#because how stupid are people that they believe their propaganda????

[wearenotjustnumbers2]

These are the victims that everybody is telling us to pray for? "God is with us" Are you serious? How can anybody believe them playing the victim everywhere on social media when they're in festivals celebrating Palestinians' death and making tiktoks putting on makeup and mocking them and the dead children?

I cannot take anyone seriously who's like "pray for israel, we're at war 🕊" like use your brain.

[fatfemmefreaquency]

. probably gonna delete this later

[envolvenuances]

normal woman separatist I don't know wanna hear another rich white opinion

[obituarybug]

Everytime I tell someone I'm independent/no party and they immediately start spouting bullshit to me about the importance of voting and why I should vote and that "a vote for third party is a vote for x" an angel loses its wings

Like sorry I wasn't aware that only Republicans & Democrats are allowed to vote for their respective parties and independents can't and that if they see you're registered independent they fucking rip up your ballot in front of you and don't count it

I AM STILL GOING TO FUCKING VOTE SHUT YOUR BITCH ASS UP.

[micamicster]

it only took 12 interviews i guess for somebody to bring up 9/11 to me

[theclosetedskeleton]

ONE OF THESE DAYS IM GOING TO FUCKING EXPLODE/NEG

[lord-squiggletits]

My idea for a meta about war and propaganda in IDW actually requires me to do some rereading so I can find specific citations for things IDW Optimus says, which is part of why I've been procrastinating so much on it. But I'm honestly really excited about it because war stories and the effects/trauma of war have always been one of my favorite genres of story, I even took an entire class on them in college. If you've read Pay Unto Evil, you know that themes about propaganda and cult of personality as justifications for war, ends don't justify the means, and violence as inherently corrosive is something I've already written about with great feeling.

Um, the exact structure of the meta isn't clear, but basically I wanted to look at IDW OP and the evolution of his attitude towards violence/war/the Decepticons as an archetypal (anti) war story. A lot of my ideas of young OP are based on how he's written in the Autocracy trilogy, so I would be putting special focus on those stories as a wah to characterize OP when he's younger (since I want more people to appreciate those stories) as a contrast to how he is when he's older.

And basically the idea is that in real life, a common story among war veterans is the fact that they went into it young and idealistic, believing that war is good or at least trusting that war is good when you're fighting on the right side of things, glorifying battle and violence and such ("dulce et decorum est pro patria mori"). And it's only when they experience war and are traumatized by it that these young soldiers realize lessons about how the soldiers on the other side are exactly the same as they are, that the reason they're fighting is for ultimately pointless reasons, and that their whole lives they were lied to in order to buy into the idea of "glorious war".

The meta would basically be centered on how IDW OP goes through this particular archetype of war story character development (not an official term), with me pointing out how IDW OP's morally dubious past is a necessary part of his lore in this continuity. Because IDW OP's position of "we have to move on from the war and stop seeking revenge, or else it will never end" is most meaningful when it comes from someone who WAS a member of the state and DID used to believe in propagandistic ideas. And it doesn't make IDW OP uniquely stupid or evil because the entire point of his kind of war story is to point out how society raises you to believe in the righteousness of violence and war and it takes FUCKING UP to realize you were wrong, that there are so many people in the world who didn't realize how deeply they were being deluded until they found themselves in the thick of pointless bloodshed. THAT'S part of why I cling so insistently to IDW OP and not erasing his "problematic" backstory, because he's so much more interesting and paints a figure so much more true to real life if you accept everything about him instead of sneering at him and calling him an idiot or an asshole.

[metamatar]

not sure how to characterise this position as anything but basic pragmatism.

(1) you should not call people you disagree with bots simply because even if that one specific person was actually a bot, the small possibility of treating a real person as a bot is so dehumanizing that it should stop you from doing so. and if you are wrong, you are actually pretty irredeemable as a good faith interlocutor in everyone's eyes.

(2) you cannot possibly function in any community or further your own intellectual growth by being arrogant enough to believe that all disagreement with you is incoherent propaganda. there is real stupidity in the world to blame!

(3) it is not particularly convincing to be conspiratorial about very run of the mill ideas like pessimism about politics.

[kyofsonder]

I understand the immediate emotional recoil, and the need to defend humanity and/or the self. You read "we each have a nazi in us" and it's perfectly reasonable for the emotional part of your brain to think "that word means evil and I don't want to live in a world where I have evil inside me -- I might not be a good person, but I'm not evil." It makes sense that this fear would naturally override calmer analysis of what's actually being said.

