…whether it was by a cult, by propaganda, by an algorithm, etc…

And did the person ever recover from it?

  • @undergroundoverground
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    773 months ago

    “Well, that’s just how it is”

    Person attempting to justify an injustice they also suffer, without even a thought about whether it being “how it is” might actually be connected to all the people saying dumb stuff like “Well, that’s just how it is.”

  • @Yankee_Self_Loader
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    613 months ago

    Maybe not the worst but the most recent one is my father in law. You know the type: baby boomer who had every advantage growing up but didn’t avail himself but still managed to eke out a comfortable life while working at the business his dad started and he inherited. He doesn’t take in the bucks but it allows him and my mil to own a comfortable home in an area that is only going up in value. Anyway…

    As you can imagine super religious, super right wing, trump loving, gay hating (has a gay brother that he’s estranged from), you know… the usual. What gets me is remember trump did an interview a week or two ago where he said that all federal employees are “crooked and dishonest and must be held accountable”? He couldn’t agree more! Guess who my wife (his daughter) and I work for? Yeah…

  • @[email protected]
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    593 months ago

    Pandemic.

    Person who I used to consider a friend was relentlessly posting anti-vax and anti-lock down stuff constantly. I would continually refute what he posted, with references and data etc but he wouldn’t listen.

    Highlight was when he posted pictures of an anti lock down protest in “Lisbon” and I went to the lengths of finding the pictures that had been stolen and they were of a dance music festival he attended.

    Even though I cross referenced his own photos with those that had been posted, including one that showed him next to someone who was in on of the pictures from the supposed protest, he still wouldn’t listen to reason.

    He is no longer a friend or even an aquaintence.

  • @ABCDE
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    423 months ago

    Jehovah’s Witnesses, who rejoice in the deaths of children. The whole thing is utterly bizarre.

    • @[email protected]
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      323 months ago

      Worked with one a while back. She was trying to get out. Her whole family abandoned her. She finally went back and agreed to the arranged marriage temple leadership was demanding. Was immediately pregnant after the wedding. Forced to quit her job to be a stay at home mom.

      Firmly believe such behavior should be in our modern concept of slavery.

      • nomad
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        23 months ago

        This shit should be documented for court and the temple leadership can lead the jailhouse from inside from then on.

  • @Etterra
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    423 months ago

    Well my mother said that she would forgive me for rejecting her religion (JWs) if I came back to the church. I was 18. I threw that letter out and haven’t heard from her in the 27ish years since.

    Pro tip kids: conditional love is not love - it’s control.

  • @Bipolarsilence
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    3 months ago

    Happened recently actually.

    TW: Talks of SA, Maga

    Tap for spoiler

    In class we somehow got into a debate of politics and it went as you expect. Teacher asks if abortion should be legal, which she agrees but the two guys in the class disagree. The idiot guy starts arguing that the anti abortion laws are warnings for “”““the girls who can’t keep their legs shut””“”. Even when the teacher tried to give examples of rape cases, he just kept repeating it like he was right. The girl, which I’ll call Jessy, tore his shit up. Teacher stops the debate and we take a break. I have a lot more respect for Jessy.

    I sincerely don’t understand how someone can be that fucking deluded, and not see a problem with it.

    • ???OP
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      3 months ago

      Does dehumanizing them help?

      Edit: From the downvotes it seems that most people here think “yes!”

      • @JusticeForPorygon
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        153 months ago

        I don’t think so, because dehumanization is kind of their whole mantra, and I’d rather not stoop so low.

        They’re people, just not very bright people.

      • @Duamerthrax
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        53 months ago

        They don’t care. They are so deep in their cult, nothing can pull them out. If tomorrow, Trump came out, completely lucid, and admitted everything was a hoax, his supporters would just shift to another cult leader.

        Also, at one point, they referred to themselves as Centipedes. They probably got tricked into it, but they still did it proudly. Calling them Magats isn’t much different.

      • @LifeInMultipleChoice
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        23 months ago

        Can you tell me how to say that differently? If people from America are Americans, people who believe in Catholicism are Catholics, people who believe in MAGA are what exactly? It isn’t Republican, because they are a subgroup, like Jacobites. It isn’t to dehumanize them, it is just what they would be called from what I would expect.

        Maggots has a different spelling, which is what i know you are referring to, but maybe they should have choose a different name/slogan to go under

  • JaggedRobotPubes
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    343 months ago

    Covid. People are still pretending there’s no pandemic in 2024.

    • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ
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      3 months ago

      I meaaan, there is no pandemic in 2024. We fucked the whole thing up and it’s just a regular ol’ endemic disease killing people every year that could have been prevented. Weeeeee!

  • Libb
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    3 months ago

    Less people using public libraries (and reading books to learn stuff) around me because 'who needs to read books when there is everything on the Internet and I can Google anything’?

    And, at least as saddening and frightening to me, seeing more and more people willing to censor whatever book, author, or idea, they hate or even they just don’t agree with (most often, without even reading it). It’s even worse when I see librarians supporting that — it doesn’t matter how ‘good’ their motivation is, censorship’s only success is in the promotion of stupid ideas (if not of sheer ignorance), hate and fear.

