• @ameancow
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    5 months ago

    The strangest part of this was how conservatives used to be the ones pushing for wearing masks as alternatives to vaccinations, because the mindless fear of needles goes waaay back. See, chances are I’m older than you, so I’ve seen these cycles repeat themselves over and over. You’ve only seen it once or twice tops.

    What happens is that a politician will dangle a new fear over you, and you will attach to that fear because that’s how our brains work. I am talking universally, not specific to one party or ideology, this is how we ALL work, and leftists are equally guilty of grifting their base the same way.

    But you HAVE to understand where this came from, why you’re fighting with people about this, where this came from.

    Never mind that people have been wearing face covering for millenia to reduce spreading disease, we have paintings and etching of lepers and plague victims going back thousands of years wearing something to prevent accidental spreading of saliva or body fluids. This isn’t a complicated idea, and a lot of people wear face coverings anyway to prevent illness or for safety around immunocompromised people. This isn’t new, this isn’t something that was planned or contrived, the ONLY reason you’re having arguments with people about face masks of all things is because someone out there knows how to connect your brain to a story to explain how it feels. To make you expend your energy on this, not making our world better or focusing on your elected representatives and what they’re signing into law, and I bet it works great. I bet you don’t get involved in your local politics. Nobody does, nobody spends as much energy on their actual neighborhoods as they do arguing online about props.

    See, like with a lot of other things, a lot of us were unsure and worried about the future, so a lot of people trying to get power used masks as their props to fixate that insecurity on. I am not even going to talk about their effectiveness or not, it’s like wearing a hat in the sun, sure it won’t save you from sunburns but it’s just a thing we do to try our best to protect what we can, it’s not a big deal.

    Your brain is not a tool of logic and reason, that’s an illusion. It’s a tool to tell you a story to explain how you feel. And it LOVES when someone provides a story for it. Because your brain wants a story that makes sense, not one that’s accurate. There is a difference. A lot of things can make sense and not be true.

    It should be a giant, glaring alarm that someone is fucking with your brain when you start feeling contentious about what other people wear on their faces. That HAS to trigger something deep inside that makes you wonder why you’re so emotionally connected to this “debate.”

    You got chains around you and they’re going to keep attaching chains until you realize how deeply you’re playing in the WWE theater of political rhetoric. Let this one go, just walk away, it’s objectively a nonsense campaign designed to distracted you.

    The outraged reply you’re already pounding out in your head is part of that distraction. You are giving your soul away to others to use as they will. Doesn’t that bother you?

    • @[email protected]
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      -505 months ago

      The reason I am fighting about this is because those jackasses lied to us and didnt let people work. I literally had to nearly lay off all of my staff because of this shutdown bullshit. People that couldnt go on unemployment and would have just been fucked. What I care about is the truth, not the propaganda and lies. I am not on one of your guys teams, I am person that likes to think for myself and actually look at facts not propaganda. The story above is obvious propaganda, and I will fight that whenever I see it.

      • Flying Squid
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        5 months ago

        What state do you live in where you can’t go on unemployment if you’re laid off? I got laid off from a part-time job during COVID and qualified for unemployment. And this is in Republican-dominated Indiana.

        This sounds suspiciously like you’re doing something underhanded with your employees.

        • @barsquid
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          95 months ago

          Business might be fictional. They certainly don’t care about facts or reality on this topic. Why would they limit the lies and cognitive biases only to the websites they’re sharing?

          • @ameancow
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            35 months ago

            Half the time these are 17-year-old middle-class white kids with no worries in the world, raging emotional hormones and a desire to “thrash someone with their incredible intellect” and have no real care for the issues beyond that, they just want to fight and they will lie to their last breath to feel like they’re special and smart.

            I really feel like if we could see who most of the people are who push back on so many modern social issues, we would have a lot fewer social issues, because we would be able to roll our eyes and close the door on these literal children who are turning every conversation into a debate with children.

      • @[email protected]
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        85 months ago

        gets shown some facts about masks and propaganda

        “I am person that likes to think for myself and actually look at facts not propaganda”


        That aside, the way small businesses were left hanging was definitely a political failure. I don’t know what business you have or why you had to fire people, but I’ll happily blame a lack of compensation for businesses that can’t operate.

          • @[email protected]
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            195 months ago

            all not of legal status

            Ah, you used cheap labour from undocumented workers and it came back to bite you? There goes my sympathy.

            As for the science, there are studies to suggest measures like shelter-in-place had an impact, and the fact that literally every form of mask reduces risk of transmission at least slightly has been established long before the nature of viral infections was understood. You could easily find these things online or through a university library, given how scientifically versed you are. But I suspect you’d cherry-pick the ones you like anyway, so why bother?

            • @[email protected]
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              -155 months ago

              Ah, you just make assumption based on no data, I am the opposite, I actually need data to make conclusions. I “retired” in my 30s, its not about how much money I made, it was that they didnt have much money and they would have been out of work. And they are not “cheap labor”, they are humans that were put in situations outside of their control.

              • @ameancow
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                5 months ago

                I actually need data to make conclusions.

                No, you don’t. I can prove it.

                If you get emotional reactions seeing other people make choices about to wear on their faces, you’re dumber than horse shit, you are a toddler, a child, a baby who needs to grow up.

                See? That wasn’t hard, no data needed, just plain ol’ simple “common sense.”

                Aren’t you guys all about “common sense?” I think It’s common sense to let people make their own choices and not get so hyper about someone else’s political agenda that you have to chime in about… mask bans. It’s just awful. I can’t imagine doing that and looking at the mirror and saying “Yeah, I am making the world better.”

              • @[email protected]
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                25 months ago

                I understand. I assume you paid them well for fair work hours under good conditions, provided for all the safety precautions, worker’s compensation, proper healthcare and all the good things a decent employer would do? Paid taxes on your income to fund the infrastructure you’re using?

                In that case, yes, you’re a good samaritan and got shafted by an unfair system.

                Doesn’t change the fact that scientific data suggests all those Covid measures had some impact, but I’ll take back my cheap labor comment then.

                  • @[email protected]
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                    25 months ago

                    I thought so too, hence my earlier cheap labour assumption. I was hoping exaggerating the opposite would bait them into correcting me (obviously still justified á la “At least they had an income”), but it doesn’t seem like they fell for it. Still, those euphemisms and weasel words didn’t quite scream “honest and forthcoming” to me.

          • @ReluctantMuskrat
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            75 months ago

            So you knowingly hire illegal immigrants instead of employing US citizens? What a great guy, getting that cheap labor and avoiding paying unemployment insurance, worker’s comp, social security…

      • @ameancow
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        5 months ago

        Okay but that addresses no part of my comment, why do you get mad when you see people wear facemasks? Isn’t that kind of strange? Is it helping anyone?

        Doesn’t it make you feel manipulated to have others able to make you start having emotional reactions to things you see that you wouldn’t have thought about before?