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I’ve definitely noticed people who challenge anything you say by asking for a source, but make tons of unsourced claims themselves.
You get people who believe jet contrails only started appearing in the 90s even though that they didn’t is literally within living memory.
I rather have a source to support a claim instead of “but it’s how I feel so it’s real! Scientists don’t know anything, stop debunk my feelings with facts because I know I’m right! I read it on Facebook!”
We need more reliable and supported sources and less fake news.
I think it’s totally reasonable to ask for a source about a historical claim if something hasn’t been true for over a decade?
Not if it’s a thing that everyone experienced first hand and everyone remembers.
SOURCE?
Hashtag Rule’34
terrifying
Family Member: Russia needs to invade Ukraine because they need a shield against NATO.
Me: But NATO wasn’t going to attack them. It’s a defensive organization.
That’s what THEY want you to believe. (Was not able to clarify who “they” were during conversation, but got the impression it wasn’t nato)
Even if you believe Russia to be 100% in the wrong, the idea that NATO is a defensive organization is laughable. Not only has it historically been led by Nazis, the member-states are the most imperialist countries on the planet. It serves to protect an inherently violent status quo of brutal looting and exploitation of the Global South, and that’s without getting into aggressive operations from NATO.
Removed by mod
I never said Russia didn’t invade Ukraine, my point is specifically that calling NATO a “defensive alliance” despite it’s sole purpose being maintenance of Western Imperialism is laughable. People who understand ACAB but defend NATO as “purely defensive” have an inability to understand imperialism.
My comment has been deleted for no reason. Enjoy.
Probably your ableist username.
It’s also hypocritical. NATO is willing to allow Ukraine to join, but not Russia:
The archives show irrefutably that the U.S. and German governments repeatedly promised to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not move “one inch eastward” when the Soviet Union disbanded the Warsaw Pact military alliance. Nonetheless, U.S. planning for NATO expansion began early in the 1990s, well before Vladimir Putin was Russia’s president. In 1997, national security expert Zbigniew Brzezinski spelled out the NATO expansion timeline with remarkable precision.
Its behind a paywall can you copy paste?
Yep. After the USSR was murdered and the State sliced up and sold for spare parts to the Imperialist bourgeoisie in the west, there was a nationalist bourgeoisie that regained control of the Russian Federation’s resources and industry, and the West never forgave them for that. That’s why Russia is a far-right dystopia in many ways, but unlike far-right dystopias allies to the US Empire, the Russian Federation is depicted in a negative light exclusively in western Media, unlike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Argentina, etc.
What the actual hell
Which part?
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The USSR was not murdered, it fell apart after decades of internal mismanagement and multiple leaders who were more invested in swinging their dicks around than feeding their people and dealing with the timebomb of internal ethnic tensions.
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countries were already breaking away before the ‘death’ knell, they had been forcibly absorbed into a warmongering empire and wanted no further part in it.
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reports of ‘people thought communism was better’ are not a trite thing to fling around, it’s a complex issue of fear of change, fuck capitalism live to work ideology, and people from a handful of very select countries who were perched very parasitically on the top of a heap to the absolute detriment of others getting butthurt at losing that position. There is a reason why no formerly occupied country wants to return to the USSR
4). THE USSR WAS LITERALLY DISSOLVED BY ITS FOUNDING MEMBERS
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Not really true. Up to the end, the Soviets were well-fed, there were genuine issues but it was fine. The Economy was slowing down, and the Soviets were still largely planning by hand, which failed to scale well with increasing production, but necessities were more than covered. The system was working, if slowing.
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A few SRs had rising nationalist movements towards the end, but up until the very end the vast majority voted to retain membership in the USSR. It wasn’t until afterwards that it began to be murdered from the top, from the botched coup, to the change in leadership roles that allowed for conflicts within what was supposed to be a centralized system.
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Wealth disparity was far lower in the USSR than in post-soviet countries.
On top of this, the majority wished to retain Socialism and want to go back. I don’t “fling it around lightly,” this is a well-documented phenomenon, Capitalism is worse than Socialism for post-soviet countries. The USSR also wasn’t an Empire, nor was it warmongering, it materially supported anticolonial and anti-imperialist movements the world over.
- The USSR was not dissolved by Lenin or the other bolsheviks who founded it, lmao. This is absurd.
