I suppose, to add a minor point to what mh has said, stick to the talking about the ideas/behaviours rather than making it personal ("that idea doesn't ring true to me" rather than "you're wrong and bad, and here's why")? Possibly implicit too, but I often find that approach works better than personalising things too much.
― Thomas NAGL (Neil S), Monday, 14 May 2018 06:35 (five years ago) link
I have this, though its a relative (in their 30s). Its been gradually increasing over the last few years, jordan peterson, ben shapiro, there are 37 genres now , snowflakes, virtue signalling, brexit, cultural marxism, jacob rees mogg, socialists. The own understanding or nuance isn't there, the straight repetition of right wing talking points.
What to do? the conclusion Ive come to, is...nothing. You have to look at yourself here, what is this debating you're imagining is going to happen. A debate is when two people accept the premise or framework of such. If you think you're going to go in their house and change their mind, it doesnt work like that. Any 'debate' should be initiated by them, not you, and only partake if they are asking you something, not if they are telling you something and putting a question mark on the end. Otherwise, you're being used by someone honing their opinion, you're fulfilling a role. The radicalized person never asks open questions.
But also you have to be honest with yourself - any kind of "yes, but dont you think that"....this is no good, for anyone!
I think when this happens you're dealing with something more existential than a debate really covers. 'Are you one of us, or not, anything else is just hot air'. I was once asked in email, by my relative, about my thoughts on the situation with Russia. I have a fairly detailed answer trying to cover as many bases as possible. Did it make any difference to anything? Ive no idea because there it was never mentioned again, it wasnt what they were looking for, they were looking for Britain good Russia bad - any detail on it, they saw as obsfucation, a dilution of the greater point. I will answer if they ask questions like this, and answer in good faith, but I wont push anything. Any such debate is framed around 'winning' (damn, all those videos on youtube where somebody is EVISCERATING or DESTROYING somebody else!)
I have a simple(ish) rule, if someone asks me openly or in good faith, I will respond the same. If someone talks at me, the best they'll get is "nah, not for me, dont see that at all", but they are more likely to get "ah, no idea, dunno owt about it mate". You don't have to be involved in statements masquerading as conversations!
― anvil, Monday, 14 May 2018 07:11 (five years ago) link
Sorry its a bit unfocussed, Ive had this on the go for a while! quite hard to condense thoughts on the fly
― anvil, Monday, 14 May 2018 07:24 (five years ago) link
One thing that struck me about this form of self-radicalization is how much its about repetition - simplification and repetition. For people making the mistake of engaging on some of these topics, its not about being on the right or wrong side of that topic, its about having that topic be the one with airtime, conversation time. A conversation about 'the BBC and the universities are brainwashing youth with cultural marxism, the police will come after you for using the wrong pronoun, Birmingham is now a no go city run by muslims". Really? This isn't a conversation that even deserves 'I don't see it like that", or any of my time! Its better to steer conversation elsewhere. Its better for this to be taking up less of their thought and talk time, and its certainly better for it to be taking up less of mine.
De-radicalizing people, i think is better achieved by getting them to think about some other damn things, engaging just hardens still further
(not saying your friend is or isnt radicalized, but when people talk and it sounds like their repeating the words of someone else, well)
― anvil, Monday, 14 May 2018 07:44 (five years ago) link
I'm not a good enough person to try to save anyone, I write off people who go beyond dipping their toes in the waters of Peterson/Shapiro/et al.. I struggle to be comfortably social with even 'mainstream' Republicans these days, the American conservative worldview is so aggressively reactionary and hateful - your average suburban GOP voter just hasn't progressed to saying the quiet part loud.
― louise ck (milo z), Monday, 14 May 2018 08:06 (five years ago) link
sage stuff from anvil there
― imago, Monday, 14 May 2018 08:32 (five years ago) link
yep
― gneb farts (darraghmac), Monday, 14 May 2018 09:00 (five years ago) link
also youre not his da, short answer
Repeating "I've never seen that" helps, as often it gets a "well, neither have I but" acknowledgement.
