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The last bit really speaks to me. “So they want a cookie for basic behavior??” YES THEY’RE CHILDREN. COOKIES ARE THE DRIVING MARKET FORCE IN PRETEENS. GIVE THE KID THE DAMN COOKIE.
Cookies are my driving force, and I am in my 60s.
Username definitely checks out and is so very wholesome. I picture you baking your own cookies and sitting down after a long day with one saying “I deserve this” and you absolutely do!
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Part of the issue is that online, it’s often hard to tell the difference between someone who is genuinely asking questions and someone who is asking questions in bad faith. The (relative) anonymity between people is definitely a hindrance here, you can often not easily tell if the person you’re talking to is 15 or 30.
It does not matter at all who the person asking the question is, how old they are, or whether they’re asking in good faith or not. You answer the question for the sake of the audience who will read it. Answering the question is an opportunity to demonstrate understanding, inclusiveness, and compassion. Even if you suspect that the person asking is doing so in bad faith, there is no downside to responding as if they were doing so in good faith, whereas attacking them for asking the question is all downside.
If you’re feeling frustrated and suspicious and you don’t have the patience for it in the moment, then do not engage. You’ll only do harm, to yourself, to them, and to anyone else who reads the discussion.
If it’s clearly bad faith, you report and remove it. It doesn’t actually benefit anyone to discuss with people who are using the question format to spread fascist conspiracy myths. Some posts are very blatant about it.
Don’t pretend to be a telepath, either. The moderators certainly aren’t telepaths. It’s pure speculation.
It is always beneficial because by doing so those observers who may be getting pulled into the fascist sphere see people that they normally get told demonize them trying to be reasonable and engaging in good faith were the side trying to “show them the light” is not. Sometimes thats all it takes to get people to reevaluate what they are engaging with and break the echochamber walls a bit. Remember you arent just discussing in isolation there are also the observers who you can aid as well. If those getting sucked into those spheres constantly get told people silence these ideas because progressives cant argue against them what do you think you do to the observers who see those posts getting removed without dialog? They start getting confirmation bias and pulled into those spheres even faster. Its the same reason certain religions send people door to door to spread the word of God, the point is to have those doing the outreach feel ostracized by the world so they become more ingrained into this group that “actually loves” them and is trying to act in “good faith” but is constantly shuned by the outside world. By just not engaging/answering questions or removing those posts you are doing exactly what they want you to do as it gives them ammo to feed their narrative of being persecuted.
I would say if you think you can tell someone is acting in bad faith. Call them out on that and explain clearly why it’s bad faith. You can just ignore any response after that but I think it’s extremely helpful to future readers if you can make them more aware of the tactics people making bad faith arguments use.
As op said. If you don’t have the energy or desire to make a response it’s more than ok to not engage of course. I would not want to wish arguing with people online against your will on my worst enemy.
Then answer as though they are asking in good faith, remain calm (which can be difficult, I acknowledge), and avoid dismissing their feelings or position. Remember that you’re talking not just to them, but to everybody who reads the exchange in future, and some of those people will need those calm words to turn away from the rabbit hole.
Remember that you’re talking not just to them, but to everybody who reads the exchange in future, and some of those people will need those calm words to turn away from the rabbit hole.
This is the most important part. If they’re arguing in bad faith, or they’re just stubborn and stupid, you’re not going to change their mind even with the kindest and most comprehensive response. But there are lots of people watching, and a lot of those people are trying to decide how they feel about the subject in question.
The best thing you can do is stand out as the voice of reason in an exchange. Your conversational partner might not be convinced, but onlookers will be.
And take breaks. You don’t have to be everyone’s savior. Do the help you can, when you can and just try to make the internet a little safer and happier than you left it.
The problem with this is that the trolls will have more time to sealion than you do, so even if you are confidently and eloquently rejecting their ideas, they will just keep flinging new bullshit until you run out of energy and they get the last word.
The last word rarely matters, what will leave an impression is the overall tone of the discussion. Once they start going in circles, you can wrap up your position too.
Most importantly, if you don’t feel like you have the energy to engage in a discussion, just leave it, you don’t owe the internet masses your energy.
Tbh, if someone is asking questions, that’s (kind of) already a good sign - even if in bad faith, at least it gives space for expressing an opposing viewpoint instead of just closing off all the discussion with insults and attacks.
