Friend Infected With Right Wing Brain Worms - What to Do?

It’s basically Gamergate 2

From what I can tell, anyway

Lovely. Sigh.

it is absolutely a personal decision to make. personally i have enough problems in my life and i don't need "friends" who are continually spewing toxic bullshit, whether it's openly or on a passive aggressive level. i'm not equivocating here, but i haven't found this to be a specifically right-wing problem. leftists who spend most of their time, in 2018, complaining about how terrible hillary clinton is will get the chopping block just as surely as anybody who uses the term "sjw" pejoratively will.

i've said it before and i'll keep saying it - when i cut people off it's not because i'm judging them as inferior. if anybody is "inferior" it's me, because i haven't got the energy to put up with that sort of thing anymore. i'm totally occupied with my own crazy, and don't have time for anybody else's.

^^^ This too. I've had to put space between friends that I like but they spend all day texting me mundane complaints about shit everyone hates.

The Clintons are terrible tbf

This thread has really great clusterfuck potential

completely baffled by adam's post. latebloomer, you have my sympathies, i don't know what exactly i'd do. i'm on a weekly bar trivia team as a device to regularly see a certain cluster of friends and shoot the shit about movies, and i really can't imagine it being an enjoyable or meaningful experience if below the surface was the awareness that one of them is carrying water for alt-right talking points as a way of blowing off steam online or whatever it is. that's not a person i want in my life. but the exact etiquette and approach of making that cut, i don't know. for me personally, if they were really committed to this stuff i couldn't stay friends (and probably, we would have drifted apart long ago for not having much in common). we've spent a lot of time talking about this w/ regard to right-wing family, but friends are a slightly different matter in a lot of ways...

if it's not QUITE to that point... hrrrrrm. i imagine staging an intervention would only feed the "libs are out to shut us down" mentality, but is there some viable version of "hey, man, i noticed you've been expressing some intense feelings online, has everything been okay?" or maybe even a way around to discussing his emotional state/life situation without mentioning the political stuff --- you're not his therapist, but if you are his friend it is mayyyyybe conceivable that he's still early in being seduced by this stuff (or susceptible to it being a brief phase that he later looks back on with embarrassment). and that it might be genuinely useful to open up a channel to talk about whatever it is that's leading him to frustration and grievance and blaming-the-sjws. it depends what kind of friendship it is, how close you are, how much cred you have with him versus how much he feels the youtube mini-limbaughs really get him, how much work it's worth to you, all of that stuff.

I liked South Park's depiction of Kyle's dad staying up nights to troll online like it's his job while drinking red wine.

If you have a racist friend
Now is the time, now is the time
People have opinions. Get over it.

I mean, wrt this particular sitch, I can hang with people who don't agree with me politically/philosophically/religiously/etc but there are certain uncrossable ideological lines and stanning for white supremacy is one of those. Maybe laying it out in terms of 'disagreement is fine, championing oppression is not' would be helpful?

Argh, this thread made me google comicsgate and now I hate knowing what it is. Tell your friend I blame him for that.

pretty sure most of the people i drink with are some kind of right wing but it's not like we spend much time talking about politics except when they accuse me of being a Maoist

and i agree with them and tell them they'll be up against the wall first

Also, one possible tack to take wrt comics creators in particular is to discuss the reappropriation of Pepe the Frog. Ask him how he would feel about people hijacking his own work to express political opinions completely counter to his own. And how he feels about a professional like Van Sciver in particular doing just that. Even divorced of the political implications, it's hugely disrespectful and unprofessional.

Oh man, I just read up on comicsgate too. This shit is so unbelievably stupid.

Yep :(

I think the thing these trolling dipshits don't get is that you don't get to claim "oh, I'm actually a nice guy in person, I'm just trolling" when 100% of your public persona is racist, sexist, garbage

if you genuinely believe the problem is that it's the "wrong people" getting work or acclaim based only on their ethnicity, gender, or views... then spend your time advocating for people you think are talented and help them find an audience

latebloomer, has your friend published anything before? there genuinely are some barriers to entry if you're not established, but I don't think any of them have to do with being a white man. I knew some people who genuinely tried to break into mainstream comics a number of years ago, and none of the reasons they failed to get a strong foothold had anything to do with this comicsgate horseshit.

