El Cid wrote:
Hi Bumpy.

Hmm, I have a theory about Twitter: Maybe from the beginning, it was designed to be a competitive multiplayer deathmatch… and nobody using it today realizes that?

Some of us do and then we re-read the threads and dissolve into laughter about we're talking past one another.

A few quips later and we're all right as rain.

It's called acting like an adult instead of name-calling and spouting “nyah-nyah racist, fascist etc” like a six year old.

Twitter, where adults can go and act like a kindergartner in the name of social justice and act like it's the Reign of Terror 1792 all over again J'accuse! The guillotine is too good for the likes of them!

You jest, but I genuinely believe a lot of the people behind our current moral panic would gladly send virtue offenders to the guillotine if they could. People haven't changed.

It's an interesting phenomenon, to be sure. Especially when in reality, the vast majority of people are MUCH closer to the “center” of all ideologies. MOST people just want to live peacefully, and let OTHERS live peacefully. However, all too often, it's the most vocal of us heard most often, and they tend to be the more extreme individuals. Extremism on either end of the spectrum, as history shows, ultimately leads to oppression and abuse. It's absolutely something to be guarded against.

People like feeling part of something, though, and social media has given us a very easy way to do that. And so we join in on the sides most closely aligned with our ideals and “do battle”… plus it's also just a great way to pass time. :P The good and bad part of this definitely is the power it has to potentially ruin lives. People have been bullied into suicide online. People have had livelihoods destroyed. People have had to go into hiding. On the flipside… dangerous people have been tracked down, bigots have been exposed, movements have spread that give people hope and restore faith, fundraisers have been held to support and uplift others…

And the good parts happen most often when, of course, differences have been set aside and individuals' humanity is recognized. Humans of New York, which is on FB and Instagram, is the best example I can think of for this. Really one of the best frickin pages on the internet, I think lol

All this to say that yeah, people bicker way too much and in most cases need to just CTFD xD

El Cid wrote:
Hi Bumpy.

Hmm, I have a theory about Twitter: Maybe from the beginning, it was designed to be a competitive multiplayer deathmatch… and nobody using it today realizes that?

This is like, the best explanation I've seen so far for internet behavior xD

El Cid wrote:
You jest, but I genuinely believe a lot of the people behind our current moral panic would gladly send virtue offenders to the guillotine if they could. People haven't changed.

Actually I'm not. A great many of the so-called “resistance ” to Trump's election were calling for guillotines.

Fortunately they're now settling for milkshakes.

And you wonder why I can't help but laugh at this stuff? This is reality on social media not satire!

Fortunately there are satire accounts but even then often all they have to do is retweet what those from either tribe have said.

People I know who yelled the loudest about the right going on about Democrats being “socialist ” were from Cuba and Eastern Europe “They're not socialist, I know what socialism is and that's not them!”

It's a sad state of affairs really. And I am on neither side. Yes, I am pretty much libertarian left, but I can still respect other people's political views (as long as it does not harm or oppress other people's rights). But I guess today people are a lot more open politically than they were 10 years ago. But that's just me.

BustyLaroo wrote:
It's an interesting phenomenon, to be sure. Especially when in reality, the vast majority of people are MUCH closer to the “center” of all ideologies. MOST people just want to live peacefully, and let OTHERS live peacefully. However, all too often, it's the most vocal of us heard most often, and they tend to be the more extreme individuals. Extremism on either end of the spectrum, as history shows, ultimately leads to oppression and abuse. It's absolutely something to be guarded against.

People like feeling part of something, though, and social media has given us a very easy way to do that. And so we join in on the sides most closely aligned with our ideals and “do battle”… plus it's also just a great way to pass time. :P The good and bad part of this definitely is the power it has to potentially ruin lives. People have been bullied into suicide online. People have had livelihoods destroyed. People have had to go into hiding. On the flipside… dangerous people have been tracked down, bigots have been exposed, movements have spread that give people hope and restore faith, fundraisers have been held to support and uplift others…

And the good parts happen most often when, of course, differences have been set aside and individuals' humanity is recognized. Humans of New York, which is on FB and Instagram, is the best example I can think of for this. Really one of the best frickin pages on the internet, I think lol

All this to say that yeah, people bicker way too much and in most cases need to just CTFD xD

Agreed. We must all come together hug each other's arms…and pat them…and hold them with care while questioning my sanity because I had 3 to 5 cups of coffee, vacuumed at least 2 rows of coke and honestly…I have no idea what I am typing, I'm just being silly.