I’m definitely not a fan of insults etc. - at worst, I’d just report it. The issue is that some of these bad faith posts are made by rightwing political activists, those aren’t in any way willing to change their point of view and are just binding resources that could be used elsewhere more productively. And if a community is targeted by those types, they can easily destroy it by posting so much that they dominate the feeds.
Yes but the purpose of that is to be banned and get content deleted so they can claim persecution as well. Its a tough thing to balance when getting over run by bots/trolls but you have to remember that the goal is not to change you its to feed a narrative to those they want to convert to their ideologies that they are persecuted and silenced without due consideration, they want to get banned so they can point back to it in a video later and be like see these progressives never engage and just hate, censor and cancel anything they dont agree with, they cant argue with is because they know we are right. Its all bullshit of course but by giving them those examples and banning instead of answering in a calm manner and moving on you reinforce their points to those getting indoctrinated.
Doesnt matter if its in bad faith or not, just answer the question with an honest answer. Even if its a bad faith question, the answer isnt. And plenty of other people will read it.
Because of the bullshit assymmetry principle, this just means people end up burned out from answering things, which is one of the goals of bad faith questions.
Doesnt matter if its in bad faith or not, just answer the question with an honest answer. Even if its a bad faith question, the answer isnt. And plenty of other people will read it.
copy/paste is your friend :)
From what Ive seen, and Im not accusing you, is that a lot of people dont want to give any answers. One of the worst things Ive seen being repeated like a mantra is “its not my job to educate you.”. Like its this hand wave to the responsibility that we all have to make sure that misinformation cant run unchecked. I saw this on Reddit especially, and what happened was that all those people who had questions were abused and told to “educate yourself”, as though treating people like this was the key to winning arguments. The result was shock and horror that Trump won in 2016 and then again later when Brexit happened.
So while it can be annoying, IMO, its import to always answer questions. Even if its just copy/pasting in an answer that youve already given before. This is turn helps to avoid echo chambers, because other people can correct me and you, should we have gotten the wrong information about something. It keeps us all honest. I mean, for shits and giggles Ive said some things that were straight up bullshit. But it fit the narrative, and people upvoted. No one pushed back at all. And thats pretty scary if you think about it.
I can copy and paste an answer if the question’s sufficiently similar to one I’ve already answered, but if you’re comitted to generating bad-faith questions, it’s pretty easy to generate variants of questions that need a different variant of the answer.
I think an under discussed issue is the people answering questions in bad faith as well, not just obvious trolls but those playing longer cons.
Could you give me an example of this asking questions in bad faith? I’ve heard it before but I just can’t wrap my head around what it means. Questions are questions and answers are answers. I’m of the opinion that unless it’s in private messages, even answering troll questions with earnest is useful as public comments have an audience.
Look up ‘sealioning’, ‘ad hominem’, ‘Chewbacca defense’ for starters. You will see these techniques show up quite often in bad-faith debates. You’ll also see a lot of goalpost-moving and general logical fallacies.
If you want to see it in action, watch videos of Charlie Kirk’s ‘debates’; he uses all of these to ‘question’ in bad faith—in other words, not to learn things, but to prove himself right at any cost. For a good analysis video of common right-wing behavior of this style, watch The Card Says Moops by The Alt-Right Playbook.
What I do is call out the bad-faith technique they’re doing in my response. If they try to move the goalposts (the ‘gish gallop’ technique is the speedrun version of this), I pull the goalposts back. It isn’t enough to point out the fallacies in the arguement; you also need to point out how they’re using bad-faith techniques too, so people who don’t have as much debate literacy can learn what patterns to look for, not just what answers.
EDIT: For an easy start, there’s actually a very clumsy attempt at a bad-faith argument in this thread
They make a false equivalence argument, where they try to equate removal of religious symbols from classrooms with the removal of religious names people have in an attempt to discredit the idea of keeping religious iconography out of schools.
If it were obvious from a single example, it wouldn’t work. The goal of bad faith discussion is to make the other party engage in good faith, and they won’t do that unless they think you’re also acting in good faith. Once they’re engaging, you can do things like waste loads of their time (it takes much less time to spout some dumb bullshit than explain why it’s dumb bullshit), persuade bystanders that you’re right by arguing with more logical fallacies and unreliable sources than they can point out, and make it look like they’re being unreasonable by sealioning.
