Replace:
X - Earth is round Y - Earth is flat
and read again. Some Y people probably started existing this way, because other Y people didn't reject them even though Y makes no sense and wasn't proven.
... but idk i could be wrong
this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2023
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Most conspiracy theories really have little to do with the belief itself, the people that get sucked in are often just lonely and looking for a purpose.
I also believe that a lot of conspiracy theories were started as jokes, with a core group of reasonably smart people LARPing a ridiculous position. What I wonder about is how many of those people LARPed so long and hard that they came to believe their own BS.
More likely, a bunch of people joined who didn't understand it was a joke (fairly common online)
People being assholes about it is definitely part of why I oppose X
It's not easy, but I think people should have a value system that's independent from how others behave.
X, the former Twitter, or another company called X?
X, the porn website
X the character as used in math problems.
I'm feeling more charitable towards landlords lately, largely because of this site. I might even tip mine next rent payment.
Are you also so incredibly smart?
That's pretty cringe of you.
My loathing of X grows
So being a dick and acting holier than thou causes people to abandon my cause... Hmm... Maybe I should call those people stupid, that'll positively impact the world, surely.
If a person being mean to you caused you to abandon a cause, you didn't really believe in that cause, you just wanted to be in a club.
I prefer to imagine that I'm stupid but not in the most obvious way.
There's actually some useful information here if you ignore the hyperbole.
If you act like a jerk and are mean to people, you will drive people away from your causes, even if you are taking a position that is strongly defensible from a moral and ethical view. If you take the view that "I don't have to do the emotional labor to educate you, OMG read some theory, you're fucking stupid if you can't understand this, you don't deserve to live if you think Y," etc. you aren't going to win people over. And yes, if you are always acting like an asshole, you're probably going to drive people away that believe similarly to you, because they won't want to be associated with assholes. That's human nature, and something that you need to learn to contend with if you want to win adherents to any political or social position.
In other words: leftists and feminists, fucking get over yourselves.. You may not want to put in the emotional labor because it's exhausting, but you know who will? Fascists, nationalists, misogynists, and religious fundamentalists. If you just want to make fun of and vent at people on the right, you're only creating a more insular group that more and more people are going to end up hating. See also: hexbear,
there's a number of inauthentic right wingers that happily pose as leftists online to spur these sorts of things, its not something you can stop by lecturing people in online spaces.
This is good in person advice but in most cases this is a mostly online issue where bad actors and children are over represented.
I've absolutely, definitely met people IRL that have argued in exactly the way I outline. ...Although "argue" is charitable, since they're just haranguing their ~~victim~~ subject. I've also known plenty of people that claim that they know they aren't going to change the mind of the person they're verbally assaulting--because people can't change, I guess?--but that they want to win the hearts of the people observing. ...Which they also aren't doing, since they're appearing to be mean-spirited to observers. (And yes, there's nuance here, and I still firmly believe in punching Nazis.)
David McRaney has been talking for a while about what actually works for changing the way people think and believe (and he just recently published, "How Minds Change"), and Anthony Magnabosco has been posting street epistemology videos on YouTube for years. Both of them have found--to be really reductive--that you need to emotionally connect with the person you're talking to, and you need to ask open-ended questions that allow them to consider the foundations for their beliefs.
And to your point, yes, that's hard to do online. I get it. I often fall into the trap of arguing instead of being empathetic. So I need to take my own advice.
My human nature wanted to rail against what you were saying at a certain point (especially when you called out feminists and leftists) since I can relate to your target audience, but yeah. Good words.
FWIW, I am very much a leftist. I'm mostly an anarchist, although I also recognize that having a large, diverse, functioning society is extremely difficult--bordering on impossible--without some degree of authoritarian control. (And I've also seen just how paralyzed radically democratic groups can get, when they have to vote on everything.) I want the people on the left, the people that want a more equal society, to do better, because I think we can be better.
Being kind to people--not fake kindness, not kindness with an agenda, but just kind--can go a long ways for leftists. For women, well, I'm not a woman. But having women as friends and them being open with me about what they experienced as women went a long way towards opening my eyes.
And, FWIW, I started from a position of being deeply conservative, very religious, and having absolutist views on gender identity and gender roles, and the godly nature of capitalism.
So it's not really about X; it's about how X made you feel.
I still remember some redditor arguing over why they believe BLM is bullshit because that one time someone was mean to them on the internet.
To repeat: Disproportionate police targeting by black people is BULLSHIT because they wrote a comment online that someone took offense to.
Have seen this in vegan groups multiple times. "Used to be vegan, but no longer am because some vegans are mean".
Vegan subreddits are so aggressively hostile.
But then being mean to vegans seem to be normal in so many places.
It's a strange circle.
Sounds like selection bias. The only experiences you memorize are the bad ones. The vast majority of people is vegan subreddits are not hostile. Well, maybe vegancirclejerk
It's weird because vegans are pretty chill IRL
Thats absolutely not a universal. Only met 1 irl vegan who wasnt a raging asshole, and not even specifically about the diet.
If you shift your diet over people being mean to you, I really worry for you.
Im not even vegan, but if you want to eat a specific way and you stop because someone called you names on the internet Im not gonna lie, I do think youre kinda dumb. The internet trolls should not impact the food you order or cook for dinner.
I would also say that if you were vegan and then stop being vegan because people were mean to you, you were never vegan to begin with.
Veganism is about reducing animal abuse and suffering as much as possible. It's not about you. If you just drop your morals because someone was mean to you, then I question those morals.
I am not incredibly smart, but I am smart enough to be aware of my own shortcomings. And those confirm this. I do often find myself supporting irrational positions because I don't want things to go the way that lots of awful people want it to. My desire for their cause to fail is stronger than my rational ability to analyze what would actually be best. That's how the human mind works.
People are complex. We are not binary.
It's why we should always call out whataboutism.
Hating mustard doesn't mean you support ketchup.
This could be applied so many different ways and is especially topical right now with that's currently going with the world policitically cough cough