#the last one is a LIE me when i spread misinformation on the internet me when i lie | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

spaceumbredoggos · 8 months ago

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I might get canceled for saying this, so I apologize in advance. But I am no longer answering asks about Gaza and Palestine. Especially when there’s active genocide in the US as we speak.

There was recently a shooting in Georgia. My first college PE class was a self defense class where I learned how to disarm guns. I truly believe we are one election away from a dystopian nightmare where we pay with the blood of our children.

They get rid of phones in schools so that we can’t call our loved ones to tell them our goodbyes. My art class teacher immediately pointed out where to hide from a school shooter. And my class is at 6-9 at night in Southern California.

Meanwhile, states are trying to take away any rights that don’t belong to cis hetero white men. They’re trying to make being queer a sex crime and punishing those sex crimes with death. Conservative white men want to create a fascist nation, and once they get into power they will be unstoppable. Sure things might be bad in Gaza and Palestine, but they’ll get a lot worse if Trump gets elected.

Go ahead and cancel me for saying this, but when we’re one election away from being in a state of total fascism and genocide against queer people, we can’t really focus on issues abroad like Palestine.

I don’t want to have to fear going to school and create a playlist I have to listen to in my final moments due to being shot for being queer. I don’t want to have to sleep with one eye open.

The right just wants more workers to oppress. They want to keep money in the greedy talons of the dragons that they feel should control society. They lie through their teeth and spread hate, misinformation, and hoaxes with the STD’s they give to the women they screw over. They scapegoat whoever they can to draw attention to so that they can keep the heat off themselves. If Trump gets elected, nowhere is safe. You may think that you can simply move out of the country, when there’s bigots everywhere that can rise to power now that they’re emboldened by Trump. Alberta Canada is already trying to pass anti-lgbt bills.

We are witnessing the active attempt to eradicate morals from society in the name of a false god. Actually decent healthcare, shelter, food, water, and safety is actively being taken away from people in our own country. Many of them are disabled. Many of them are queer. Many of them are women.

Another thing, you know how teachers are complaining on how far behind Gen Alpha is? And how bottom of the barrel content farms that show violent and pornographic content gets targeted to kids? Also notice how overstimulating some of these videos are (I’m looking at you, Cocomelon.) Meanwhile, KOSA is just trying to ban queer spaces and trying to keep people in abusive relationships. It’s late stage capitalism at its finest. So many people are suffering.

We can’t just focus on what’s happening in Gaza when our own kids can’t seem to get off their screens and read. I’d be damned if it’s found out that those shitty content farms that leech off of indie projects are in line with rich white conservatives that want to eradicate literacy to breed the ultimate worker for their own twisted purposes.

I know that last paragraph was controversial for me to say as an aspiring content creator, but I truly believe that there can be a way for content creators to exist in this world without making illiterate kids. There should be regulations in place that keeps young children off of highly addictive platforms such as TikTok and YouTube shorts. There should be better systems in place for content creators that emphasizes quality over quantity. Bring dislikes back. There is room for genuinely creative content creators to grow and share their platform, whilst keeping the scum away from vulnerable kids. There’s a place for porn on the internet, and it should be kept away from kids.

In synopsis, how can we focus on Gaza when there is active genocide in our own country and active attempts to create denial. Hey furry hackers, maybe target those content farm channels next! I betcha my soul you’ll find that the algorithm that YouTube and TikTok praises so much thrives off of feeding kids stupidity as some grand master plan by the possibly conservative white male CEO’s that want to keep kids stupid and poor just to keep brainwashing propaganda onto them. Where is critical thinking skills and basic reading comprehension?

Wow. This turned from a rant on school shootings to my unbridled hatred towards content farms and how fucked up Gen Alpha is. I’ve definitely been chronically online for too long. But yeah, the YouTube algorithm supports shitty content and hates genuinely good content. Sponsorships are only helping genuine creators so much, as well as genuinely good merch. And AI will only make things so so much worse.

I have a project for the furry hackers. Attack generative Open AI. (Yeah, I’m prolly gonna quit Figgs AI because I’m feeling hardcore AI addiction again. It’s hurting my ability to create content. The site’s dying anyways.) And attack content farms too. Maybe it’s time for me to get into IT. Gonna look at computer classes. It can’t be too hard, right?

I may be either spewing a shit load of nonsense with the content farm shit, or I’m hitting the nail on the head. But there goes my ADHD. But yeah. I can’t answer asks on Gaza anymore. I am so sorry if I let people down because of this.

#I’m so sorry #I’m exhausted #queer #actually audhd #feed the machine #foaming at the mouth #tw guns #fuck kosa #fuck MAGA #fuck project 2025 #vote for democracy #protect women #protect children

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arsenicbluebell · 2 years ago

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Idk if ur taking requests, but if you AREEE, i’d like to request Sally face x Dyslexic!Fem!reader? If it’s okay w u :))

Yes I am taking requests, and TYSM FOR BEING THE FIRST ONE TO REQUEST :]]] I hope you have a lovely day <33333 but I didn't know if you wanted just sal or the whole gang so I'm doing that- Todd's gonna be platonic since he's gay, enjoy<3

SallyFace x Dyslexic!Fem!Reader

Sal Fisher

You two were assigned to read a book for history, and he noticed that you took discomfort

You guys planned to read the chapters at his apartment, to try and make it easier

He noticed that you would have to take a break from reading every few minutes, he asked you about it

You told him that the words didn't make sense to you and that you got a headache when you tried to read the book

He got you some ibuprofen to ease gour headache and then read the chapters to you, as you laid on his bed while he sat next to you

He started doing this alot, every time you wanted to read a book he'd offer to read it to you, since audio books weren't easily accessible in the 80's-90's

He'd also share his notes with you after class if you guys had to read something in class

Larry Johnson

You two were in his room, Larry was showing you one of his latest painting, it was covered in letters and words and sentances

He asked you what you thought of them, but you couldn't give him an answer, the words didn't make sense to you, and it was hard to ignore them since they were all over the painting

He asked you if you wanted him to read it, not prying any further

You accepted his offer and then he started reading for you,

Sometimes, when he notices you looking at things like posters or words on a soda bottle, he'll read them

He pretends that he just likes reading outloud, but you both know that's a lie

Ashley Campbell

You guys had to write an essay for English class for homework

You both went to the park to write it, to share notes and ideas

And to also occasionally play on the playset

She looked at your notes and they made no sense, the letters were scrambled and didn't look like letters

She asked you about it, being a bit more pushy than the others until she got you to say what was the matter

You told her that you had dyslexia, she doesn't know a lot about it, so she asked you to tell her about it

After that, she asked you to lay on her lap as she sat cross legged

You did, feeling your cheeks warm up a bit. She took your notebook and used you as a hard surface to write on

She asked you to say what you wanted her to write in the essay, you told her every last word as she wrote it down, occasionally ruffling your hair as you laid there

Todd Morrison

You guys were reading up on the paranormal while taking notes to try and find out what was going on in Nockfell

When you saw the pile of books, you got visibly uncomfortable

He asked you what was wrong, you were probably the most comfortable with Todd because he looked at things from a logical point of view, keeping his emotions aside to try and help, so you knew he wouldn't judge you

You told him you had dyslexia and he understood, telling you he's read about it

He left the room for a second, getting you some advil and water incase you decided to read and got a headache

He looked up the book on the internet and then pasted it into Google translate and clicked the sound button, to read it outloud as he took notes

He also didn't want you to feel completely useless, so he gave you some photos of some paranormal stuff the group caught on camera and asked you to pick out what you saw, since the photo was blurry

Hoped you liked it!! Have a wonderful day! And if I got some things wrong, please tell me! I don't want to spread misinformation

#sallyface #sally face fandom #sally face #ashley campbell #larry johnson #sallyface x reader #larry x reader #nockfell #sal fisher #salfxsher #todd morrison #ash x reader #dyslexic

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onesheeptwosheepandachicken · 3 years ago

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Explaining the Logic of RNJR in Volume 5 and Team RWBY in Volume 8

If there’s one thing I’ve noticed about RWBY Criticism, it is often based on an excessive lack of awareness, a lack of context, and a refusal to look at details.

In particular, RWBY Critics seem to complain that Ruby and company was doing nothing in both volume 5 and volume 8.

Let’s discuss what was actually happening.

First? Volume 5.

Qrow needed access to the Relic of Knowledge Vault. To get that? He needed the Spring Maiden. Where was the Spring Maiden? Serving Raven Branwen and her mass-murdering pillaging Bandit tribe. Yes, it was revealed Vernal was a decoy...but are you people seriously going to scream “Retcon!” or “Bad writing!” for THAT?

Raven is NOT a good person...she kills people...wipes out villages? So no, she was NOT going to hand over the maiden.

4 kids and one huntsmen could not invade the bandit camp.

So Qrow...and Ozpin...both agreed...that they needed to find allies to invade the bandit tribe...

While Qrow was searching for allies? Ruby and Oscar were training hand to hand combat....allowing Ruby to later catch Mercury off-guard.

