#grifter tactics

[silverbackedjackal]

"transandrophobia"

> meaningless. It's posing as a sister-opression to transmisogyny; transmisogyny itself is an intersection of two oppressed conditions, implying the same for the other. However, misogyny is real, "androphobia" is not. The word you're looking for is transphobia

[mxbitters]

i hope the people that respond to my nervousness saying “don’t be nervous” know that a certain ronald radke said that to me like seven years ago and good lord if there is one way to instantly rip a 14 year old out of their falling in reverse phase it would be that anyway if you tell me to just not be nervous you are i automatically associate you with that silly, silly man so perhaps do not

[bemusedlybespectacled]

what's happening with James Somerton right now: a probably-incomplete primer

TW: suicide, including suicide as a threat and a manipulation tactic.

The short version:

James Somerton is a former Youtube essayist who focused entirely on queer history, queer media criticism, and queer issues in general. He is also a flagrant grifter who has made tens of thousands of dollars via fraud, both directly (lying about his finances to beg for money and getting donations for films he never even started making) and indirectly (stealing whole essays and articles and books, reading them out loud verbatim for his videos without indicating they were anything other than his own work, and then using the prestige he gained from using their work to get Patrons and sponsorships).

The story as told James and James apologists was that James attempted to apologize twice, was hounded mercilessly on the internet for weeks, and then, driven to the end of his rope, he posted a suicide note on Twitter, was MIA for several days, and from then on has been avoiding the internet.

The actual story, as revealed yesterday, was that James used two sockpuppet accounts to defend himself and parrot his talking points (again, while publicly claiming to be trying to take responsibility for his actions), using one to try to rebrand the con under a different name and another to deliberately stoke the panic caused by his suicide note. He was not only aware of the pain and anxiety he was causing people, but he encouraged it on one alt while hornyposting about his favorite movies on the other.

He is an unrepentant con artist who successfully used a suicide threat to prevent further interference with future cons. The only reason he was caught is because he is apparently incapable of going more than a couple of weeks without trying to get back in the internet spotlight, allowing people to tie his alts back to him. He lies for fun and profit and he should not be taken seriously, ever.

The long version:

In December 2023, Youtube essayist Hbomberguy (Harry Brewis) put out a four-hour-long video about plagiarism on the internet, and devoted two hours to addressing as much of JS's plagiarism as he could. I strongly recommend watching the entire thing, as the first two hours build on the concepts that he uses later in the video.

He also blew the whistle on James' fraud surrounding Telos, a studio James founded using thousands of dollars of IndieGoGo money that never actually produced any films despite him definitely working on them! Any day now they'll be released! Don't you worry!

A day later, Todd in the Shadows, a guy whose entire thing is music reviews, posted his own video debunking multiple outright lies that James had told about history, especially queer history. A few more days later, The Ace Couple, who run a podcast about asexuality, released an episode detailing how they'd lost $1.5k donating to Telos.

I have put the videos, Twitter threads, Patreon posts, and Reddit posts by other people discussing different aspects of James' fraud under the cut.

Every other time James was caught plagiarizing, prior to Harry's video, he would lie about it. Either he'd have some excuse (easily proven to be a lie) or he'd retreat to his favorite deflection: "I'm just being harassed because I'm gay."

This last lie was one he'd use not only to deflect accusations of plagiarism, but all criticism in general, no matter how trivial. Every time, the critic or someone associated with them would somehow dox him, or harass him, or send him death threats, or threaten to falsely accuse him of sexual assault.

This happened to The Ace Couple (who'd tried to correct him on something extremely acephobic in one of his videos), Jessie Gender (who'd tried to correct him when he claimed that there were no queer content creators on Nebula, given that she and a bunch of other queer creators were definitely on that platform), and the person who first blew the whistle on him stealing from Tinker Belles and Evil Queens by Sean Griffin (who was accused of being behind death threats he'd received, and hounded so harshly they had to leave Twitter).

It is important to note that every time James faced potentially damaging criticism, or even just a threat to his ego, suddenly he would claim to be harassed by people connected to the critic, including threats to his life. There has never been any proof of any threats being directed at him, nor evidence that, if the threats were real, that they are actually from people connected to the critic.

In the original video by Hbomberguy, Harry makes a compelling argument that James brought on a friend of his, Nick, as a co-writer specifically as a shield against accusations of plagiarism. "How dare you accuse me of plagiarism! Nick would NEVER do that!" This is even more apparent given subsequent developments which I will get into.

When evidence started dropping about different aspects of his fraud (not only Harry's video, but Todd in the Shadows' video debunking his misinfo, The Ace Couple's podcast about their experience donating to his fraudulent film studio, and Dan Olson's tweet thread about James' obvious lies about his finances), he went into hiding for two weeks, and then put out the first of two apologies. He then deleted that one and put out another one a few weeks later. And then he immediately deleted that one.

While his first apology was rambling, vague, and dramatic (lots of sniffing/crying), and his second was more measured, thought-out, and totally batshit (lots of hilariously and bizarrely implausible excuses for why he'd done what he'd done), they had roughly the same points:

Not ALL of his stuff was plagiarized! Actually, a lot of it wasn't! No specifics as to what, though!

Most of the stuff that was plagiarized was just a failure to properly cite sources, as he had no idea that putting someone's name in your end credits or video description (without specifying what parts are attributable to that person or disclosing that you are using their words verbatim) is not sufficient credit,

Also, he totally had permission, in some cases, to use their work verbatim prior to publishing the video (this is not true, and is disproven both in Harry's video and his own screenshots);

He definitely didn't commit fraud with Telos and would soon have a good explanation for where the money went! (he did not)

He was going to keep the videos up so that he could either donate the funds from any monetization to the fund Harry had set up for his victims or to "help Nick's portfolio" by showcasing his work;

He lost his best friend (i.e. Nick) over these allegations, who absolutely definitely wasn't a scapegoat, except Nick was also responsible for a lot of the stuff James was being criticized for;

He was going to keep the videos up so he could either donate the advertising proceeds to Harry's fund for his victims (first apology) or to "help Nick's portfolio" by showcasing the work he'd done; and

As a result of this entire ordeal, he had attempted either self-harm or suicide (he merely alluded to "doing something stupid").

Again, his response was to 1) downplay the severity of his actions or flat out ignore allegations against him, 2) come up with ridiculous excuses for his behavior, 3) throw Nick under the bus, and 4) claim to be in mortal danger. As far as I am aware, he has never taken any concrete action to make amends to any person, not even donating money to charity.