"We all have evil within us" doesn't mean we all act on that evil. It doesn't mean we all have an evil phase where we're cruel and bigoted until we see the light. It doesn't mean we all have a curse that transforms us into were-nazis on a full moon.

It means that "hatred, rage, fear, narcissistic self-regard and contempt for others" as actions and beliefs that harm others are the building blocks of what we call evil by another name. It means that everybody gets mad, finds things or people to hate, gets scared, gets too much in their own head, and forgets that others deserve patience and respect. Everybody has the capacity for these things in normal, manageable, human degrees.

Everybody also has the capacity to have these things turned up full volume in their own heads until nothing else gets through. There are people whose internal slider goes up the less they're exposed to the humanity of others, and in their isolation they become so bitter and hateful that they look down on others in a way that becomes outright cruel. There are people whose internal slider goes up the more they're exposed to other people's cruelty, and in their fear they decide to fight fire with fire. Become cruel or die. This is the impact of trauma that the author is talking about.

We are not all evil by default. We are not all good by default. We are all human by default, and that means all of us have emotions that can be turned into actions and all of our actions can be cruel or kind or otherwise if we let them.

It's our responsibility, individually, to check on our emotional state and our emotional history (with whatever guidance we need to make it safe, some people need workbooks and others need groupchats and others need to try a few times to find a good therapist) and make sure our sliders are set at safe and reasonable levels. It's up to us to avoid having the evil that's within us become evil that acts on the world around us.

If this helps, it's a little like saying all cats are dangerous because they have claws. It's true that claws are dangerous, even a small cut can become easily infected. It's true that having claws is the normal state for a cat. It's not true that all cats will scratch no matter how you treat them. It's not true that all cats need to he declawed to be safe around humans, and the declawing process is actually actively harmful to cats. It's not true that all cats are dangerous to humans any more than it's true that all humans are evil. What is true is that it's important to treat our cats with patience and understanding, and teach them proper claw control so they don't scratch us by accident. We find compromises that are the least harmful to both cat and human in those cases where claw control can't be taught.

To say "we each have a nazi in us" is to say "cats each have claws within them." We don't need to defend ourselves against the statement. We don't need to apologize pre-emptively for being evil. We need to treat ourselves with patience and understanding, and learn proper emotional and mental control so we don't fall into hateful doctrine or lash out emotionally.

We all have the capacity for cruelty. Every person in the world. No matter what. It's up to us how to manage that, and whether we want to break the cycle of cruelty that already exists.

im gonna be real with you guys a little but you are all deeply fucking stupid

[medicinemane]

"This is what such and such was about"

...but... it wasn't

Like I was there, I wasn't directly involved, but I was in that general space at that time and keeping up with the news on it... and it's not at all what you're saying it was

You're totally missing the catalyst and... and the notable events and... all of it

Funny thing is there's more than one things I can say this about

It's never fucking worth weighing in, people have already made up their minds it's just... it's frustrating when it's like... I directly remember this happening, I was following it at the time and... I get sick of it

[specialagentartemis]

I get variations on this comment on my post about history misinformation all the time: "why does it matter?" Why does it matter that people believe falsehoods about history? Why does it matter if people spread history misinformation? Why does it matter if people on tumblr believe that those bronze dodecahedra were used for knitting, or that Persephone had a daughter named Mespyrian? It's not the kind of misinformation that actually hurts people, like anti-vaxx propaganda or climate change denial. It doesn't hurt anyone to believe something false about the past.

Which, one, thanks for letting me know on my post that you think my job doesn't matter and what I do is pointless, if it doesn't really matter if we know the truth or make up lies about history because lies don't hurt anyone. But two, there are lots of reasons that it matters.

It encourages us to distrust historians when they talk about other aspects of history. You might think it's harmless to believe that Pharaoh Hatshepsut was trans. It's less harmless when you're espousing that the Holocaust wasn't really about Jews because the Nazis "came for trans people first." You might think it's harmless to believe that the French royalty of Versailles pooped and urinated on the floor of the palace all the time, because they were asshole rich people anyway, who cares, we hate the rich here; it's rather less harmless when you decide that the USSR was the communist ideal and Good, Actually, and that reports of its genocidal oppression are actually lies.

It encourages anti-intellectualism in other areas of scholarship. Deciding based on your own gut that the experts don't know what they're talking about and are either too stupid to realize the truth, or maliciously hiding the truth, is how you get to anti-vaxxers and climate change denial. It is also how you come to discount housing-first solutions for homelessness or the idea that long-term sustained weight loss is both biologically unlikely and health-wise unnecessary for the majority of fat people - because they conflict with what you feel should be true. Believing what you want to be true about history, because you want to believe it, and discounting fact-based corrections because you don't want them to be true, can then bleed over into how you approach other sociological and scientific topics.