Once they’re engaging, you can do things like waste loads of their time (it takes much less time to spout solve dumb bullshit than explain why it’s dumb bullshit), persuade bystanders that you’re right by arguing with more logical fallacies and unreliable sources than they can point out, and make it look like they’re being unreasonable by sealioning.
Bad faith debate/discussion is something I see more and more from the right. It seems that they’ve now grown an entire ecosystem that can manufacture plausible support for anything they might need to get what they want.
General or scientific consensus on a topic? The consensus is just greedy establishment types trying to maintain funding - a conspiracy. Why else would we have a number of scientific papers/books/academic works from think-tanks with generic, helpful-sounding names brave enough to publish opinions that are contrary to the alleged consensus? We’ve even had success lawsuits strategically worded and filed strategically in specific districts, decided in our favor by judges we recommended!
“I’m just asking the question” has become popular with various groups that don’t have counter-facts. Instead, they couch statements as questions or use them to chip away at opposing, reasonable arguments. No answer to the question (other than the one they intended) will ever be accepted, and facts will just raise more questions or moved goalposts. Then, when these people finally get shut down or yelled at for being jackasses, they claim persecution.
It was a VERY popular tactic with anti-vaxxers or pro-Russians on social media before Facebook etc became mostly a bot-populated desert.
Even if they’re 30, it’s better late than never for them to learn, right?
If they’re going in without a desire to learn, you can’t really reach them, at least not with forum comments. They’ll probably need some work in person.
Some of these 30yos might even be paid trolls or bots.
Doesnt matter at all, half the of the purpose of the trolls is to get posts removed/banned as it gives them ammo to act like the persecuted group. Don’t give them what they want answer the question calmly and keep moving so you dont allow their narratives to be the only ones visible to the susceptible people getting pulled into those hateful ideologies.
Whenever I mention that the way things get phrased in left spaces matters, I get yelled at that it doesn’t matter. This is why it matters.
I’m an adult, so.im not going to let some Internet Dipshit who can’t practice what they preach chase me right, but there’s plenty of vulnerable kids out there, who do have real problems, that are sick of being told those problems don’t matter because of how they look - which is similar to the people WHO ARE ALSO OPPRESSING THEM.
Stop attacking fellow victims of the system. You are not creating allies
Yes. The left is horrible at messaging, both in terms of word-choice AND in terms of attitude. I fundamentally agree with left-leaning ideals far more than right-leaning ideals, but holy shit there are people who are just dog-shit at the messaging, and somehow that messaging sticks the hardest.
Struthless has a really good video about this. I’ve seen it happen to the young men in my life first-hand. To my siblings, my friends, and - yes - even to myself at one point. And that hole is a hell of a lot harder to climb out of than it is to fall into, and I’m very lucky to have had some good, caring people in my life who helped me to do it. An uncomfortable truth that we on the left must face, is that this is an issue that will only get worse the longer we pretend it doesn’t exist.
Just left a much less succinct version of this same exact sentiment. It really sucks seeing my family indoctrinate their own children, one of which is not severely but not moderately either spectrum. The sad shit I’ve heard come out of his mouth has been truly heart breaking.
Edit; watching that video was very reassuring as someone currently struggling with alcohol addiction. That compass metaphor was so incredibly powerful.
Thanks for the video, whole-heartedly. I’m an older millennial and don’t really subscribe to youtube channels ever… but I did for that because I wanna be able to find them again. They were refreshing and I appreciate it
Big reason why I try to report and shutdown blatantly misandrist shit I see in leftist spaces. It’s not clever, it’s not funny, maybe it feels good for the person saying it but there is no difference in my eyes between a misandrist and a misogynist. Putting people down based upon intrinsic characteristics they cannot change is the exact kind of behavior done by conservatives.