This was coupled with some kind of attempt to profit: monetizing his apology videos, closing and then reopening his Patreon right before the monthly charge cycle happened (totally to let people unfollow him, not at all as a grab for that money), creating a new Patreon under a different name, and changing his Twitter and Youtube handles to distance himself from the controversy while gathering new followers.

At one point (I forget if this was on Twitter or Instagram), he also said that someone had broken into his apartment due to the notoriety he'd received from Harry's video. I believe that was after his first apology, when people started to point out that he'd just changed the name of his Twitter and Youtube channel and had restarted a new Patreon under a pseudonym. (BTW, the pseudonym he used for his new Patreon was "The Gay Raconteur"; this will be important later).

It had what I think was the desired effect: any attempt at pointing out that he was rebranding his grift now came across as weirdly fixated on minor things he was doing, which certainly wasn't worth putting him in physical danger. (Again, he has never provided any proof of this happening, nor provided any evidence that these people allegedly threatening him were, in fact, in some way inspired by Hbomb).

So along comes March 5, 2024, and James posts a suicide note on his Twitter, saying that he is going to set up his videos to automatically publish (for Nick's portfolio), provide in some way for the ad revenue to go to a suicide prevention nonprofit, and then kill himself.

The immediate response from the internet was compassion and totally chilling any further criticism, since you might be callously criticizing a dead person. Harry and Kat worked for a couple of days to get a wellness check for him while a substantial section of the internet called them murderers.

On March 6, a day after the note was published, Nick tweeted that that he had cause to believe James was fine. Kat confirmed that James was safe on March 11. Due to the drama of the "suicide attempt," however, the chill on criticizing James stayed in place for months.

And then yesterday Lady Emily, one of the cowriters for Sarah Z., drops two more bombs:

James has not one but two alt accounts that he was using to rebrand and start over.

The first one was created between his first and second apologies, and originally was for "The Gay Raconteur" until he changed it to "Will"/"thatgayyouknow" and, later, "The Achillean Boy."

The second one was much older, under the pseudonym "Mikey JB," and used stolen pictures from Grindr instead of his own face. However, it is pretty obvious that it is, in fact, a sockpuppet account and not just some other person who happens to like James, as detailed below.

Both accounts, both between apologies and after his "suicide," talked about how criticism of James was unfair because the plagiarized stuff was "like a decade old" and repeating the same excuses that James had also made.

The "Mikey JB" account not only supported James, but actively threw Nick under the bus, saying that a criticized part of a video "reeks of his co-writer."

On March 6, the day after James' main Twitter posted the suicide note, The Achillean Boy account was hornyposting about Ryan Phillipe. James didn't even take a day or two off of Twitter. If he had been completely off Twitter for a couple of days, that could have been an indication that he really had hurt himself and was unable to access his phone, or at the very least unaware of the panic. But he wasn't. He was aware of it and did nothing. Actually, no! Worse than nothing!

On the same day (March 6), the Mikey JB account was actively contradicting Nick saying he was okay (they "haven't spoken in months" so there's no way Nick could know if he was alive) and saying that "people like you" i.e. his critics, "drove him to it." Not only did he ignore the panic he'd intentionally created, he actively drove it.

He saw people going emotionally through the wringer over the idea that they might have somehow caused his death, and intentionally made them keep thinking it. He say people calling his critics "murderers" for "driving him to his death," and he joined in.

Why am I explaining all of this? I want to make a couple of things extremely clear, and the context is necessary to my ultimate points, namely:

James Somerton didn't merely "credit people improperly;" he conned his followers out of more money than some people make in a year with the Telos con, while raking in thousands more per month on Patreon and buying expensive equipment, while claiming to be near insolvency and in desperate need of money.

James Somerton has never taken full responsibility for his actions or attempted to make amends. He has only ever tried to dodge responsibility, particularly by throwing Nick under the bus.

Every time he has ever been criticized, for any reason, he has lied about threats to his life to gain sympathy and quell criticism. This is a standard part of his MO. He has done this over and over and over again. At this point, I think if he says the sky is blue, someone should go out and check first before doing anything.

"But BB, what if he really is getting harassed/threatened or really is suicidal?"

So, okay: people who are attempting to manipulate you may use legitimate problems as a tool. It doesn't need to be fake to be effective - in fact, it might be more effective if it it's true. An abusive ex who says "if you leave me, I'll kill myself" and genuinely means it and actually attempts it (and possibly even succeeds!) is a lot harder to leave than someone who says the same thing but is clearly just bluffing, because the threat is real.

My rule of thumb in these cases is to treat the threat like it's real, without caving to the intended manipulation. Whether your ex is lying or telling the truth when they say, "I'll kill myself if you leave me," the appropriate response in both cases is to immediately call a mental health service or supportive family member. If it's fake, it's inconvenient for them; if it's real, you reacted appropriately. Your response needs to be the same regardless.

You don't get back together with them because it's a real threat (presumably you wouldn't do that if you knew it was fake and they were never in any danger), and you don't tell them that they're a piece of shit who should be dead (HOPEFULLY you wouldn't do that if you knew for a fact that they were telling the truth).

In this case, I am extremely confident in saying that he was coldbloodedly lying the entire time and was never once threatened, and certainly not to the degree he claimed to be. But even if he wasn't, that does not and should not change anyone's behavior in terms of holding him accountable.

And I mean actually holding him accountable: making sure he doesn't try to start a new con on new people, continuing to point out that he hasn't paid anyone back for his previous con (so long as it's still true), that sort of thing. It doesn't mean people should tell him he should go die for real or, I don't know, try to get him fired if he gets a job at Tim Horton's or Target or something else that's not fraud. That would be wrong regardless of whether he's actually in danger or not. The point is to avoid being cruel without negotiating with terrorists.