Of course, sadly, many Ruby haters have made a number of nasty memes in R/RWBYCritics gleefully enjoying any meme of her being hurt.

Did people seriously forget how Lionheart was able to lure them into a trap?

He said that he had found allies....allies that they were looking for.

I mean...do the RWBY Critics need people to literally hold their hand and spoon-feed them every last shred of detail? Or are they so incapable of paying attention that they ignore EVERYTHING in front of them?

Idiots...that’s all I can say.

Now...let’s talk about Schnee Manor...

In V7, Ironwood ordered all of ruby and her friends to be arrested...how could they possibly help the people in need...when the atlesian military would shoot them on sight? They had to hide....Hide while healing their friends.

Nora was badly injured trying to save Penny...Penny was badly injured getting Amity up and running....and as you saw, Ironwood had a kill-switch on Amity that Harriet activated....military control of the media...an abuse of power...Ironwood literally was going to control the internet....but back to two injured comrades...Ruby does not abandon her friends...that’s James’ department.

Are you people seriously saying that Ruby and her friends should just go to Ironwood , beg him for forgiveness, let him abandon Mantle? This logic is like telling an abuse victim to return to an abusive relationship. Or claiming that because Ironwood being the politician he is gave Yang an Arm, that she OWES him? I just want his apologists to think about how that is NOT a sane decision.

Let me ask you...a man who abuses power regularly does EVERYTHING to hold onto it...he betrays the people who criticize him...he refuses to let anyone call him out...that is who Ironwood has always been.

So Ruby and her friends had to wait while Nora and Penny recovered, hiding from the military that would rather SHOOT THEM than accept help from people who did not submit to ironwood’s authority.

So tell me, oh rwby critics who claim to know better than the writers...who claim to be “Fixing” rwby...who claim to know monty better than his own friends...who claim to be offering “valid criticism” yet insult the writers, heavily edit the videos to remove any context in the show, and call Monty the creator but not miles and kerry...

Why are you so obsessed with ignoring every detail and context in the show in order to literally lie about what is going on for the sake of spreading hatred and misinformation?

#ironwood #rwby critical #rwby criticism #rwby volume 5 #crwby critical #james ironwood #raven branwen #team rwby #ruby rose #rwby ruby #general ironwood #yang xiao long #rwby volume 8 #rwby v8 #rwby v5 #rwby

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fancydancing · 6 years ago

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The 8½ Laws of Rumor Spread

***Please read this article and think about every rumor you’ve heard about Scott and/or Tessa in the past year. I think it’s very enlightening***

Some rumors grind to a halt, while others circle the world. Why some ideas spread and others die.

By Taylor Clark, published November 1, 2008 - last reviewed on June 9, 2016

If I'm not gullible and you're not gullible, how come some improbable stories take a long time to die?

"The money it's cost me," said clothing designer Tommy Hilfiger. "It hurt my integrity."

"It" was the shocking story that had circulated for years on the Internet and through word of mouth: Hilfiger, known for his colorful, preppy styles, had supposedly appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show to air a disturbing grievance. "If I had known that African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians would buy my clothes, I would not have made them so nice," Hilfiger complained. "I wish those people would not buy my clothes—they were made for upper-class whites." According to the tale, an outraged Winfrey immediately asked Hilfiger to leave her show—and when she came back from a commercial, he was gone.

Never mind that intentionally alienating your core market isn't exactly a shrewd business strategy. Never mind that Hilfiger had founded a philanthropic fund to benefit inner city youth long before the rumor even appeared, or that he donated over $5 million toward building a memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in Washington.

Of course, Hilfiger had never said anything of the sort. At the time the rumor surfaced and spread, Hilfiger had never been on The Oprah Winfrey Show. In fact, the two had never met until 2007, when Winfrey did invite him onto the show to try to squelch the rumor once and for all. "The next time somebody sends you an email or somebody mentions this rumor to you, you know what you're supposed say to them?" said Winfrey. "You're supposed to say, 'That's a big fat lie!'"

Nor did the president of Procter & Gamble appear on The Phil Donahue Show to "come out of the closet" about his company's ties to the Church of Satan. Nor did Liz Claiborne tell Oprah that black people shouldn't wear her clothes—which didn't stop director Spike Lee from telling Esquire magazine, "It definitely happened. Get the tape. Every black woman in America needs to go to her closet, throw that shit out, and never buy another stitch of clothes from Liz Claiborne."

Skeptical or gullible, we all buy into rumors sometimes. Even Barbara Mikkelson, who runs the popular myth-debunking Web site Snopes.com with her husband David, admits she's swallowed some whoppers. "A friend told me that when his friend's daughter was off on vacation, she had a whirlwind romance with this charismatic guy," Mikkelson says. "When it was time for her to come home, he gave her a package. Inside was a ceramic coffin with a message on it: 'Welcome to the world of AIDS.' I believed that one hook, line, and sinker."

Rumors have a way of slipping under our mental defenses before we think to question them. The best ones sidestep common sense entirely. "Think of the lawsuits parents filed over subliminal messages in heavy metal songs," says Martin Bourgeois, a rumor researcher at Florida Gulf Coast University. "People believed Judas Priest was planting messages to make teenagers commit suicide; no one thought to ask, 'Why would a rock band want its audience dead?'"

Most of us don't like to think of ourselves as gullible. But we're especially likely to accept as true—and do our best to spread—tales that have several specific characteristics that take aim at our best defenses.

At its core, a rumor is just an unverified scrap of information we pass among ourselves to make sense of the world. In one case study conducted at Ohio University by psychologist Mark Pezzo, students had heard that someone on campus had died of meningitis. The story spread because the anxious students were trying to find out what was going on: "Is the rumor true?" "How do you get meningitis?" "I heard that everyone on campus will need to have a painful spinal tap, did you hear that?" In the marketplace of misinformation, fit rumors survive and spread like epidemics, while unfit rumors die quick deaths. So what separates the fit from the unfit? What, in short, are the laws of effective rumors?

1: Successful rumors needle our anxieties and emotions.

When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, water wasn't the only thing that flooded the city. In the environment of intense anxiety and uncertainty, grim rumors flourished: Sharks have infested the water! Terrorists planted bombs in the levees! Murdered babies and piles of corpses filled the Superdome!

Unfortunately, the national media reported many of the rumors as fact—especially after a misinformed Mayor Ray Nagin told talk show hosts like Oprah Winfrey that "hundreds of armed gang members" were killing and raping at will inside the dome. Yet once the crisis began to abate, investigators found that almost all of the widely circulated stories were false. FEMA doctors even showed up at the Superdome with a refrigerated 18-wheeler to cart away the hundreds of dead bodies rumored. They found six—none of them a homicide victim.

So why did these stories pop up? Fear breeds rumor. The more collective anxiety a group has, the more inclined it will be to start up the rumor mill. As Rochester Institute of Technology rumor expert Nicholas DiFonzo explains, we pass rumors around primarily as a means of deciphering scary, uncertain situations: Exchanging information, even if it's ludicrously false, relieves our unease by giving us a sense that we at least know what's happening. "One major function of rumors is to figure out the facts and find what the appropriate, adaptive thing to do is. Look at 9/11. I don't ever remember feeling so threatened as I did after 9/11, and people used rumors to try to manage the threat."

Thus when 9/11 left people terrified and searching for answers, they heard a horde of alarming (and completely false) rumors—that terrorists had injected anthrax into one of every five cans of Pepsi, that no Jews showed up to work at the World Trade Center on 9/11 because they knew about the attacks beforehand. (In fact, about 15 percent of those who died in the attacks were Jewish.)

Very few of the tales were positive, because we're naturally more inclined to pass on negative information. "As humans, we have a tendency to weight negative information more," says Helen Harton, a psychology professor at the University of Northern Iowa. "It makes evolutionary sense. It's more important to know how to avoid a tiger than to know where a field of nice flowers is."

Of course, most of us don't have to worry about tiger attacks anymore, but we do dread things like layoffs at work. So we toss rumors back and forth to figure out what's really up.

2: Rumors stick if they're somewhat surprising but still fit with our existing biases.

If you ever open endlessly forwarded e-mails, you're probably familiar with at least one notorious malapropism from President George W. Bush: "The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for 'entrepreneur.'" Or this embarrassing gem from the pop starlet Mariah Carey: "When I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can't help but cry. I mean, I'd love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff." Can you believe they actually said these things?

Well, don't. Both quips were made up by pranksters. Even so, they enjoyed viral spread for the simple reason that both are juicy enough to be shocking—yet not so far-fetched that we doubt the two parties could have uttered them. They confirm what many already believe—that Bush is, let's say, not quite firing on all cylinders, and that Carey is a vain diva—without setting off too many common-sense alarms.