You can hold everything that is in this post true to your heart and still understand the very real fact that misandry doesn’t exist.
changing the defenition of misandry is just as bullshit as changing the definition of antisemitism to include critism of isreal.
misandry doesnt exist for the same reason reverse racism doesnt exist. there is no system of oppression against men, there is no system of oppression against white people. and all misogyny/racism is inherently systemic.
you are confusing a personal prejudice caused by systemic mistreatment with systemic mistreatment. it is an important distinction to make.
men hating women is misogyny because men have societal power over women. women hating men due to discrimination theyve faced is just them hating their oppressors. when men receive lower salaries than women, have lower rights than women, have their bodies policed like women, are treated like objects and property like women, and are raped and murdered like women, then we can say that misandry is a real thing.
not everything is for you, not everything is about you. you can acknowledge that things and behaviors are bad without pretending they are systems of oppression. if you would prefer to quote a dictionary than actually educate yourself then thats fine, but it doesnt make it any more real.
“you being more offended by the mere implication that some of your peers can be bad than by the harm that they actually cause makes you part of the problem”
i already knew of and dismissed this exact argument before you made it. i don’t know why you thought it was a good idea to make the exact same argument and hope for a different outcome
changing the defenition of misandry is just as bullshit as changing the definition of antisemitism to include critism of isreal.
lol it’s not even an argument it is an accepted fact in academia. your misunderstanding of higher level concepts is not a valid argument against it
It’s not so much a misunderstanding of concepts, it’s people using 2 different definitions.
You must know by now that misandry can both mean “systemic oppression of men” and “bigotry against men” - sorry, “unfairly being mean to men”, just as misogyny or racism can mean different things in a systemic and personal context.
People are complaining about bigotry, or “being meanly treated” if you want to imply dismissiveness, and the word they use for that is misandry/racism/misogyny - that these words imply systemic oppression in an academic context doesn’t matter, we are talking about the other context.
And if you think it should not have this other definition at all, because it makes it harder to talk about the more important systemic issue, or for another reason: don’t be a pedantic prescriptivist on these definitions, language is fluid.
when have men ever been systematically oppressed? misandry doesn’t mean that, because it doesn’t happen.
and what words mean in an acedemic context does matter, because when the academia says one thing and people use it to mean another, it furthers the meabing from reality and science. especially when it’s something like this, when what you’re using as is just something not grounded in facts.
lol it’s not even an argument it is an accepted fact in academia. your misunderstanding of higher level concepts is not a valid argument against it
This whole exercise of injecting academic terms into common discourse and pretending like they’re the only “correct” definition is at least 15 years old now and has achieved nothing. Where is your victory? If a woman hates all men just for being men she’s engaging in misandry. No matter how many times you explain that a system of oppression against men is required in the definition, all you will be doing is preaching to your ever shrinking choir. That definition is only useful outside academia because certain people want to excuse bigotry, and that’s all.
There were already terms for this - the word “systemic” was already in use. Systemic racism vs racism for example. But this insistence that all of society must accept that racism is actually defined as systemic racism and racism without systemic elements simply doesn’t exist is so absurd and silly that it is has no ability to gain any mass appeal required for systemic change which is why its confined to terminally online leftists (and not even all of them).
im really just not gonna waste time engaging with bad faith strawman arguments that start with “the dictionary defines this word as”
i hope that life treats you well and that your beliefs take you to great places
This is some LilyOrchard double standard typeshit… is that you Lily?
All your arguments hinge on broad generalizations and so they can be dismissed offhand. You make the mistake of thinking that if Group A has majority power vs Group B, then that means they have absolute power. You completely diminish and cut down any power or leverage that Group B has. Basically doing learned helplessness to justify prejudice. You ignore any cases where your assumption doesn’t hold true or use those instances to justify “well it’s okay if they do it back!”, completely negating your whole point that “doing that thing is bad”.
this is,,,, this is just a “misogyny isnt systemic” argument
broad generalizations such as “men have systemic power over women” and “men get paid more than women”
next will you say black people can be racist towards white people?
If you think that only white straight men have a monopoly on bigotry and hate, you are a lost cause.
if you think that the systemic oppression of women as people for the benefit of men is in any way shape or form comparable to “this girl was mean to me this one time”, you are a lost cause.
the idea of “misandry” has always been weaponized against women in a misogynistic way by denying them even the ability to express anger at their oppression. women who “hate men” would not hate men if men did not systemically oppress them in every aspect of life. you can say “misandry is real its just not systemic” if you want, but its like saying “all lives matter” has a meaning outside of its use as a racist dogwhistle. not a very serious take. additionally, you cant say that while also comparing it to misogyny, which is systemic.
gender essentialism and bioessentialism are bad, we all agree on this! we dont have to silence women talking about actual issues and experiences in order to do so.
if you are a man and you feel the need to say how misandry totally is a real problem, you have to remember first that you are benefiting from patriarchy right now whether you like it or not
like i said to begin with, the line of reasoning that misandry exists is the same line of reasoning that is used to say reverse racism exists. and last i checked we all know that isnt the case.