Video sources and links under the cut:

Links:

It's like Breaking Bad, but backwards: a brief history of how Somerton successfully screwed himself Dan Olson's Twitter thread about the financial fraud My Year With James: Todd's post explaining the backstory of his video (Patreon-locked) DJSO#: Dan Olson's breakdown of James' second apology (Patreon-locked) Lady Emily's Twitter threads revealing James' alt accounts, part 1 and part 2

[wilwheaton]

The grifters that make up the troll-industrial complex are not okay. "One can see the sheen of desperation in the world of self-identified conservatives who make a living by "triggering" the liberals. The usual dose of outrage bait isn't working as well any longer, so the right-wingers are escalating the provocations. Tucker Carlson, for example, gave a glow-up interview with manosphere "influencer" Andrew Tate, who is being held in Romania on charges of sex trafficking and rape. Daily Wire anti-trans provocateur Matt Walsh is selling plushies of himself clad only in a diaper, which he encourages people to give to children. Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro, on the other hand, made a nearly hour-long video tantrum about "Barbie," complete with setting the dolls on fire. The clawing need to get attention from progressives seems to be driving these engagement farmers a little nuts, as they up the weird-and-evil ante, hoping to get those precious clicks and plays. [...] "The escalation of shock value tactics, on both the right and the pretending-not-to-be-right political classes, are likely rooted in the same cause: The slow motion collapse of Twitter, now rebranded "X," under the leadership of Tesla CEO Elon Musk. While these folks have various outlets, both in the media and social media, ultimately their business model of trolling depends heavily on Twitter. "Grifters need people to harass and a mainstream discourse to counter. As traffic takes a nosedive and Twitter becomes less a part of the conversation, it's going to be harder for these folks to make money," Melissa Ryan, a strategist who helps counter online disinformation, told Salon.

"They need us. We don't need them:" The fall of Twitter is making the trolls and grifters desperate

The clawing need to get attention from progressives seems to be driving these engagement farmers a little nuts, as they up the weird-and-evil ante, hoping to get those precious clicks and plays.

[...]

"What Musk has proven through his actions and his statements is that he's committed to serving the trolls and the fraudsters first and the ordinary good faith users second," explained Brian Hughes of American University, who is the co-founder of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL). But, he noted, Musk is "blinded by his own ideology" and can't see how this is backfiring. "As normal people, for lack of a better term, continue to leave Twitter, that's actually going to cause probably a reduction in the use of the platform by these trolls and these fraudsters. They don't have their audience of targets that they need," he continued.

(bolding mine)

HAHAHAHAHAHA die mad about it, trolls. Full offense.

[aesethewitch]

And you know what, I'd be so bold as to say that a lot of witches need to learn how to advertise ethically and effectively! Even folks whose services are 100% legit and genuine can be (or come off as) extremely shady. It's a problem! You don't have to be an expert or anything, but understanding what makes a good product listing and how to ethically advertise your goods and services is absolutely critical.

Having done marketing and advertising work for a Major Company with Many Advertising Regulations, these are the extremely basic hallmarks I look for in a good advertisement or product/service listing:

Language is clear and concise, focusing on the specific product or service in question *

Language is engaging but not inflammatory **

No typos, misspellings, or grammatical mistakes

All products and services are clearly described, and the consumer knows exactly what they would receive if they were to purchase from you

If applicable or possible, at least one quality photo of the product is provided (more than one from multiple angles is preferred, but one very good photo is sometimes enough)

Provided images appear legitimate (not AI, not stolen from the internet, etc.) and product descriptions appear to have been written by a real person ***

Prices are clearly stated and appear fair when compared to other sellers offering similar products and services, or which are otherwise explained (for example, if prices are unusually high, it may be because the seller only has limited stock or is providing a unique, high-effort service; this should be clearly stated in the listing in a simple, matter-of-fact tone)

The method of delivery is clearly described, including delivery timelines and whether tracking will be provided

If not provided elsewhere, or if it's a long list of available products/services, contact information and instructions are provided somewhere obvious and easy to access for questions and concerns

Disclaimers are clearly marked, and the consumer's rights are clearly explained (for example, if it's a commission for a custom spell, could the consumer publish the spell instructions on their blog, or is it for private use only?)

The refund policy is clearly described either in the listing itself, in the sales terms, or elsewhere on the page (so long as it's easily found)

It isn't explicitly about listings, but one other big thing I look for is whether the seller has a presence other than their shop or marketing space(s). This could be social media, a physical location, or a personal website. Basically, I want to see that they're obviously a real person doing real work in the field they're selling in, not just a grifter cashing in on what's popular.

I wouldn't buy cakes from someone who isn't obviously making cakes. Why the hell would I buy a tarot reading from someone who, as far as I can tell, has never done a tarot reading except in closed DMs when paid to do so?

* If you're advertising a specific product or service, the post, listing, or whatever else should be focused ENTIRELY on that specific product or service. Avoid extolling your virtues in excess.

What I mean is, your listing should not be 65% sucking your own dick about how long you've been doing the thing you're doing and how great you are. It should be about the product or service, not you. The place for that (and it does have a place, imo) is in a masterpost of services, a pinned post about yourself on your blog, and/or in the "about" section on your website/sales page.

** I mean inflammatory in the way of pushing the reader into a heightened state of emotion. These listings are purposefully manipulative, intending to take advantage of particular types of people. It's not an uncommon tactic, but it is a pretty scummy one, especially in spiritual circles, which attract non-experts who are desperate for relief, comfort, and results. Consider this example:

A listing for a tarot reading about future love saying, "Discover the future of your love life!" would be generally fine. A listing saying "Your love life DEFINED!! Once in a lifetime LOVE!!! SOULMATE CONNECTION? Is HE the ONE? Don't be fooled by NARCISSIST SOCIOPATHS!!" is inflammatory, intent on targeting a specific type of person who is likely to fall for the urgency and the particular language used here. You see the difference, no?

*** There are always cases of folks who aren't so good at words or taking pictures or who aren't using their first language and so forth, and it's important to take that into consideration. But for the most part, even those cases stand out from the bullshit artists, whose only goal is to take your money and run.

[utilitycaster]

"not engaging with the themes of this campaign" is the same tactic as when people say "read theory" in political circles: they're barely competent grifters banking on the idea that you'll feel intimidated or shamed by this and won't ask "what themes/theory" and assume they're right and you're wrong. If you do ask someone directly, however, chances are they'll block you or keep pushing the shame tactic, often even shaming you for even asking the question because if you were smart/good you'd obviously know, and if you say "okay, fine, I'm stupid and problematic, but can you explain it so that I can improve? Tell me your ways, wise one!" they will suddenly be too busy or tired. Anyway! highly recommend asking whenever you see a post like this and staying the course until you get an answer because thus far I never have but I HAVE taken down a lot of people who thought they could bully others into agreement.

