I've been noticing it more and more. It sucks cause I used to like the internet.

  • pluggd [they/them]
    ·
    vor 3 Jahren

    The thing to remember is that the boomers and GenX in power are subject to exact same programming that your racist uncle loves, they're just smarter about how they present themselves.

    Someone I studied science in school with was trying to tell me that plants watered with microwaved water wil die, while plants watered with normal water will be fine. QED. Microwaves. Confirmed poison now. This person is is a high achiever in a position of authority.

      • pluggd [they/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        vor 3 Jahren

        Ya see microwaving water changes the fundamental chemical nature of the water. It's no longer H2O.

        I'm just angry because my reaction was "Hold on, there's probably some misunderstanding here, I'll read the study, probably something to do with impurities in the water or something, I haven't spoken to this person in a few years so maybe don't immediately laugh at something they said earnestly. "

        It was a fucking jpeg on facebook they got from somebody into crytstal healing or some shit. bullying ensued.

        • AcidSmiley [she/her]
          ·
          vor 3 Jahren

          Ya see microwaving water changes the fundamental chemical nature of the water. It’s no longer H2O.

          Sounds like this "water memory" thing people who are into homeopathy believe in. That's surprisingly widespread, even though it's proven to be total and utter nonsense. If you call such people out on that, they'll usually tell you that you believe the lies of the pharmaceutical industry, as if the problem with the pharmaceutical industry was the pharmaceutical part and not that it's an industry under capitalism.

          • Pezevenk [he/him]
            ·
            vor 3 Jahren

            Oh fuck I remember about some nazi talking about water memory on some forum, also in relation to female promiscuity or some shit. Just completely deranged nonsense.

            • AcidSmiley [she/her]
              ·
              vor 3 Jahren

              It really is all about sexual pathology with these guys. Linking water memory and female promiscuity is something i haven't seen in the wild, but nazi esotericism is a fairly common thing, both for historic and contemporary fascists.

              • Pezevenk [he/him]
                ·
                vor 3 Jahren

                It had something to do with promiscuity changing the brain and DNA of women because of jizz memory or something, I don't fucking know.

          • pluggd [they/them]
            ·
            edit-2
            vor 3 Jahren

            yep the person who sent them the jpeg is into crystal healing and all the associated woo.

            I was freaked out because this is someone who spent more time studying science than you in school, who achieved better, now without the critical thinking to understand basics, even after a decent education. The purest example of a high achieving PMC you could find.

          • Three_Magpies [he/him]
            ·
            vor 3 Jahren

            Did you know that water (h20) remember's being in in a dinosaur's balls?

            • AcidSmiley [she/her]
              ·
              vor 3 Jahren

              Yes, which is why i will now get another glass of clear, cold water that used to be part of thick, creamy therizinosaur cum.

        • duderium [he/him]
          ·
          vor 3 Jahren

          I know there's a study out there showing that the more education you have, the greater your susceptibility to conspiracy theories, but I can't find it anywhere. Google is just giving me studies showing the opposite. There's an NPR story I just looked through which says that lower education = greater susceptibility to conspiracy theories, but it obviously does not mention RussiaGate as a conspiracy theory, because that would completely upend their stupid article. RussiaGate is, by definition, a conspiracy theory which large numbers of highly educated liberals (including me) believe or believed in. They also mention JFK's assassination there. I don't think I've met a single person who believes that JFK was shot by a lone gunman. I can even remember my educated, nice, lib high school history teacher talking about how JFK was hit by like eighty bullets flying in eighty different directions at the same time.

          It's possible that education actually has nothing to do with it, that living in a dying culture makes you more prone to believing conspiracy theories (and also makes some of these conspiracies real!). Living in Korea for years, I can't recall any Koreans bringing up any conspiracies with me. I asked my Korean wife about this and she couldn't think of any Korean conspiracy theories either. When I was traveling through Turkey like ten years ago, at least one Turk mentioned the term "deep state" to me. That was the first time I'd heard it, and it sounded completely natural to him. Like, in Turkey, it's obvious that the deep state exists because the military has overthrown the government how many times there. But if you talk about the deep state unironically in the USA, people will instantly assume you are a raving lunatic.

          • pluggd [they/them]
            ·
            edit-2
            vor 3 Jahren

            After watching the people around me who are most susceptible, it seems like the common thread is resentment, that "I could never speak about my woo before but now people on youtube are normalising it so you will listen to me".

            There are a lot of people who will get their information and worldview from just one youtube pseudo expert. They literally will not watch or consider anyone else.

