I'd have assumed, even as insufferable liberals, that they'd be diverse enough to at least argue with some variety from one federated liberal to another, but so far not seeing much of that.
It's weird shit too, like the preoccupation with passive-aggressively saying "kindly" while insulting people too left for them. I've seen it from three different federated liberals today, alone. Is it some kind of "BioShock had such le epic quotable lines and the blue curtains were awesome, dae 'would you kindly'" thing?
What else do you expect from Reddit liberals? They talk like parrots locked in a room with Big Bang Theory and NPR playing over each other.
What else do you expect from Reddit liberals?
I actually expected better while despising them.
I assumed before federation that they had developed some new lines while we were on our own for three years -- our rhetoric and tactics certainly evolved over the same time period. I was shocked to discover that they were still using our extremely stale bits unironically.
it demonstrates the power of media within the superstructure and its hold on peoples' imaginations. this experience reminds me so much of an experience i had in maybe 2017 or 2018. i had wandered into chapo after 2016 and started to engage more with marxian theories, post-colonialism, etc. i pretty much stopped watching The News except for primary reporting on big events. the analysis was all garbage, the pundits were all idiots etc.
anyway, after a few years of that, i'm trying to have a conversation about current events with a guy i'd known since high school, who was a bernie guy etc. but he stayed in the corporate media approved marketplace of ideas. he insisted he knew these outlets weren't telling the whole story, but he felt compelled to consume them because he "wanted to know what they were saying." as a result, he only had b.s. lib talking points. he knew nothing of any kind of union activity going on anywhere, nothing about goings on within AES states, no familiarity with anything going on in the semi-periphery beyond like Vuvuzela is when no hamburger or iphone. it was like talking to a collection of about 20-30 talking points and the conversation couldn't go anywhere because it wasn't his ignorance so much as his incredulity for anything outside those points.
the worst though was trying to tell him that i could literally tell him everything the news analysis is saying without having to watch the news, that hegemonic discourses are the ocean we're all swimming in... and short of moving into a cave with no electricity for a few years, you are going to hear everything they want you to believe just going about your own personal business. because all the messages are short, sweet, and repeated at the top half and the bottom half of the hour on every station
- russia bad
- china bad
- semi-peripheral state with lots of resources needs US-UK-EU intervention because human rights probably
- and toothless court intrigue in the halls of power (impeachment/indictment/scandal/investigation)
that characterization pissed him off as "too simple" and then we sat through 30 minutes of exactly that on loop until i got up and left out of boredom. i get along more with his boomer parents because we can talk about their experiences with unions and actual political projects with material components.
anyway, it's the same shit with these people. they have nothing new to say because there's nothing new coming out of the talking point factory. purity politics bad, economic rivals bad, vote, blah blah blah.
I blame the phones.
Seriously, though, they've got their pefect world, their best of all possible worlds. A vote blue is in the white house, they're engaged in a righteous war against evil, the adults in the room are solving climate change, bidenomics is working. Life is good? Why seek beyond the veil? Why search for wisdom? Why question the false reality in pursuit of truth? The demiurge says life is good, covid is over, time for brunch! Why ruin that by pulling on threads and noticing the sick, the dead, and the poor?
And then if you try to make them realise , they call u fascist 🤬
The Kingdom of Conscience will be exactly as it is now. Moralists don't really have beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded. Centrism isn't change — not even incremental change. It is control. Over yourself and the world. Exercise it. Look up at the sky, at the dark shapes of Coalition airships hanging there. Ask yourself: is there something sinister in moralism? And then answer: no. God is in his heaven. Everything is normal on Earth.
If they're Reddit refugees, Reddit encourages a particular manner of dialogue that is receptive to karma. The whole faux politeness snark is exactly the sort of speech that gets upvotes in the default subs.
So, the hypothesis is that it's a Pavlovian response.
It's such a seethingly petty and hostile way to talk. It's pretend politeness that's loaded with arrogance and passive aggressiveness.
Oh, I must say, your ideas are truly fascinating. It's impressive how you managed to come up with such... unique concepts. I can see you're really thinking outside the box, even if the box is something most of us find quite useful. Keep up the remarkable work!
I must admit, I find it quite amusing the way some liberals talk. They truly believe themselves to be paragons of justice and equality.