How we think about history informs how we think about the present. A lot of people want certain things to be true - this famous person from history was gay or trans, this sexist story was actually feminist in its origin - because we want proof that gay people, trans people, and women deserve to be respected, and this gives evidence to prove we once were and deserve to be. But let me tell you a different story: on Thanksgiving of 2016, I was at a family friend's house and listening to their drunk conservative relative rant, and he told me, confidently, that the Roman Empire fell because they instituted universal healthcare, which was proof that Obama was destroying America. Of course that's nonsense. But projecting what we think is true about the world back onto history, and then using that as recursive proof that that is how the world is... is shoddy scholarship, and gets used for topics you don't agree with just as much as the ones you do. We should not be encouraging this, because our politics should be informed by the truth and material reality, not how we wish the past proved us right.

It frequently reinforces "Good vs. Bad" dichotomies that are at best unhelpful and at worst victim-blaming. A very common thread of historical misinformation on tumblr is about the innocence or benevolence of oppressed groups, slandered by oppressors who were far worse. This very frequently has truth to it - but makes the lies hard to separate out. It often simplifies the narrative, and implies that the reason that colonialism and oppression were bad was because the victims were Good and didn't deserve it... not because colonialism and oppression are bad. You see this sometimes with radical feminist mother goddess Neolithic feminist utopia stuff, but you also see it a lot regarding Native American and African history. I have seen people earnestly argue that Aztecs did not practice human sacrifice, that that was a lie made up by the Spanish to slander them. That is not true. Human sacrifice was part of Aztec, Maya, and many Central American war/religious practices. They are significantly more complex than often presented, and came from a captive-based system of warfare that significantly reduced the number of people who got killed in war compared to European styles of war that primarily killed people on the battlefield rather than taking them captive for sacrifice... but the human sacrifice was real and did happen. This can often come off with the implications of a 'noble savage' or an 'innocent victim' that implies that the bad things the Spanish conquistadors did were bad because the victims were innocent or good. This is a very easy trap to fall into; if the victims were good, they didn't deserve it. Right? This logic is dangerous when you are presented with a person or group who did something bad... you're caught in a bind. Did they deserve their injustice or oppression because they did something bad? This kind of logic drives a lot of transphobia, homophobia, racism, and defenses of Kyle Rittenhouse today. The answer to a colonialist logic of "The Aztecs deserved to be conquered because they did human sacrifice and that's bad" is not "The Aztecs didn't do human sacrifice actually, that's just Spanish propaganda" (which is a lie) it should be "We Americans do human sacrifice all the god damn time with our forever wars in the Middle East, we just don't call it that. We use bullets and bombs rather than obsidian knives but we kill way, way more people in the name of our country. What does that make us? Maybe genocide is not okay regardless of if you think the people are weird and scary." It becomes hard to square your ethics of the Innocent Victim and Lying Perpetrator when you see real, complicated, individual-level and group-level interactions, where no group is made up of members who are all completely pure and good, and they don't deserve to be oppressed anyway.

It makes you an unwitting tool of the oppressor. The favorite, favorite allegation transphobes level at trans people, and conservatives at queer people, is that we're lying to push the Gay Agenda. We're liars or deluded fools. If you say something about queer or trans history that's easy to debunk as false, you have permanently hurt your credibility - and the cause of queer history. It makes you easy to write off as a liar or a deluded fool who needs misinformation to make your case. If you say Louisa May Alcott was trans, that's easy to counter with "there is literally no evidence of that, and lots of evidence that she was fine being a woman," and instantly tanks your credibility going forward, so when you then say James Barry was trans and push back against a novel or biopic that treats James Barry as a woman, you get "you don't know what you're talking about, didn't you say Louisa May Alcott was trans too?" TERFs love to call trans people liars - do not hand them ammunition, not even a single bullet. Make sure you can back up what you say with facts and evidence. This is true of homophobes, of racists, of sexists. Be confident of your facts, and have facts to give to the hopeful and questioning learners who you are relating this story to, or the bigots who you are telling off, because misinformation can only hurt you and your cause.

It makes the queer, female, POC, or other marginalized listeners hurt, sad, and betrayed when something they thought was a reflection of their own experiences turns out not to be real. This is a good response to a performance art piece purporting to tell a real story of gay WWI soldiers, until the author revealed it as fiction. Why would you want to set yourself up for disappointment like that? Why would you want to risk inflicting that disappointment and betrayal on anyone else?