In short, we're primed to accept them. As Mikkelson explains, "These stories get in under our radar because they click in with what we already believe, or want to believe." If you already think liberals are waging a war on religion, you'll be more likely to buy 2008's (untrue) rumor that the new dollar coins omit the customary "In God We Trust." (It's printed along the side.) If you buy the idea that too much money unhinges people from reality, you might believe the story that Tiger Woods rented a mansion for the 2007 U.S. Open, moved everything out, and flew in all of his own furniture so he would feel at home during the four-day tournament.

Even when presented with evidence refuting a rumor, we often stick to our biases. A 2007 University of Maryland study found that only 3 percent of Pakistanis believe Al Qaeda was responsible for 9/11. "It's difficult for them to accept that Al Qaeda, their fellow Muslims, could have perpetrated these acts," says DiFonzo.

3: Easily swayed people are more important than influential people in passing on a rumor.

In the mid-1970s, the Life Savers Company introduced a product that revolutionized the way kids chewed gum: Bubble Yum. Before it came along, you had to work on a piece of gum for ages to make it soft enough to blow bubbles. But Bubble Yum was squishy right out of the wrapper. It was the perfect gum… maybe a little too perfect, kids thought. What was making it so soft? Soon, the obvious answer presented itself: spider eggs. Bubble Yum was made with spider eggs.

This bit of schoolyard conjecture became ironclad truth with staggering speed, sending Bubble Yum's sky-high sales into a tailspin. Within 10 days of first getting wind of the rumor, Life Savers executives commissioned surveys that revealed "well over half" of New York area children had already heard it.

The spider egg story didn't zoom from kid to kid so quickly because of well-connected playground information magnates or influential adolescent gum mavens, but because kids are credulous, and credulous people make rumors go. "It's your willingness to pass things along that matters, not necessarily how much status or respect you have," says Duncan Watts, a sociologist who researches information spread for Yahoo. Kids will believe almost anything (another long-lived schoolyard rumor claimed the "Mikey likes it" Life cereal kid died after a mixture of soda and Pop Rocks made his stomach explode), and thus rumors run rampant in schools. But the same is true of gullible adults: They're the ones who really fuel rumors.

4: The more you hear a rumor, the more you'll buy it—even if you're hearing that it's false.

According to a poll, 11 percent of Americans believe the rumor that Barack Obama is secretly a radical Muslim who refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance and was sworn into the Senate on the Qur'an (and probably hates mom and apple pie as well). The myth that he is a Muslim is so pervasive that The New Yorker could satirize it on a cover depicting a cheery new prez Obama hanging out in the White House in full Islamic garb—with an American flag burning in the fireplace and a portrait of Osama bin Laden on the wall.

But if the hyper-liberal New Yorker was trying to expose the absurdity of the rumor, someone probably should have talked to Mark Pezzo first. Even hearing that a rumor is bunk, he observes, tends to plant it deeper in your mind. "No question, the more you hear something—even the same thing from the same person—the more you believe it," says Pezzo. "Politicians know all about this; the more I heard about weapons of mass destruction, the more believable they seemed to me. Even a denial can be a repetition of a rumor." (Just ask Senator John Kerry, whose 2004 presidential bid sunk thanks to whispers about his swift-boat service in Vietnam—even though most of the media stories were about how the rumors were false.)

What's more, repeating a rumor can also make people believe it came from a credible source. In one Stanford study, the more subjects heard a rumor about dried rat urine on Pepsi cans, the more likely they were to attribute the information to ConsumerReports rather than to The National Enquirer.

5: Rumors reflect the zeitgeist.

Every fall, right around mid-September, Barbara Mikkelson starts receiving urgent reports of a grisly new trend in gang initiations. Prospective gang members are driving around in the evening with their headlights intentionally turned off, the story says, and when a well-intentioned motorist flashes his brights at them, the would-be gang member has to follow the car home and kill everyone inside. SO NEVER FLASH YOUR LIGHTS THIS IS FOR YOUR OWN GOOD PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO EVERYONE YOU LOVE!

It's always in mid-September that the rumor resurfaces. "That's when you first have to start thinking about putting your headlights on when you're coming home from work," she explains. "Headlights are on people's minds. That's why you never hear it in the dead of winter or the height of summer."

Rumors have the greatest chance of multiplying when the topic is something people are already pondering. As University of British Columbia psychologist Mark Schaller points out, "What matters is a match between the nature of the information and the goals of the people who are trafficking that information." So what's on our minds lately?

The election of 2008, and the thousand plausible and implausible tales swirling around the candidates. Among the best ones: As a Navy pilot, John McCain executed a "wet start" (a maneuver that involves flooding your fighter plane's engine with fuel so that starting up unleashes a huge and macho burst of flame) so reckless that he actually set an aircraft carrier on fire. Then there's the one about how Barack Obama has been endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan—they're tricky, those Klansmen.

6: Sticky rumors are simple and concrete.

Examine your stockpile of offbeat conventional wisdom: It takes seven years for swallowed gum to pass through the body. We only use 10 percent of our brains. The Great Wall of China can be seen from space. People swallow eight spiders a year in their sleep.

These tidbits are all simple and specific, with a vivid detail that sticks in the mind. They're also false. But they illustrate the point that tangible, easily graspable tales have an excellent chance of catching on. "Complicated ideas are not that spreadable," says Duncan Watts. "Ideas with content, when they do spread, lose their content." Rumors work just like a game of telephone; after they've been transmitted a few times, the details get lost and the message grows simpler.

According to Mikkelson, the spider-swallowing rumor got its start when a columnist for PC Professional wrote a story bemoaning our tendency to believe every harebrained factoid in mass e-mails; the writer made up the statistic as an example of the kind of ludicrous thing credulous people will, um, swallow. In time, the fact that it was a joke got lost in transmission, and now millions live in fear of sleepingwith their mouth open.

The principle of concreteness also helps spread urban legends (which are rumors presented in story form, usually as something that happened to a friend's ex-girlfriend's mechanic's second cousin). Ever heard the tale of the guy who accepts a drink from a stranger at a bar, then wakes up in a tub full of ice, one kidney poorer? How about the one where the woman tries to dry out her wet lap dog by putting it in the microwave? Chances are, you remembered those tall tales because a visceral image—fingering your stitches in an ice-filled tub, watching a live dog sizzle in a microwave—got lodged in your mind.

"Urban legends survive only if they conjure up very visual or very tactile images," says Chip Heath, a Stanford business professor who studies idea spread. "Our brains are wired to remember concrete, sensory things better than abstract things." For example, if researchers give people lists of words to memorize and then recall later, the tangible ones ("apple," "pencil") will spring to mind more often than the conceptual ones ("truth," "justice").

7: Rumors that last are difficult to disprove.

Ever wonder why even the craziest legends and conspiracy theories never seem to die? Why do people still believe there's a giant prehistoric reptile prowling Loch Ness, even though innumerable hours of investigation have produced zero proof of such a creature? Well, it's a pretty big lake: How can we be sure she's not in there? It's tough to disprove the idea definitively.

As DiFonzo explains, a rumor like "On Thursday's Late Show, David Letterman's hairpiece fell off!" doesn't work, because people can check it out and easily find evidence it didn't happen. But a rumor like "I heard David Letterman's hairpiece fell off during a show, but they destroyed all the tapes!"—that's more like it.

Persistent rumors tend to have what Chip Heath calls a "testable credential," some element that can be misconstrued to give the story a whiff of credibility. "Rumors very often have a little truth test that people can run," he explains. "There was a rumor in the San Francisco Bay Area in the '90s that Snapple supports the KKK. You turned the label around, and you saw a capital letter K with a circle around it. People were doing that test, and then all of a sudden this seemingly preposterous rumor becomes more plausible." (For the record, Snapple bottles do bear the K—the symbol for "kosher"—as do thousands of other drinks and food products.)

8: We are eager to believe bad things about people we envy.

Is there anyone in America who hasn't heard about Richard Gere and the gerbil? The story goes something like this. Gere checked himself into Cedars-Sinai Hospital in California complaining of intestinal pain and rectal bleeding. When doctors investigated, they found Gere's beloved pet gerbil Tibet, shaved, declawed, and dead, lodged in Gere's rectum—the result of "gerbilling," a sexual practice common among gay men. So doctors performed an emergency gerbilectomy on Gere. The gerbil was removed—but the story stuck.

Needless to say, none of this ever happened. Gere was never admitted to the hospital for rectal bleeding, and "gerbilling" is not a sexual practice at all, among gay men or anyone else. Gerbils aren't even legal in California (for agricultural reasons, not sexual ones). Like most rumors about celebrities, its origin is unknown, but we do know the rumor hit a tipping point in the 1980s after a hoaxster, claiming to be from the ASPCA, flooded Hollywood fax machines with a bogus press alert about Gere's putative "gerbil abuse."

