Bahahahaha!
Facebook is fun lately
- Thread starter Wingboy
- Start date
After "their loss" some people have just come off the rails, well more off the rails.
Priller
Well-known member
All that QAnon s**t would be hilarious if it wasn't so dangerous. That fact is that it's on the edges of the Republican party, and Trump loves to tease them along, so what should be out there with flat earthers and David Icke's lizard men has become part of the real political conversation in the US.
My wife has a friend who's all in on it, and her timeline reads like the ravings of a lunatic. The fact that she is an average, normally intelligent person shows the seduction of this stuff for people when faced with the terrifying uncertainty and existential dread of our times...
My wife has a friend who's all in on it, and her timeline reads like the ravings of a lunatic. The fact that she is an average, normally intelligent person shows the seduction of this stuff for people when faced with the terrifying uncertainty and existential dread of our times...
I was talking to someone the other day about the terrible cell phone service in the neighbourhood and the new tower that will be in service soon. She changed colours because she was so angry about the 5G. wtf. I don't understand how some people end up all in on crazy theories.
Priller
Well-known member
This is a complex deal. Conspiracies aren't a new thing, as I discovered by the awkward silence when I made fun of people who believe in chem-trails in front of my in-laws. They were not amused, and seemed to think I was the stupid one for thinking it was easily disprovable nonsense.
Add to this, somewhere along the line, some groups are making a large-scale, concerted effort to churn out a flood of online disinformation at all ends of the political spectrum, primarily on Facebook. Because so many of these are pure fiction (as opposed to cherry picking facts), I think the source has to be from a disingenuous source, as I don't think anyone who is a 'true believer' would feel it necessary to explicitly lie to serve their cause. Whether these are coming from Russia, China, anarchists, militias, etc., or combinations of the above, if anyone knows, they're not telling.
Add this to the decline of news quality from traditional sources due to seismic changes in the business model for major networks and newspapers, and trust in traditional news has never been lower. This leaves people vulnerable to all sorts of nonsense, particularly when their Facebook feed is a finely tuned rage generator, seeking out the things people get upset about and constantly drip-feeding stories to wind them up.
I've read a few things about this, and the consensus seems to be that simple answers are always more seductive than complex ones. Knowing (or thinking you know) provides a certainty and a target for anger that is a lot more appealing than just having the world be a big scary place where random bad s**t happens to good and bad people alike. I think the bit I have to remind myself is that just because someone buys into something that I think is patently nuts, it doesn't mean they're nuts, nor does it mean they're stupid. My in-laws are otherwise perfectly normal and smart, for example, but somewhere along the line, they listened to someone they believed who gave them bad information.
I think what is new, though, is that the amplifying effects of Facebook, not only in the dissemination of misinformation, but also in gathering otherwise small groups into bigger ones by aggregating around the world. Time will tell what the damage of that is...
Y'all need to check out christians against Dinosaurs for a textbook example.
Down the fundamentalist rabbit hole with Christians Against Dinosaurs
Either Christians Against Dinosaurs is brilliant satire, or it's the next frontier of the fringe religious right.
www.dailydot.com
And if you think it might be fun to join and troll them, make sure your VPN is up and running. They are malicious.
Priller
Well-known member
Whoa. That has to be trolling, or at the very least a very small group of nutters backed by a bunch of jokers online, but it's a perfect example of the online world being impossible for average folks to filter properly. It also gives a disproportionate voice to the loud. Even if 8,000 people were genuine backers of that group, it's a microscopically small percentage of the English-speaking world. But it gets given credence because all 8,000 of the same cloud-cuckoo-land mofos can gang up together.Y'all need to check out christians against Dinosaurs for a textbook example.
Down the fundamentalist rabbit hole with Christians Against Dinosaurs
Either Christians Against Dinosaurs is brilliant satire, or it's the next frontier of the fringe religious right.
And if you think it might be fun to join and troll them, make sure your VPN is up and running. They are malicious.
Also, I'm a Christian, and I spend a lot of time facepalming at the ways some folks seem to be able to flip elements of scripture on its head. Some (typically American) brands of Christianity are so peculiar to me that it's sometimes hard to reconcile as the same faith. When folks cite the Old Testament and Revelations almost exclusively, it's a big warning sign in my book...