[daenystheedreamer]

if u think more than one, or someone else, add in the tags!

[0w0tsuki]

Hey Ive seen Baeddel used in a lot of your posts but like,, other than a definition of the word I cant really find much on what it means like discourse-wise.

I know its something relating to transfems but other than that im lost x.x sorry for the bother

Basically it started out as an old timey slur for trans women. The word "bad" is rooted from it. In the early 2010s a group of trans women adopted the term and had a community for a very short time before it collapsed and not much information is left over.

Some say that had abusive dynamics. Some say they were just talking about transfeminism like they do now. My sibling swears up and down from their personal experiences with the initial group that they were a group of grifters using queer politics to fundraise for tumblers first big scam, The ARK(C?) Project.

A bunch of anti-transfeminists in their efforts to create the magical word that will allow them to terf-jacket trans women without having it called out as such happened upon the term and used the lack of concrete history/the fact that most of the subjective history isn't too charitable to this original group to fabricate a conspiracy theory that these original Beaddels were an evil cabal of bigoted trans women who never really went away and now operate and sow intracommunity discourse from the shadows for the explicit purpose of weakening the holy divinity of TransUnity.

And while some of them moved on to other terms like "TIRF" and "Neo Radfem" a good portion of TransUnity/Transandro anti-transfeminists have latched onto the term and have doubled down on their intent to use it to create a category of trans women that it's ok to exclude. Out of all of the anti-transfeminists that have come out of this new wave, the ones who build their politics around "Anti-Beaddelism" are some of the most mask-off exclusionists of the bunch. Like look at how they talk about Beadels

They will list how these groups have a bunch of ties to nearly every anti-queer group they could think of. And then they warn White™(Because everytime they attack trans women they have to pretend like it's a race thing to distract from the transmisogyny) that they mean to need to maintain a sense of hypervigilance around their transfem sisters and read into every laugh, every joke, and every word for the possibility of finding Beaddel rhetoric. This is a manipulative abusive tactic to keep the transfems within their sphere of influence to reach other to other transfems and rely on TME people to tell them what's right and provide community.

I remember on sailorportia's "Anti-Egg discoursers sound just like my conversation therapist" post I saw one of these people referring to the notes section as "full of beaddel dogwhistles" and inviting people to "take a look and educate themselves". Not specifying what the dogwhistles are or how they are dogwhistles. Just vaguely gesturing at the notes section and inviting you to regard anything a vocal trans woman as a crypto-beaddel and anything they say as "beaddel dogwhistles"

These communities cultivate a sense of paranoia. They encourage constant scrutiny regarding anything a trans woman says. Their leaders sell themselves as protectors of the community whose exclusion is a necessary evil to keep online trans communities safe. They are incentivized to keep the term Beaddel definition murky but representative of all the evils they attribute to trans women.

The term in the modern day is largely prescriptive and moreso defined by the reactionary "Anti-Beadelism" movement than it is defined by its history. Only a few trans women have reclaimed the term. When anti-transfeminists talk about Beaddelism they aren't talking about an organized group or community, they are referring to a bunch of individual trans women they have branded with the beaddel slur.

Currently I don't think reclaiming the word is a good move. Not that I disagree with it or think trans women shouldn't reclaim it. It's just that it will do more harm than good for as long as exclusionists control the narrative on its definition. I've seen mutuals have their posts on general transfeminism get completely discarded out of hand because they had Beaddel in their profile name or bio.

Because like it or not the current definition of Beaddels that gets passed around was written by current ex-terfs/transandro nothorses bro and cites TERF resources in their definition. This is the same dude who's responsible for the foundation or the current TransUnity echo chamber and used the influence from creating that community to try and redefine TERF to include trans women for the purpose of TERF-jacketing.

It's why me and some other trans women have been picking up the words trasfeminism to refer to discussions of transfem issues and anti-transfeminist to refer to these new wave of transfem exclusionist. It denies the exclusionists the ability to define our politics for us to outsiders. Also note: If the term trasfeminism picks up in use your going to see a lot of these people switch from "Beaddel" to "Radical Transfeminist" as their go-to anti-transfeminist TERF-jacketing slur

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

From April 2024. Covid denial is a bipartisan platform.

By Julia Doubleday

Viruses are bad for kids' health. Public health is a collective effort. Liberals no longer believe either.

There are few groups so reviled in liberal circles as the anti-vaxxers. Seen as embarrassingly anti-science and anti-social to boot, the popular anti-vaxxer archetype is a shrill, loudly wrong grifter straight out of YouTube Medical School. They are not only uninformed, but dangerous. And their specific brand of ignorance invites a mocking condescension from those of us who self-identify as “educated” and “pro-science.”

There’s one big problem with liberal media outlets, individuals and institutions expressing this disdain today: they have, themselves, adopted many foundational beliefs of the anti-vax movement without even realizing it. While they express continued appreciation for vaccines, their underlying ideas about immune systems, illness, herd immunity, and the social value of public health have all aligned with anti-vaxxer ideology. I’ll unpack each of these foundational beliefs individually, but first I’d like to address why this has happened.

After the release and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines, world governments, rather than waiting to see what sort of immunity these vaccines would produce in the long-term (would it be durable? How quickly would the virus mutate? Would people get infected? How often would they get infected?) gambled on the so-called “vax and relax” strategy. They bet everything that the vaccines would significantly limit infection and exposure to the point that everyday life could resume without any long-term disruption to society. They unwound every other virus mitigation tactic on this poor assumption.

In 2020, the Republicans had wanted to pursue “herd immunity” at any cost- meaning a quick reopening, massive die off of “the weak”, followed by the resumption of business-as-usual once the public was exposed. In early 2021, the Democrats’ approach was also a “herd immunity” strategy- but one accomplished by vaccinating the public. The only problem is that we’ve since learned that we cannot achieve herd immunity to COVID- ever.

Herd immunity would mean long-term, durable protection from infection, like we have for viruses like measles, mumps, and rubella. This society-wide protection would then enable vulnerable people to rejoin society without constant risk of infection. But since reopening, COVID has circulated year-round at high levels and the population is continually getting reinfected. Both the Republican and Democratic strategies to achieve herd immunity were doomed from the start. There are a variety of biological reasons for this.