― Mark G, Monday, 14 May 2018 12:26 (five years ago) link
why not murder them
― type your stinkin prose off me, ur damned qwerty uiop (wins), Monday, 14 May 2018 12:33 (five years ago) link
NAILS IT
― The Beatles' Solo Deaths Poll (Noodle Vague), Monday, 14 May 2018 12:36 (five years ago) link
get over it. people have opinions. furthermore people are more than their media consumption habits and painting somebody as "infected" because of their media choices is some weird dehumanization Othering that shouldnt impact a real life friendship. OP says they are irl friends that hang out w this person once a week. you don't feel comfortable discussing political topics with them in real life, yet you will make a big post on the internet and talk about them with strangers? this passive aggressive signalling through media choices has poisoned YOUR mind as well.
if it's a person you care about irl then talk to them. if you can't stand their social media posts you can hide them. it is like a two click action. if you need everyone of your friends to subscribe to the same media you do then it would seem the friendship is secondary to your social media feed. get over yourself.
― Hazy Maze Cave (Adam Bruneau), Monday, 14 May 2018 13:30 (five years ago) link
https://i.imgur.com/1WU8ron.jpg
― Ned Raggett, Monday, 14 May 2018 13:31 (five years ago) link
being into comicsgate is not about "media preferences"
― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 14 May 2018 13:33 (five years ago) link
To be honest, the main issue for me isn’t “can I change his mind?” That won’t happen. It’s more, “can I continue being friends with him?” If he stays confined to complaining about “SJWs” ruining the comics industry online, maybe, but if it devolves beyond that? I’m not sure it will, but I can’t tell anymore. It seems like a lot of seemingly sane people’s brains have been broken over the last few years.
― latebloomer, Monday, 14 May 2018 13:41 (five years ago) link
Uh, x-post
― latebloomer, Monday, 14 May 2018 13:43 (five years ago) link
Adam, your post is more than a little fucked. 'Dehumanization' and 'othering' is exactly what this shit is all about. It's informed by very thinly-veiled white supremacy, and that kind of reappropriation of the language of oppression is exactly what they use to paint themselves as victims. 'Victims' of people who just want to see their own perspectives represented in media which is overwhelmingly white and male and hetero. You don't get to champion a viewpoint like that and then brush it off with a 'but I'm a cool guy otherwise'.
― Delightful in Microdoses (Old Lunch), Monday, 14 May 2018 13:44 (five years ago) link
I wasn't even aware of comicsgate before this thread but of course there's a comicsgate, and of course it's in opposition to the exact comics and creators I would've expected. Expected but depressing as hell.
I dunno, man, no one can really tell you whether to remain friends with someone or not. Personally, I couldn't, but then I've never had trouble disconnecting myself from toxic people. The employment of 'SJW' as a pejorative is so pernicious because that particular utterance is several steps removed from what it's actually saying. You pooh-pooh the SJWs, which means you're against the social justice warriors, which tells me that you're against social justice, which in turn suggests you're for social injustice. And if you're a straight white dude, that tells me pretty much everything I need to know.
― Delightful in Microdoses (Old Lunch), Monday, 14 May 2018 13:49 (five years ago) link
Shunning and ostracization are underrated methods of letting people know that their antisocial (in the most literal sense) views/behavior are unacceptable, imo.
― Delightful in Microdoses (Old Lunch), Monday, 14 May 2018 13:51 (five years ago) link
I dunno, they seem pretty popular right now and I don't see them having much of an effect. Not that you need the effect to be clear, I don't think I could remain friends with a comicsgater either.
― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 14 May 2018 13:55 (five years ago) link
won't somebody save the alt-right from dehumanization and othering lmao
― Spiderman pointing at himself.img (Bananaman Begins), Monday, 14 May 2018 14:00 (five years ago) link
Is comicsgate different than gamergate? I've cut off ties with most of my family because of their abhorrent views. I am not making small talk and sharing my life with them out of duty when they believe and say shitty things about women and other races. I put in my time trying to rationalize or have them try to restrain themselves. Out.
― Yerac, Monday, 14 May 2018 14:03 (five years ago) link
It’s basically Gamergate 2
― latebloomer, Monday, 14 May 2018 14:05 (five years ago) link
From what I can tell, anyway
Lovely. Sigh.
― Yerac, Monday, 14 May 2018 14:05 (five years ago) link
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.
― Arch Bacon (rushomancy), Monday, 14 May 2018 14:06 (five years ago) link
^^^ 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.