Celebrities are easy targets for sordid tales. An almost equally widespread rumor is the one about the lead singer of New Kids on the Block being rushed to the emergency room, where doctors pumped his stomach and removed more than a gallon of semen he'd swallowed during an orgy of oral sex. The details vary: Sometimes the quantity of ejaculate is reported as one gallon, sometimes 10. Sometimes the substance removed is human semen; other times it's dog semen. The rumor has variously featured Rod Stewart, Elton John, David Bowie, Marc Almond, Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol, Jeff Beck, Jon Bon Jovi, Alanis Morrissette, Li'l Kim, Foxy Brown, Britney Spears, and Fiona Apple. But the basic story stays the same.

Once someone hits a certain level of celebrity and adulation, it seems, the mill starts to churn automatically—and the more beautiful and successful the star, the more depraved the rumors. Jamie Lee Curtis is a hermaphrodite. Cher (or Janet Jackson) had a rib removed so she'd look skinnier. Catherine the Great died trying to make love to a horse.

What is it about celebrity rumors that makes them spread so widely and stick so hard? Part of it is good old-fashioned schadenfreude. "People pass along rumors that they, on some level, tend to agree with, if there's something in the story that they identify with, that they want to be true," says Mikkelson. "We envy celebrities, and it's just human nature to pull down what has been raised so high."

Richard Gere is so annoyingly handsome that we want to believe he's really a sicko or otherwise flawed. Girls were so taken by the New Kids on the Block that men longed to believe they were actually secret gay dog fellators.

The easiest way to tarnish the reputation of a male heartthrob is to undermine his masculinity and suggest he's not interested in women at all—but rather, men, gerbils, or dogs. Which is why gay rumors have plagued so many handsome Hollywood leading men, from Tom Cruise to Johnny Depp to Orlando Bloom. "Saying that so-and-so good-looking male actor is gay is seen as pulling him down a peg or two," explains Mikkelson. "It's like, well, he may be attractive to women, but he's not attracted to women—so there!"

The Ninth Law

We might also postulate a final law of rumor survival: Sometimes, there is no "why." Often, we tell remarkable tales to build relationships or show off our yarn-spinning prowess—not necessarily because we think they're true.

And hey, sometimes they are true. Research by DiFonzo and Prashant Bordia, of the University of South Australia, has found that in groups with an established hierarchy—like large offices—the scuttlebutt you hear about company affairs is around 95 percent accurate.

"Every Halloween, you hear the rumors about people putting razors in apples and giving them to trick-or-treaters," DiFonzo says. "Actually, my own family had an experience where my wife found a sewing needle embedded in a piece of our kids' Halloween candy. I know, it sounds crazy—the rumor expert believes a rumor. Don't tell anyone."

The 8 1/2 Laws of Rumors Spread

#virtuemoir #food for thought #don't believe everything you hear #rumors

22 notes · View notes

ehentha · 6 years ago

Text

Maldives Twitter VS Francesca Borri

Imagine getting harrassed on twitter by a bunch of people you claimed didn’t know english or have smart phones 😂

— ‎ބ̸̤̯̍̏ު̵̩͔̬͑͝ރ̴̢̝͓̅ަ̶̜̌͊ކ̴̱̮̚ަ̶̹̱̥̽ށ̸̘͒ި̵̻̘̍̆͗❓🎈 (@Burakashi) January 27, 2019

*smartphone 😫🔫

The Maldives is one of the most oppressive countries in the world. It has a constitution that makes the lives of non-Muslim and LGBT Maldivians illegal. This makes life incredibly difficult for any progressive Muslims that want to bring about reforms as well as saying anything against extremist sheikhs will get you labled an apostate. Progressive Muslims like @moyameehaa (Ahmed Rizwan / Rilwan) and @yaamyn (Yameen Rasheed) who have spoken out for Maldivian minorities, progressive Islam, and secularism have been taken away from us. Sheikhs are not safe either, as one of the only moderately progressive sheikhs, Afrasheem Ali, was also brutally murdered in 2012.

First they came for the bloggers, and I did not speak out Because I was not a blogger. Then they came for irreligious, and I did not speak out Because I was not laadheenee. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.

— Mohamed Shuraih (@MohamedShuraih) January 27, 2019

The greatest battlefield in the war for the hearts and minds of Maldivians is the internet. Bloggers like Hilath Rasheed have been the targets of escalating campaigns of harassment and death threats. In 2012, Hilath himself barely survived his neck being slashed. This was after years of attacks against people deemed laadheenee.

Maldivian extremists have used the internet for their terror and propaganda activities. One of the earliest Maldivian extremist groups, of which Rilwan was an ex-member, called “dot” or “dotu” literally got it’s name from “dot com”. Right now there are dozens of terrorist recruitment facebook and twitter pages, telegram, whatsapp, and viber groups, and websites brainwashing Maldivians with extremist propaganda.

He made a list of “dhivehi kaafarun”. We reported his account and now he’s changed the name to “Dhivehi atheists”. But here is proof of the original name https://t.co/WvbfkKbMp1

— ‎ބ̸̤̯̍̏ު̵̩͔̬͑͝ރ̴̢̝͓̅ަ̶̜̌͊ކ̴̱̮̚ަ̶̹̱̥̽ށ̸̘͒ި̵̻̘̍̆͗❓🎈 (@Burakashi) June 16, 2018

Their latest efforts including making a list of Dhivehi Kaafarun (Maldivian infidels) on twitter (which twitter support refused to remove, the account is still active), and a telegram group called “MV Murtad Watch” (Maldives apostate watch). This has also not been removed despite even making the local news.

Maldivian extremists are free to spread hate on the internet. Especially if they use Dhivehi, a language that cannot be automatically translated. This means that the support staff of these platforms often don’t even know how to recognise hate and fear speech when it is written in Dhivehi.

Murtad Watch MV is still active on @telegram. They claim to not be making death threats.But they state multiple times the verdict for apostasy is death. After which they list pictures, names & personal info of alleged apostates. Calling stoning cruel is enough to get labeled one. pic.twitter.com/hqcOXAI0fb

— ‎ބ̸̤̯̍̏ު̵̩͔̬͑͝ރ̴̢̝͓̅ަ̶̜̌͊ކ̴̱̮̚ަ̶̹̱̥̽ށ̸̘͒ި̵̻̘̍̆͗❓🎈 (@Burakashi) January 27, 2019

murtad watch is like "these people are apostates & apostates should be killed. here are their personal info. BY THE WAY THIS IS NOT A THREAT" that's a death threat. why would police do anything? when these groups commit murder police's job has always been to cover up the murder

— 🎈Thihen Vany (@basneyheemaa) January 27, 2019

I hope I have set the scene for you. An intolerant constitution that outright bans thinking and freedom of conscience. Extremists getting away with murder, and using technology as a means of oppression in a highly connected and tech literate society while the multi-million dollar companies that run them turn a blind eye.

It’s so fucking insulting that Maldivians have to fear for their lives because of goddamn @telegram groups, but meanwhile there’s western experts writing books claiming we go gaga at the sight of an iPhone. I wish these terrorists didn’t use phones, would make our lives easier 🤬

— ‎ބ̸̤̯̍̏ު̵̩͔̬͑͝ރ̴̢̝͓̅ަ̶̜̌͊ކ̴̱̮̚ަ̶̹̱̥̽ށ̸̘͒ި̵̻̘̍̆͗❓🎈 (@Burakashi) January 27, 2019

#NowReading Destination Paradise - Among the jihadists of the Maldives pic.twitter.com/6y4E5BYQf5

— Nash (@NashNasheed) January 21, 2019

Enter Francesca Borri with the radical insight that there is only one bookstore in Male’, all the while seeming to imply that most Maldivians don’t know English.

This book was published in 2017. It is factually incorrect. There’s only an Islamic bookstore? 🤦🏻‍♀️ This author is delusional. pic.twitter.com/ngPcG5yRhY

— Nash (@NashNasheed) January 26, 2019

And that there is no local cuisine.

Page 39. “I think that the Maldives are the only country in the world where there is no local cuisine”. Okay. Now this is going too far 😡

— Nash (@NashNasheed) January 26, 2019

And that Maldivians are amazed by smartphones.

Page 53. “A text arrives and my phone lights up... there’s an ooh of general amazement because it’s an iphone and no one has ever seen an iphone here”. 🤦🏻‍♀️ Seriously @francescaborri? Starting to doubt that you were even in Male’. Btw. Tweet sent from my iphone.

— Nash (@NashNasheed) January 26, 2019

“While the rest of the world watched the Olympics, in the Maldives most people watched the battle of Aleppo. And rooted for al-Qaeda”. What? Which channel on medianet was the battle of Aleppo broadcasted on? pic.twitter.com/wSaOPpQKRR

— Nash (@NashNasheed) January 21, 2019

But perhaps most insulting is the fact that we’d give a damn about the Olympics when we could be watching football. Also how the heck do you reckon people cut up the “Battle of Aleppo” for broadcast television? Do you think they had an HBO style miniseries?