The problem is that we cannot achieve herd immunity to COVID- ever. Herd immunity would mean long-term, durable protection from infection, like we have for viruses like measles, mumps, and rubella. This society-wide protection would then enable vulnerable people to rejoin society without constant risk of infection. But since reopening, COVID has circulated year-round at high levels and the population is continually getting reinfected. Both the Republican and Democratic strategies to achieve herd immunity were doomed from the start.

Firstly, infection with COVID does not produce durable immunity. That means that the experts who claimed a single infection would mean immunity for life, or immunity for a significant period of time like a decade, were wrong. These experts- the overly optimistic ones- were the experts continually platformed by both our governments and our media. In fact, COVID immunity is measured in months, not a lifetime or decades or even years, for the average person.

Secondly, vaccination against COVID also does not produce durable immunity. The CDC’s own vaccine efficacy data shows how rapidly protection declines- yet this rapid waning has never been properly explained to the public. Studies have repeatedly found that COVID protection dwindles over the course of mere months. This VE (Vaccine Efficacy) study looking at hospitalization rates found that:

"During the first 7–59 days after vaccination, compared with no vaccination, VE for receipt of a bivalent vaccine dose among adults aged ≥18 years was 62% (95% CI = 57%–67%) among adults without immunocompromising conditions and 28% (95% CI = 10%–42%) among adults with immunocompromising conditions. Among adults without immunocompromising conditions, VE declined to 24% (95% CI = 12%–33%) among those aged ≥18 years by 120–179 days after vaccination. VE was generally lower for adults with immunocompromising conditions."

In other words, a mere four months after receiving their first booster (so their third shot overall in the series), immunocompetent people’s protection from hospitalization with COVID was 24%. With three shots, only months out from their booster, they were 24% less likely to be hospitalized than a fully unvaccinated person. This is a significant percentage, and surely worth receiving a vaccine for- but it’s nowhere near the public’s perceived vaccine efficacy, which would be much closer to 100%.

That perceived efficacy- the idea that we are all well protected from serious outcomes of COVID in the long-term- is a perception that was deliberately promoted and cultivated by institutions that do not want to see any additional attention on pandemic control or COVID mitigation. “Vax and relax” as a strategy is less appealing when people understand how temporary and weak that protection really is.

Thirdly, COVID mutates around vaccine protection quickly. For example, upon their release, the Moderna shots were 92% effective against infection with the ancestral strain, but only 48% effective against infection with Omicron BA.1. Last year, a study looking at data from 2022-2023 found that children under 5 who received the bivalent boosters had an 80% reduction in risk of ER visits, whereas those who received the original series Moderna shots had only a 29% reduction in risk of ER visits. Studies continually find that new subvariants “escape neutralizing antibodies induced by both vaccination and infection”.

The mRNA vaccines were a great leap forward in vaccine technology because they can be quickly updated with new strains of COVID as they emerge. But “quickly” is still a matter of months, not minutes. And COVID keeps outpacing our ability to update the vaccines. In the winter of ‘22-23, we were encouraged to get bivalent vaccines that included both the original strain and Omicron BA.1. By the time people could get the shots, the currently dominant variant was XBB.1.5- a recombinant descendent of BA.2.

Similarly, this past winter we finally got the XBB-specific booster shots. By the time they were released, JN.1 was the dominant variant, a descendent of BA.2.86. Again, there is still efficacy associated with updated vaccines; it makes sense that a vaccine formulated for a strain that is genetically closer to the dominant one would protect better than the original vaccine. But the virus is still outpacing us. Additionally, thanks to (purposefully) poor communication about boosters, variants, and strains, most people do not understand why they need a booster, nor do they seek them out.

When politicians lost their gamble that we would achieve herd immunity to COVID, they didn’t admit they were wrong or explain that, without any mitigation, our “new normal” would be continual reinfection with a blood vessel, organ, immune system and brain damaging virus. Instead, they doubled down and worked to normalize this continual reinfection- and all the negative downstream outcomes that come along with it, like overwhelmed hospitals, record student and teacher absences, constant illness, record rates of worker sickness and long-term illness, re-emergence of controlled pathogens, dropping test scores, high excess deaths, and increasing heart attacks and strokes among younger people.

This normalization process relies on a few tactics. One is burying data, like refusing to test for COVID and failing to report on excess deaths. Another is misinformation: promoting false, pseudo-scientific explanations for the clear results of uncontrolled transmission we see all around us. This is the juncture at which the goals of COVID normalizers intersect with the goals of anti-vaxxers; both want to manufacture broad consent to destroy collective belief in public health. And this is the point at which their tactics, explanations and justifications become nearly identical. Since 2021, our institutions, with the help of our media watchdogs, have mainstreamed nearly every foundational belief of anti-vaxxers and brought them into ascendence over scientific reality. I’m going to explore each one below.

Mainstreamed anti-vaxxer belief #1:

Viral and bacterial infections are good for the immune system

This has long been a foundational belief of anti-vaxxers. They claim that not only can vaccines harm the body, but that illness itself is a boon to health, training and building a hardy immune system. They insist that natural infection is important for the growth and development of children. Visit any anti-vaxxer facebook group; you’ll find parents boasting of their decisions to purposely expose their kids to chickenpox, tips on how to navigate measles, and collective back-patting for the “wisdom” of purposely sickening children.

The belief that illness makes us well is completely false and incredibly dangerous. It comes from the also-controversial Hygiene Hypothesis- the belief that exposure to certain microorganisms is an important part of the development of babies. Even were we to accept the hygiene hypothesis- which again, is itself debated, with a recent study finding lockdown-era babies have healthier microbiomes and fewer allergies - the microbes in question are healthy or neutral types of bacteria that occur in our environments and thrive in our guts; they do not equate to pathogenic viruses. There has never been any serious contention that a pathogen- meaning a microbe that is harmful to humans- would somehow be healthy for you. It is simply a complete fabrication.

However, liberal outlets adopted and adapted this anti-vaxxer belief in the glorious healthful effects of viral illness and laundered it to their audience of scientifically minded liberals. They did so because children became notably sicker after reopening. As parents began to question the levels of illness they were observing in their kids, media outlets and elected officials rushed to rebrand illness as a positive sign that kids’ immune systems are developing well. This brings us to:

Mainstreamed anti-vaxxer belief #2:

Public health measures and disease mitigation harms people

As part of their push to handwave away record childhood illnesses and absences, the press also embraced the completely fabricated “immunity debt” idea. This is the idea that, because children were kept at home and/or wore masks, their immune systems were harmed. Their weak immune systems therefore have more trouble fighting off common childhood diseases- a phenomenon that will surely abate with time (but hasn’t yet, three years on).