    • @BitSound
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      183 months ago

      On a related note, I think libraries do need a bit of a facelift, and not just be “the place where books live”. It’s important to keep that function, but also expand to “a place where learning happens”. I know lots of libraries are doing this sort of thing, but your average person is probably still stuck in the “place where books live” mindset, as you allude. I’m talking stuff like 3D printers, makerspaces, diybio, classes about detecting internet bullshit, etc.

  • OBJECTION!
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    My brother got fucked up psychologically from murdering Iraqis and Afghans and then came home and started “self-medicating” with meth while spending all day sitting in his house alone while listening to far-right propaganda like OAN. He tried to check himself in for treatment at the VA but they committed malpractice which nearly killed him, and he responded violently, which put a flag on his record making it difficult for him to get help in the future, while at the same time giving him a deep distrust of doctors. He was incredibly paranoid and accused everyone of being part of some sort of conspiracy against him and would make violent threats, veiled just enough to not be actionable. Eventually, he went over to someone’s house with a gun, but the cops had been watching his house and they showed up, he pulled a gun on them and got shot in the arm, which he lost the use of, but he eventually recovered somewhat on account of getting off the meth while in jail. He’s still a fascist and still listens to all the same shit, but he’s at regular fascist levels of paranoid-schizophrenia now.

    I don’t give a shit about him but the pain he put my family through, a memory is burned into my mind of tears in my mother’s eyes as she gets another text and it’s another crisis and she can’t enjoy even a single night out at dinner because she has to act like a 911 operator 24/7 - and whenever I think about any of the people responsible for the stupid, pointless wars that caused all this, Bush, Obama, Biden, Trump, and all the rest, I remember that we got off incredibly easy, that our suffering was absolutely nothing compared to the actual victims of our country’s wanton slaughter and pointless wars of aggression, and I multiply the pain I felt in that moment and the trauma throughout the whole experience by a thousand, a hundred thousand, by as much as my mind is even capable of comprehending which is still only a tiny fraction of the reality, and I focus it into pure hatred directed towards all the people responsible for the wars.

    • ???OP
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      43 months ago

      In all fairness I went there to see what the issue is, the top post was about ants and most things that popped up were good memes. Which communities are you referring to? I’m guessing not c/earth or something…

      • @BitSound
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        153 months ago

        Threads like this, with highly upvoted comments like

        americans are more propagandized than they think citizens of the DPRK are

        They also use sarcasm try to push the narrative that North Korea is actually just fine, OK?

        Guys you don’t understand; the West has spoken; we MUST hate North Korea, our governments have already decreed it so.

        Many of them are also seemingly physically incapable of communicating without hexbear’s custom reaction images, which is a weird behavior common to many cults. Makes it harder to communicate with the outgroup.

        I think LW is defederated from them (or vice versa) so you can’t post over there, but for further examples, try making an account over there and saying that maybe, just maybe, Putin did a bad thing by invading Ukraine, and they’re defending an imperialist.

        • ???OP
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          93 months ago

          Yeah these things sound awful. Thanks for the pointers.

  • @sakodak
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    243 months ago

    There are six companies that control a very large percentage of the media consumed by Americans. They are all mega corporations. The media Americans consume is mostly corporate propaganda, and it’s invisible to us. It’s the water we swim in.

    Whatever opinions the oligarchs want us to have are dictated to us.

    It is not a coincidence that all our national political races come down to a wire, that we are divided almost 50/50. We are being intentionally divided so that we don’t unite and challenge the oligarchy.

    • @mrcleanup
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      23 months ago

      John Stewart did a great bit where station after station reads the exact same script over and over again. It’s unsettling.

      • @sakodak
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        33 months ago

        It’s not just the news. It’s TV shows, movies, books, periodicals, commercials - even music. The oligarchs have massive influence over all of it and can manipulate the public at will.

        • haui
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          33 months ago

          Indeed. But most normies will gladly tell you they are not easy to manipulate while buying something the media has told them to. Its shocking.

          • @sakodak
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            43 months ago

            You can hardly blame them. It’s a 24/7 onslaught of propaganda and it’s incredibly difficult to break out.

            And even when I initially woke up out of it I frequently questioned my sanity. Is this real? Is this actually what’s happening? How can nobody else see this?

            And then I wanted to go back to not knowing because of the incredible weight that knowledge puts on your shoulders, but it’s impossible. There’s no going back, at least for me.

            • haui
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              23 months ago

              Do you realize you just quoted the first matrix movie nearly verbatim? ;)

              And yes, I get that. It feels weird af.

    • I'm back on my BS 🤪
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      223 months ago

      That shit is so scary. Those people were ready to exterminate others out of pure hate and brain washing. It made me think about how the more extreme MAGA people today refer to liberals/Democrats. It’s like they’re heading down the same path. It’s insane that that many people can fall into that type of mentality with the freedom of information we have today. They’ve been trained to only believe a certain narrative, but instinctively disbelieve and see as enemy anything that goes against it. Freedom of thought is not an option for them. Crazy af.