            People from some countries have not been exposed to social media to the same extent maybe, the societies aren't as atomised.

            It's fucked. I've talked people down from antivax, (you accept the polio vaccine, right?) and two videos later they are right back on the bandwagon.

            imo this stuff has always been in society but online has turbo charged it in western societies, particulary in the 2010s.

            • duderium [he/him]
              ·
              vor 3 Jahren

              I will have hour-long struggle sessions with my dad about liberal politics. He will end by agreeing with me about everything. A week later, we’re back where we started.

              I had some success talking about vaccination in Cuba and also the history of inoculation going back to China with one anti-vaxxer I know. He was back to his normal anti-vaxx-ness within days. Convincing these people just isn’t enough. Their entire lives have to change in order for their ideas to change.

              • medium_adult_son [he/him]
                ·
                vor 3 Jahren

                This misinformation is reinforced every day by the media they consume, or worse, by people they trust at work that evangelize this propaganda. So even people that don't use social media can get sucked into it.

                I have only had success with those family members by 1) telling them that Bill Gates is bad, but not for the reasons you think (likewise with other topics) or 2) if your coworker is so smart why do they work at the same job as you?

                • pluggd [they/them]
                  ·
                  vor 3 Jahren

                  I have only had success with those family members by 1) telling them that Bill Gates is bad, but not for the reasons you think (likewise with other topics) or 2) if your coworker is so smart why do they work at the same job as you?

                  Yeah, I've had some success with exactly this type of thing.

          • CarlTheRedditor [he/him]
            ·
            vor 3 Jahren

            Your NPR article probably doesn't mention RussiaGate because in early December 2016, when the article is dated, RussiaGate as we know it now had not really taken off; to illustrate that point, the "Steele Dossier" would not be published by BuzzFeed for another month (Jan. 10, 2017).

            • duderium [he/him]
              ·
              vor 3 Jahren

              I mean, people are obviously doing this. I've run in some local elections where I live, and my friends and I "conspire" to win these elections; i.e., we make secret plans which are meant to benefit ourselves at the expense of our political opponents. It would be weird to think that everything occurs out in the open and that no one has any secrets of any kind.

            • duderium [he/him]
              ·
              vor 3 Jahren

              I considered it kind of an urban legend but I guess it’s a conspiracy theory, although it’s pretty easy to defeat the evil fan manufacturers by cracking a window.

        • VernetheJules [they/them]
          ·
          vor 3 Jahren

          "it's no longer h20"

          If it's no longer h20 but keeps resonating (i.e. heating up) when you blast it with microwaves, that's awfully convenient lol

          • pluggd [they/them]
            ·
            edit-2
            vor 3 Jahren

            Hey look if people can have their astrology this person can have a little alchemy, as a treat.

  • clover [she/her]
    ·
    vor 3 Jahren

    Not entirely sure what you mean but especially on sites like Reddit I’ve felt for years that they’ve become the people they used to make fun of. It was always a little cringe, but I remember subs like r/atheism and r/politics had more of an edge to them. Feels like now all there is is the reactionary outrage of the day and Russian interference shit. I don’t know if this started around gamergate or the Pao stuff, but it certainly kicked it into a higher gear. Reddit is now fully a giant yahoo news comment section, if anyone remembers what those look like.

    • Phish [he/him, any]
      ·
      vor 3 Jahren

      Gamergate and the Pao stuff was definitely the point it reached critical mass. I think that might have just been the result of a long, steady change though. I blame it more on increasing user numbers. Maybe the younger people that normally would have ended up on the chans found reddit first or something, maybe it's a result of the whole hive mind concept. I guess there's probably more than one reason. I completely agree though, reddit used to be where I'd go to talk about how dumb more mainstream sites were. You'd see funny shit on reddit then a week later they'd get to facebook. Now reddit moves at the same, sometimes even slower speed than those other sites. The world became more "online" though, that's undeniable.

        • Phish [he/him, any]
          ·
          vor 3 Jahren

          I was a little before but probably used Digg more than reddit until the exodus. They really ruined Digg haha.

      • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
        ·
        vor 3 Jahren

        I'm convinced the only reason I'm a communist is because I never had any social media to suck me in and commodify and idologize me.

        I did spend time on reddit, but mostly avoided the defaults until Trump and immediately felt the propaganda pull and started to back out.