Not to get too off track but was a picture of a bunch of young women enjoying milkshakes really a catalyst?

women can't be employed in a coveted field, happy, and pictured together. it just drives dudes completely insane

I also didn't know about Comicsgate (or I knew, but about the one a few years ago around "hey guys maybe don't put traced porn shots on comic covers") - the article here makes the point that it doesn't even have the figleaf of ethics in games journalism, it's literally just "we fear the rise of women and brown people"

https://www.inverse.com/article/41132-comicsgate-explained-bigots-milkshake-marvel-dc-gamergate

I am not sure if laughing is the right response to idiotic claims, but I snorted when I saw this gem from one of these comicsgate turds

good lord pic.twitter.com/S2aY5Fcnwg

— BAKOON (@BAKKOOONN) May 14, 2018

I think the ongoing collapse of legitimacy of liberal institutions, increasingly anxiety producing omnipresence of (social)media, increasing forgetfulness of 20th century totalitarianisms (and hence the taboos around them) and finally ambient stress from environmental collapse all push ideological identification closer to the Cult mindset than it's ever been since the 40s. Or at the very least the melding of Cult tendencies familiar from the mid-century with political discourse seems like a natural evolution of the form. Hence, you should take your cues from this guy:

https://harpers.org/archive/2013/11/the-man-who-saves-you-from-yourself/

All nerd media needs to morph into a wall-to-wall multicultural pansexual orgy until all the chuds are stricken with massive rage aneurysms, at which time we can return to business as usual.

xpost Yes, I feel like deprogramming techniques are probably going to be an increasingly-useful tool to have in one's belt, sadly.

even if it was, and it definitely is NOT the case, that writers/artists are getting gigs because of a hype cycle and not due to extraordinary talent, these guys have short memories. a lot of the so-called adults making the most noise are my age or older and came to age during the time when the superhero comics market was 90% hype, there was Wizard magazine and a couple knockoffs publishing lists of "hot artists" that had nothing to do with artistic ability, and the comics were pretty disposable

and nearly without exception, the "hot" writers/artists were young men in their 20s -- it was some weird confirmation that every kid drooling over their comics collection, if they were into it enough and practiced drawing misshapen women and big guns, could be a success in the industry in a few years

The biggest problem here is that there's 457 easy logical arguments against believing any of this dumb shit and none of them will take because this dumb shit isn't founded on a logical argument in the first place. It's people who mistakenly believe the source of their insecurities is external to them and who've found an echo chamber to point them in the direction of an easy scapegoat.

Like, no responsible professional is gonna say 'yeah, sorry, forget about getting into the industry at a time when probably thousands of different comics are being produced every month, and you can blame affirmative action' but at the same time these dopes are busy expressing butthurt on Twitter rather than asking responsible professionals for advice.

we don’t really interact online much

then what is the problem? you say you hang out every week and have known him since 7th grade, this seems like a very longstanding friendship.

when I took a closer look and saw that he’s been hobnobbing with a lot of alt-right adjacent type folks and actively arguing with “SJWs”. Now he’s apparently following dudes like Stephen Crowder and tweeting recommendations for books by Ben Shapiro. BEN MOTHERFUCKING SHAPIRO. Ugh.

okay i have no idea who these people are. please explain why this is some decades-old friendship killing thing. these people are media critics, right? why judge him on believing what you believe that these media people believe.

It’s just heartbreaking because he’s not a jerk at all IRL. He’s always been a good friend and has helped me out and had my back numerous times.

so he sounds like a real person in real life but you have a problem with his virtual avatar posting links. if he's a stand up fellow irl who cares?