I love how this is all gen ed level college race and diversity course, and yet the majority of people here still will never even try to understand it. I try to bring this up every time I see a comment about misandry or reverse racism, fully knowing I’ll get downvoted into oblivion. definitely a reminder that the majority of of lemmy skews to priveledged older white male, even those who call themselves leftists.
you guys are the ones who totally miss the colloquial opinion in academia. idk why you keep appealing to that as if academics agree with vapid moralizing anymore than anyone else. besides, that’s not even how… the humanities work? these things are not presented as facts, they’re presented as imperfect and fallible models like any other field of inquiry, because that’s all we have.
not even discussing the argument at hand, you can’t just respond to people disagreeing with you by saying they’re wrong and they don’t understand. it is immature and shows a lack of higher level reasoning.
but either way the whole line of thought here in these downvoted comments is ass-backwards. it’s not that people disagreeing are all priveleged old white men. it’s that the world literally isn’t some black-and-white place. feels like lots of people are mentally either 13 yo blue haired tumblr girls with a just world fallacy or psycho 12 yo boys nowadays, no inbetweens.
also - saying terms like “reverse racism” or the idea that misandry functionally doesn’t exist are at all common or accepted ideas in academic circles and not radical diactems, especially within sociology/philosophy fields that deal with race/diversity, is so insanely disingenuous as to either be an intentional attempt at manipulation or so obtuse and ignorant as to be buffoonery.
prejudice is still bad! misandry/reverse racism doesn’t exist (full stop) but a black person could still be prejudice against white people, or a women could be prejudice again men. that doesn’t excuse it, but words and connotation matter.
What’s race based prejudice if it isn’t racism? You can’t just displace the original meaning and pretend the original never existed
Obviously it’s generally much more harmful in one direction, but acting like people aren’t all just people with the exact same biases, and acting as if which group has power over which isn’t something that has kept changing throughout the history of humanity, and acting as if all of human experience is homogeneous (that all people with the same labels have identical experience), is all nonsensical extremist horseshoe politics stuff.
When you hear people on your own side defend Apartheid but for opposing reasons, you gotta admit those people have gone too far off the deep end. Racist extreme right people push it because they believe people are inherently different and can’t integrate. Delusional extreme left people do it because “people of different status and power can’t mix without abuse” and so they abdicate from the responsibility to support coexistence and mutual understanding, and so they end up helping racists push their policies.
prejudice is still bad! misandry/reverse racism doesn’t exist (full stop) but a black person could still be prejudice against white people, or a women could be prejudice again men. that doesn’t excuse it, but words and connotation matter.
Yes, words and connotations matter which is why the whole exercise of injecting academic terms into common discourse and pretending like they’re the only “correct” definition is so pointless . It is at least 15 years old now and has achieved nothing. Where is your victory? If a woman hates all men just for being men she’s engaging in misandry. No matter how many times you explain that a system of oppression against men is required in the definition, all you will be doing is preaching to your ever shrinking choir. That definition is only useful outside academia because certain people want to excuse bigotry, and that’s all.
There were already terms for this - the word “systemic” was already in use. Systemic racism vs racism for example. But this insistence that all of society must accept that racism is actually defined as systemic racism and racism without systemic elements simply doesn’t exist is so absurd and silly that it is has no ability to gain any mass appeal required for systemic change which is why its confined to terminally online leftists (and not even all of them - like seriously if you can’t even win them over then maybe your strategy sucks?).
It’s all the more tragic because this whole time feminist discourse could have been focusing on the actual problem of systemic misogyny and systemic racism instead of fighting linguistic battles that have all been conclusively lost.
what…
Heartbreaking: A Twitch Streamer Just Made a Great Point
Heartbreaking: Someone who keeps track of who is and isn’t a streamer doesn’t realize they are contributing to the thing they proclaim to hate.