― Yerac, Monday, 14 May 2018 14:08 (five years ago) link
The Clintons are terrible tbf
― The Beatles' Solo Deaths Poll (Noodle Vague), Monday, 14 May 2018 14:09 (five years ago) link
This thread has really great clusterfuck potential
― imago, Monday, 14 May 2018 14:13 (five years ago) link
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.
― noel gallaghah's high flying burbbhrbhbbhbburbbb (Doctor Casino), Monday, 14 May 2018 14:15 (five years ago) link
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.
― Yerac, Monday, 14 May 2018 14:22 (five years ago) link
If you have a racist friend Now is the time, now is the timePeople have opinions. Get over it.
― type your stinkin prose off me, ur damned qwerty uiop (wins), Monday, 14 May 2018 14:25 (five years ago) link
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?
― Delightful in Microdoses (Old Lunch), Monday, 14 May 2018 14:28 (five years ago) link
Argh, this thread made me google comicsgate and now I hate knowing what it is. Tell your friend I blame him for that.
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Monday, 14 May 2018 14:31 (five years ago) link
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
― The Beatles' Solo Deaths Poll (Noodle Vague), Monday, 14 May 2018 14:32 (five years ago) link
and i agree with them and tell them they'll be up against the wall first
― The Beatles' Solo Deaths Poll (Noodle Vague), Monday, 14 May 2018 14:33 (five years ago) link
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.
― Delightful in Microdoses (Old Lunch), Monday, 14 May 2018 14:33 (five years ago) link
Oh man, I just read up on comicsgate too. This shit is so unbelievably stupid.
― Yerac, Monday, 14 May 2018 14:52 (five years ago) link
Yep :(
― latebloomer, Monday, 14 May 2018 14:58 (five years ago) link
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.
― mh, Monday, 14 May 2018 15:18 (five years ago) link
Not to get too off track but was a picture of a bunch of young women enjoying milkshakes really a catalyst?
― Nhex, Monday, 14 May 2018 15:44 (five years ago) link
women can't be employed in a coveted field, happy, and pictured together. it just drives dudes completely insane
― mh, Monday, 14 May 2018 15:47 (five years ago) link
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
― Andrew Farrell, Monday, 14 May 2018 15:47 (five years ago) link
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
― mh, Monday, 14 May 2018 15:56 (five years ago) link
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/
― ryan, Monday, 14 May 2018 16:06 (five years ago) link
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.
― Delightful in Microdoses (Old Lunch), Monday, 14 May 2018 16:08 (five years ago) link
xpost Yes, I feel like deprogramming techniques are probably going to be an increasingly-useful tool to have in one's belt, sadly.
― Delightful in Microdoses (Old Lunch), Monday, 14 May 2018 16:09 (five years ago) link
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
― mh, Monday, 14 May 2018 16:15 (five years ago) link
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.
― Delightful in Microdoses (Old Lunch), Monday, 14 May 2018 16:20 (five years ago) link
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.
― Delightful in Microdoses (Old Lunch), Monday, 14 May 2018 16:24 (five years ago) link
i'm not saying there's a clear-cut distinction, exactly, but "the democrats are coming for your guns" is just a different thing than, you know, some of the other stuff
― budo jeru, Wednesday, 30 August 2023 18:54 (six months ago) link
if the last few years has taught me anything it's that apparently unbigoted weird beliefs are very swiftly aligned to modern fascism
― da elephant in daruma (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 30 August 2023 18:55 (six months ago) link
i haven't noticed a through-line from flat earth or antivax shit to communism
― da elephant in daruma (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 30 August 2023 18:56 (six months ago) link
nothing he said was bigoted though! just crazy.
Yeah, doesn't say anything bigoted that I can recall. Its more about Liberals than anything else, though as we know they are simultaneously feckless and weak and unable to tie own shoelaces, while also being all-powerful with a sinister vice like grip on society
― anvil, Wednesday, 30 August 2023 19:07 (six months ago) link
in 2023 if you have to wait for the sieg heil you're probably being over-generous
― da elephant in daruma (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 30 August 2023 19:09 (six months ago) link
fascism weaponizes tons of shit, and imo it's a losing game to try to blame the hatred on the music, the hair, whatever. and re: flat earth, i think it's broadly fine for people to be downright weird in their worldviews. it's not like the neoliberal "We Believe Science" doctrine is any less racist.