Implicit in the claim that kids’ immune systems were harmed by masks is the idea that masks and quarantines- basic mitigation measures, in other words, are bad for your health. In fact, if people need pathogenic infections to build up their immune systems, any form of disease mitigation at all could be construed as negative for public health. This claim was first promoted by anti-vaxxers in Spring of 2020 and beyond; at the time, outlets corrected the misinformation, asserting that no, masks and isolation measures could not harm people’s health.

But as 2022 dragged on and the effects of continual COVID spread became apparent, our governments and media had only two options: clearly, something had changed since 2019. People were sicker. The two possible culprits- the only things that had dramatically changed- were the spread of COVID, and the adoption of COVID mitigations. Our institutions chose to throw mitigations under the bus, rather than admit that continual COVID spread was a mistake, a bad decision, and a social catastrophe. On to:

Mainstreamed anti-vaxxer belief #3:

Public health shouldn’t pursue the elimination of pathogens

The fact that pathogens are harmful for humans underlies the entirety of modern public health. It is why mitigation has always been not only a goal, but in fact, the ultimate goal, of public health itself. The CDC itself was first founded as a malaria elimination project. HIV/AIDS, malaria, and TB projects worldwide openly pursue the goal of elimination, and they are never seen as irrational or extremist for doing so. Elimination was the goal of vaccination campaigns that all-but-eradicated polio and other common infections like diphtheria, typhoid, measles, mumps, and rubella in developed countries.

In the age of COVID, elimination has become a dirty word. Absurd labels like “Zero COVID extremists” came from the far-right, but this attitude toward those of us still advocating mitigations has been adopted by the press, Democrats, and the liberal public. No press outlet would label people advocating for the elimination of a deadly disease as a “Zero HIV extremist” or a “Zero measles extremist” or a “Zero cholera extremist”. That’s because it’s well understood that elimination is the highest goal of public health; once elimination is achieved, all the resources devoted to mitigation can be repurposed. It’s ultimately far cheaper to eliminate a disease than it is to attempt to continually mitigate and manage it; however, neither goal is now being pursued by our public health institutions in regard to SARS-COV-2. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be any public health goal at all in regard to the spread of a highly infectious, highly disabling, incredibly disruptive and widespread airborne virus.

Instead, completely abandoning its public health obligations, our institutions have embraced the ideologically extremist, libertarian “Let it Rip” approach to COVID. In other words, zero attempts to mitigate, zero attempts to halt, zero attempts to eliminate, just a complete disease free-for-all. Normalizing this non-approach to disease to a science-embracing liberal audience required a ton of ideological messaging. From there it’s a short leap to:

Mainstreamed anti-vaxxer belief #4:

Health is an individual choice, not a collective practice

Much has been made of anti-vaxxers refusal to understand that their choices impact others. Ok, yes, your kid may be fine if they contract measles- maybe. But even if your kid is fine, you’re contributing to community spread. Viral spread threatens herd immunity (to viruses like measles, where herd immunity is possible and was attained decades ago). Contributing to disease spread means that vulnerable people- people who cannot get vaccinated, do not mount an immune response to vaccination, and/or will die if infected, can no longer be safe and protected.

This reality is the crux of the criticism us pro-science folks lob at anti-vaxxers. You frame this decision as your individual choice, we point out, but your decision is affecting and harming the collective. It shouldn’t be your right to afflict harm on others because you think you will be okay.

Now that it’s clear COVID will require additional mitigations aside from vaccines alone, liberal institutions have adopted and mainstreamed the worldview that disease mitigation is a personal choice that must be left to the individual. If some people want to wear a mask, that’s fine, but I’m pretty sure I’m low risk for Long COVID- so why should I have to mask? This is exactly and precisely the same logic used by anti-vaxxers to justify their personal choices not to participate in protecting collective health. If other people want to mask- 24/7, amidst unmitigated COVID spread- that’s not any of my business! This bleeds directly into:

Mainstreamed anti-vaxxer belief #5:

If vulnerable people are so weak, they should simply hide forever or die

One of the major things people seem to have memory-holed about the early pandemic is that mitigation measures, from day one, were first and foremost about protecting the vulnerable. Even in the earliest, pre-vaccine days, COVID infection was never highly deadly to young, healthy people. It was dangerous for the elderly, new babies, immunocompromised folks, folks with underlying conditions, and our decisions to collectively adopt mitigation measures were explicitly done to care for our vulnerable populations.

Now, people have been persuaded to not only ignore, but even openly despise vulnerable people. Defenses of refusals to mask often expressly state that “only vulnerable people” are dying from COVID- even though vulnerable people were always the ones dying from COVID. Our public figures like former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky commented that she’s “encouraged” those dying have underlying conditions, while just this past winter, Dr. Fauci acknowledged that “the vulnerable will fall by the wayside”- framing this as an okay, or even positive thing.

Media outlets continue to push that narrative that “most” people won’t get Long COVID, while encouraging everyone to assume that the unfortunate outliers will be, simply, somebody else. Vulnerable people, left with zero public protection, have had to adopt extreme measures to protect themselves, including isolation, constant masking, avoiding medical care and abandoning professional careers. These measures are not only ignored by liberals; they are mocked and derided by liberals, and sometimes even leftists.

The message is loud and clear to disabled and immunocompromised people who cannot afford a COVID infection (or in the case of Long COVID patients, another COVID infection): shut up and/or disappear. It’s the message vulnerable folks have always received from anti-vaxxers, and an explicitly eugenicist one. This brings us to the end with:

Mainstreamed anti-vaxxer belief #6:

The strong will survive, the weak won’t, and that’s a good thing

The anti-vax movement has always been eugenicist. The logic goes that, if your kid is healthy, they will not only recover, but build strength from infectious disease exposure. The people who die- well sadly, they just weren’t built for survival. They’re the necessary sacrifices of a stronger collective, weeding out the weak and embracing a Darwinian, survival of the fittest model. It’s no surprise that anti-vaxxer beliefs overlap heavily with other fascist beliefs, like white nationalism, great replacement conspiracies, and fear of diversity and inclusion. Fundamentally, anti-vaxxers believe that some people should survive, and others should not. Some people should have rights and privileges, others should not. Some people are superior, others inferior.