The only reason this conversation exists is because there are billions of dollars propping up right wing grifters that don’t exist for the left. Like there ARE lefties in places like twitch, but for every one Hasan there’s a hundred Asmongolds. This is all downstream from media ownership by the capital class. Jamie pull up the Lenin quote about The Economist.
And? That doesn’t change the fact that these spaces have inherently been beaming out “no boys allowed” for ages and then wondering why so many young men head elsewhere.
Our enemies’ tactics and financial backing doesn’t absolve us of responsibility for our own shortcomings.
these spaces have inherently been beaming out “no boys allowed” for ages
I disagree that that’s what they’ve been doing. That’s what reactionaries often characterize them as doing
Given the entire OP image and many of these comments, I really think you should reconsider.
I’m not saying it’s intentional or malicious, but there is a messaging and communication problem that is strongly contributing to ease at which the alt-right pipeline is recruiting teens and young men.
“Am I so out of touch? No, it’s the children who are wrong” - Seymour Skinner
Am I misunderstanding you, or are you saying it requires billions of dollars to come up with effective messaging/marketing for the left, aimed at young boys and men?
Like… I hear you that the funding gap is a huge and fundamental problem, but I frankly don’t think its difficult at all to message leftist points to younger guys.
Give them a set of principles to hold themselves to, and explain to them why these are good principles.
‘A good man helps out his community to the greatest extent he can, a good man doesn’t hate others for no good reason, a good man is responsible enough to learn how to question what he is told so that he can discern the character and intent of others, a good man approaches the unknown and the strange not with fear, but with a measured yet hopeful curiosity’
Reject toxic masculinity but don’t just leave an empty void where it was, instead, actually replace it with an actually healthy and affirming masculinity.
I mean the funding gap literally does make it harder to message leftist points to younger people though. What you run into is a lack of redundancy and resiliency because, not for a lack of points, but a lack of messengers. On the right ironically you have a diversity of thought: You have your Zionists, your Nazis, your run of the mill misogynists, your trad accounts, your christian trad accounts, your finance bros, your ancaps, and literally everything in between. No matter where you are on the vast tapestry of wrong, there is a paid shill whose entire content is meeting you exactly where you are and pulling you in. You only get that by having a robust ecosystem of content creators across almost as many platforms.
On the right they have podcasts, YouTube, twitch, rumble, kick, tiktok, Spotify, x, meta, on and on. What do we have? We have a small army of 4-5 digit sub accounts on iHeartRadio, YouTube, twitch, and tiktok, and Hassan, almost all of which are focused on the millions of issues we have in society beyond young men needing a place to belong. Like I love Behind the Bastards, but they ain’t patiently explaining to kids why the n-word is wrong.
The problem isn’t that we have a lack of arguments, or a lack of good arguments, it’s that the right has not only entire platforms geared towards pushing their ideologies, but financially backed systems built around gaming even the most “neutral” of platforms. Like respect to the bigger leftists, they had to earn every sub and view to gain access to [insert site]'s main page. Andrew Tate can call up his financiers and have 5 million bot subs by tomorrow. That access to feeds is something that can only be bought to manifest the reach we need.
It’s unclear whether it’s required. What is very clear, is that a large, well funded, effort on the right seems to be out performing the efforts of the left.
I think, it’s safe to assume that there is a numbers game at play here. Money provides search optimization, higher production values, more creators able to spend more time on content, bot armies promoting content, generating likes, subscriptions, and comments.
If that is possible to recreate through pure grass roots efforts we haven’t seen it.
No, the whole point is that it is required, and becauase it isn’t being done, identity-hungry consumers find people who actually are marketing to them, specifically.
Like, sorry to put it in those terms, but that is the reality of it.
How could it not be required? The young white male demographic just objectively did get more and more right wing radicalized in the last 5 to 10 years… you can either yell at them for that, or, do preventative care.
It doesn’t take a billion dollars to develop ways of talking about things and topics that work for that demo… there are tons of uh, for example, ex-religious people who will and do truly relate to the bullshit that a young white dude goes through growing up /very/ religiously, and they can tell you how their moral structure correctly led them to reject a whole bunch of right wing bullshit, and they’re speaking genuinely.
Would a billion dollars help with this kind of messaging?
Sure, yeah.