― budo jeru, Wednesday, 30 August 2023 19:12 (six months ago) link
like, if it's okay to be skeptical of "Science" or post-Enlightenment Western rationalism for the sake of understanding the racist and patriarchal assumptions that are baked into the system, then it needs to be okay to have the skeptical or even paranoid impulse in the first place.
― budo jeru, Wednesday, 30 August 2023 19:17 (six months ago) link
― budo jeru
pretty hard disagree here. i don't think it's accurate or fair to draw an equivalence between the _very understandable_ skepticism demonstrated by victims of racist patriarchy and the people who adopt pseudoscience in order to perpetuate that racist patriarchy.
― Kate (rushomancy), Wednesday, 30 August 2023 20:18 (six months ago) link
that's not what i'm doing at all. i'm pushing back against NV saying that all flat earthers are crypto fascists until proven otherwise
― budo jeru, Wednesday, 30 August 2023 20:21 (six months ago) link
but they are
― da elephant in daruma (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 30 August 2023 20:23 (six months ago) link
and i enjoy zany counter-rationalism as much as anybody
― da elephant in daruma (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 30 August 2023 20:24 (six months ago) link
yeah i'm with noodle vague on this one
― Kate (rushomancy), Wednesday, 30 August 2023 20:24 (six months ago) link
budo there is a more nuanced argument to be had here but what i'm saying is that if somebody tells you, in 2023, that they've got concerns about vaccines or climate change or 15 minute cities then self-preservation says assume they're fash and hope for a pleasant surprise if you've got the stamina to discuss it
― da elephant in daruma (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 30 August 2023 20:29 (six months ago) link
like am i skeptical of the way white patriarchal science is implemented in practice? hell yes. i suffered severe, permanent, and irreparable harm from enlightenment science's universalization of "factual and objective" norms regarding gender diversity that, in reality, had nothing to do with gender expansive people's actual lived experiences but instead were based on the bigotries and prejudices of cis men presenting themselves as "experts". what _they_ said about us was the only thing that mattered. that, you know, that's post-enlightenment western rationalism, and you know what else it is? it's fucking _evidence-based_. flat earthers aren't. covid deniers aren't. trans eradication shares certain apparent similarities to conspiracy theories, but acknowledging and advocating for the dismantlement of hegemonic institutions of repression is not remotely comparable to blaming COVID on "the chinese". it's not.
― Kate (rushomancy), Wednesday, 30 August 2023 20:33 (six months ago) link
xp fair enough but we weren't talking about vaccines or climate change, we were talking about flat earth
― budo jeru, Wednesday, 30 August 2023 20:34 (six months ago) link
ok, i'm going to take a step back because i'm not talking about blaming COVID on the chinese ... i was talking about moon landing / aliens
― budo jeru, Wednesday, 30 August 2023 20:35 (six months ago) link
you know, that's post-enlightenment western rationalism, and you know what else it is? it's fucking _evidence-based_.
that _skepticism_ is a skepticism of enlightenment-era western rationalism, and that skepticism is evidence-based. wow. is my whole post this incoherent?
― Kate (rushomancy), Wednesday, 30 August 2023 20:35 (six months ago) link
well, it's not like it's a super topic, in fairness
― budo jeru, Wednesday, 30 August 2023 20:36 (six months ago) link
*super easy
questioning enlightenment values is fine by me, i'm a kneejerk postmodernist
the issue is the specifics of how flat earthism plays itself out and aligns itself at this moment
― da elephant in daruma (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 30 August 2023 20:39 (six months ago) link
ok, i'm going to take a step back because i'm not talking about blaming COVID on the chinese ... i was talking about moon landing / aliens― budo jeru
ok, so trying to come down from my dander here, lol, this is one of my special interests, conspiracy theories, i've spent a lot of time with them.
and my argument is that people spend so much of their time focusing on whether or not conspiracy theories are _true_ and to me the interesting question is _why_ people believe them. for instance, the "ancient aliens" conspiracy theory, if you look at what motivates that it's the assumption that non-white people couldn't possibly design and build monumental architecture. again, this comes from a _critique_ of enlightenment rationalist assumptions. if you drill down far enough as to _why_ people believe these conspiracy theories, you're really likely to hit a racist and/or patriarchal core assumption underlying it.
when it comes to the abuses committed by white supremacist patriarchal rationalist institutions, there's not a question of _why_ people object to it. there's your qualitative difference, i'd argue.
