Qanon, conspiracy theories, and the Fairness Doctrine

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

It's frustrating. I literally just use it to network, look at job postings, follow companies i might be interested in working for. I don't mind linked articles to news about politics, but these people are just sharing the same stale partisan Q memes and acting like it's the same as someone posting a link to an economist article.

They're all supposedly "free thinkers" yet they all parrot the same little stupid slogans and insults. I can honestly say I don't think I've ever seen a more sheep-like, boring, intellectually stunted group of people, and this is coming from someone who grew up in the evangelical south

Is it still useful for job-hunting? It helped me get my current job.

I think it's *really* dumb that those people are using it to spread their idiotic political "thought" but I guess if they were smart enough to have discretion about that they wouldn't believe that dumb stuff in the first place.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

Is it still useful for job-hunting? It helped me get my current job.

I think it's *really* dumb that those people are using it to spread their idiotic political "thought" but I guess if they were smart enough to have discretion about that they wouldn't believe that dumb stuff in the first place.

I find it useful. I found out about some cool companies hiring for positions related to my experience and qualifications, and I don't know if I would have found them otherwise. I sometimes find companies on there that aren't hiring, but for whom I might like to work some day, and I will go through and connect with people in those companies. In some cases when they weren't hiring, they still took my resume and said they would add it to their candidates if a position opened up. A longshot, but I like to get my name and experience out there anyway if it is a company I really like. Like I recently sent my resume to Moog Music. Their turnover is low, but this way I hope I at least put myself on their radar for future reference. It never would've occurred to me to look there if I didn't see them posting other positions on linkedin. Their HR department actually responded to me and thanked me for sharing my experience and qualifications. They probably tell anyone this, but it was nice to hear back and know they at least took some interest in my resume. It was a slight confidence booster and felt good because I have been dealing with extremely low self esteem for a while.

 

[ceecee]

Is it still useful for job-hunting? It helped me get my current job.

I think it's *really* dumb that those people are using it to spread their idiotic political "thought" but I guess if they were smart enough to have discretion about that they wouldn't believe that dumb stuff in the first place.

I have a profile there I barely look at. My husband got a message the other day from someone he use to work with - it appeared to be a congrats for a promotion he got but it had two videos of a woman screaming about "groomers" and "Don't Say Gay" that this person just wanted to share I guess. Normally it would be a block and move on situation but this person my husband use to work with is a VP for a large insurance company. What do you do with that? They are all total slack jawed sheep - they all parrot the identical bullshit and right wing talking points . Unfortunately many of them are running corporations and are part of govt. at every level.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

I have a profile there I barely look at. My husband got a message the other day from someone he use to work with - it appeared to be a congrats for a promotion he got but it had two videos of a woman screaming about "groomers" and "Don't Say Gay" that this person just wanted to share I guess. Normally it would be a block and move on situation but this person my husband use to work with is a VP for a large insurance company. What do you do with that? They are all total slack jawed sheep - they all parrot the identical bullshit and right wing talking points . Unfortunately many of them are running corporations and are part of govt. at every level.

That is the problem. A lot of the people on there posting this shit are legitimate businesspeople who originally signed up to network like everyone else. I have started simply responding to these posts requesting citations and sources, or asking why propaganda memes are being shared on a business networking site. I don't give two shits if they're CEOs of fortune 500 companies, all the better when I call them out their logic in front of everyone else. Fuck them. Fuck them when they know most of their employees are probably on there and wouldn't dare to question or debate such posts. These people act like they're silenced and yet they're the loudest. They intimidate or scare others off, and then it seems like they have strength in numbers because they are usually the only people responding to one another and resharing these posts. I feel bad for some employee at one of those companies who wants to be connected to their boss and potential hirers and have to wade through this shit with no real ability to respond or call BS on them unless they want a big target on their backs at their jobs.

No one is silencing these chucklefucks, that's the big, sad irony. Talk to me when you've had to watch and self-censor your every social media post out of fear that your HR manager might be browsing your social media accounts. Normally I ingore this sort of stuff on social media but I delight in knocking these big shot guys down a peg on a public website in front of any of their connected employees. Their egos deserve a little bruising. They don't get called out and assume it's because they're brilliant and undebatable when really people either think they're assholes or are afraid to say anything. (plus it always feels good making some ExTJ eat their words or stumble about trying to save face.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

this one chucklefuck with some job for Wells Fargo responded to a request for sources with "i could tell you more but you probably wouldn't believe it. you will just have to research and find the truth yourself." Why is it always this backtracking when you ask for actual info? Do your homework for you? No, fuck you, the burden of proof lies on the person making the claim.