It makes it harder to learn the actual truth.

Historical misinformation has consequences, and those consequences are best avoided - by checking your facts, citing your sources, and taking the time and effort to make sure you are actually telling the truth.

[animentality]

I don't believe the people who say the atla live action show is good.

the most they seem to say is "just turn your brain off and you'll enjoy it-" and "it's for kids! it's supposed to be braindead."

the reason atla has endured as long as it has, is because people are still finding intelligent discourse to have about its mature themes and its thoughtful story and expansive world building. it's a timeless classic because it found a balance between being light hearted and humorous, when appropriate, and completely serious when exploring its darker material. There are no fucking jokes about katara's mom dying or the genocide of the air nomads. but they are a cast of kids/pre teens and they definitely feel like kids. they grow and mature, and they joke around and have a good time, but the fucking show never felt the need to dumb itself down because it thought kids were too fucking stupid to appreciate character growth or a nuanced story.

it's actually embarrassing to be here and say well atla is supposed to be for kids, so having the emotional depth of paw patrol is fine-

I'm so sorry that kids these days can't handle a story about redemption and genocide and imperialism.

I'm so sorry that kids are being fed slop under the guise that they're too stupid to have anything else, because God knows those of us who grew up with avatar sure didn't appreciate how smart it was.

that's why WE STILL TALK ABOUT IT YEARS LATER ACKNOWLEDGING HOW MANY LITTLE THINGS WE BOTH OBSERVED AND MISSED IN THE SERIES WHEN WE ORIGINALLY WATCHED IT.

go ahead, write paw patrol the last airbender.

kids definitely don't need to know what genocide and imperialism are. they're definitely not very fucking relevant topics of the modern day!! god knows American kids in particular shouldn't know how genocides and propaganda and the total annihilation of oppressed cultures work!!

[ckret2]

I sympathize with you wholeheartedly because of how disappointing it is to have to change around the flatland-inspired lore of the fic because bill's homeworld doesn't seem to follow it. I will however say that as someone who was forced to read the book in high school geometry and hated it entirely for its powerful sexism, I'm kinda glad that it's not exactly the same thing, even if I do think a lot of the lore is cool. It was just such a male-centered book and seemed so smug about it, it was really hard to ignore.

The book is satire & critique of Victorian era social conventions, including the rigidity of its class system and how people defended it by saying the nobility were inherently "better" than the commoners (number of sides); the abuses of the poor & disabled, including euthanasia, and how they were written off as inherently stupid & criminal to justify their low position (isosceles triangles & irregulars); and, the way women were trapped, talked down to, treated like unthinking irrational animals, ignored when they spoke so they couldn't prove their rationality and dismissed when they got furious about this as just being too emotional.

In the book itself, the Sphere openly looks down on the Square's society for its disregard of women.

The book isn't smugly sexist; the book is mocking guys who are smugly sexist by exaggerating it to enough of an extreme that even Victorian era men would be able to see how messed up the system is.

And it apparently worked, since in a later edition of the book Abbott had to add in the intro that he doesn't believe those things about women, perhaps Mr. A Square has absorbed too much of his culture's propaganda about women? (Which means it succeeded in riling up readers—and also it sounded similar enough to the extreme end of real Victorian-era attitudes that some readers thought it was the real thing instead of satire, which tells you what kind of culture Abbott was up against.)

The book is openly advocating for increased respect for women's intelligence and autonomy by pointing a light on how horrible their treatment is.

[reality-detective]

It’s time for me to have another rant! 👇

Buckle up!!! ⚔️🛡️

The State of America:

I am angry. As an American, I am sick and tired of what this country has become. I do probably curse more than I should, but I am pissed off.

Our schools: Children are being indoctrinated by school teachers about sexual activity rather than things they should be learning about. You know, like civics, math, real history and science? What grown ass adult wants to discuss sexual intercourse with a minor? I’ll tell you, a social deviant fucking pervert. That’s who. I will not expose any child to that madness ever.

Our military: Our military is the weakest it has ever been. I have friends that are still in the military and they cannot wait to get out. Not because of their lack of service to this country, but the lack of leadership. The good ones are tired of getting slammed with “woke” PowerPoints on shit that doesn’t even matter to military readiness. It’s dumb. And our adversaries are laughing at us. I can’t even recommend someone to join the military until it is returned to its rightful place as the strongest military in the world.