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If you think the USSR was murdered and didn’t just collapse due to its own gross mismanagement, you’ve been on .ml for too long.
What do you believe happened? It’s pretty clear that right up until it’s dissolution, the majority of the public had no idea it was going to collapse, nor did they want to replace Socialism with Capitalism. The majority of ex-soviets still claim it was better under Socialism than it is under Capitalism.
Or when you bring sources and they straight up ignore them entirely…
I understand not wanting to read or go through the entire Marxist-Leninist books I recommend, not everybody has the time for that, but a 5-20 minute article? You waste more time debating me after the fact than you would have just reading the article, at least do me the courtesy of skimming it and trying to engage with my points.
Perhaps peppering responses with links is counterproductive. Why not follow a more consistent strategy? Such an approach would for example summarize the opposition’s view in good faith, give a name to the fallacies in it, and respond not only by providing a link, but a short synopsis of what the link is and how it refutes those fallacies. This approach helps not only rebut the opponent, who may be unwilling to listen to reason, but everyone following the conversation in real time or in the future. For this reason it is also great to use archived versions of links, whenever you can.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, I generally offer specific reading recommendations and explanations for why, the only time I “pepper” is if it’s to add supporting evidence that might be immediately disregarded otherwise. I don’t usually send a large reading list, usually it’s one article or book with an explanation of why it’s relevant. You can see my comment history for examples if you want.
Certainly. I try to do the same, in fact I craft my comments so that they are immediately useful to others. Nonetheless, this might be not enough. Trolls are there for a reason, and you have to accept that our comment-section skirmishes do not add up to much, especially when you consider state-sponsored trolling and mega-corporate push of the far right agenda, across all media outlets, including social media.
And their own sources are so heavily butchered or even lied about. I cannot count the amount of times people provided me with ‘sources’ that they claim were ironclad in their favor only for them to completely debunk their shit…
It’s called a “gish gallop” mixed with a disagreement about what this platform is, with a healthy mix of “ain’t nobody got time for that”. To some people this is a legitimate place of discussion, to others it’s a place to shit post. One thing that Reddit did get right was seperating the two groups from each other. Lemmy doesn’t do that as well unless you ask it to and for some people, they ain’t got time for that. That still leaves the people who are gish galloping but they’re not going anywhere so might as well adapt.
If somebody would ask for a source it would already be a big improvement. Usually you are just classified as idiot if you dare to have a different view.
Eh. By now I’m pretty sure most people just interact with the internet in order to reconfirm their already held beliefs because they expect the algorithm to give them exactly what they want and a few “wrong” things to dunk on easily for bonus points.
They don’t need sources they are already right.
And that’s the same person who makes wild absurd claims but well just go off the rails and tell you to do your own research
And the sources they claim to have heavily researched often never say what they claim they say or are utterly full of shit.
"Of course they would say that. Those Liberal, left wing universities, with their peer review, aren’t to be trusted.
These hard-right think tanks (masquerading as anything other than a glorified PR firm they are) on the other hand are the definition of unbiased knowledge"
It’s gotten to a point where I just go ahead append a warning that I have no source and am just making casual conversation.
Source: my previous comment on Lemmy.
I’ve heard a saying, two things you should never do on the Internet are argue or explain. It takes up a lot of mental energy and time to do it for no reward.
Also trolls and propagandists employ bad faith tactics specifically to make their opposition do the bulk of the world, which they either ignore after or they just laugh at for some bullshit reason they claim is a gotcha.
There is an Islamophobic author who has been employing shit like in his books since the 90s. It isn’t new at all.
I think in many cases the people who explain things are doing a huge service. They’re silently appreciated by many. The true GOATs of the internet.
I’ve read so many great explanations on Reddit for things in math, science, literature, etc and I feel very grateful to the people who explained them.
Askhistorians is king.
Yes. The thing to remember is in many cases you aren’t explaining for the person you are debating with or answering a question for. You are doing it for others who may read the conversation.
I’ve had things brought to light in online discussion change my mind or educate me many times. When I see someone claim these conversations are useless or a waste of time, I just think they are really setting weird criteria for what constitutes a waste of time.
Sure, sometimes I ain’t got no time for that, but other times I do, and I figure the same is true for many others as well.