 

[Z Buck McFate]

Can Fox News viewers be deprogrammed? Paying them to watch CNN makes them less gullible​

It's Salon, but here's the actual study theyre referencing.

This is why we need something akin to the Fairness Doctrine.

 

[Z Buck McFate]

this one chucklefuck with some job for Wells Fargo responded to a request for sources with "i could tell you more but you probably wouldn't believe it. you will just have to research and find the truth yourself." Why is it always this backtracking when you ask for actual info? Do your homework for you? No, fuck you, the burden of proof lies on the person making the claim.

"Do your own research" is the new (albeit far more pernicious) "She lives in Niagra Falls." There's hardly anything a person could say to confirm they have no understanding of whatever they're arguing and/or no appreciation of what "knowledge" actually is (that it's a reality-based understanding of something outside the self, which exists outside of anyone's willpower).

 

[Lexicon]

Welp, this cute little postcard showed up in my mail last week:

-QR CODES & LINKS REMOVED-

I didn’t follow any links on this postcard, & I don’t advise anyone else to, either. Someone on the NH subreddit took screenshots of the link’s destination & posted the 25 page monstrosity to imgur, if anyone cares to read.

I got about halfway through. If David Lynch were a Q-bot, I think he’d toss up a word salad like this.

Link:

https://imgur.com/a/n2PBw9G

In all seriousness, I strongly suspect a vulnerable person in need of mental health treatment is behind this/got sucked into all this nonsense. There are some pretty clear signs of paranoia, delusions, disturbances in thought /word processing, etc.


I was not alone in receiving the card:

Qanon mailer sent to households across New Hampshire

The postcard, which contains photos of celebrities ranging from Johnny Depp to Jim Gaffigan, includes false statements and claims the “world will end” on Good Friday.

www.nhpr.org

 

[FemMecha]

Complete transcripts for the Keith Raniere NXIVM trial

https://www.reddit.com/r/theNXIVMcase/comments/kcict6

In Lauren Salzman's testimony she kept a girl named Danielle locked in her room for 18 months on Raniere's orders with nothing but a cot on the floor and paper and pencil to write letters to Raniere.

The Dead Women of NXIVM

Was Keith Raniere a murderer as well as a tax evader and child rapist?Keith Raniere via the New York Post Entrepreneur, self-help guru and cult leader Keith Raniere was sentenced to 120 years in prison in October 2020. The charges against him included racketeering, attempted sex trafficking...

www.truecrimeedition.com

Article about women who became antagonistic towards the cult and went missing, "committed suicide" or lived with Raniere, ate his personally administered "do-do balls", had hair tested for high levels of Barium and Bismuth, and then died of cancer. Oh, and he was the executor of their wills and then charged $328,000 on one's credit card because he knows the meaning of life and shit.

I just saw a blogger attempting an open-minded interview with Nicki, one of his lady-thugs. This is a real sadistic psychopath. It scares me when I see people being so naive.

At minute 7:00 in this video he says, "I've had people killed because of my beliefs, and because of their beliefs, and because of things that I've said, and I'm mindful of that."

 

[FemMecha]

What I've noticed about cults and conspiracy extremists is that the most seductive allure of the process is how hard they stroke the ego. They make the person feel superior to "Other" by being the insider, holding special knowledge, being smarter, more able to discern, and everyone else is brainwashed, sheeple, stupid, unwashed masses. This is the hook they use as a guise to completely dominating the person's brain.

This is why they can't get out. You have to accept a paradigm shift from being especially insightful, knowing all the secrets, being superior to all the masses of "brainwashed stupid people" and accept oneself to be a hoodwinked twat. It is difficult to make that transition. I've done it a couple of times and yeah, it kinda hurts for the rest of your life to know how stupid and gullible oneself can actually be.

 

[Z Buck McFate]

I watched the latest three episodes (this season, thus far) of The Vow last night. The focus is a bit different. Last season it was all about the path of those who were trying to get out - including Catherine Oxenberg's attempts to get her daughter out - lumping the people who wanted out as soon as they saw what was happening together vs everyone else (the enablers and the leader). But this season they're delving into the enablers' points of view.

The reason for staying seems to run the gamut, although I'd say that^ assessment seems spot on for Nicki and Allison so far.

 

[ceecee]

What I've noticed about cults and conspiracy extremists is that the most seductive allure of the process is how hard they stroke the ego. They make the person feel superior to "Other" by being the insider, holding special knowledge, being smarter, more able to discern, and everyone else is brainwashed, sheeple, stupid, unwashed masses. This is the hook they use as a guise to completely dominating the person's brain.

