Not the first totalitarian government people have felt like that about…
I break things. Then I put them back together. Then I break them again. Just to show I mean business.
Not the first totalitarian government people have felt like that about…
They develop IC on iPhones?!!
“The whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret!”
“status quo”
Compare how and why people cheer for sports teams. If you’re affiliated you will support any statement in favor of the team, while ignoring, suppressing, or attacking any statements to the contrary.
You won’t debate a Trump troll out of supporting Trump, because it’s about belonging to a group and showing loyalty regardless of facts. Honestly I’m not surprised he’s doing so well, consider how techy most of us are and still get overwhelmed by what the Internet is shaping up to be. If you’re in your 50’s from a poor rural area, what chance have you got to stand against weaponized online propaganda?
We are all like this, by the way. The inclination to blind affiliation with groups is the result of very deep, very old, very well studied cognitive structures and behaviors.
Here’s some introductory reading that might fundamentally change how you perceive people’s participation in groups:
https://thedecisionlab.com/reference-guide/sociology/conformity
Sherif’s autokinetic experiment - if enough people around you believe something, you’ll soon believe it too
https://www.simplypsychology.org/asch-conformity.html
A similar experiment performed by Solomon Asch
https://www.simplypsychology.org/robbers-cave.html
The Robber’s Cave experiment - arbitrarily divide a group into two, and watch the inevitable descent into inter-group conflict (hopeful note: if you make the groups try to overcome a common obstacle, fighting goes away)
Leon Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance Tests - This is an interesting one as well, here’s the idea:
Experiment: Infiltrating a doomsday cult before, during, and after the date of their supposed apocalypse, Festinger and his fellow scientists noted that instead of losing faith, members doubled-down on their beliefs after the ‘end times’ came and went — eventually believing that their work saved the world.
Conclusion: When we have two (or more) incompatible thoughts, we adjust them to minimize internal conflict, what Festinger called ‘cognitive dissonance’ — a term that explains the mind state of those unwilling to accept information that conflicts against their belief.
“The Greeks were a bunch of woke gays anyway, good riddance” is what a Republican might say if they knew the Greeks invented democracy.
The concept of AI weaponized mass propaganda on social media makes it less mysterious.
Not a film, but I read Cormac McCarthys The Road at 25, and it threw me into a deep depression from which I never fully recovered.
Watching Alien at any age is a borderline traumatic event.
Gremlins. Still freaks me out.
This has been bothering me too for some time.
Kill the beast while it’s weak.
MRGA, fuck yeah
Literally siding with Russia against the American people… After all those wars against communism, this is where we wound up.
The official sponsor of this election is Russia.
Yeah API shit was the final straw, but it was a long time coming. Honestly I’d switch way sooner had there been any alternative. I and a lot of other people tried, but nothing ever really took off even though the systems were there.
It’s about adoption, but mainstream adoption is also what kills a site like this.
Yeah, us communists are all the same, just repetitive propagandistic slogans and dumb soundbites led by an uncharismatic moron telling us what to do.
Go build a wall, or bridge or whatever.
Edit: Wait, wait, you weren’t being sarcastic? If so my bad.
You hit the nail on the head.
Druggies may steal from you, but gamblers ruin the lives of everyone around them.
Funny you should say that by the way, and horrifyingly sad, but two Russians drove my friend to his mother’s home in the middle of the night, shoved her in the car with her son, then was told to pay $10K (which was pure interest at that time) for her son’s life. She did. A couple of weeks later he was dead, drowned about a hundred yards away his childhood home.
There was never ever ever ever any reasoning with him. The sheer number of girls he hustled, and by god the money they “gave” him, they were all permanently psychologically damaged after their encounters. Actually a very insane story. He was an amazing guy, literally everybody loved him. He walked into a room, a bar, a subway car… He dominated it instantly, like the lone hero out of some Western movie.
Sorry, I wax sentimental.
RIP Joni.
E: he actually came to me in those weeks leading up to his death and asked me, “if it was a matter of life and death, would you borrow me $10K?”, and I answered, “No, because you’d be back next week asking for the same thing, and one day I’d say no and then you’d die anyway”. We were always sarcastic and fuck you towards one another but like brothers you know. I didn’t understand it at the time, but he was literally asking me to save his life. In hindsight, I don’t know how to feel about it, because I was 100% right, yet, what kind of human wouldn’t do anything to save their friend’s life?
Fuck this woke some feels, sorry for ranting.
Let’s not give this absolute nobody media space please…