Our southern border: The southern border is a dumpster fire. More illegal aliens and fentanyl are pouring through the border at record rates. The saddest part about this is the Democrats are wanting ILLEGALS to vote for any and all elections. Democrats only use their party for votes to continue their reign of power, while their own districts are literal shit-holes. Republicans are not safe from this and they really aren't much better. If they wanted the border shut down they would too. Always remember that Americans being murdered was never enough to shut the border down.

Joe Biden: I will never accept the thought that Joe Biden got 81 million votes. You cannot make me believe that the alleged President of the United States of America got the most votes in American history, then was kicked out from running by his own party. Give me a fucking break.

Kamala Harris: This Indian American woman locked up more black men than I have ever seen in my life. She doesn’t care about black people. Never has and never will. She just wants your vote.

Mainstream Media: These retards have been fed so much propaganda that they actually think Donald Trump will incite a civil war if he doesn’t win the 2024 election. You all have an extra chromosome if you truly believe that. There are some that are just gaslighting but a large portion of the population is too stupid to vote if they can’t decipher this.

Speaking of Donald Trump: This man has been given more bullshit to a public servant that I have ever seen in my life. For crying out loud, it has been over 2 weeks since the Deep State almost took his life and no one has been held truly accountable. They are all behind it until proven otherwise. Imagine if that was the other way around. Democrats would want to put the nation on lockdown like they did during COVID.

National debt: As of today the United States is at $35,000,000,000,000.00 in debt. How irresponsible of adults. I will never be gaslit to send money overseas anymore especially since Americans are struggling to put food on their table. How outrageously treasonous.

And to top all of this off. I am a white male that was in the military and now I'm considered a domestic terrorist by some. How unbelievable is this? The same ones that are backing the Military Industrial Complex. The same “elected leaders” that I served, don’t have our backs when we return home. The military are the ones that uphold and defend the Constitution, not them.

This is not what America should be about. This is not the country I served. Not anymore.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!! 🤔

God Bless America. 🇺🇸

[elfwreck]

It's not over.

Put your support behind Kamala Harris and VOTE BLUE IN NOVEMBER.

Harris has a solid track record to point at - including a whole lot of connections with Congress.

Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., took to the Senate floor to congratulate Harris, noting that the Inflation Reduction Act, the American Rescue Plan and other key Biden administration achievements would not have passed Congress without her vote.

Trump's support hasn't grown. But he's going to be insufferably smug; he now believes he can coast into office, rewrite the entire US government, and never go to prison no matter how many crimes he commits.

Prove him wrong.

He believes that Democrats were behind Biden like his supporters are behind him - a cult of personality, not plans and ethics. He thinks Biden was the front-runner because people liked him personally, and if he could convince people not to like him, he'd lose.

Prove him wrong.

Watch out for propaganda; there's going to be heaping amount of it. Watch out for "don't vote nothing matters" apathy; there's going to be a lot of that, too. Watch out for "but her emails!!!!" or whatever stupid pointless drama they're going to claim about Harris.

Trump and his supporters think the US government is a popularity contest, not a matter of voting for the future you want.

Prove them wrong.

[ladymirdan]

I have seen that “Everything is canon”, post like its some kind “gotcha, this is stupid”-response, and I have balked how dumb some of the takes are.

But then I realised not everyone is as autistically obsessed with warham as I am. And I should take a step outside my own bubble and try to see things from other people's perspectives. Especially people who perhaps do not read much lore, but just enjoys Youtube lore videos or such.

The entire quote is “Everything is canon, not everything is true”.

It was written so armies would have something to fight over in this war game. There were little differences to quarrel over that didn't have a right or wrong side. Even armies who were usually allies could find something to beef over when the usual beef of MacGuffin or land had gone stale.

One of my favourite examples of the “Everything is canon, not everything is true”-rule is how in the Ultramarine codex they say “No Ultramarine has ever fallen to chaos”, while in the Black legion (I believe it was, some chaosy codex anyway) says they have a renegade Ultramarine. Not both of these can be true.

It is up to the players to pick what side you want to belive, both sides have good reasons to lie about this.

So when we say “Lore isn't important, its just fluff”, that doesn't mean we don't care about the lore, it's the fact we have been told since the start that you are allowed to believe what you want, because that makes for a more exciting story.

Finding inconsistencies is not a bug, it is a feature (and it also makes this increadibly vast fictional universe bearable to manage since no one person can realistically keep track of it all).

The Codices are propaganda, plain and simple. The books are told from a perspective, (usually the imperium because humans are relatable I guess 🤷‍♀️)

The unreliable narrator is the core and essence of Warhammer, and if you want to cling to only one true story, you will go insane. For this setting is blessed and ruled by the Changer of Ways.