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

If you were to show this thread to someone who has contracted brain rot from alt-right memes, it would probably comfort them in their belief system. But what does it matter, since barely anyone cares for dialogue at this point anyway? Perhaps a war will sort it all out at some point.

soref you may need to de-strawmannify this bit

wholly their own fault

pretty stubbornly mischaracterizes OL's post, which reads

probably largely of their own making

And IME it's not necessarily about a "positive result." More about discouraging the enormously *negative* results entailed by white dudes deciding that their problems can & should be blamed on women and nonwhite ppl

and the record will show that when men blame women for their problems, the results are very often highly asymmetrical (aka death)

similarly to how when white people blame people of color the results are highly asymmetrical (aka death)

i went to high school with two cisgender white christian males who were addicted to heroin and hung themselves at the ages of 15 and 17. must've been there own fault i guess

or possibly reliance on viewing the world through identitarian bromides is also a form of brain worms

ugh idbros

Reading comprehension is a useful thing for kids to learn, too, I find.

The earlier, the better.

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.

― Delightful in Microdoses (Old Lunch), Monday, May 14, 2018 11:26 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I remember doubling down as a youth, no matter how trivial the stakes or how uninformed I was. The only way to win in life is to turn every conversation into an argument, and then get the other person to admit you have won that argument.

Hi, jim. A bad faith misreading of something someone says is not a counterargument.

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

― mh, Monday, May 14, 2018 3:09 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark

yeah this is how i feel about it. and it is true, different people come at this stuff w different levels of engagement, different levels of knowledge. some people genuinely don't care, or haven't spent all day long thinking it through.

these are not just some random 'media critics' latebloomer disagrees with, though that is precisely what they want to define themselves as

i am not and engaged as you are on this topic and the culture around these people. see, this is an opportunity for you to explain who these people are.

you're coming off a little like "so he posted a bunch of swastikas. what's the big deal? i've never seen that symbol before, is it a thing or something? from what i've been able to gather it seems like

ok this is bullshit. you are accusing me of things i am not saying. Dr. C i love talking with you about music or video games or movies or whatever but you need to rethink this hostility. peace out everyone.

Hi, jim. A bad faith misreading of something someone says is not a counterargument.

― The lovely and talented Loretta Switt and the irascible Jamie Farr (Old Lunch), Monday, May 14, 2018 2:36 PM (nineteen seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not bad faith, if you were trying to express something that wasn't entirely reductive and banal it doesn't come across to me no matter how many times i look the sentence over

and while i don't buy the whole "the rise of the alt-right is the fault of the tumblr left" argument - there's nothing that excuses being conservative, let alone alt-right imo - this kind of rhetoric is absolutely beloved by the online far-right

adam, i often enjoy your posts on those topics also! i have no global beef w/ you. my post came from, it was pointed out in response to yr first post itt that these was not just a matter of disagreeing with the media critics other people read. you came back with "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." i said that this came off "a little like" a person who's never heard of swastikas wondering what the big deal is. which is something it comes off a little like imo. i guess i could have just said "use google" or "go reread the gamergate thread and then take a guess as to what kind of content might be at stake here." maybe it wasn't the most charitable response i could have posted but when you've already been told that the stakes are high and there's white/male revanchist shit afoot, why adopt the "i need to know more to understand why this would be a friendship-killing thing" posture?

I very intentionally omitted any mention of fault or blame from what I wrote earlier. If you 'win' the demographic jackpot most favored by our society, you have decidedly more control over your fate than do those who are born or who self-select (eg, religion) into groups which have historically been othered and oppressed. This is not to say you won't face obstacles and hardships and all kinds of shit beyond your control, but you have a significantly better chance of overcoming those hardships than someone with a similar background who also happens to be brown or gay or a woman.

"you're coming off a little like "so he posted a bunch of swastikas. what's the big deal? i've never seen that symbol before, is it a thing or something? from what i've been able to gather it seems like"

ok this is bullshit. you are accusing me of things i am not saying. Dr. C i love talking with you about music or video games or movies or whatever but you need to rethink this hostility

Casino 100% OTM, since Ethan Van Sciver is the most significant proponent of gamergate2.

not bad faith, if you were trying to express something that wasn't entirely reductive and banal it doesn't come across to me no matter how many times i look the sentence over

I don’t think Dr. C was being at all hostile, either! just exasperated because these events and jerks are very readily searchable and most people seem to have a handle on what we’re talking about without describing them in detail in-thread

If you 'win' the demographic jackpot most favored by our society, you have decidedly more control over your fate than do those who are born or who self-select (eg, religion) into groups which have historically been othered and oppressed. This is not to say you won't face obstacles and hardships and all kinds of shit beyond your control, but you have a significantly better chance of overcoming those hardships than someone with a similar background who also happens to be brown or gay or a woman.

otmXten

No, white doodz (of whom I am one), it's not that you've had an easy life. Or that everything bad in your life is wholly your fault.