But in his online life he’s kinda turning into a real “why won’t you let me debate you, coward” sort of douche

hide his offensive posts on social media & your newsfeed. don't respond to his posts, don't give him that attention, that platform. if you don't like it, and it seems like you don't, then don't do it. it is very simple. don't take the bait. it is the best way to deal w a troll. if you decide this is cowardly and you want to be a knight in shining armor defending whatever issue he is talking about then you are stepping right into whatever SJW role that linked story has prefabricated for you, it will be a useless endeavor, possibly giving you some ownage gratification but little else, and will harm your irl relationship in the long run.

for that matter, it is harmful to the society at large for progressives to cut off their "infected" friends. doing so sort of proves them right, that these ideologies have indeed taken away a very real relationship from them, that the other side is extremist and only interested in defending an ideology, etc. i mean, people really do sound like Warriors when they say shit like "they'll be up against the wall first"

Hey Adam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqH_0LPVoho

I recently found out this crackpot character I used to hero worship a bit in my formative years is a fairly typical bigot these days. Fuck knows how he justifies being a racist cos his biological dad was Afro-Caribbean. But he used to be funny as fuck and had a rep for breaking into local chemical plants to steal ingredients for his amateur pyrotechnics experiments and occasionally blowing up phone-boxes. He is welder these days and is Islamophobic, hates Eastern Europeans, rants about "benefits scroungers" (even though he was on the "rock'n'roll" himself for the best part of a decade). It saddens me that he is so fucking thick-headed these days, but I'd probably still talk to him and be civil. But wouldn't bother talking politics with him for sure.

not sure about your friend, latebloomer, but the red pill types i know have either been rejected at some point (because of their own issues, which they then blame on others) or they've been consistently unhappy and searching for answers, and this is just the latest place they think they've found them.

empathy can be pretty tough for people like this but it's important to try to hold onto it. i'm pretty tolerant of other viewpoints generally speaking, but for me it's not the opinions themselves that make me roll my eyes and ignore people (even though i may disagree strongly with them!) but rather the constant need to make waves, or always wanting to talk about every single little thing that the opposition is doing like it's the end of the world (which really does go for the left more and makes me want to quit a conversation immediately), or the trolling, or the clear need to intentionally hurt other people. so i mean i guess you can try to bring him back from the brink and talk about actual issues without the rhetoric or tedious right wing talking points. or lead by example, bring him out of the echo chamber.

he used to be funny as fuck and had a rep for breaking into local chemical plants to steal ingredients for his amateur pyrotechnics experiments and occasionally blowing up phone-boxes.

Tyler Durden was probably a key figure in the lives of many current "not as smart as they think" alt-right types and that's a pretty good example!

for that matter, it is harmful to the society at large for progressives to cut off their "infected" friends. doing so sort of proves them right, that these ideologies have indeed taken away a very real relationship from them

Foreseeing a backlash and a social cost to espousing antisocial ideologies doesn't make you 'right'. It just means you're able to identify basic cause and effect. 'See? I told you the maaaaaan would arrest me if I burnt down that warehouse! Typical!'

At any rate, this isn't even some conservative vs. liberal argument about how taxes should be allocated. It's a situation with zero benefit to anyone beyond the ego gratification of online sadists. Whose perspective we should consider with sympathy lest society-at-large be harmed...I guess...?

Like if you're going to argue that these people have a valid point to make, please tell me what is gained by the point they're making.

sez he like

https://78.media.tumblr.com/9a03aca158969fe68758babae8cced37/tumblr_ms6ariMAvh1s9kboko1_500.gif

To be clear that was aimed at old lunch re bruneau and doesn’t necessarily refer to latebloomer’s alt-right mate who may still be reachable

that harper's article that ryan linked to is good

Yeah, I know I'm failing to follow the 'do not engage illogic with logic' advice I gave upthread.