I noticed this in real life too. I had a political argument or debate or whatever with an old friend who is died blue Democrat, literally works in politics. He's a smart guy and obviously in tune with politics, but when we talked about China or foreign policy every single argument he made I had heard before and had counters to. Nothing was surprising. Liberals all kind of retread the same basic bullet points and change the topic if you have concrete ways to address those points.
Told a coworker that Chinese high speed rail was groovy and they hit me with an Uyghur genocide bit for no reason
but when we talked about China or foreign policy every single argument he made I had heard before and had counters to.
How did he respond?
It started with talking about China not respecting IP laws and every time I countered what he said, he switched to a different "China bad" bullet point.
To be honest, I think the simple answer is that's what they were taught growing up. As a child who was not instantly born a commie but was a filthy lib for some years, I'm pretty sure it was school that taught me "commienism is when one person controls everything" or "some people are mooore equal than others
". It was also school where I learned to accept the news media absolutely unquestioningly, and that anyone who questioned it was stupid because it literally must be true, every lib-ism I hear to this day, including 'would you kindly', I've seen so many times from teachers, other kids, and the news, and I learned it as "the" way to deal with thought dissent.Like it or not, these formulaic thoughts and speech patterns are simply ingrained in western teaching and culture. You have to push specific thoughts and phrases on to a population, because the only alternative is actually having people engage with the ideas.
Brainworms are strong, and I think it takes different things to make everyone share them. But I think the most important part is getting them curious and actually wanting to engage, however you tempt a given person to do that.
When Virgil and Matt did Skullduggery, and then had a subsequent autopsy episode on their show, they noticed liberals have the same canned responses to criticisms of US foreign policy/capitalism that they had no counter to legitimate arguments.
It's ultimately low effort thinking, and substitution of dogma over critical analysis. The ruling class and the state is the only ones that do legitimate critical analysis and then learn all the wrong lessons, building institutions of control after the fact.
Lol that ep.
When Matt says Iran has a moral obligation to get nukes…
It’s because liberals have outsourced the entirety of their mental faculties to the likes of the NYT. It’s like a choose your own adventure book, there’s only so many lines they’re programmed to regurgitate propaganda in response to, so if you step even a tiny bit out of bounds from their narrow strait of intellectual bankruptcy and dishonesty, they short circuit and get stuck on repeating thought-terminating cliches like a broken record.
Ledditors are people who used third-party apps, got very very very mad when spez took away their third-party apps, and hopped on to a Reddit clone instead of just using a totally different social media site. They are completely addicted to Reddit and consequently have their brains melted by the Reddit algo.
Ledditor act more like Redditors than your average Redditor.
They must be State Department Bots. There is no other explanation, only such primitive LLM models would reflexively call their opponents tankies.
We need to Voight-Kampf these mother fuckers, only way to be sure they're not the Replicants they accuse us of being
Edited for clarity
Though the struggle sessions can be exhausting, I do think it's healthy for a community to face fierce resistance to everything you fucking say, even from your allies. I appreciate the way that you tell me I'm wrong <3
I want to fully agree with that, but when some insufferable lib does the "can you kindly point out where in this (false equivalence statement where the lib said that all work done for pay is equally as exploitative as sex work/trafficking can be) that I actually made a false equivalence? I'll wait" song and dance, it's worse than arguing with a wall. It's like arguing with a steaming fermenting pile of shit.
I usually respond once in good faith (if someone didn't already), and move on to dunking and ppb if they don't respond in kind
Those seem like fair rules of engagement. I feel like we should try to reach them first, but if they get all smarmy, it's open season. This is the only place on the Internet where we can actually slap that shit down without getting immediately banned.
They'll be saying (CW: Holocaust reference):
spoiler
"Can you kindly point out why I am being transported away in a box car kind sir? I believe you are violating the law and didn't follow proper protocol" until it's too late. The sad part is that they'll be the last ones to be treated that way, and anyone who would have saved them will have been harmed already
(with an antagonistic implication directed at them, although somewhat sarcastically): https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-twitter-discover-pro-west-propaganda-network-criticized-russia-iran-2022-8
I see this brought up around the Ukraine packages the US government keeps approving.
Tankie commie scum: healthcare please
We have money for bothTCS: Ok, then why isn't anything happening regarding healthcare?
Haven't you been paying attention? Insert rotating villain here blocked it!TCS: Isn't that convenient?
FUKN TANKIEEEEEEEEEEE