But going back to your point, people should just get along. The Internet is a townsquare in a way.

But going back to your point, people should just get along. The Internet is a townsquare in a way.

there in lies the problem…getting along doesn't present action, doesn't get you seen…quips and snark garner the currency of likes…EVERYTHING must be presented as a movement of some sort…to me, this seems like a symptom of millions of people with humanities and other otherwise non-marketable degrees in need of an outlet to validate $40k of student debt…I could be wrong

Don't get me wrong, I love Seinfeld as much as the next guy, but we've turned a corner in society in making the most mundane minutia some sort of crisis…and its highly contageous

Bumpkin Skateboards wrote:
Don't get me wrong, I love Seinfeld as much as the next guy, but we've turned a corner in society in making the most mundane minutia some sort of crisis…and its highly contageous

That's the whole snowflake trope. 🤣🤣

Bumpkin Skateboards wrote:
Don't get me wrong, I love Seinfeld as much as the next guy, but we've turned a corner in society in making the most mundane minutia some sort of crisis…and its highly contageous

Now for another side of what I previously said:

Many people find social media a great tool for making voices heard that, until now, could never BE heard in the first place. There's good and bad to this absolutely. Like I said before, it's given extremists platforms. And personally I 100% believe such people need to be called out and it needs to be shown that their attitudes are not acceptable. This has been, in my experience, the BIGGEST source of contention. People perceiving injustice and bigotry and using their platform to say “HEY! This is not okay!” Which… honestly? I think I'd rather see this than a widespread, apathetic “who cares”. BUT… I cannot support things that ruin peoples' livelihoods for the sake of fulfilling some grudge. That is just not okay. I mean, when a person has to go into hiding because of rape and death threats when all they're doing is calling out sexism, things have really gone way too far. (*cough* the gamer community *cough)

This is so much fun to talk about. :D lol

I bet you ANYTHING there are people reading through this and sorting the commenters and their comments into the “right” and “left” buckets, according to their own preconceptions XD

ozoneocean wrote:
I bet you ANYTHING there are people reading through this and sorting the commenters and their comments into the “right” and “left” buckets, according to their own preconceptions XD

From what I've experienced on Twitter, all the commenters would be dumped into the racist, fascist, homophobic bucket.

After all someone mentioned groups as opposed to social justice versus oppression. Noone here used the right language and only committed microaggressions using the words of patriarchal oppression.

One thing about buckets and labeling: sometimes you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. A sin of omission is a passport to hell in some eyes.

One thing I always find funny is posts that are essentially say “zero tolerance for the intorent!!!!”

One thing about buckets and labeling: sometimes you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. A sin of omission is a passport to hell in some eyes.

did yall see what went down with Chelsea Cain?

I get tossed into both buckets depending on who's doing the tossing…I think the trick is to not care

ozoneocean wrote:
Naomi is indeed an example of a victim of internet political tribalism:
-The only reason Vice interviewed her was because she fit the profile of the sorts of people they like to hold up as an exemplar for their agenda:
A sexy, transgressive, educated, ethnic, foreign woman, who has some issues with sexist, rightwing trolls.

She plays perfectly to their house narrative. ^_^

But in writing their article their article they didn't seem to care that it could harm her.

And she WAS harmed, by mechanisms setup because of the excesses of tribalistic behaviour (The anti-doxing rules on Patreon)
And then she was further harmed by political tribalism when other bloggers and the New York Times wrote smear articles about her claiming she was a rightwinger and people tried to actively get her defunded and deplatformed.



What happened to her is a perfect example of the rabid excesses of this childish behaviour that masquerades as political activism and exists on both sides of the political spectrum.
Yes, there are toxic rightwingers who do and say nasty, stupid, evil things, but us on the left are just as prone to over-reactions and evil through stupidity. We have to admit that and guard against it.

Even for myself: I'm committed to the left, and know how easy it is for me to get swept away and caught up in the campaigns against such and such individual and cause. Like the case of that stupid smirking boy in the MAGA hat for example. The actual facts of the situation were VERY different from what the press reported and what people got carried away with fighting for.
None of us are immune to this idiocy.