there was a recent episode of This American Life about a confrontation between one of the more assertive right-wing student groups and the students and faculty of a university that alluded to, but didn't spell out, the methodology of their confrontations

and that's really it in a nutshell: the politics are secondary to the provoking of a confrontation, and how to shape the views of the community by making it a strong us-versus-them conflict as opposed to a conversation. saying and doing the most offensive things in order to provoke a reaction in kind, which is then held up as some sort of breach of... I don't know, values or civility

setting yourself in opposition to people who, for the most part, just want to be treated fairly and equally by trolling them and making their lives hell is pretty weak

like, it's one thing to mock people for invoking "the patriarchy" but if you ask one of these alt-right kids "ok, there are 80% male faculty members at your school, and advocating for hiring based on merit alone isn't changing this, and it's been shown that students generally feel more valued when some of their teachers are a reflection of their own live experiences. what do you think we should do?" they have no answers. and the vicious part isn't that they want to uphold the status quo -- they're actively trying to provoke the people who are already exceptions to the rule to anger, so that they can drive them out and screw up the system

the long answer is that most of the people being taken by these hucksters aren't going to see any material gains, either. you could have an all white male staff and still fail all your classes because you refuse to learn, but they're not quite seeing that

going back to the comics thing, it's pretty much the same thing. the comics industry was dominated by white men, and guess what? not every kid who could draw a halfway decent spider-man was guaranteed a job then, either

had somehow never heard of comicsgate but jfc that is some deranged shit.

In my experience, or in my own personal case, I see some of what mh says. For my relative, the them and us is existential, and the 'them' will always be the 'them', discussion is obsfucation, its more deep seated than that, its not going to change anything, it is merely the sound of a petty criminal trying to avoid his fate in court.

In some ways it predates all this recent commotion in the media, thats just given it a structure, a framework. Predating all that was an outlook that was very black and white, anything other than that is perceived as trying to muddy the waters. My 'role' is either to agree with them, or failing that, act as the opponent should. You're with us, or you're one of them, a snowflake, a Putin sympathizer, brainwashed by the bbc, there isnt anything else but these two options.
it feels like a desire for certainty. They also only believe in the tangible, depression doesnt exist, anxiety don't exist, priviledge doesnt exist, simply cannot conceptualize them, they are made up excuses.

In some way, its the same thing about reading or learning. What does the university lecturer have to offer the aristocrat or businessman? If the lecturer is so smart, why doesnt he have any money. Who needs their notebooks and manuals, after all, how hard can it be

a lot of the materials are, like ryan alluded, very cult-like. they don't try to teach, they try to explain that you already know what is right and the people who say otherwise are your enemies. it's a self-protective hubris -- acknowledging that others may have perspectives that you could learn from, or that you might have been mistaken in your beliefs, is a blow to your sense of self. you always had value, you were always right, and here's this man to tell you those things. you just needed a little boost, to line things up to be more effective.

when i mentioned that people are unhappy and searching for answers, i think the subtext is that they're searching for answers that fit into their specific worldview rather than challenge their worldview. they've maybe been challenged to some extent before because of those views and have been seeking out their safe space, or waiting for a safe time to unleash them. it's obvious of course that the response many people have to being challenged for their views is to shift further in that direction rather than questioning themselves, and whether or not they were correct in the first place.

In lieu of full-scale education in critical thinking skills, the least we can do for kids is to promote the idea that the only version of being wrong that isn't totally 100% okay and natural is when you double down in lieu of self-reflection.

imo the hardest thing is acknowledging that life is complex and there's never one good right answer that is going to work for you forever, so you should probably think things through and accept a little ambiguity

the thing that blows my mind about the whateveronline-gate people is that a bunch of the twitter hustlers drifted right from that into the alt-right, and some have jumped ship and are -- I shit you not -- selling vitamins and diet supplements now

This is why, i think, the most effective way of not being pulled into .these weird conversations that actually arent conversations - is just not to go along with it, not to play the game.

I can't criticize anyone for cutting off or ostracizing, because each situation is different and you have to do what you feel is the right thing, but I think just not letting yourself get sucked in goes a long way. You're not obliged to discuss any particular topic, if I tried to bring every topic round to involve leopards, nobody would indulge me with that! They wouldnt debate me about the leopards, they'd just change the subject

the thing that blows my mind about the whateveronline-gate people is that a bunch of the twitter hustlers drifted right from that into the alt-right, and some have jumped ship and are -- I shit you not -- selling vitamins and diet supplements now

Yeah I heard Cernovich was getting into some kind of block chain-based mysticism? It’s all just so stupid.