Hey @francescaborri what medieval technology do you think this Maldivian terrorist group used to post this to Facebook? A 🥥 ? Can you help decipher the strange language they’ve used to threaten my life? I’m sending this via economy pigeon. May it reach you safely. Pls send halp. pic.twitter.com/wNvYbd06kZ

— ‎ބ̸̤̯̍̏ު̵̩͔̬͑͝ރ̴̢̝͓̅ަ̶̜̌͊ކ̴̱̮̚ަ̶̹̱̥̽ށ̸̘͒ި̵̻̘̍̆͗❓🎈 (@Burakashi) January 27, 2019

You get the picture. A hastily strung together piece of orientalist trash that makes the situation worse for people suffering because of Maldivian extremists. The last thing progressive Muslim, non-Muslim, and LGBT Maldivians need is more misinformation out there. Especially not from someone with a savior complex.

How can you trust anything written in this book when it features so many blatant fabrications? Fabrications deliberately worded to make Maldivians sound like backwards people rife with extremism who can’t read and are technology inept.

98% of our population had internet access five years ago. We have one of the highest tech proliferation and device per capita stats in the world. This isn't lazy research, this is outright malicious https://t.co/slgUtYcoYe

— Naailu🎈 (@kudanai) January 27, 2019

Well I’ll have you know us Maldivians are backwards people who are incredibly tech literate. And we can read too, to the shock of the author who is currently at the receiving end of the wrath of Maldives twitter.

Finally in bookstores. pic.twitter.com/ujRIg867gI

— francesca borri (@francescaborri) November 13, 2018

Here are some of the funniest and most insightful tweets directed at this latest savior who thought they could turn a profit on the suffering of the global south. These are the words of Maldivians speaking about their own country. Listen to them.

Lmao loving how conservatives and liberals are uniting against the mostly false portrayal of our country by @francescaborri . Nobody can trash-talk Maldivians except us amirite? 🇲🇻

— 🎈Nora Nazeer ✨ (@NoraNazeer) January 27, 2019

When western "journalists" parachute in to a South Asian country and assume they know everything and that they are always right. A Frenchman, who did the same, told me after visiting Maldives that Borri "took a lot of liberty" when writing her book. As in, she made up stories. https://t.co/wnBPUZgoi1

— Junayd 🇲🇻 (@mjunayd) January 27, 2019

But you could see how it perpetuates an idea of Maldivians that’s quite patronizing, even to the extent of orientalism, right? I mean, I do agree that extremism is at a critical stage here, but surely that could have been said without this inaccurate depiction of the rest?

— Aryj (@Arrryj) January 27, 2019

So tell me, how did you come up with this shit? 👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻 I graduated in an IGSE Cambridge examination back in 2008...from my island. Got an A in English. Even starting primary school, I had access to books from authors like Enid Blyton, R.L Stein and Louis Cooper... 🤦🏼‍♀️

— ShinyShine (@ShinyShine18) January 27, 2019

Might want search Google Maps for "bookshop" next time. This book is a blatant lie at this point. Even given the benefits of the doubt, this book falls short of acceptable. Tldr: Riddled with lies for dramatic purposes. pic.twitter.com/TXycTvAzqC

— A. A. Nawaz 🎈❓ (@aanawazu) January 27, 2019

When someone from the global north decides to do a book about one of the smallest countries in the global south without much research and one that won't easily be scrutinised for the factual inaccuracies, with sweeping generalisations, this happens. Awesome thread btw https://t.co/0TKA9KmHV4

— Ahmed Tholal🎈 (@Tholman_79) January 27, 2019

Whats an iPhone? Im tweeting on my iCoconut https://t.co/RPYxQKUFDR

— Faafa🎈 (@psychofart) January 27, 2019

Actually it’s Dhonmeeha: *whips out iPhone 6S* Mordis meeha : *whips out iPhone XS Max, iPad Pro, the New Mac book Air DJI Mavic pro, DJI Osmo and 2 GoPro Hero* https://t.co/nK3ux1I7VZ

— Simbro (@aachym) January 27, 2019

(“Dhon meehaa” literally means “fair skinned person”. It is the word used by Maldivians for “white people”. And it’s true, turn a Maldivian upside down and shake them little. The contents of an Apple Store will fall out).

the "worst parts" in the book are absolute lies. are we as maldivians not entitled to be upset over them? ignore them and move along? these are "facts" written by a "journalist" in a published book. https://t.co/2mFKGEw7hn

— ˗ˏˋ 𝑅𝒾𝒻𝑔𝒶 ˎˊ˗ (@MRifgaR) January 27, 2019

for the record i'm still a bit confused about your reviews @dbosley80 but ok. at least you made it clear that you don't recommend this book by @francescaborri pic.twitter.com/DUpatyXurX

— ˗ˏˋ 𝑅𝒾𝒻𝑔𝒶 ˎˊ˗ (@MRifgaR) January 27, 2019

Love it when white people feel the need to exaggerate and look down on an entire country and reduce their entire culture and history to what they came across in a day or two lol. pic.twitter.com/olIe8jDGoj

— Alhaaves NulaaFA (@ShafaRameez) January 27, 2019

I think the verdict of this would end up like, i condemn thee @francescaborri to 1 year of internship at Divehi Bahuge Academy 😅 so that by the time she's done there she can translate this godforsaken book to Divehi so us natives could actually learn about ourselves

— Aishath Ibahath (@AishathIbahath) January 27, 2019

Just had garudhiya, baiy, theluli faiy and theluli mas. The height of Italian cuisine!

— Junayd 🇲🇻 (@mjunayd) January 27, 2019

In Maldives we have no local cuisine to the point that when we attempted to make that shit, we sucked so much that we left it to cook for days and that is how we had rihaakuru and now we just eat that

— thikujja stan account (@ahunafu) January 27, 2019

If @francescaborri did her research properly she'd know about the dissent against extremists from Maldivians. Specially in our twitter community. I for one didn't applaud them as heroes. https://t.co/358lReKjMq

— 🎈Nora Nazeer ✨ (@NoraNazeer) January 27, 2019

At the end of the picture that sentence, is that saying the minority that speak English is rich and WHITE????

— Sharlight❓🎈 (@sjaufar) January 27, 2019

Shame these important interviews are in an a book with so many lies in it @francescaborri https://t.co/GeHpH5BU0m

— amani naseem 🎈 (@amaninaseem) January 27, 2019

Francesca Borri Vaguthu 🤝 Jaanalizam

— Threefish 🎈❓ (@three3fish) January 27, 2019

(vaguthu [“time” lol] is a Maldivian tabloid rag that primarily posts moral panic inducing “journalism” about Maldivian minorities).

Maldives has no local cuisine?!? I wasn't bothered when the author called us all extremists cause that's just typical white people racist fear mongering but NO LOCAL CUISINE?? Ive half a mind to make a thread about local cuisine & tag the author in it. https://t.co/QrpE3QPBcP

— Faafa🎈 (@psychofart) January 27, 2019

just because I am so offended I am going to write my whole masters thesis on Maldivian food

— Malsa Maaz (@malsamaaz) January 27, 2019

So fiction writers, here's a heads up. @7StoriesPress are very fond of fiction, specially investigative parody works. Ask franny @francescaborri she had the easiest of rides with that "Maldives in a Parallel Universe" work she did.

— Naif Naeem (@nAAYf) January 27, 2019

People like @francescaborri is what is wrong in the literary world, creating fake news with half truths to earn a buck. And also publishers, bookstores etc who support to push this garbage onto mainstream. Shame. https://t.co/Vi53939fLG

— p3st (@p3st) January 27, 2019

I read what was available on google because I’m not going to give a racist money - and yes, @francescaborri you’re racist.

— くたばれ🎈 (@hoshiyoshii) January 27, 2019

I’m tweeting from my iphone while I’m eating ‘Rihaakuru ‘ u know.., local cuisine. 😎 After finishing my food, I’m going to the ‘book store’ next to my house with English Arabic n international language books. 🖕🏼that’s for u 😉

— Jen (@jennasym) January 27, 2019

Hello uncultured jihadi Maldivians without bookstores tweeting using rocks and smoke signals or whatever, If you have a moment, please do send a messenger pigeon with your thoughts about @francescaborri’s book to google DOT com review What’s what? Click https://t.co/822PDLTTgR https://t.co/uR1UpoAFkm

— insaan🎈❔ (@pikomonster) January 27, 2019

people are saying @francescaborri makes sense despite exaggerating some stuff. but i think her “exaggerations” demonstrate an extremely skewed, clearly orientalist perspective which entirely rescinds her entire narrative. she lacks any coherent context. what a silly woman

— xiena saeed 🎈 (@dorinbakedbeans) January 27, 2019

Thanks @francescaborri. The roasting you're receiving is really entertaining. The tweets coming from iPhones are especially tasty. Almost as tasty as our cuisine, and now I'm craving some rihaakuru dhiya. Ta Ta, gonna go have some while I keep up with this roasting.