        • Pezevenk [he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          vor 3 Jahren

          95% of people using social media don't give a fuck about the weird debates that spawn there, they just have them so that they post pics with their friends or at best share memes. It is also boomer mindset to constantly be like "these social medias that the kids watch? They are making them weak narcissists and all they know is how to post their butt on the Instagrams" lol

          • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
            ·
            vor 3 Jahren

            I was talking about me personally lol, I agree though that most people just post pictures.

        • My_name_is_christ [any]
          hexagon
          ·
          vor 3 Jahren

          You see im not a communist, more of a democratic socialist. Under communism there's blatant corruption, but after the orange turd I guess its just mainstream to be corrupt now.

  • Pezevenk [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    vor 3 Jahren

    It always confuses me how it is possible that every day there is going to be some kind of huge post on Facebook where it's something like "how much is that? Don't use a calculator: 2+4x9-3" and it's gonna have like 995k comments from boomers where 90% of it is wrong answers. Like how many times are you going to play the same shit over and over again? What even is the joy of commenting on it, they're just posting a number there to disappear into the void of 40 new comments/sec.

    Also I used to have set my FB age older than I am and I ended up getting a bunch of that boomer action recommended. For instance there recently was some kind of huge crypto scam marketing campaign where there were a bunch of sponsored ads for extremely obviously fake articles in websites that posed as major outlets like the Economist or whatever which had titles like "China makes crypto the official currency!" and then proceeded to advertise some shitty coin which I'm not even sure if it was a real crypto currency. Anyways the comments under that post were fucking full of boomers having heated boomer debates about weird conspiracy theories and unrelated shit. They didn't seem to be taking the bait but for the wrong reasons. A lot of them were saying stuff like "the Chinamen want to take my money? I DON'T THINK SO" etc.

    I think it is because boomers started to use the Internet more because of staying inside more etc.

      • Pezevenk [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        vor 3 Jahren

        If you have an FB, you could change your birth year to something like 1950 or something and if you start browsing a few boomer stuff for a little while it's gonna start showing you the boomer ads. You can click on "why am I seeing this ad?" and it usually tells you that x advertiser is targeting boomers in y area. It's pretty amusing.

    • NaturalsNotInIt [any]
      ·
      vor 3 Jahren

      I think it is because boomers started to use the Internet more because of staying inside more etc.

      It was happening pre-Covid as well. The biggest thing imo is that the internet in general has become the new cable TV, not just Netflix/Hulu. These people would have been watching Westerns all day long on TMC 20 years ago.

      • CarlTheRedditor [he/him]
        ·
        vor 3 Jahren

        These people would have been watching Westerns all day long on TMC 20 years ago.

        This is thankfully still my dad, who got rid of the only computer he ever owned after he retired and no longer was obligated to use e-mail. What a blessing.

        • medium_adult_son [he/him]
          ·
          vor 3 Jahren

          Reminds me of an old plasma TV my friend got from his grandfather with the Encore Westerns channel logo still burned in, lol.

      • Pezevenk [he/him]
        ·
        vor 3 Jahren

        An ideal socialist society would entail mandatory TCM hours for all boomers.

  • an_engel_on_earth [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    vor 3 Jahren

    i wonder if this is because more ppl under 30 are living with their parents since the 40s and getting exposed to their right wing drivel

    • duderium [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      vor 3 Jahren

      My dad is a Marxist except for Biden but he's started using stormfront reddit now. He used to make fun of me for using it. I might have looked at reddit five times in the last six months. It's either boring lib shit or disturbing fash shit now.

  • Rojo27 [he/him]
    ·
    vor 3 Jahren

    Different generations too. Seeing a ton of cringe "this generation doesn't value blah blah blah." posts on social media from people my age (late 20s - early 30s).

  • medium_adult_son [he/him]
    ·
    vor 3 Jahren

    It's gotten to the point where people have to reply to chud comments for movie torrents on rar.bg to refute them, but thankfully the chuds lose those arguments in my experience.

    I had seen a few commenters spouting the great replacement theory on slashdot.org before I stopped visiting the site, which used to be safe from that. I first heard about the Australia Project and The Left Hand of Darkness, among other great sci-fi books, in the comments section there.

    Reactionaries must have some insecurity-driven need to force their opinions and propaganda on others. I hate it.

  • TheModerateTankie [any]
    ·
    vor 3 Jahren

    It's hard to win the posting wars against people who have literally nothing else to do but be mad on the internet.

  • PurrLure [she/her]
    ·
    vor 3 Jahren

    Boomers finally learned how to use the internet during covid lockdown.