This deeply fascist belief is the beating heart of COVID normalization. Without it, all the other beliefs listed above don’t gel together and form the poisonous worldview now adopted across the political spectrum: some people are going to die, and it’s not our job to prevent that or care.

Now, morally, this view is abhorrent. It’s also completely wrong on a practical level. As mentioned above, COVID infections are not harmless, but are directly harmful to anyone with a vascular system, a brain, an immune system, and organs (that’s you). You may feel okay after your COVID infection, and you may not. You may develop microclots in your blood, a new onset heart problem, and you may sustain cognitive damage, no matter how healthy you were prior to COVID. You may develop new onset autoimmune disorders, and/or become more vulnerable to other infections.

In other words, the “strong” who survive COVID are becoming slightly less strong all the time. They are not beating COVID and becoming a super-race of Übermenschen, destined to rule over a newly healthy population with an incredible life expectancy. Instead, they too are becoming sicker. They too are missing work and school at record rates. They too are becoming vulnerable. Different people may tolerate different numbers of infections, but one thing is certain; continue to get infected with SARS-COV-2, every year, over and over again, and you will eventually move into the category of disposable people. You will have become the vulnerable, who don’t deserve protection. Who don’t deserve mitigation. Who don’t deserve to live.

The story of COVID normalization is ultimately a story of breaking solidarity. We went from embracing a social model of public health that prioritized the safety of vulnerable people as the greatest priority, to one that explicitly denies them safety and promotes harming them. In essence, public health itself, the concept of collectively combatting disease for the collective benefit of all, is what we’ve lost. It’s been replaced by a cruel, sadistic, eugenicist program of deliberate elimination of the weak as a named and accepted cost of abandoning all attempts to control COVID.

This social normalization of the anti-vaxxer worldview, the mainstreaming of the idea that illness is good and the weak must die, has implications that will follow us well past the normalization of this virus. What does a society look like when parents believe making their children sick is good for them? Is that a society that effectively controls measles outbreaks? What does a society look like if the people in it believe lockdowns and masks can physically harm them? Is that a society that willingly adopts those measures again during an outbreak of a highly pathogenic disease like H5N1, now spreading uncontrolled among America’s dairy cows?

What does a society that no longer “believes the science” do when science is our greatest disease fighting weapon?

What does a society full of people who think disease elimination is stupid and silly do about other diseases?

What does a society trained to hate the vulnerable do to the vulnerable?

Anti-vaxxers are certainly a threat to the collective. So are the mainstream liberals who’ve adopted every one of their beliefs about viruses, disease mitigation, public health, and who deserves safety.

[captain-cargoshorts]

I am seeing far too many of you assholes conflating intellect and morality with falling for propaganda. Knock it the fuck off. Americans are not especially stupid or evil, they're literally just people.

For all that we laugh at Trump in our little morally superior corner of the internet, he is still extremely good at his one and only true job. He's a grifter. And like it or not, he's getting the results he wants. His tactics work.

People are not inherently idiots or villains for falling for his stunt with tiktok with the information that they have. There's a lot of noise out there around this whole event, and most people haven't spent years honing their skills weeding through the bullshit.

Keep in mind that the division between us only serves them, and you're playing into it with every "lol USA stupid" comment. Quit bemoaning the people that aren't using their heads and fucking use yours. I get that you're scared and frustrated- we all are! But I know you can do better.

[clearancecreedwatersurvival]

Sometimes I’m still surprised by the number of people who watched Midsommar and ignored the very cut and dry portrayal of cult brainwashing tactics and responded to the film like ‘yes girlboss dump that guy in the bearskin and burn his ass!!! You’re better off with your new more supportive family!!! #feminism’ and then I remember how many people join MLMs and various internet grifter conspiracy pipelines and all the actual religious cults flourishing in the U.S. and I am no longer as surprised.

[faerygardenparty]

we need to start employing 70s feminism tactics again and make a huge deal out of not fucking republicans, I’m so serious, so many of these predatory right wing grifters market themselves as pickup artists and players and they manage to draw in so many lonely young people looking for advice on how to find love, we need to turn these people into absolute sexless losers in the public eye because that’s exactly what they are despite how much they make their personality about desperately trying to get laid

[jewish-vents]

The encampment at my uni has an instagram page where they're consistently referring to Israel as the "violent Zionist entity" or "occupying Zionist entity" and... I'm tired. I don't like how Israel has been handling things. I want the violence to come to an end. I think that they and I probably have a lot of common ground, when it comes to our opinions on how the civilian population of Gaza should be treated--and that should be their primary concern, shouldn't it? That should be the core they build their movement around, you'd think.

And yet. And yet. They say "antizionism is not antisemitism" as if the two could never coincide (though I do agree they are not synonyms) and "[we] fight against antisemitism when bigots and grifters attempt to infiltrate our movements" (that's in the first public draft of their guidelines, they ditched the fighting antisemitism part for the newest one lmaoooooo) as if it has never even crossed their minds that they themselves might be antisemitic? That the antisemitism in the movement might come from within, no bad-faith actors needed?

But then they "demand that the University ... cut all academic ties with Israeli universities and Zionist academics" and "acknowledge the reality that media and Zionists will try to identify [encampment participants]" while also saying that "oppressive behaviour and stereotypes are not welcome"--well, which is it? is it bad to stereotype people for the purpose of limiting and/or excluding them, or is it acceptable to assume that every single Israeli student and professor is an evil scheming (((zionist))) and therefore they must be excluded?

I understand why they want the university to divest itself from weapons manufacturing and such (though tbh the links they've cited are fairly tenuous) but the total stonewalling of an entire country's academia just really rubs me the wrong way even without taking the singling out of Israel into consideration. You'd think, if they were so concerned about Israel being an insular ethnostate, they would want Israeli students to come here and see a different way the world can be! And yet!

Like I said--I'm tired. I wish this movement was one that I felt comfortable supporting. I wish their tactics aligned better with their stated goals. I wish they would be more self-aware, and that they would be better activists. Antisemitism doesn't help the people of Gaza. It just drives potential allies away.