― Kate (rushomancy), Wednesday, 30 August 2023 20:42 (six months ago) link
― da elephant in daruma (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, August 30, 2023 3:29 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
also, i broadly agree with this, but this is the friend infected with right-wing brain worms ("What to do?") thread, so i feel like here if nowhere else it may be okay to put forth the notion that there might be something to acknowledging that people's conspiratorial / aggrieved worldview do have a basis in a reality of disparity and exploitation.
and by the way, i know anti-vaxxer anarchists who spend all their time doing mutual aid and passing out food at homeless encampments. it's weird and it is a thing!
― budo jeru, Wednesday, 30 August 2023 20:46 (six months ago) link
and, to further clarify, what i'm putting forth is largely a rhetorical argument in service of minimizing harmful right-wing discourse. i don't blame anybody who shuts it down or decides to walk away. i'm just trying to propose a strategy that sees an essential truth at the core of the conspiratorial mindset and tries to use it and pivot it with actual, useful analysis
― budo jeru, Wednesday, 30 August 2023 20:52 (six months ago) link
and Kate your most recent post is interesting but i'm struggling with focus at work and need to come back to it
― budo jeru, Wednesday, 30 August 2023 20:53 (six months ago) link
i feel like here if nowhere else it may be okay to put forth the notion that there might be something to acknowledging that people's conspiratorial / aggrieved worldview do have a basis in a reality of disparity and exploitation.
In my case, it is definitely not rooted in anything like that, its based in transmissions from the internet. a woke liberal elite have captured the institutions, and are an existential threat. There's some fuzzyness about whether they're going to introduce communism if they ever get elected, or there already is communism, or both, or what communism is, but it is happening or has happened nonetheless
but there's a shape shifting quality to it. He got the vaccines, he was still wearing masks later than I was, was still doing covid tests later than most, so covid was definitely real but also fake and used by the liberal elite to control society but also real and a targeted weapon by China. All of these are simultaneously true, but not quite occupying the same space. Has never said anything negative about vaccines though
― anvil, Wednesday, 30 August 2023 20:59 (six months ago) link
https://amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/aug/28/live-worm-living-womans-brain-australia-depression-forgetfulness
― Stomp Jomperson (dog latin), Thursday, 31 August 2023 11:08 (six months ago) link
Ah, posted a few days back. Still euwww
― Stomp Jomperson (dog latin), Thursday, 31 August 2023 11:10 (six months ago) link
and by the way, i know anti-vaxxer anarchists who spend all their time doing mutual aid and passing out food at homeless encampments. it's weird and it is a thing!― budo jeru
oh, absolutely, as a historical phenomenon anti-vax ideology is pretty interesting. i'm out here in pdx, it's a hotbed for new age "alternative science", which is where the anti-vax movement started out. honestly it's entirely possible that i'm in the pseudoscience pipeline myself. i get my hormones from a naturopath, which is legal in oregon and nowhere else, naturopaths are legally mandated to have parity with medical doctors. do i think naturopathy is evidence-based? not really. my provider, though, was the only one who would prescribe hormones for trans people back when nobody else would. nowadays you can get hormones from other people. sometimes. endos still tend not to listen to trans patients. i'm a fan of evidence-based medicine, however, when it comes to the actual effects of hrt, it's not really evidence-based, because _nobody is doing this fucking studies_. i take progesterone, for instance. does progesterone do anything? fuck knows! i think it does, but there's no fucking research out there to back it up. same way, i'm reading a book on somatics by someone whose experience with it comes from reichian bodywork. wilhelm reich, who in my mind will always look like donald pleasance, is a meme to me, somebody from hawkwind jams and the french band "zorgones". at the same time, i'm finding the book really helpful to me, not in a _scientific_ way, but it's helping me understand how to live a more embodied experience. embodiment means a lot to me. is there a medical basis for talking about dissociation and embodiment? not really.
i still think of myself as a proponent of evidence-based science, but someone could look at the stuff i do that's _not_ evidence-based and conclude otherwise. there's definitely some cognitive dissonance in my attitudes!