It's simply that the things that were hard for you would have been HARDER for someone coming from different circumstances. And if you're a reasonably well-adjusted, self-reliant individual, it does you no harm to recognize that.

this thread is very long and hard to read but nonetheless here's my experiences:

my friend from school J, who I didn't see for a good five years, moved to a flat beside mine a few years ago, and we ended up reconnecting. J is a good person - she is funny, and thoughtful, and honest. But she has also suffered in her life at the hands of abusive family and bullying for her weight. Her first proper boyfriend (who she met three years ago, at 28 years old) was a horrible man who dealt Class A drugs and told his flatmates that it wasn't a problem for them to walk in and watch them have sex. J has some really fucked up ideas about her own self-worth because of this, but she also has some horrible opinions about women and feminism, "she wore a short dress so she was giving off the signals she wanted it" basic horror stuff. Speaking with mutual friends, it's clear that J's problematic antifeminist views are a result of internalising shitty behaviour from men about her appearance and value and how she's processed some of the things that happened to her - I think its easier for her to believe it's her fault than she spend two years hung up on a bad bastard. I've tried to suggest the wrongness of this internal thought process but it doesn't work at all. Interstingly she loves RuPaul's Drag Race and from watching that has developed some of the most compassionate and supportive stances on LGBT issues. So when she says other problematic stuff, my belief is it's borne out of ignorance and fear, and the best way to deal with that isn't to hector her but to keep introducing her to culture that will unprovocatively change her mind.

my partner's cousin's partner is obsessed with Glasgow Rangers and of course all the accompanying sectarian chat. He is very right-wing. He is also 18 and his social life consists of travelling across Scotland to watch games. I think for him it's about the drinking and the community spirit, and from that he's developed some *interesting opinions* on a lot of things but mainly Catholics and Muslims. I'm not particularly close to him and so I don't have the opportunity to challenge him on it regularly, instead we do a lot of awkward squirming when we hear the conversation steer in any direction. I wish I could say something to him but the family dynamic isn't right for it to be my place.

my brother has had a lot of problems in his life - he took our parents splitting up hard and we've had other issues. At 13 he was drinking and smoking weed, and spent ten years moving through various uppers and downers as habits before deciding to get clean... which led to a gambling addiction to replace the substance abuse. He's moved on from all that and keeps himself occupied by drumming in a band he joined who recruited him via an online ad. The guys in the band are all in their 50s where my brother is not yet 30. They're a typical skinhead oi! band who sing songs about vigilante paedophile hunters. In other words my brother has joined a right-wing band. I don't think he ever realised because, by his own admission, politics isn't his thing. But he says things like "I don't think Tommy Robinson is racist, just Islamaphobic and that's understandable" and we've had full-on arguments in the pub over it. With my brother it's different - I know he's better than this and he's just so easily led astray. It's not an excuse - he chooses to invest time with these people who feed his head full of nonsense, and he says these things out loud by himself - but it's hard to stand back and let him just fall into this utter shit and I struggle to not fight him on it constantly, even though I know it does no good whatsoever.

The lack of a proper dad figures a lot into it for me, complex situation but the lack of a proper structure growing up, with no underlying feelings of security or safety, I think factored in a lot into wanting a black and white world of certainty where things are what they appear to be, and not unnecessarily complicated. So therefore, If you cant touch it then it doesn't exist and the people that are saying these things, are just trying to muddy the waters and deflect from what is obvious to them (no different to when people use overly flowery words that aren't appropriate to a situation and it feels like they are playing a trick) - a desire not for 'simpler times' but for solidity and certainty. 'Just get things done and stop whinging about it'

Some crossover with the 'masculinity' thread maybe?, which I haven't even looked at, but in terms of solidity and structure in the house growing up, and what happens if thats not something you can rely on.

