They don’t think in logical, reasonable systems, they imagine stories. The entire conservative mindset is narratives and feelings. That’s why things like vaccines and tylenol go so hard for them, it’s an easy McGuffin to comprehend and work into their mental storylines.

spectrum

Our species broadly doesn’t think in terms of spectrums or nuance.

I burned years of my life trying to make arguments from reason and explain how there can be simultaneous truths or that issues are not black-and-white. It has NEVER stuck, not with friends, not with family, not with strangers on the internet.

People’s minds largely do not work that way. We all HAVE to digest this and mourn it and let it pass through us so we can stop trying to argue with these blockheads in ways they can’t even grasp. We can change them if we tell them stories about feelings, if we make them feel validated or heard, we can change them with careful, patient one-on-one care like a parent telling a child bedtime stories… but this takes a level of energy, empathy and patience that few of us have. Some do, I give massive respect to those who have dedicated their lives to this kind of outreach. I wish we had more.

There’s a vast number of conservative parents who have said they would support abortion in cases of fetal abnormalities like “autism” because they’re not pro-life or informed about anything, they’re just scared. They’re scared of hardships, they’re scared of emotional labor, they’re scared of the social stigmas around having to care for someone with special needs, they’re scared they won’t love a child who isn’t normal, and will be judged for it.

If they could read or do comparisonal analysis or could formulate higher-functional abstraction in their frontal lobes, this would really make them think.

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even the RX9070 is running around $900 USD, I cannot fathom affording even state-of-the-art gaming from years ago at this point. I am still using a GTX1660 and playing games from years ago I never got around to and having a grand time. Most adults I know are in the same boat and either not even considering upgrading their PC or they’re playing their kid’s console games.

Every year we say “Gonna look into upgrading” but every year prices go up and wages stay the same (or disappear entirely as private-equity ravages the business world, digesting every company that isn’t also a private equity predator) and the prices of just living and eating are insane, so at this rate, a lot of us might start reading again.

Hey now, he didn’t say he was working close with Trump, he said he was working closing with Trump.

I’m sure there’s a distinct difference.

To stop insisting upon itself for like, five fucking minutes.

Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer”.

Bruh, it’s not game of thrones. People just need to work.

Me who was denied an education and raised by a cult family in the wilderness for the first 20 years, and had to escape and learn everything and get an education on my own, and still somehow managed to learn the importance of voting for qualified candidates, reading this and taking notes

I can already tell I won’t enjoy conversing about this with you, it’s okay, have a good one.

It seems like you’re directing this at me,

I actually wasn’t but I do appreciate the brutally honest and non-combative reply, this is exactly the window into how the foreign and domestic forces working tirelessly to amplify contention and hate have subverted our very spirit and left us not wanting to care about anything anymore.

This isn’t entirely the fault of the population, but the population can and should at least more informed of this tactic so they don’t doom-scroll the worst clips and gifs, the pandering content, the screaming matches and “debates” and news stories from dubious outlets. We need to do this so we all take better care of our minds, this is part of the whole story… your mind is vulnerable and selfish forces will sell out your mental wellbeing and sovereignty so they can keep making line go up.

If you take care of your mind like your body, if you take care with what you put into it, it will be stronger and healthier and you can make better decisions. This is why they are attacking the very notion of “mental health” by the way. They want a depressed, checked-out population of serfs working the fields and buying the latest iPhone as soon as it lands.

The election was real.

The millions of contentious voices on Facebook, twitter, reddit and so on were not. They used the KGB handbook to play the basic tactic of amplifying the worst contention on both sides of literally every issue, leaving the general, moderate population absolutely checked out and uninterested in involvement.

When you don’t feel connected to your community, what do you do? You ignore it, you don’t work to better it.

While I say this was from the KGB handbook (literally) I don’t think they were the only forces at work, I think it’s just an effective tactic that everyone who wants to control or subvert the richest, most powerful nation on earth (a nation already sabotaged by “fierce individualism”) will readily employ so that democracy no longer stands between them and the prize.

When the goal is “line go up for infinity” the soil itself is a commodity that will be dug up and sold. I really feel like ya’ll still aren’t realizing what’s happening. Almost half the population didn’t get involved, and the ones who did had no media literacy or involvement in politics, as evident by the absolutely bonkers exit polling. We’re at that scene in the Die Hard sequel where the dump trucks are driving the gold out of the city.

It’s really easy to blame non-voters when you have the privilege of civic literacy

This is a helluva line I that I’m absolutely stuck on.

I don’t even know how to approach it… civic literacy as a privilege? I feel like that’s an entirely new term invented as a way of avoiding accountability tbh. I get that it’s hard to vote, and I get people who have to work all the time, but I don’t get pushback against the idea that we’re just not making the effort or trying to push through challenges for a better future. Fuck that, I don’t care. Ya’ll gonna learn one way or another what accountability means.

I feel so bad for you. Now excuse me while I go back to living inside of it.

if it’s that bad, I honestly think you shouldn’t be online.

Not kidding, you need to take better care of yourself if it’s at the point where you’re setting filters and still getting stressed seeing political content, you’re not helping yourself escaping online.

There have to be some other things you can do, places you can go, activities you can occupy yourself with or people you can hang out with.

Because man… this shit happening right now is big, it’s history, it’s going to be really, really hard to escape it online because there are millions and millions of people far more involved and worried and trying to communicate their concerns.

It would have been nice if 45% of the eligible voting population didn’t already check out last year. It would have been nice if there weren’t countless posts by bots on reddit saying “I really hate all this politics” in a concerted, ongoing effort to make people like OP tune out and not care.

I mean, I get that it’s hard sometimes to always see what’s happening in the world, but you have the option to turn it all off. But expecting to just get the content that appeals to your mood at the moment and lets you avoid responsibility, that’s fucking childish.

When you’re a child you can avoid the world. You’re supposed to be protected from the world. You grow up and BAM now you’re part of shit. No, you don’t get out of it. No, you don’t get to escape whenever you want. Sorry, we didn’t sign up for it either but we know what we have to do so we’re concerned about events and trying to communicate that concern so that evil doesn’t flourish. (Much further.)

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This is very much a real effect.

I play some video games on my downtime, I hop into discord groups of male gamers and it’s like jumping into Penthouse Letters - Oops! All Men Edition.

The weird way a lot of straight men “joke” about erotic ideas with each other seems to spiral out of control as they hang out with each other, and rapidly leaves the realm of “ironic dirty talk” and becomes full on eroticism and while I’m no prude and don’t feel offense, I sometimes wonder if these guys should just get in a private channel and get it out of their system.

Because we’re all being trained to be afraid of each other, we have rising phenomenon that indicate a deep human desire for connection that’s being lost. Why is incest porn so popular right now? Not because people commit incest at any higher rate than at any other point in modern history, it’s because a growing swath of the population, mostly men, are so distanced from the idea of intimacy with a female partner that they can only imagine it with someone they have a pre-existing, non-threatening relationship with. Erotica with imagined siblings, anthropomorphic “pets” and of course sexualizing underage or “innocent” characters other ideas of non-relationship sex with “safe” partners are flooding media and it’s absolutely a sign of our current male population not having ANY idea how to grow up and have adult relationships and it’s more sad than anything, and it’s only going to get worse and worse.

I wish modern men would finally come to terms with the reality that almost every contentious social issue boils down to them having some kind of sexual insecurity.

I’m not even kidding.