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

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.

It's like when my brother tried to open up a debate about why women made poor managers and he could never work for a woman. I am not debating. I call him an asshole and move on in my day.

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.

its a lil too easy tbh

yea these dudes are all drifting into the Alex Jones zone, which, to be fair, is a hell of a lucrative grift

decidedly not what i was hinting at my man

As a general thing, people need to be reminded that the extent to which their own demographic info overlaps with that of a cisgender white Christian American male without some sort of physical or mental disability is the extent to which their problems are probably largely of their own making.

man, I wish there were easy answers

half of this shit is like, why are you even putting all this effort into it? get a job, maybe stop for a beer on the way home, watch some tv or read comic books or whatever. why does every person need to invest all this time in who is writing what and why?

I mean, that goes for me too, but I’m not crafting my identity around it, I’m just posting about it on a message board and shrugging

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?

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

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

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)

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.

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.

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.

Surprised it’s not the drummer.

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.

Especially when it's not an important member of the band.

Bassists aren't important?

Yeah wait what? I'm a bass player!

EXCELSIOR

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."

itt - Rockists!

Cries in drummer

real champions of shat-on instrumentalists are viola players

https://media4.giphy.com/media/kZD8cN1MycfKw/giphy.gif

Apparently libs are being owned by Sydney Sweeney wearing a revealing dress at a, uh, GLAAD event?