This is why sometimes the things that sound like somebody else's words being parroted, is true! They are someone else's words, tried and tested with 28 million views on youtube or twitter or whatever. Those words appear solid, they got a million likes, then they got attacked which led to a million more likes, the security and certainty of being on the right side of a battle, knowing where you stand. Discussion and debate, and talking about stuff - these are all things which weaken that worked-for certainty, not strengthen it, so why would they want to open the door to all that again?

there's a difference between productive conversation and changing worldviews. discussions can be productive in that they develop and reinforce views or give a sense of purpose or engagement to the participants without being agreeable or polite or whatever (obv you can also get some of this from singing hymns, watching the worst youtube videos, or engaging w all sorts of culture that involves language; debate is not a totally unique activity imo). this will always happen down fault lines bc that's how discourse works.

but yeah in terms of changing ppl's minds I think it's best approached obliquely initially. humour is important, not so much in terms of witty takedowns or w/e but more just being good humoured, being yourself and being relaxed. more than anything I increasingly think that just being open and visible about what you believe makes a difference. seeing ppl thoughtfully and good-naturedly espousing their views grounds and humanises things, esp if they seem more appealing than yr radgy online culture warriors

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.

I know I know, the US, but the not seeing money/class in the list is very odd - Mark Zuckerberg's problems are more of his making than those of a coal miner - or those of the coal miner's teenage son, right?

Mo' money, mo' problems, iirc.

Yes, of course there are a myriad of other factors that open doors for people and allow them to create whole new sets of problems for themselves. And a lack of money, education, etc. definitely make for bigger hurdles, but the fact remains that those arenas are far more easily navigable for the demographics I mentioned.

aren't we talking a bit past each other when some ppl are mentioning problems like depression and addiction, but the comicsgate grievances are more "straight white men can't find jobs/representation in the comics industry any more"?

Like I can totally get being upset at anyone minimizing these issues, no matter how privileged the person affected, but when it comes to "discrimination" in the comics industry Old Lunch is totally OTM

xp that's totally true, but it'd also be true for any smaller collection of those attributes. I just think that if you're going to say "the more you match this list the more your problems are largely of their own making" - which is both true and an important point - then money needs to be on the list.

Daniel OTM about Old Lunch being OTM!

When people who have (and particularly people who've inherited the gains achieved by those before them) fail to appreciate how they got what they have, they begin to take what they have for granted, to expect. Expectation is bundled with the notion of deserving what you have, of having earned it. Which suggests that people who don't have what you have must not deserve it. And if they want what you have, it must entail something being taken from you, something you've earned. If you're stuck in this mindset of victimhood, under siege by some undeserving other, and the privilege you've enjoyed is compromised for any reason, the tendency may be to start laying blame upon that other. Because if you deserve and have earned what you have and expect it to continue unabated, if you're the unquestioned hero of your own narrative, then someone else has to be the villain. And this entire complex is further complicated by the fallacy of viewing privilege as some finite resource, of thinking that you're going to suffer some great loss because someone who doesn't look like you insists on asserting their personhood.

(NB, It's early yet and that may not be entirely coherent.)

There's also the aspect where resource is some finite resource, and privilege is what gets you more resource (CF 500 media studies papers about the rise in popularity of zombie movies (including particularly "grimy" zombie mobs) in a world starting to think about serious resources shortages in the medium term)

It probably goes without saying here, but a lot of the butthurt defensiveness on the part of the privileged when they feel their privilege being compromised is probably informed by their understanding, on some level, that they in fact did not earn much of the privilege they enjoy, that the disparity that enables their privilege was gained through oppression, by generations of those in a position of privilege gaming the system in their favor. That's a tough pill to swallow, so many opt for the red pill instead.

the whole blame argument is one i've not much stomach for anyway. is it my fault i suffer from severe clinical depression? no, not really, and christ it doesn't fucking matter. i can whine all day about how unfair it is that i'm depressed and nothing is going to change. i am still responsible for what i say and do, no matter how many cognitive distortions and outright delusions i have to deal with. these right-wingers today seem to lack almost entirely any sense of personal responsibility. whenever something goes wrong for them it's always somebody else's fault. until and unless that changes there's nothing at all i, or anyone else, can do to help.

and yeah, the just world fallacy needs to die in a fire.

on second thought, best bet is just hammering ppl over the head w generalised statements about privilege & responsibility, anyone that thinks this is useless has quit too soon

xxp Also a fear that the pendulum will swing back, and an appeal that it shouldn't swing back further than fair, because that wouldn't be fair! I mean in practice that means pointing at any move to the centre as the necessary correction that we can stop with now, right?

