist” screaming about how all men are rapists and men should never be left alone with children.
I gave up the fight, reddit banned me for being an involved human, but it continues to this day, getting worse by the day.
I watched it happen because I saw it happening and read the (too few) news reports that pointed out that it was indeed happening.
But it’s like climate change. It seems to go in one ear and out the other for the vast majority of the population.
The fact that our species has a glaring weakness in identifying abstract threats, while at the same time we’re developing tools capable of performing the most abstract possible attacks on our free-will and agency, makes me feel a tad uncomfy about the near term future.
Well as long as you’ve correctly identified the KGB and Russia Russia Russia, your job is done.
You don’t have to be Russia to use KGB handbooks anymore
I hate the Kremlin so much. I hope the whole russia will crumble and disappear.
while the techniques were pioneered and written down by the KGB, I’m not even saying the blame lay on Russia alone. There are a lot of forces adopting this tactic, both foreign and domestic.
Wait 'til you learn about Twitter.
The craziest part here is that the primary goal of these movements isn’t to actually achieve their objectives, but to virtue signal. If all it took to get a huge chunk of the population on your side was to change your messaging a bit, then any reasonable movement would jump at such a low hanging fruit of an opportunity to advance their cause… but they don’t. These movements would really rather sacrifice optics and stall their movements than accept some criticism and adapt.
Hmm, this is an interesting line of thought. I’ve always thought these movements are dominated by left leaning people and the left usually understands the importance of inclusive wording. So why do they use such exclusive labels?
Surely many people do try to jump at that low hanging fruit and adopt more inclusive labels. But, I guess it’s not an idea that spreads so easily? These movements must rely on people with strong feelings on specific issues and have to target them with a label they can identify with. I guess the more moderate majority would associate with other terms, but don’t have the motivation to take much action in the name of it.
I suspect that all these slogans originated in more radical far left circles where extremism and purity testing are more rampant. Meaning that the face value meaning of the slogans is the intent. As the slogans became more mainstream, the moderate left tried to damage control by introducing alternate meanings to appeal to the public. However, that hasn’t really worked out because the average person doesn’t care about the extra nuance. They’ll just see the slogan and take the face value meaning as the intention. At face value, a lot of these terms are just bad and people rightfully oppose them. Having someone try to explain to them something along the lines of “ackhsually the slogan doesn’t actually mean what it says” doesn’t sound very convincing. Bad optics is a really a big problem on the left, and the crazy thing is that there’s a good chunk of the left that sees no issue with it.
Mottes aren’t actually baileys