I have also lived rurally, fwiw— off grid, 15 miles from the nearest town of McCloud, CA— and it was blissful, we just didn’t have jobs that were good enough to make it work.

Ideally a small city surrounded by country (and some boulder fields, natch) would be a welcome change. I like Philly but I am tired of it at the same time.

From street interviews especially in cities you see these people saying things like "I like Trump because he cares about animals" and I wonder if people just see someone on tv and then project all kinds of stuff there and at the end of the day Trump is on tv and most democrats politicians are in bed

I think politics has been fanfiction and “head canon” for many people for a long time. “Obama is a radical Black Panther Muslim!” “Trump cares about people like me!” “Kamala is too radical!”

it's funny the thread went direction because dude i cut off, was terrified of cities. he found out i was heading to chicago a couple years ago and he flipped out thinking i was going to get shot. like i was walking into a war zone with a target painted on my back. even in toronto he'd just be scarred of random streets – we left a restaurant and wanted to hit up another place that was walking distance and he refused to go down the street we were talking. the thing was it was a *nice* street. busy with some very nice restos and bars, some new condos etc. it was baffling. he walked back to his car and drove it down a side street to meet up at our destination.

xpost

Ideally a small city surrounded by country

Oakland is pretty good for this, we have some giant forested parks just to the east.. I've even taken a city bus up to my secret camping spot, inhabited by yowling coyotes, deer, racoon and skunks

that said, there's often a sea of Subarus in the parking lot when you go on the weekends, you're never really out there on your own unless you head out on tuesday mornings or something

was terrified of cities

At one job I worked we moved from a suburban city to a larger office in downtown of the big city. Virtually everyone working there lived out in the suburbs so, in a meeting about the move, the boss did a lot of reassuring about how it wasn't going to be so bad there with regard to crime or anything like that. That big city? ... Salt Lake City.

SLCrips

How can you live in Toronto and be terrified of cities? Isnt it as big as like, where I live?

yes but a handful of people speak french

dude lives in the suburbs. i moved as soon as possible, he stayed as put as any human being on the planet has ever stayed.
Toronto is the 4th largest city (in population) in North America and one of the safest cities in NA (more so than many other Canadian cities).
my dude sees a street of houses where none of them look the same and starts hyperventilating, i swear to god.

and apparently french is the #10 most common language dans le city!!

i'm surprised Korean is so far down actually.

_Ideally a small city surrounded by country_

Oakland is pretty good for this, we have some giant forested parks just to the east.. I've even taken a city bus up to my secret camping spot, inhabited by yowling coyotes, deer, racoon and skunks

that said, there's often a sea of Subarus in the parking lot when you go on the weekends, you're never really out there on your own unless you head out on tuesday mornings or something

Oakland is not affordable, though. I could sell my place in Philly and buy a place in Lancaster. I would have to sell 4-5 of my places in Philly to approach a burnt up as-is shell in Richmond.

tbf SLC has a serious homeless problem. I mean it's not like they're hurting anyone but it's pretty wild to see a full-on tent city with unhinged people wheeling old shopping carts full of old rags right in the central, touristy part of town.

Saw this FB post from a former friend (lost to time and distance, not any great rupture) and sometime coworker who is convinced Zohran Mamdani is an anti-Semitic radical who's going to destroy NYC.

I hope your free buses and government supermarkets make you happy (if you ever actually get them). I’ll just be over here with all the reasonable Jews being terrified.

Another ilxor is pushing back (and had to assert his own Jewishness to even get a hearing) but I am staying out of it.

its not a bad band name that

always astounded by the people americans who become enraged in the presence of people speaking non-english

why would you care?

(tbf those ppl *are* totally making fun of you, but only because you're a weird bigot)

so ya. recently cut my oldest friend of of my life. he'd slowly been getting on my nerves over the years in that he never matured out of his teenager years. i had nothing left to talk with him about. music, movies, even baseball – he was stuck in the late 90s. he still lives with his parents, has a low paying dead end job and few other friends (just some trumpkin cousins that have been rotting his brain). i feel really shallow for saying this, but he brought nothing to the friendship, outside of occupying space. even meals was like dealing with a toddler with him.