*The original video created the impression that the MAGA hat boy had gotten in the face of the old native American man and he was disrespecting him, smirking and tempting to provoke him while he calmly sang.
People found out who the boy was and started a hate campaign against him and his parents, tried to get him expelled etc.
-It turned out that the real story was that the kids were standing in their own little right wing group in their stupid hats but away from people and not interfering with them. The old man was part of a group of agitators who deliberately go around trying to provoke violence, which they had been filmed doing. He had come into the group where the boy was and sung in his face while the boy stood there and took it. The person who filmed it cut out everything excpt that short snippet and kept the view on a tight frame so you missed all the real context… and so another tribalist campaign was born.

I see… I admit I hadn’t heard about that Naomi business until you mentioned it. But yeah, sounds like a typical internet escalation to me.

Also, agreed on “over-reactions and evil through stupidity”. However, pointing those out on the other side is often used as a kind of fake defense… for example, there was a video going around on Twitter of people shoving an old man who was a pro-Trump protester in London a few days ago, and he fell to the ground, and Twitter was like: oh look at those stupid violent liberals!!!1!!1 And yeah, sure, those - I don't know - 3 out of 10,000? protesters were out of line. But clearly, you don’t need to be a flawless human being in order to have a legitimate point against morally bankrupt people like Trump and their ilk, and incidents like those in no way speak against liberalism or anti-Trump protests…

What point, exactly, were they making by physically attacking an old man?

You also left out the part where they threw a milkshake at the guy's head and, upon it hitting him, this “nonviolent” crowd erupted in celebration. I'll give credit where it's due: one of the anti-Trump guys who'd been yelling at the old man moments before actually came to his aid to keep the mob from descending upon him, but he was the exception. The fact that all 10,000 people didn't get their hands on the victim (did you expect them to form a queue?) hardly absolves them of guilt.

Video of the incident SOURCE: LBC Radio ('Leading Britain's Conversation')

And it's not like this is an isolated incident. If it were, then maybe the public reaction would be overblown, but (presumably) leftist mobs have been attacking wrongthinkers on the street since Trump's presidential campaign.

Violent Anti-Trump Protests in San Jose, 2016 SOURCE: FOX News

The pattern of violence, along with the perception that most idea leaders on the left either tacitly tolerate violence or in other cases actively encourage it, more than justifies public disgust at yet another violent mob behaving violently. That's not tribalism; at some point, you just have to call it what it is.

Also, I'm not sure what you meant by 'morally bankrupt people like Trump and their ilk.' Maybe in your social circles, saying “Trump bad, left good” qualifies you for an instant Nobel Prize, but you'll need to try harder today. Unless you're willing to retract that slur, then I have to ask you to specify exactly what you meant, so I can understand. Because right now, I'm not convinced you had a point to make there.

…that's not tribalism…

Actually according to many sociologists and historians that is precisely the sort of behavior expected under “tribalism ”.

Us- not us A member of my group is righteous and correct to do rude things to a member of the other because they're NOT us.

But it's a tragic evil for those not in our group to visit such behavior upon us because we are right and just and they are not.

Tribalism. Might as well be Huron and Iroquois or Girondist and Jacobin.

El Cid: My point was that you can't extrapolate from a bunch of douches at an anti-Trump rally to the left, or liberals, or even to Trump-opponents.

I am obviously not condoning violent behaviour on either side. On the contrary, I feel pity for the old man, and ashamed for those who attacked him. But even if that whole protest had erupted in a massacre in which every single protester had taken part, I would have been horrified, but not re-evaluated my stance toward Trump (except if it had been so horrific I'd have gone insane).

The whole thing about crowd dynamics and psychology is that a couple of douches can get the whole crowd riled up and an opponent or even a bystander can get literally torn to pieces.

That one douche can also have thousands of followers on social media all nodding their heads in agreement. Out of step once and into the other bucket with you and you're the enemy with a bullseye on your chest.

I dare not wear my Bubba Gump shrimp company hat because it's red. It's too easily mistaken for a MAGA hat.

People are shocked you get whiffs of grapeshot and dictatorships to maintain public safety.

Crowds give courage to cowards.

I think that, if you want to lawfully demonstrate, you should need to get a sponsor. And the sponsor is liable for any damage caused by the demonstrators, including broken faces and tort suits for assault and battery. That might at least encourage some self policing.