— Nomura-sama has slain Nabith (@nabithahmed) January 27, 2019

What an ignorant writer @francescaborri is! Our school system is based on the English language since decades ago—almost every Maldivian can converse in English. Many physical+online bookstores in Male. I own an iPhone. Tweet at me and I will send you recipe for Rihaakuru Dhiya https://t.co/TA773n5PgQ

— Maahil🌺❤️🍃 (@MaahilMohamed) January 27, 2019

How long was the research period to write this book? 😂 #localtweetingfromiphone

— Azza Rushdy (@UGLY_Y) January 27, 2019

Its from a parallel dimension...on Earth 51, maldives is like that 🤪 tuna has run out of the oceans and no more rihaakuru and palms sold to dubai hence no coconut for mashuni...

— p3st (@p3st) January 27, 2019

Your portrayal of maldives as backwards and having little or no indentity of its own (except the one you try so hard to force on your readers) is proof that you wrote this on hearsay and some internet research done whilst sitting on your ass at home.

— Ahusan (aka.Jack / Pusheen) (@awhosun) January 27, 2019

Hi @francescaborri, there are about 4 main bookstores with multiple outlets in Malé and many independent ones that stock many titles in English. This tweet was kindly translated to English by a member of the minority and sent from my garudhiya baiythashi. https://t.co/iSloEziYl1

— 🌞 (@izznzz) January 27, 2019

According to the author Maldives is the only country in the world with no local cuisine. So @francescaborri should I stop researching for my PhD on, guess what, LOCAL MALDIVIAN CUISINE? Shameful. https://t.co/7gntvUeCeV

— Mo S. (@moshen81) January 27, 2019

We have many qualified people capable of producing an accurate assessment of radicalisation in Raajje that @francescaborri so spectacularly failed at. If one good thing comes of this, can it be that? Or is it only the dhon meehaa who can talk abt it w/out fearing for their lives?

— Azka (@Azka__Anees) January 27, 2019

Nothing brings Maldivians together like a good roast.

Thank you @francescaborri. It's really nice to see you get roasted by a whole country, everyone together.

— Emaz (@emaaaz) January 27, 2019

#twitter

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fck-no-antipsych-blog · 7 years ago

Text

So, let’s get started with the initial reason for creating this blog: namely, one user spreading conspiracy theorist levels of misinformation on ABA.

Here, I am going to dissect @the-real-seebs ’s last answer to one of my asks, which I will stick here:

The only credible evidence of "ABA abuse" any of you can come up with, and the only case I have EVER seen of electric shocks being used in the last several decades, is the JRC. Which is not even an ABA facility, though it uses behaviorism-based techniques. They're for actively dangerous patients as a last resort, and while we might disagree on the ethics of their methods, using it as an evidence of ABA being bad is incredibly disingenuous. ABA therapy DOES NOT USE NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT.

So let’s get started!

Okay, so, I really clearly and unambiguously said “do not try to argue this with me on anon”. Here you are.

Yes. It turns out I cannot stand misinformation on something that is literally saving lives. How interesting.

You want to see the abuse? You’re being abusive, right here, right now. That this ask was sent tells me, with no potential for doubt or inaccuracy or guesswork, that you are willing to behave in 100% unambiguously abusive ways. You know that you were asked not to do this, and yet, here you are.

This is a common pattern I have observed in seebs. “You’re being abusive” allows him to shut down all discussion, and sometimes, as he actually did for one of my earlier asks, he adds some sexual connotation to it. The reason is simple: seebs surrounds himself with abuse victims, especially CSA. I am not entirely sure why, but I’ll be honest, I am vaguely suspecting easy channels for emotional manipulation. This is in extremely bad faith, though.

You. Are. Abusive. Right here, right now. You are engaging in behavior which violates a clearly stated boundary, where there is no justification for violating that boundary. It would require minimal effort to follow the stated boundary, and you won’t.

Your initial boundary was, in fact, “Go away”. This is the first time you mention going off anon as a possibility, and I explicitly said I would. Anyway, fuck that. Ignoring a boundary that has been clearly stated in bad faith? Is not only something that’s not abusive, but something you. Have. Done. And anyway, “stating boundaries” in order to silence a conversation is abusive. No matter how you word it.

Furthermore, you make a number of false claims.

And I would love to be proven wrong! Listen, if it suddenly turns out, against everything I’ve ever actually learned, that ABA is inherently abusive, and violent, and gives kids PTSD systematically, and cannot ever possibly be used well? I’ll drop all my plans for going into it. Because I’m not a fucking sociopath.

I have pointed out other examples of abusive behavior in the past, as have many other people. The electric shock example stands out because it’s on one of the clearly-defined lists of “things we know are fucked up” that you don’t have to walk people through to get them to understand a thing.

Could you point me to those other examples? I don’t seem to find them in your previous answers. Anyway, we know these things are fucked up because someone did them at some point in the past. I’ll outright say it: while Løvaas didn’t know what he was doing was wrong, it absolutely was.

But notice how that was decades ago. ABA started with Løvaas, but it absolutely didn’t stop evolving once he was gone. Claiming otherwise is about as stupid as saying brain surgeons are all evil because of lobotomies.

But that doesn’t mean it’s the only credible evidence.

I would, again, love to see the others. No, unfortunately, blog posts don’t count, sorry. You know about as well as I do how often people lie on the Internet, especially when they have an agenda, and we might both know a few of the abusive groups stirring up anti-psychiatry sentiment.

You claim that ABA “does not use negative reinforcement”.

Minor aside here: I am using “negative reinforcement”, not in the actual behaviorist sense (taking away something, e.g. a toy), but in the pop culture sense of “punishment for bad behavior”, as opposed to “rewards for good behavior”. I’m pointing that out because another person attempted to use papers with that word (under the behaviorist definition) for some scare-mongering earlier.

And yet, so many people have been through so many things that were called “ABA” which did, but they don’t count,

I can claim to cure cancer by bleach enemas. Does that mean all oncologists are frauds? ABA being the only evidence-based form of treatment for symptoms of autism spectrum disorders (again, I would love to be proven wrong) means many non-board-certified hacks call their therapy ABA. Which you have admitted yourself. (See all variants of “Sometimes they just call their therapy ABA for insurance purposes but it’s ~*~actually good~*~”, which, yes, is fraud)

because you’re not actually here to argue a point or understand a thing, you’re here to demonstrate your ability to continue applying force to a person who asked you to stop. Because you are the abuser.

I am honestly impressed. It’s probably the antisocial traits, but that is the most amazing mastery of social manipulation I have seen in a person with autism. You know exactly what the demographic of your blog’s viewers is, and you appeal to emotions they, specifically, relate to. “Applying force”, by sending mean anons, of course, “to a person who asked you to stop”: you’re not attempting to argue against me, you’re pushing your sexually abused friends’ buttons.

This sounds ironic, but I am, in fact, impressed.

As I said before: If you want to argue off anon, you’re allowed, and I’d be willing to show you more evidence and actually do some of your research for you.

(Watch him backpedal at this. I bet you’re going to call me even more abusive for going off anon.)

But you aren’t, are you? You even said you could but then decided not to. Why? To show that you have power. To show that you can hurt people who’ve told you to stop.

*sad trombone noises*

For the record: I’m lazy. Making a Tumblr account takes effort. Executive dysfunction is abusive now, incredible.

The problem isn’t that you aren’t aware of ABA tactics that are abusive. The problem is that you are willing to do abusive things, and will never admit that they are abusive,

I’m stealing something from your own rhetorical maneuvering here, but: fun fact, a hallmark of narcissistic behavior is insulting other people by accusing them of something the person does themself.

because you don’t feel like it’s abusive to hurt people to show them that you have the power to hurt them in order to compel them to act.

“Compel them to act”? Sure, I prefer you posting my asks to you blocking me, but it’s at worst an inconvenience, as seen here by the fact that I have this freshly-made Tumblr account.

And this whole post is nothing to you but an affirmation that hurting people to make them give you the responses you wanted is a good tactic that works and since it’s effective no one should call it abuse.

You know, you’re good at that stuff. Because you wanted exactly this out of me, didn’t you? Making me go off anon and interact directly so that you can feel smug and righteou--

And I’m posting this because you will feel smug and righteous and like you proved your point that hurting people and disregarding boundaries works,

*snorts*

and everyone else will say “wow, ABA really is that fucked up”.

Great job with that post! Also at myself, honestly, it was hard to go through in its entirety.

Anyway, sure, blast away. Send me all this Absolute Proof Of All ABA Being Abuse Always All The Time. I’ll wait.

#the real seebs #seebs #aba #actuallyautistic #the seebscourse

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qasian-tech-support · 8 years ago

Note

Answer every question that ends or begins with a 1 or a 3 (sly smile)

1. What is you middle name?

Muega-Azekiel. My mom's from the Philippines and apparently it's a tradition to give a son his mother's maiden name. My parents are also somewhat religious (not like *too* religious. What I mean by that is if I were to say that I was, like bisexual or asexual or even an atheist, they wouldn't pull the "YOURE GOING TO HELL" card.) and my dad wanted me to have the same initials as my brother Shauz. One day in church, the preacher was talking about Ezekiel and my dad was like "Hey, why don't we just change the E to an A?" (Also, a little freebie about me: my initials spell SMAD.)