This is why they can't get out. You have to accept a paradigm shift from being especially insightful, knowing all the secrets, being superior to all the masses of "brainwashed stupid people" and accept oneself to be a hoodwinked twat. It is difficult to make that transition. I've done it a couple of times and yeah, it kinda hurts for the rest of your life to know how stupid and gullible oneself can actually be.

Here's another example; There were 1,542 news stories about “rainbow fentanyl” in the two months before Halloween, most warning that dealers could slip this drug to trick-or-treating kids.
There hasn’t been a single story today confirming this happened anywhere in the U.S. And there won't be because it's a right wing fantasy that feeds into their "crime!" narrative.

I really do believe that for many people, it's not about being "gullible". It's about wanting to be fooled or scammed or taken advantage of. Why? Because to them it shows there is someone responsible or in control of the ills they see vs vast socioeconomic factors of capital against which there is no evident recourse. And to be a mark is to give yourself over to the pleasure of never having to think - I honestly feel that might be the core motivation for cults like NXIVI or Qanon or any other cult or dangerous and destructive person or group. Life can be hard - why not allow yourself to shed the burdens of responsibility when presented with the option?

 

[FemMecha]

I saw an episode of “The Vow” and noticed that Raniere looks at everyone like they are giving him an orgasm. It’s the secret to his power.

Instead of “bitchy resting face” he has “orgasm resting face”.

 

[FemMecha]

The free speech question is difficult. I'm not on the alternate sites like Parlor, but I have seen posts on FB by people who frequent those sites and they are emboldened to post really sadistic memes. I was going to show an example, but it makes me too sick. I reported an ex's FB meme as hate speech against the disabled.

I think a level of sadism is being normalized on those alternate sites. It is going to make that segment of the population more dangerous. It is well established even in domestic abuse that dehumanizing speech precedes physical violence. It's how people acclimate themselves to it. What is the answer? I feel like the U.S. is on a crazy train and the bridge is out ten miles ahead and there is no stopping it.

 

[Z Buck McFate]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1626404202208546818

 

[ceecee]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1626404202208546818

View attachment 28435

This is all fine and well but nothing substantial will come of it. Fox could be fined into oblivion, it isn't going to stop anything. Unless they start attaching jail time to it.

 

[Z Buck McFate]

This is all fine and well but nothing substantial will come of it. Fox could be fined into oblivion, it isn't going to stop anything. Unless they start attaching jail time to it.

It's just really amazing how something like this can come to light - not allegations, but solid proof these shitheads knew they were lying - and it'll still get dismissed as "fake news."

It's absolutely stunning what one man can do to an entire nation's understanding of what's true. I realize it wouldn't have happened in a healthier system, but still, that particular shit stain of a human being personally made the problem exponentially bigger.

 

[ygolo]

I think there are forms of beliefs that are difficult to handle.

1) Pay-off beliefs where pay-offs or costs are essentially infinite have a whole category of them. Pascal's wager is the classic, easy to see-through version. But I think some conspiracy theorists value 'proving the whole system wrong' essentially infinitely. So no matter how unlikely the conspiracy theory, exposing it to 'sheeple' is always worth it for them.
2) Using as premise that I should do X, where X is a very concrete action. Then all the reasoning people would do is turned backwards to reach beliefs that would best support the action of doing X. Conspiracy theories of this sort essentially support doing a particular thing the theorists find comforting. Soothing actions essentially gets supported by a tin-foil-hat beliefs.

 

[ceecee]

The free speech question is difficult. I'm not on the alternate sites like Parlor, but I have seen posts on FB by people who frequent those sites and they are emboldened to post really sadistic memes. I was going to show an example, but it makes me too sick. I reported an ex's FB meme as hate speech against the disabled.

I think a level of sadism is being normalized on those alternate sites. It is going to make that segment of the population more dangerous. It is well established even in domestic abuse that dehumanizing speech precedes physical violence. It's how people acclimate themselves to it. What is the answer? I feel like the U.S. is on a crazy train and the bridge is out ten miles ahead and there is no stopping it.

When you understand that the people most vocal about free speech only believe it in for themselves, they are much easier to understand (Elon Musk banning journalist en mass from Twitter for example). They aren't interested in a free press, freedom of thought and idea or freedom at all.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

When you understand that the people most vocal about free speech only believe it in for themselves, they are much easier to understand (Elon Musk banning journalist en mass from Twitter for example). They aren't interested in a free press, freedom of thought and idea or freedom at all.

Well, a lot of the right is only interested in something when it applies to themselves, I've noticed.