And the individual offenders wouldn't get off scott free, as the sponsors can always pursue them to recoup any fees incurred on their behalf.

El Cid wrote:
Crowds give courage to cowards.

I think that, if you want to lawfully demonstrate, you should need to get a sponsor. And the sponsor is liable for any damage caused by the demonstrators, including broken faces and tort suits for assault and battery. That might at least encourage some self policing.

And the individual offenders wouldn't get off scott free, as the sponsors can always pursue them to recoup any fees incurred on their behalf.

…but then you're heading for rights restrictions. Its a dodgy area. Maybe not in the USA, where unionism, etc. was crushed severely way back, but most countries got their current levels of freedom, such as they are, via broken windows and broken ribs and the odd casualty in demonstrations, strike and riots. Fewer U.K. people were shot than in the U.S. (although Churchill was responsible for some in Wales early last century) A people get pushed just that extra ‘straw’ and the ‘camel’ collapses - hence week, what 26 ?, of the Gilets Jaune riots en France. A crowd operates at its lowest common denominator, unfortunately though, plus there are often ‘state agents’ in the crowd to “lower the tone” and discredit the whole (happened in Britain, when I lived there).
Personally, I wouldn't exactly class myself as an empath, but I always had a bad vibe in big crowds, always scanning for the exits, etc. Even going to the rugby, when it was standing only and ‘cosily’ pressed together. My Dad was looking taller than usual on the way out one time. He'd got separated from me and I saw him over shoulders. He had been picked up by the sheer crush and carried through the gates. I saw him visibly ‘plop’ down, as the crowd thinned outside . I found that scary . Never went again for years, until seating became standard .
I don't have a lot of faith in humanity as a whole. I only like them as individuals, or in small groups !

I only like them as individuals, or in small groups !

I agree. Mobs of people, hashtags…everything has to be some kind of movement and the most ‘revolutionary’ become the flag bearers of any given movement…but the same people are usually fairly rational when they're by themselves

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds was written in the early 19th century.

The crowd madness versus individual rationality has been known about a long time.

Any casual glance at the peasant rebellions of the Middle Ages or the French Revolution makes that plain.

And America got its freedom through an eight year war. A very costly war that even pitted neighbor against neighbor. Or at least in New Jersey and the Carolinas.

And then again a four year long civil war eighty years later. The US has a bloodless revolution every four years. That's what the founders intended and wrote about at the time.

But Paris has always had its bloody mobs. Nothing has changed except the clothing and what they burn.

People who preach Revolution often end up the victims of the very crowds they inspired. Just ask the Jacobins.

bravo1102 wrote:

Any casual glance at the peasant rebellions of the Middle Ages or the French Revolution makes that plain.

And America got its freedom through an eight year war. A very costly war that even pitted neighbor against neighbor.

But Paris has always had its bloody mobs. Nothing has changed except the clothing and what they burn.

People who preach Revolution often end up the victims of the very crowds they inspired. Just ask the Jacobins.

Yes, all this is true, but doesn't negate the necessity of them, when the alternative is simply perpetual endurance of tyranny. It's SO much nicer when you can remove it via the ballot box, but history teaches us that that's a bit of a luxury. There's also the paradox of ballot-box-created governments creating tyranny elsewhere, as we're seeing over the past 5 decades or so of the USA's little "regime-change hobby'

As far as the American Revolution is concerned, I could never understand why the USA couldn't understand how a poorly equipped ‘shoeless’ bunch of farmers in Vietnam could defeat the then strongest army on the planet, when in its history there was an example of… how a poorly equipped ‘shoeless’ bunch of farmers in America could defeat the then strongest army on the planet

B-)

They did a study of all the violent upheavals throughout history. With a few notable exceptions they all led to greater tyranny.

Especially look at the history of Republican Rome.

And after Tet'68, the “shoeless” farmers had been conclusively defeated and the war became an invasion of the South by the People's Army of Viet Nam. The Viet Cong were a mere shadow used for propaganda.

And after the entry of France into the AWI in 1778, the British had to downsize their commitment to the 13 colonies to fight in other parts of their empire. Edmund Burke was ready to vote the Americans independence in Parliament so Britain could fight France, but the king wouldn't hear of it.

It's really a false analogy. There's the nice mythology and there's what really happened and why.