(also--and this is not quite as much a vent as the rest of it--they call the university hypocritical for not saying anything about Palestine when they do have local land acknowledgements. Assume their framework holds. They put up a self-flagellating instagram post about how they felt they desperately needed to set up their encampment, and quickly, and so they did not have time to consult local indigenous groups before doing so. Now, I don't really think that setting up a rule-breaking encampment on university grounds under the current governance structure should require you to ask special permission--it's not like they asked the uni anyway lol--but they clearly do. They clearly feel it is not right for them to exist on these lands in the manner in which they do... but they're still here. They still made the encampment. They're colonizers, and they remain in the colony. One might think that this would give them some insight into reasons that an alleged colonizer population might be disinclined to leave--but of course, it's different for them. They acknowledge their own hypocrisy and continue on, having gained absolutely no insight--at least not any they're willing to share with the world.)

.....dang, sorry for the essay lmao. that got a bit out of hand. I'll wrap it up here so I don't go yammering on all night XD

.

[mesetacadre]

idk about other trot orgs worldwide and I don't care to know about them on this post but. Spanish trotskyists are little scurrying rats who would rather lie to your face and self-victimize rather than admit a single mistake. In private if you talk with them they're somewhat reasonable and can do some amount of self-crit, but as soon as there's someone listening who might ever be interested in assemblary trotskyism (tip, they won't), all reason flies out the window, and anyone who tries to gently point out a single mistake, everyone turns into an infiltrator hellbent on stifling movilization.

I've never met such two-faced and harmful set of people in the entire "left" space, never. At least the adventurist separatists know when to follow common agreements, and at least the grifter union is very open about their tactics. Imagine that stereotype of high school bully that now uses therapy speak to bully people on twitter. Then take that essence, and transplant it onto a trotskyist assemblarist party. Words escape me whenever I try to express just how much I hate their rethoric and tactics

[proto-actual]

Hey tronblr. It's sysop. Let's talk about the Midjourney thing.

(There's also a web-based version of this over on reindeer flotilla dot net).

Hey tronblr. It's sysop. Let's talk about the AI thing for a minute.

Automattic, who owns Tumblr and WordPress dot com, is selling user data to Midjourney. This is, obviously, Bad. I've seen a decent amount of misinformation and fearmongering going around the last two days around this, and a lot of people I know are concerned about where to go from here. I don't have solutions, or even advice -- just thoughts about what's happening and the possibilities.

In particular... let's talk about this post, Go read it if you haven't. To summarize, it takes aim at Glaze (the anti-AI tool that a lot of artists have started using). The post makes three assertions, which I'm going to paraphrase:

It's built on stolen code.

It doesn't matter whether you use it anyway.

So just accept that it's gonna happen.

I'd like to offer every single bit of this a heartfelt "fuck off, all the way to the sun".

Let's start with the "stolen code" assertion. I won't get into the weeds on this, but in essence, the Glaze/Nightshade team pulled some open-source code from DiffusionBee in their release last March, didn't attribute it correctly, and didn't release the full source code (which that particular license requires). The team definitely should have done their due diligence -- but (according to the team, anyway) they fixed the issue within a few days. We'll have to take their word on that for now, of course -- the code isn't open source. That's not great, but that doesn't mean they're grifters. It means they're trying to keep people who work on LLMs from picking apart their tactics out in the open. It sucks ass, actually, but... yeah. Sometimes that's how software development works, from experience.

Actually, given the other two assertions... y'know what? No. Fuck off into the sun, twice. Because I have no patience for this shit, and you shouldn't either.

Yes, you should watermark your art. Yes, it's true that you never know whether your art is being scraped. And yes, a whole lot of social media sites are jumping on the "generative AI" hype train.

That doesn't mean that you should just accept that your art is gonna be scraped, and that there's nothing you can do about it. It doesn't mean that Glaze and Nightshade don't work, or aren't worth the effort (although right now, their CPU requirements are a bit prohibitive). Every little bit counts.

Fuck nihilism! We do hope and pushing forward here, remember?

As far as what we do now, though? I don't know. Between the Midjourney shit, KOSA, and people just generally starting to leave... I get that it feels like the end of something. But it's not -- or it doesn't have to be. Instead of jumping over to other platforms (which are just as likely to have similar issues in several years), we should be building other spaces that aren't on centralized platforms, where big companies don't get to make decisions about our community for us. It's hard. It's really hard. But it is possible.

All I know is that if we want a space that's ours, where we retain control over our work and protect our people, we've gotta make it ourselves. Nobody's gonna do it for us, y'know?

[velvetvexations]

lmao though like I sent that anon about how you are out of touch with other transfems for you to call me emily programmersocks and tell me I'm privileged and affluent as if you know even a single thing about me. I literally have been assaulted for being a trans woman and I also think you are heinous to other trans women. consistently. Seriously like that response is so defensive it really confirms my point more than anything I could have ever said.

Every hate crime is a sin and I hate that it happened to you because no one deserves that. Nonetheless, it does not change my opinion that most trans women I'm "heinous" to are a very small percentage of trans women overall that're relatively insulated from the worst of transphobia, based on how out of wack their priorities are. A trans woman who wakes up every morning and bitches exclusively about how evil trans men are is not someone who comes off as having greater worries.

At best, they're incompetent activists who don't know what they're talking about. At worst, they're deliberately malicious grifters with morals no better than the transphobic media whose tactics they imitate on a pathetically smaller scale, while portraying themselves as leading a transfeminist revolution when all they really are is bullies who find contentment in being big fish in a small pond. I am no more "heinous" to them than the ideal allied cis woman is to TERFs.

Furthermore, I'm hardly "heinous" to only trans women when most TRFs are self-identified to TMEs anyway. You may call thata deflection to hide attacking trans women all you like, but it's the truth, and believe me, I feel the same way about them being relatively privileged, although many are also just trying to be good allies. If that sounds like I'm being more forgiving to the TMEs, I think it's extremely skin-crawlingly creepy that at least some seem to get gender euphoria from imagining themselves privileged men who are so totally capable of flexing patriarchal power over women if they wanted to, and I've been told by multiple that they believe this specifically because they were huge transmisogynists themselves, which is a fucking hilarious own goal.

This doesn't even just apply to trans issues. A painfully high percentage of TRFs are also tankies, and I don't think any tankie who told people to not vote are likely to have the next four years effect them in any way nearly as badly as it will others. All I want is for people to care about others.

To put it simply anon, if I were a transmisogynist who hated other trans women the entirety of this response would be the sentence "that sounds like misdirected transandrophobia, are you sure they didn't just mistake you for a trans man?" like it almost was until I decided that it would be too callous to dismiss your experience even sarcastically and that it merited taking seriously.