like, when it comes to vaccines, the people i know in the queer community are _strongly_ pro-vax, about the most pro-vax people i know. if you want to go to queer events here, even in public, you need to show evidence of being vaxxed and boosted. a lot of it comes out of disability politics and an understanding of the disproportionate effects of anti-vax ideology on marginalized group. we'll fight, fight hard, for access to preventative care. you do have to fight to get PrEP in a lot of cases, and you have to lie sometimes. my girlfriend when to a doctor and they asked her if she had receptive anal sex with multiple partners. when the monkeypox vaccine came out it was advised for "men who have sex with men" to get it. i'm an asexual woman who's intimate with other women. i'm just as at risk for monkeypox as MSMs. if i want to get PrEP, if a doctor asks me if i have receptive anal sex with multiple partners, i'm going to lie. if they don't have a right to know, yes, i'll lie, and i'll do it without guilt.
― Kate (rushomancy), Thursday, 31 August 2023 14:31 (six months ago) link
Looking back i'd say the Lancet "vaccines cause autism" study from 1998 was a fulcrum point. Not just, I think, because it mainstreamed anti-vax ideology. What interests me is that the article published in the magazine dedicated to Medical Science was an iteration of anti-vax ideology that just happened to dovetail quite nicely with the normative biases of the time. Anti-vax ideology ceased to become a form of dissidence against hegemonic norms and instead a movement aimed at perpetuating those norms in a more explicit fashion.
OK that's all a lot of rhetoric, to get personal on this... I'm autistic, and I'm also queer. Coming out as queer helped me to re-evaluated my understanding with autism and my relationship to it. Because I'm not just autistic, I'm self-diagnosed autistic, something that was heavily stigmatized earlier in my life. People were derided as having "self-diagnosed Asperger's" (Asperger's being a form of autism created by a Nazi scientist as a form of legitimizing certain forms of neurodivergence, while allowing socially unacceptable neurodivergent people to be exterminated through the Aktion T4 extermination process. It's not a current diagnosis in the DSM, but was taken seriously at the time.
Having recognized the necessity of self-determination in the case of my queer and trans identity, I started to question the norms medical science established around autism, the framework they had constructed to define it. Autism, for instance, was seen as a single "illness", one that was diagnosed almost exclusively in white AMABs from affluent families. Furthermore, experts writing on the topic frequently did so in a fashion that transparently perpetuated their own cultural biases. For instance, one of the foremost experts on autism is Simon Baron-Cohen, who characterized autism as "extreme male brain". You can imagine how pleased I was upon reading _that_ one. Baron-Cohen's work is actually a lot better than a lot of the other allistic perspectives on autism. I figured that if this was what one of the foremost medical experts said on the topic, I was OK to self-diagnose, that I knew myself better than Baron-Cohen knew me.
For autistic people, the Lancet paper is not just about the anti-vax thing - it's a pseudoscientific perpetuation of the pathologization of neurodiversity. Given the observable correlation between neurodiversity and queerness, I do personally think of this as kind of a big deal.
Anyway. That's just kind of the way I look at conspiracy theories, the social implications of how they develop and are perpetuated.
― Kate (rushomancy), Thursday, 31 August 2023 15:52 (six months ago) link
in autistic social circles I have known it's truly impressive how much SBC's work and associated assumptions from professionals have managed to *differentially* fuck up autistic people's lives based on their psychiatrically-assigned genders - thereby enforcing cisnormative genderness on and driving a wedge into a population which has always been deemed to have been misperforming their gender in some way, troubling enough to require such an intervention
I'm sure my liberal science believing acquaintances would think this is another crazy conspiracy theory (like those ones I have about the media lying to people or bosses exploiting their workers) and really who are they going to believe, my hysteria or published research by a bunch of scientists?