But it isn’t required, it doesn’t take a billion dollars to figure out how to talk to young white guys, young guys of any ethnicity… unless you’re the DNC, then I guess this does apparently require giving small fortunes to a whole lot of contractor PR marketing people.
What is required is the actual messaging, and then tie that back into the rest of a leftist worldview.
Then you use the money to help spread that message further.
If you start with the money and make messaging from there, you get David Pakman, you get Brian Tyler Cohen (Cowen? sp?), ie, not actually leftists.
A good man helps out his community to the greatest extent he can, a good man doesn’t hate others for no good reason, a good man is responsible enough to learn how to question what he is told so that he can discern the character and intent of others, a good man approaches the unknown and the strange not with fear, but with a measured yet hopeful curiosity’<
I won’t discount the controversies or vastly different experiences other people had with the organization, but those are all lessons that were drilled into my head during my time in the Boy Scouts.
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God damn this hits hard. I was seriously in danger of falling down that hole as a kid, because kids are stupid and the right talks confidently and ad naseum. Also my father wasn’t exactly a stalwart of progressive ideals. I’m so very thankful for being a Mama’s boy, she is probably the reason I’m not the typical chud I look like.
With that being said, this is also a societal problem when so many parents offload their parenting to the web. And I say societal because it is not often times not the parent’s fault as having to work extended hours or multiple jobs just to provide the necessities.
It’s really a feature, not a flaw, of the right’s long term plan. Stupid people vote for stupid things.
Years ago I argued that misandrist feminist rhetoric (e.g. all men are rapists) was going to wind up creating a misogynistic counter-culture.
These days, I watch it unfold and just feel very very sad as it will ruin lives.
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I’ll pop a little observation in here, as I’ve generally had a woman for my manager for most of my professional career (doesn’t bother me, they’ve all been good managers).
It’s socially acceptable to make a joke about men (you know what men are like lol), it’s a visit to HR if you make the same joke about women (you know what women are like lol). This isn’t a false perception, or over exaggerated bit of right wing propaganda, it’s just working life being a man.
I’ll NEVER forget an inaugural lecture where a professor stated she’d always hire women over men for her research team, and people cheered. She’d have been stripped of her title as a man, possibly sacked.
To be quite frank, there are hundreds of little “adjustments” men live with today. I’m sorry to say that the iniquity men face today is real, and while older men can see how it balances past iniquities (or are indifferent) - younger men just see the iniquity levelled against them and rightly question it because their only crime is being a man.
It isn’t just “a few” - it’s the normality we’ve created. It’s a sad situation, because in the pursuit of justice we’ve created injustice and the predators that shape the manosphere have monopolised it for their own selfish ends.
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I agree the played victim like a soccer player.
As someone raised as a white Christian male: no, I have never felt like people were calling me evil, shunning me, or pushing me away because I am white, Christian, or male. That is such a bullshit take and people need to not tolerate that persecution complex nonsense.
Assholes get called assholes for being assholes, and instead of any sort of introspection they blame it on them being “white” or “male,” because to them being a white male means they get to be an asshole and everyone else just has to accept it.
Isn’t it nice how of all the people commenting ITT you’re the only one whose personal experience can be generalized to an entire race+gender of people? You’re very lucky.
So we agree it is not a universal experience that all white males are vilified for being white males?
The post never claims all white males are being vilified, just that enough are being vilified or at least ignored in leftist spaces to push them away and into far-right / alt-right spaces.
enough are being vilified or at least ignored in leftist spaces
Which I have never encountered. I see no data supporting that claim. Why is there anecdote more valuable than mine? Are you ignoring me because I’m a white male?
I’m gonna be real bro this is a real midwit argument. Can you understand that this is happening enough to be noticed as a trend and an issue that must be addressed?
As for a source, there are countless examples of both your experience and the experience of men who fell into the pipeline after being shunned and finding there way out.
I’m not arguing they should be shunned, I’m saying people need to not feed into this “white male” persecution complex bs.
Absolutely having gentle conversations with them helps. And sometimes that gentle conversation is “they’re not treating you this way because you’re white, they’re treating you this way because of how you act.”
one of the main reasons i didnt fall to the right wing bullshit is because motherfuckers bothered talking to me and presenting any alternative at all
Yeah, this shit hadn’t really taken off much when I was that age but I can 100% see it being a problem for me if it had. I was very much socially isolated and angry when I was younger because I was ostracized by basically everyone and couldn’t figure out wtf I was doing wrong (looking back I still don’t really know) and it wasn’t until I got into college that I met people who were kind enough to help me get straightened out. If I hadn’t met those people I think there’s a pretty decent chance that I turned out to be a horrible person. I was certainly heading that way for a while.