3. When is your birthday?

It's really easy to remember! It's 2/22/02 (DD/MM/YY).

10. What shoe size are you?

About 10 1/2 US Male

11. How many pairs of shoes do you own?

I own most of the shoes that I've worn growing up, but if you mean the ones that fit me and that I actively wear, 3; a pair of old white tennis shoes, a newer pair of black canvas flats, and a pair of flip flops

12. What was your last dream about?

I couldn't explain it if I tried. My dreams get weirder every day. Sometimes my head's like a goddamn television that's channel surfing. (I vaguely remember a shirtless guy running down a street flailing his arms though??? I've never seen the dude before, I don't think.)

13. What talents do you have?

Self deprecation and over complication (have you read my bio). Though, I'm not really sure. I guess remembering some video game trivia, but not necessarily when I need to.

14. Are you psychic in any way?

Even though I'm a variety trainer, I like to think of myself more of a grass or water type trainer, but I don't mind the occasional Psychic type addition to the team. Gardevoir's a great example.

15. Favorite song?

Fuuuuuck. Why are these so tough??? I can't really think of a specific one, but Rolling Girl feat Hatsune Miku (produced by wowaka) stands out. The lyrics are like one huge "big mood poem".

16. Favorite movie?

Already answered ^_−☆

17. Who would be your ideal partner?

Someone who would understand why I do and don't do some things. I'm not the best at communication or communicating my emotions/what's on my mind. Someone who would share my love for things like video games and other things. But in all honesty, I don't really know.

18. Do you want children?

At this stage in my life, I'm not really sure.

19. Do you want a church wedding?

Maybe??? Again, haven't really thought about it.

21. Have you ever been to the hospital?

Only through visiting people so far.

23. Have you ever met any celebrities?

No, none that I can think of

30. How many pillows do you sleep with?

Two. One really long memory foam one and a comfy Pikachu pillow.

31. What position do you usually sleep in?

Have you ever seen the stereotypical crime scene victim outline? Like that. But I move around a lot, so I sleep on my sides or on my stomach often.

32. How big is your house?

5 bedroom (originally 3; my dad built onto it around the time I was born), two bathroom, single floor. I live in a relatively small town in Tennessee, so houses tend to be a little bigger than I think you would see in cities.

33. What do you typically have for breakfast?

Schools started back up, so I either have a bagel or waffle.

34. Have you ever fired a gun?

Only BB guns. I haven't fired a real gun.

35. Have you ever tried archery?

Yeah, I like it, but I don't have easy access to it since I don't own a bow that's my size.

36. Favorite clean word?

[Why are these so tough?] Like in general or as an insult? I guess zero because it's one that I use commonly. As an insult, walnut's pretty high on the list (cough, @biggest-gaudiest-patronuses , cough).

37. Favorite swear word?

I say "shit" a lot. It can have many different meanings depending on how you use it. Excitement ("Holy shit!"), despair ("shiiiiiit...."), surprise ("Shit!!!"), fecal matter ("shit"), et cetera.

38. What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without sleep?

I know I've spent 24 hours without sleep, but I feel like I've gone longer before...

39. Do you have any scars?

I've got some across my lower back from going through a crawl space too fast at my grandma's. As for any others, it depends on if I've had an extremely bad day recently; once winter starts, I feel like I'll have more and it'll be more frequently (can't wait for long sleeve season).

41. Are you a good liar?

When I want to be, yes. I'm able give some things the status of "near fact" in my head. What I mean by that, is I'm able to say some things as easy as if they were the truth. I also try to remember details in my lie and not go too outlandish.

43. Can you do any other accents other than your own?

Not well. I used to be able to copy Scottish accents somewhat well. I also went through a BBC phase, where I could mimic British accents fairly well, if I do say so myself (probably not though).

51. Are you scared of spiders?

Yes. The thing that scares me though is I'm not able to tell if they're venomous or if they bite. When I was smol, my elementary school nurse had a chart of spiders in the nurse's station and whether or not they were poisonous. They were in such good detail, too. THAT'S the kind of stuff that can scar a child.

53. Favorite foreign food?

I've already answered 52 with General Tso's chicken, but for the sake of variety I'll say something else. I really like lo mein, but I've been trying to get into sushi recently.

61. Do you sing to yourself?

Oh fuck yes. If the song is in a language that I can't speak, expect some passionate mumbling. Even if the song doesn't have lyrics, you can expect some rambling wubs, doots, na's, bops, boops, and da's.

63. Biggest Fear?

I don't really know. I guess dying without my life being meaningful or not having an impact in someone's life (maybe one that could've helped bring them success) is high on the list.

71. What makes you nervous?

Lots of things. I'm not going to make the list too long, though. Being around new people, small talk irl, and messing up big time come to mind. Oh yeah, being new in a place where a lot of people are already used to the swing of things also makes me nervous and can set off my anxiety. I had that problem when I first joined Reddit, when I first joined Tumblr, when I rejoined Tumblr under this URL, when my friend made me get Snapchat, and when I downloaded Discord. However, it may take one, two, or a few people to help get me going; those people I have a tendency to cling to.

73. Do you correct people when they make mistakes?

Sometimes (I assume it means when I'm not blatantly proofreading something for someone). I try not to be a dick about it and I try not to when it isn't needed. Like, if someone uses your instead of you're or its instead of it's, I try to look past it. After all, English might not be their first language and it can just make you look like a douche. And as for correcting facts, I try to make sure that I'm correct before I go accidentally spreading misinformation.

81. Can you roll your Rs?“

No. That's a main reason why I'm taking French I and not Spanish I.83. How fast can you run?

"FAST AS FUCK, BOIIIIIII!!!!" jk. I used to run somewhat fast (faster than most people I know), but only for limited distances. I'm not sure if I still can.

91. Do you like your own name?

Yeah, I would say so. I mean, yeah I like my irl name, but I prefer Zero when I'm on the internet.

93. Do you want a boy a girl for a child?

I'm not really sure. I like to think that I would understand more if I had a son, but I think that having a daughter would rock just as much.

100. Color of your room?

It's like a tan.

Thanks @homestuckorbust !!! It was a lot of fun!

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goldenoutlander · 8 years ago

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A long rambling post to us from ObsessiveSassenach. I copied and pasted her letter to us....