"True feminists want equality, but these fake feminists want to subjugate men"

on second thought, best bet is just hammering ppl over the head w generalised statements about privilege & responsibility, anyone that thinks this is useless has quit too soon

― ogmor

hey if you want to spend your time giving alt-righters the soft sell about why they should be decent human beings be my guest, i agree with you that it's probably essential to give people an out. i'm not trying to change anybody's mind and i'm not handing out carrots.

I read this in theroot yesterday and it seems applicable here. "Most people don’t want equality; they are simply seeking their opportunity to play the oppressor." I really hope that in the original post where lb is talking about his friend "owning sjw's" that only includes healthy debate and not, like, sending strangers rape threats.

i don't think that's true at all. i don't want to oppress anybody, i just have an insatiable desire for revenge based on real or perceived slights.

here is some ComicsGate BS, right on cue: https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/jawbreakers-comic-comicsgate-antarctic/

Oh, I totally have that too. But my basis for revenge is on specific people that I know.

I think there's something in the gulf between "these guys are just angry because people are paying attention to people who _aren't them_" and the anecdotes boxedjoy mentioned. All of those examples sound very familiar, but inherited attitudes and family dynamics or organically starting to absorb some political opinions from a new social group seem like a different animal from the mostly online gamergate/comicsgate groups.

There's something particular vicious about the pointed "punish the people we think are outliers" mentality when they're creating actual lists of names and attacking people. I guess it's completely on the table as opposed to glancing at a picture of women in an office and mumbling "oh, well you know how THEY got there" but honestly, the online mob is doing that, too. And that more insidious attitude, which occurs even in people who are otherwise reasonable, is where they gain ground.

ugh, that article. I mean it shouldn't be a revolutionary thought that white men's stories have been centered in this world for so long that it's utterly boring to always have them as a protagonist/writer. I don't know when it subconsciously changed for me but I have very little interest in consuming culture from that viewpoint. In this world, and me not being a white man, it is not interesting in the slightest.

yeah apart from all the other nonsense that comic looks appallingly bland and boring

Like, I am watching the second season of Billions right now and all these dudes are sooooo boring (granted I worked in finance for a decade so none of this is novel to me.) Thank goodness they put in a non-binary character to give it an interesting character.

I can only imagine that the industry's response will serve as a wake-up call to the creators of that comic, that they'll see this widespread repudiation of their viewpoint as a sign of its unacceptability, and that they will attempt to reign in their childish vitriol in the hope of being accepted as professionals that the industry will once again feel comfortable hiring.

Did u like my joke, y/n.

Or they can create graphics for dick supplements.

As a straight white cis American dude, I agree that pretty much all of the stories about people like me are unnecessary and played out.

At least like in Bojack, they had the good sense to make the depressed, alcoholic, ego/ennui-centric dude a horse.

Here's just one of the things about these Jawbreakers knuckleheads: you know they're going to have a massive tantrum over Antarctic cancelling their comic, but...fer chrissakes, you already raised $250 grand. Go self-publish your stupid, hateful little tract if you have to. I get the feeling they went through an established publisher in part to engineer a predictable situation they could then express butthurt about.

I do experience a mild enjoyment every time one of the idiots in this vein does something as a knee-jerk reaction that looks infinitely dumber than what they're protesting

I mean it shouldn't be a revolutionary thought that white men's stories have been centered in this world for so long that it's utterly boring to always have them as a protagonist/writer. I don't know when it subconsciously changed for me but I have very little interest in consuming culture from that viewpoint. In this world, and me not being a white man, it is not interesting in the slightest.

this post resonated with me enough to pipe up even though talking about this topic is akin to jumping into a cesspool. i realized this when i realized that i wanted to read to understand the stories of people who were not like me. reading about myself is pretty boring since i have to be myself every day for the rest of my life. i would much rather read about someone whose experience i would have no way of knowing unless i read about it. i was probably 12? reading men's stories was part of that, since i am not a man and was curious for a while about what they thought. that phase lasted about as long as my indie snob phase, maybe 3-4 years. i don't have a problem reading stories written by men as much as stories centered around the experiences of men.

and even then, there are plenty of interesting stories about men's experiences.
specifically i definitely don't ever need to read another author like richard yates again