MeanwhileOnGrad
"Oh, this is calamity! Calamity! Oh no, he's on the floor!"
Welcome to MoG!
Meanwhile On Grad
Documenting hate speech, conspiracy theories, apologia/revisionism, and general tankie behaviour across the fediverse. Memes are welcome!
What is a Tankie?
Alternatively, a detailed blog post about Tankies.
(caution of biased source)
Basic Rules:
Sh.itjust.works Instance rules apply! If you are from other instances, please be mindful of the rules. — Basically, don't be a dick.
Hate-Speech — You should be familiar with this one already; practically all instances have the same rules on hate speech.
Apologia — (Using the Modern terminology for Apologia) No Defending, Denying, Justifying, Bolstering, or Differentiating authoritarian acts or endeavours, whether be a Pro-CCP viewpoint, Stalinism, Islamic Terrorism or any variation of Tankie Ideology.
Revisionism — No downplaying or denying atrocities past and present. Calling Tankies shills, foreign/federal agents, or bots also falls under this rule. Extremists exist. They are real. Do not call them shills or fake users as it handwaves their extremism.
Tankies can explain their views but may be criticised or attacked for them. Any slight infraction on the rules above will immediately earn a warning and possibly a ban.
Off-topic Discussion — Do not discuss unrelated topics to the point of derailing the thread. Stay focused on the direct content of the post, rather than engaging in unrelated arguments.
Brigading — If you're here because this community was linked in another thread, please refrain from voting, commenting or manipulating the post in any way, this includes alt accounts. All votes are public, and if you are found to be brigading, you will be permanently banned.
You'll be warned if you're violating the instance and community rules. Continuing poor behaviour after being warned will result in a ban or removal of your comments. Bans typically only last 24 hours, but each subsequent infraction will double the amount. Depending on the content, the ban time may be increased. You may request an unban at any time.
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They do genuinely believe it until and unless they are challenged on it in a way they cannot refute and also simultaneously does not anger them.
If it angers them, they all become screaming sarcastic trolls.
If you manage to do it politely they will act as if they have an extremely nuanced opinion and well we basically believe the same thing with minor differences.
In short, they basically have late stage irony poisoning which has legitimately caused many of them to become delusional and extremely aggressive if correctly agitated.
If you are enough of a leftist to know their more grounded ideas and the lingo / meme culture, you can fit in well until you trigger them with a verboten question or idea.
You are correct that many of the psychological traits are basically the same seen in other cults of personality. Self reinforcing bubble.
Also lets be real, a whole lot of these people are also chronic weed smokers. Sure, in moderation that shit is fine, but use it consistently to the point that you need it to cope with reality and ... well long term hallucinogen use kind of warps most people's sense of reality.
Yeah. There's this culture of lemmy.ml, too, that's elevated arguing in bad faith to this sort of "this is the way" status. Like if you're calmly citing sources and asking questions, that is "sealioning" which is a bad thing to do, but hurling abuse at someone who you don't agree with is fine. Also, I've noticed a common thread of behavior which is telling other people what those people believe and then disagreeing with it. Like hey, you disagreed with some ludicrous thing that I said, so that means you're a "centrist" and you support establishment Democrats and Israel, and so now I'm gonna go HAM about telling you how wrong you are for supporting the Democrats and Israel even though you never said those things or anything even roughly similar to them. It's like a little one-man band of internet debate. The other person doesn't even really need to be involved in the process at all beyond showing up and saying a couple things enough to be branded as the enemy.
At one point I thought it was bots. Like they're programmed with this pattern of general hostility pushing a certain viewpoint, that doesn't even need to have anything to do with what the person they're talking to is saying, and that's why it's so bizarre in the flow of conversation. But now I'm not real sure about that. IDK. Maybe it's not worth time trying to figure out, but it is a mystery to me that I wish I could know the answer to.
Basically just look up EthanIsOnline on youtube or twitter and there's your average terminally online, drama queen, any slight association to anything I don't like mandates guilt by massive unfounded leaps, always correct no matter how much of a hypocrite or just factually wrong they are kind of leftist person.
I have known people like ml and hex tankies in real life. The ones I knew were extremely erratic and manipulative, explosive personalities.
The sort of weird conversation style that works on comment threads and streams on the net has kind of broken their brains, as when you see a person doing this IRL its basically a 30 minute rant of them either screaming at you, or having a complete suicidal depression breakdown after any particular thing sets off them off.
If you were an unbiased observer who was just observing most of the interactions these people have it'd be clear that they are emotionally abusive cry bullies.
My experience was so bad that I've given up doing mutual aid and helping those who were at the time less well off than me.
I can be the person actually doing the thing, spending all my time actually assisting the downtrodden, and none of that means anything because I laugh when my roommate says oh China's former president just got whisked away during a very public party meeting, surely he's been put into witness protection to save him from threats on his life!
A month later I am homeless because roommate was angry and decided to spread a bunch of rumors about me.
Awesome!
No no no I don't want to
My experience is, honestly, pretty limited, but that makes sense to me. Some of the super-left people I have known IRL have been illogical in this very particular "and of course I am right about everything, that goes without saying" way that largely tracks with what you're describing.
It's a fucking shame, because I am feeling right now that I should be getting involved with some kind of left organization for progress, because without that the US and the world are in mortal danger of some very bad things. IDK. Maybe the way to go is to get involved with unions and electoral politics and leave the harder core of communists to their own devices for the time being.