― your original display name is still visible (Left), Thursday, 31 August 2023 17:00 (six months ago) link
I really want to trouble the assumptions about a rational (if complacent and ineffectual) liberal establishment vs a crazy conspiracy theorist underground because I see it a lot in thinkpieces but it doesn't at all reflect what I see IRL
― your original display name is still visible (Left), Thursday, 31 August 2023 17:08 (six months ago) link
Has anyone read the new book _ Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Public Health Threat_? There are parts in there about what to do when people you have an existing connection with go down that road
― Glower, Disruption & Pies (kingfish), Thursday, 31 August 2023 18:17 (six months ago) link
I'm sure my liberal science believing acquaintances would think this is another crazy conspiracy theory (like those ones I have about the media lying to people or bosses exploiting their workers) and really who are they going to believe, my hysteria or published research by a bunch of scientists?― your original display name is still visible (Left)
― your original display name is still visible (Left)
i don't blame anybody individually for their skepticism of anything that doesn't conform to liberal norms... when i was a liberal i was the same way. i once, pre-transition, tried to argue with a trans woman of my acquaintance that her lived experience didn't conform to transmedicalism... not my finest moment. obviously, in retrospect i would have benefited much more from listening to her. that's one of the big issues with it and one of the main frustrations i have as a leftist... it's really easy for people to act against their own interests, when it's part of a norm they've been taught. i mean, my only mistake was believing literally everything i'd ever been told about gender, you know?
but it's impossible to explain, because liberalism does equivalate every form of dissent from what it falsely considers to be "objective truth". "horseshoe theory" really emblematizes this tendency of liberalism.
at the same time, in order to get rights, we have to justify and convince liberals that we deserve rights, the onus is on us... when it comes to trans rights, in the us, liberals have mostly been convinced, in the uk, not so much. more than that, we have to convince liberals to support us to the _detriment of their distinguished opposition_, which is an _extremely_ tough ask and is the issue america is struggling with.
when it comes to neurodiversity... people who don't have the lived experience we do, they have no understanding whatsoever of neurodiversity. honestly, most of them, to the extent they're aware of neurodiversity at all, probably hold the autism speaks (ugh) approach to things, simply because they're not aware of anything else.
― Kate (rushomancy), Thursday, 31 August 2023 21:33 (six months ago) link
It seems covid and the lockdowns will be coming back on October 16th in order to ban in person voting. But there is some confusion as the election isn't until next year. So it looks like there has been a miscalculation
When I asked about this issue regarding the year, he responded with "well it doesnt always have to make sense". Something of a Motte and Bailey effect seems to be present.
― anvil, Tuesday, 5 September 2023 07:47 (six months ago) link
There's a newish local band I've been wanting to see, but I just checked out the bassist's FB page and it's wall to wall Trump-loving, Biden-bashing, Qanon memes and now I think I've noped out of ever supporting them.
― Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable POST (Dan Peterson), Tuesday, 26 September 2023 14:10 (six months ago) link
Surprised it’s not the drummer.
― papal hotwife (milo z), Tuesday, 26 September 2023 14:52 (six months ago) link
I vaguely know one guy in the band and I'm surprised he can be in a band with this fuckwit. They must have a "no discussing politics" understanding, but I don't think I could do it.
― Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable POST (Dan Peterson), Tuesday, 26 September 2023 15:12 (six months ago) link
Especially when it's not an important member of the band.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Tuesday, 26 September 2023 16:00 (six months ago) link
Bassists aren't important?
― The First Time Ever I Saw Gervais (Tom D.), Tuesday, 26 September 2023 16:04 (six months ago) link
Yeah wait what? I'm a bass player!
― Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable POST (Dan Peterson), Tuesday, 26 September 2023 17:24 (six months ago) link
EXCELSIOR
― The land of dreams and endless remorse (hardcore dilettante), Tuesday, 26 September 2023 18:39 (six months ago) link
LOL
My son is a bass player also. He and I had a good laugh over the Onion (?) article about the groupie being dismayed when she found out she had slept with the bass player. "If I'm going to sleep with someone, they'd better be important."
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Tuesday, 26 September 2023 19:31 (six months ago) link
itt - Rockists!
― vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino), Tuesday, 26 September 2023 20:04 (six months ago) link
Cries in drummer
― Hereward the Woke (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, 26 September 2023 20:42 (six months ago) link
real champions of shat-on instrumentalists are viola players
― Kate (rushomancy), Wednesday, 27 September 2023 14:49 (six months ago) link
https://media4.giphy.com/media/kZD8cN1MycfKw/giphy.gif
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 27 September 2023 15:03 (six months ago) link
Apparently libs are being owned by Sydney Sweeney wearing a revealing dress at a, uh, GLAAD event?
― papal hotwife (milo z), Sunday, 17 March 2024 09:00 (one week ago) link