― FRAUDULENT STEAKS (The Cursed Return of the Dastardly Thermo Thinwall)

it's not shallow to dump a friend for bringing nothing to the friendship. that was a big problem for me for sure, cutting people off on the grounds that i wasn't getting anything out of our friendship. it's normal and ok, though! i've stopped talking to people i liked and admired and thought were pretty cool just because, like, i wasn't getting anything out of talking to them.

my feeling about "brainworms" is that... all my life i was taught, basically, "facts good, emotions bad", and what i see people doing, _particularly_ cis white men, is disguising their emotions as facts.

my take on facts and feelings is really influenced by DBT, which in turn is supported pretty well by cognitive science. DBT says that emotions aren't right or wrong, they just _are_. they're not bad, it's not bad to have emotions - everybody has them. they're just not facts. and what happens is that when people are feeling strong emotions, we literally _can't think rationally_. so there's no point in rational discourse with someone who's in a place where they're either unwilling or unable to engage rationally. if i'm gonna deal with them it has to be in a way that acknowledges and accepts their emotions, not judging or shaming them for it, but also not saying that their feelings are factually true or right.

it's hard because i talk to people and sometimes they get upset when i talk about their emotions, they feel like i'm not respecting them intellectually. it's not a matter of disrespect - it's just that i don't see a point in engaging with them intellectually until we're on the same page.

it's also not my _responsibility_ to change anyone's mind. i gotta live with the consequences of how other people talk and act towards me, but i also gotta recognize that i don't have control over them. they are responsible for their own words and actions, just like i'm responsible for mine. i got a cousin, says he's a zionist, i mean, he's an intelligent guy. at the same time if he's committed enough to israel to say that he's a "zionist", talking to him isn't going to change his mind - it's just gonna get me upset. he's an OK guy, but supporting genocide, which he does, is fundamentally in violation of my values. i limit the time i spend around him and i deal with him on a more superficial level. it's not practical for me to cut him off, so i don't, but i do limit my interactions with him.

a lot of what frustrates me is this sense of learned helplessness. it's easy to make fun of "someone is WRONG on the Internet" but this shit does affect our lives on a practical level. all i can do is value and care for myself and the people who are most important to me. i was raised as a liberal and taught that i should care about "everyone", and, well, it's true in the sense that i want them to be safe, happy, healthy, i want to live with ease, i have those basic well-wishes towards everyone. in practice, though, i do have to make choices, hard choices. if i can't change their mind, well, i'm not going to protect them from the consequences of their actions. the power i have is that i can choose how to react to their words and actions. it's not much, but it's not nothing!

great post. it's nice to see all that articulated so well.

https://www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/the-most-articulate-apologist

regarding an interview with Ben Shapiro-

He concedes, in other words, the central claim of every liberal critic of the Trump project for the past decade: that the man at the center of it is a wannabe usurper who would have ended the constitutional order in 2020 if the institutional resistance had been weaker, who continues to test those institutions, and whose personal corruption has reached scales that would have ended the political career of any previous American president before lunch.

And then, having conceded all of this, he explains why he voted for Trump anyway, why he would do it again, and why anyone who finds this position scandalous is engaged in hysteria.

The reasoning is the lunacy:

“The guardrails would largely hold... his worst mistakes would end up being mitigated by the pushback of reality.”

he doesn’t support Trump per se, but the larger right wing project behind Trump’s personal peccadillos

Ben's reasoning is straight up blind rationalization. Institutions do not resist usurpers. It is the people who occupy those institutional positions who must do that. What Shapiro is doing is lending Trump his real, measurable support for the project of destroying those institutions while disclaiming any responsibility for maintaining them. Meanwhile, Trump is emptying those institutions of people capable of resisting him, while congressional R's either cheer him on or cower in fear.

otmfm

Shapiro is going to have a hard time with the coming overtly anti-Semitic groyper future of the Republican Party that Trump has flirted with

curmudgeon, I know it's tough but at this stage I'd recommend you just end your friendship with Ben Shapiro, not a good dude

but maybe he can fix him