They hated him because he said the truth (and didn’t hand over his platform to someone “more marginalized” after one single drama).
A big part of this is that parts of the Democrat base loves to actively sabotage any Democrat outreach efforts, because they are more interested in smug fart sniffing than strategic pragmatism.
more interested in smug fart sniffing than strategic pragmatism.
exactly.
For example: see the commenters in this thread
So this is clearly personal to many people in this thread but I’m just going to point out objectively and non judgementally that Vaush and other participants misrepresent the argumemt made by the original poster.
The original poster specifically refers to men. Vaush’s response either intentionally or unintentionally responds to to an argument not made by the original poster by referring to 12 year old boys.
This is actually fairly low level discourse because the entire reply chain is responding to a strawman. If anyone has any further insight I’d be happy to hear it. I think we need to elevate our reading comprehension if we’re going to have meaningful conversations about this.
Young boys see comments directed at men as being directed at themselves as well. The foundations of the things that make a man buy into this shit are laid when he’s young. I think it’s quite valid to bring this up.
An adult man doesn’t just join the Andrew Tate crowd. The foundations for agreeing with his misogyny were laid while he was a teenager (or even younger). The people who are alienated by this sort of rhetoric aren’t adults, they’re teenagers who haven’t formed a political identity yet, who can yet be turned away from that self-destructive ideology and it is them who are turned away by such rhetoric.
The term “man” may by all of us be seen only to refer to males over the age of 18, but a teenage boy will already identify with it, will thinks of himself as cool, independent, grown-up. He will see an attack on “men” as an attack on himself.
While the targeted group may have been adult men, the actual targets will have been the twelve y/o Vaush spoke off and they will be driven further away from the principles of democracy and equality and into the hands of waiting fascists.
Post Scriptum
This isn’t supposed to be a defence of Vaush btw, I don’t really like him myself.
Yeah, the next step in the conversation is acknowledging that the same applies to a LOT of adult men. Not the majority, by far. But certainly enough to make a significant difference.
A lotta guys out there are participating in the patriarchy simply because it’s how they were raised, or because they were in a bad spot and the right made a better pitch to them when they asked for help. Or the only pitch. They haven’t thought it all the way through yet, and are just working with the information they have.
Every day at every age, there are some men out there collapsing the cognitive dissonance between patriarchy and basic human decency. Men who could be good people if they discard the right belief when the two finally become irreconcilable. When talking about effective outreach, these guys are important to reach. I’d say not as urgent as reaching out to the malleable kids before Dennis Prager sticks his oily little fingers in their brains or something of the like. But still a very worthwhile demographic to reach out to.
I figure that the assumption being made is that the alt-right social media pipeline is generally accepted to refer to the online ecosystem that was created to court impressionable young boys from the ages of 12-25 into the rightwing and then extreme rightwing ecosystem. And though Men’s Rights Activists is more broad and could be considered a choice, it is the younger demographic that are the ones “falling in”, and that’s where I imagine Vaush clarified that with saying “12 y.o.s”.
Older folks entering involuntarily, would have been through other media like Rush Limbaugh-style AM radio, Fox News or other Republican campaigns directly like Project Redmap in 2010, then those Republican groups shifted even further right over the last 15 years.
Perhaps the correlation that 12 year olds are the ones falling in even if others are doing it by choice, should have been explained by Vaush before jumping directly to the conclusion.
Sidenote: The problem is caused by the difficulty to have nuanced arguments within 150 characters. (The first two Twitter screencaps)
I feel like “the right is willing to use manipulation, misinformation, and coercion on children while the left isn’t” is not quite the argument these users think it is. Certainly we shouldn’t be demonizing young white boys but tbh I’ve seen very little if any of that behavior. If a person gets censored and banned from communities because they shared the funny nazi emoji then that should be a learning moment for them, I don’t think it should be in the hands of the minorities, which those children are actively harassing on public platforms, to be the Daryl Davis in their lives.