Oh you don’t understand how much reward i get on tiktok for proving my point so much that i get blocked.
It brings me unfathomable joy
Source?!
/s
Is that what the s stands for?
Yes.
ngl, I don’t comment nearly as often anymore out of concern for anything I say to be misconstrued, argued, or wanting verification like this meme. Ya’ll, I’ve got a job and a life, I can’t/don’t want to sit here and fight people. The worst gets assumed of anything and it gets difficult to have productive, much less positive discourse online.
This is also due to a distinct drop in reader comprehension. One of the largest parts of reading comprehension is being able to infer the intended audience for a particular piece of work. You should be able to read a news article, see a commercial, read a comment, etc and infer who it is aimed at. And the answer is usually not “me”.
People have become accustomed to having an algorithm that is laser focused to their specific preferences. So when they see something that’s not aimed at them it is jarring, and they tend to get upset. Instead of going “oh this clearly isn’t aimed at me, but I can infer who the intended audience is. I’ll move on.” Now they tend to jump on the creator with whataboutisms and imagined offense.
Maybe you make a post about the proper way to throw a football. You’ll inevitably get a few “bUT wHaT abOUt WhEElcHaiR uSerS, I hAvE a baD ShoUlDer aNd cAn’T thROW SO wHaT abOUt me, I haTE FoOtbAll wHY aRe yOU SHowiNG tHIs to Me, etc” types of comments. It’s because those users have lost the ability to infer an intended audience. They automatically assume everything they see is aimed at them, and get offended when it isn’t.
I have even noticed this started to affect the way media is written. Creators tend to make it a point to outright state their intended audience, just to avoid the negative comments.
I’m wondering how many people skipped your comment because it was too long.
I’ve had people go “I don’t have time to read 3 paragraphs!”, as though that’s some kind of argument against the point I’m trying to make. Attention spans are down.
I tend to front-load my comments as much as possible, to try and avoid just that. Make the main point ASAP. But even then, there’s only so much you can do without sounding messy.
For instance, I front-loaded the part about reader comprehension. All of the “why” is in later paragraphs. But even if they only read the first few sentences, they’ll at least get my overall point.
It does make nuanced discussion impossible though. I work in a pretty specialized field (professional audio) with lots of snake oil myths about what will or won’t make your system sound better. There have been several times that I have seen people parroting this snake oil type stuff as if it is genuine advice. And often, this advice happens because the person only has a surface-level understanding of how audio works. Something sounds plausible, (and they don’t understand the underlying principles that would disprove it,) so they end up perpetuating the myth. So a lot of discussions boil down to “well kind of but not really” and people won’t bother reading anything past the “well kind of” part.
Hmm good point. Never realized there could be connection with hyper curated algorithm and main character syndrome.
Now I kinda understand why “just look away” makes no sense to these kinda people.
This is a very interesting idea. It would certainly explain why people seem to constantly “infill” everything everone says with whatever gets them the most angry - the algo feeds them ragebait, so that’s what they see.
“If it doesn’t apply, let it fly.” “Hit dogs holler.”
What, feeling too good for an unproductive Internet fight with strangers who probably would agree with you if they could read?
birds used to be real
Source? Because that’s so not true. Birds are an invention by the government, they are robots to spy on us. The government wants us to believe they always existed. It’s all fabricated lies created by the government. Source
I fucking hate newsletter emails but this is the only site I registered for one. I’m launching my ass off every single time. 😂 I love satire haha
And they had arms
Obviously, that’s what the “arms race” refers to. Birds used to have very strong arms which they used while racing in their super-fast arm bikes.
The evil version of this is when people cite a click bait article, you go to the article and read the attached study and the study is not backing up their claims in any meaningful way. Like come on bro you clearly haven’t read this study don’t cite it and claim I need to educate myself.
Average YouTube influencer for me.
It’s gotten even worse in the past year. Most of them sound like they’re parroting AI summaries of blog posts and sprinkling stupid ass cutaway gags to memes. Like rather than actually consuming the entire body of context around a subject and having an informed take, they’re just giving shallow thoughts and trying to monetize.
Any YouTuber whose whole angle is to spicy commentary on current events in tech/programming is definitely part of the trash heap.
Problem here is you’re watching “influencers.”
Spoken like someone who’s never experienced the ancient healing frequencies :p