What the ever loving fuck is wrong with you people You people You Antis, NST, Truthers, Haters, wtfer name you want to be called or are called. You people. You know I’m talking to you @noshippingallowed @contemplatingoutlander @goldenoutlander @adhara112 @aliceinoutlanerland (oops you forgot the d in outlander. get a d.) @whylimewhyanything (put the lime in the coconut) @whoreallyknowswho (it’s whom! whom! unless you just forgot to finish your sentence) @prodigiousreblogger @bestof60 (are you 60?) @vividdreamer318 (your imagination is certainly leading you astray) @breezylouisey (is that you weezy?) @momofmusa (i thought you were mom of USA lol) @alittlebitmasss (oops your s key got stuck) Anyway, there are more of you and I’m sorry I didn’t give you a moment of thrill by acknowledging you by name but I mentioned the Tumblr accounts that I’ve seen making horrendously wild, hateful, fictional, hurtful accusations against other Outlander fans with no speck of proof - accusations meant to inspire others to emulate you and spread hate to those people as well. Let me get this straight. From what I can tell, you are super hopping mad about the content of certain Twitter and Instagram accounts. Fine. Totally fine. You are entitled to your opinions. I can see why those accounts might make some people mad. I mean, irrelevant to my life but maybe not yours. You are mad that certain Twitter and Instagram accounts have been created for the sole purpose of throwing shade and mocking a certain celebrity you hold in high esteem. I get that. Fine. Be outraged! Express yourselves!! Speaking of fine I know you will go through this post with a fine toothed comb for anything you can argue with and attack me over because god forbid you actually read the message, digest the information, thoughtfully consider the content and then share your thoughts and opinions and maybe answer some of my questions. Nope that’s not your style. Attack attack attack half-cocked and don’t put any thought or concern for reality into it. Yes you are the borg of Antis as the foil to the Shippers. I didn’t create that world, you did. You wanted to be the anti-shippers. You are gathered on Tumblr together to be this Anti-Shipper fighting army. Go forth and fight uhh I guess? WHY???? See, shippers are motivated by love. That’s really obvious. There are all types of shippers just as there are all types of people (and even all types of antis), but what brings them together is not just their love of Outlander (and you guys love Outlander too! Whee we have something in common) but their love of the LOVE parts of Outlander and all the LOVE associated with Outlander in promos, BTS, interviews, Q&As, social media banter between the cast and crew, etc. LOVE is LOVE is LOVE is LOVE is LOVE is LOVE is LOVE is LOVE. So you generally don’t see shippers on social media attacking people with hatred and lies and accusations of criminal activity. Wait wait wait. Correction! YOU see shippers doing those things but no one else does. You mostly see shippers doing those things with accounts that aren’t even recognized shipper names. They are basically troll accounts that you have deduced are shipper accounts. You do have these long convoluted narratives of what certain shippers are alleged to have done and you bandy them about so frequently that your telephone game grows legs and walks it’s own marathon and becomes some weird beast-mode attack shipper who does horrible things. You say you SAW these things but you haven’t. Show me a tweet, a facebook post, an instagram post from an Outlander fan who identifies herself as a shipper and has a known persona in the fandom and is attacking, hating, committing these horrendous crimes you claim. What I mean is, SHOW ME THE MONEY! SHOW ME PROOF to back up your narrative. You have specifically named a number of Outlander fans and made outrageous claims as to their character, behavior, beliefs, actions, off-line actions and more. YOU HAVE NO PROOF BECAUSE THESE STORIES ARE FICTION. I’ll give you an example of how your lies have grown wings, run a marathon and turned into beast-mode: So a certain blue check account posts that a certain object of your hatred and hate-mongering did something so illegal that she would have been arrested and would still be in jail. You all headnod, mouth breath, feel righteous for having attacked her because you were soooo right, bang away at your keyboards and continue the lies and hatred and stoke the fires for uhhh fun? Yet you all know that she isn’t in jail and couldn’t have done this highly illegal thing because you watch her every move and you saw her posting pics of herself just last weekend participating in a fitness event. Hmmmm. Are you collectively dumbing each other down with your groupthink or all you all that stupid? YOU KNOW IT’S A LIE. But you’ve all convinced each other it’s ok to lie about it, malign, spread hatred and misinformation about certain fans and tarnish their reputation in the fandom because… because? because why??? Help me out here. So it’s because someone has said rude bad things to an actress you believe is Sam Heughan’s girlfriend even though he has never once said so. You BELIEVE it so it’s your reality. And the fans that you malign? You do that because they believe something else. But the weirdest thing is that you do malign them by tossing out totally unfounded and false accusations about their behavior and ascribe all kinds of unsavory activities, motives, and behaviors to these fans you have chosen to malign. You do the thing to them that you so claim to hate they are doing to the objects of your admiration. I’m still working on this and I still need your help. So because you BELIEVE that two actors are dating and BELIEVE that it’s wrong that internet trolls make claims that they are not and some internet trolls say really rude things and tag them, you feel fully justified in making claims that the trolls are not just trolls but actual recognizable Outlander fans. Are you like shippers of trollworld or something? I’ll just come right out and say it. Kim Hickey is not behind any of those trolls accounts you claim she is. I know this and you know this. You know which accounts are legitimately hers because she identifies herself. You are even attacking her My Peak Challenge account that she posts inspirational memes and encourages people to donate to Bloodwise. Are you for fucking real? You’re attacking a charity endeavor in your blind hatred of…. hatred of who fucking knows. Even if you didn’t know she wasn’t behind the troll accounts, you absolutely have no basis for claiming she is. You are making shit up and publicly proclaiming it as truth just like that thing that Shippers do that you claim to hate. Also, let’s talk about me: I am a public person online. I don’t hide behind cutesy names. You can look me up and it won’t even be doxing me because it’s all right there, isn’t it? I have no sock accounts. I put my name on all my accounts because I own what I say and share. This tumblr account was created in the middle of last summer as a parody of Starz Obsessable campaign therefore it did not need my name on it. I never had a Tumblr account before that and I have never even sent anons on Tumblr. I never pretended I was anyone else or made any attempt to be anyone else. I posted freely about myself and my life when it was topical, including photos of myself. If you were like BINGO I’m such a supersleuth I figured out who is behind that blog!! you’re not smart or observant. It was obvious. The thing is, though, shippers didn’t know who I was. Not because they didn’t know who was behind “Obsessive Sassenach” but because they didn’t know who Nipuna was. Isn’t that funny? One of the Outlander fans on the top of your BAD SHIPPER LIST WHO MUST BE EXTERMINATED list isn’t even known by other shippers. What makes me a shipper? Just that I have heart eyes for Sam and Cait and think they have chemistry and oh wait, whoah, ZOMG, Arthur Kade thinks that too. Josh Horowitz does too! and ummmm ummmm that one lady at TCA that one year and that one book author who was on the NYT best seller list and you know I could go on. It’s not a crime to be fully happy to enjoy Sam and Caitriona’s chemistry. And if that makes me a shipper, yay. But the only reason I’m actually a known component of the shipper community now is because you guys have dragged my name around and created ridiculous lies about me. It’s like I’m some sort of Shipper Legend (to you, not shippers) who does these super crazy Shipper things in AntiLand. Remember the grave story that was created by one of you weirdos because a family friend of mine who is a caretaker for a military graveyard in the USA was friends with Sam’s father? You guys turned it into: That Crazy Shipper Nipuna stalks Sam’s father’s grave in hopes of running into him and Caitriona making a baby on his dad’s grave in Scotland. Or something like that. Anyway, tour bus guides in Scotland think there are crazy Outlander fans who stalk Sam at his father’s grave but if they stop to think they realize they don’t even know if he has a grave or if it’s even in Scotland. You’re maligning the whole fucking fandom you freaks! You’re creating these outrageous, convoluted piece of fiction because you are all worked up about uhh something and then you tag other nasty people and get them to repeat the stories and then the stories get embellished and repeated and you sit back and watch the telephone game continue. But don’t you realize that you’re fucking the whole thing up for yourselves too? I mean, I guess not if you like chaos and mayhem. But most of you profess to care about people being nice and kind and cry out that bullying is bad and wrong. But then you do just that when you pick an Outlander fan and create detailed and convoluted lies about her behavior. The people you lie about know they are lies, sure. And lots of other people know they are lies and ignore you, but you repeat the lies over and over and you know that saying about how if you repeat a lie often enough people will start to believe you. So you repeat and repeat and then sit back and with self satisfied smiles. Or maybe it’s just that your mouth is open because you’re breathing through it. Whatever. I don’t know your motives. I don’t know what attracts you to fan the way you do. I don’t know what fulfills you. I know it’s not LOVE. But do you even know? Are you just running around half-cocked and brainless and letting yourselves be lied to? What gives? Can you help me understand why you are constantly naming and targeting certain people and pointing others to attack them and if that doesn’t work creating stories that will hopefully motivate them to attack? WHY???2 notes Mar 27th, 2017 ng post from ObsessiveSassenach to us all.

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secretkingdomjellyfish · 5 years ago

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who are we?

A few nights ago I was reflecting on the world, the way things are and the way things appear to be going. I’ve watched as the two extremes throw a lot of insults around and there is a particular one upmanship going around that’s difficult to ignore. I stated in my last blog that both sides are continually trying to throw shit the other way to distract from what they, themselves are doing and I tried to work out why?

I mean, the answer is pretty simple really. We are no longer able to have healthy debates about the rights and wrongs of our actions and we are slowly devolving back into a sort of tribal mindset, acting like toddlers who would rather throw the ol’ ad hominem attacks rather than actually have to think about the valid point someone may have made.

The internet is full of echo chambers where people’s views are not being challenged (right or wrong) and are simply being strenghened by others around them. They are narrowing their view point so much that they are now refusing to even hear any, even slightly different, view point and because they are being pushed along and cheered by the many internet strangers who share this view, it’s easy to get very caught up and commit horrendous crimes in the name of what they feel is right. I pity people with this mindset because it’s so incredibly cloying and restrictive. By allowing yourself to be open to others viewpoints means that you can and will grow as a person. I know I sound preachy as fuck but try it. Just give it a go on something small, something insignificant.

The mob mentality, confirmation bias and mental regression are all massive problems right now. We see society falling apart around us and rather than admitting that we may be playing a part in this, we simply blame the ‘other side’. It’s their fault, I done nothing wrong, but did you see what they did?! See, my internet friend whom I’ve never met but have found completely agrees with my shaky world view agrees with me so I must be right.

Currently I’m watching the events of the world with a mix of horror, humour and sense of unreality. We have an ongoing pandemic which is still killing people, it hasn’t just decided to stop and, personally, I feel this is mother nature’s way of firing off her warning shot before unleashing a real horror that will wipe out humanity. I’m watching several countries use this pandemic as a screen in which they can continue committing atrocities without the world watching them and we are so busy fighting with each other we don’t see that insidious danger slowly creeping in and getting ready to move when the time is right.

We are currently pulling down statues of various international figures around the world. Many of whom were involved in various neferious activities which we don’t like to talk about. Now, this is, in it’s very basic form, a noble and understandable thing to do. Why should we celebrate the lives of known slave traders, dictators and generally unpleasant people, right? No one wants to talk about the fact that history is always written and rewritten by the victors. We all want to believe that the people who won these wars and battles were absolute angels and didn’t commit any serious crimes themselves. Time has a bad habit of smoothing the very sharp edges of history. Making it smooth and pretty to look at - we tend to forget that war makes monsters of even the kindest of men if given enough motivation. Furthermore, these very activities that we find so abhorrent now was perfectly normal at the time and we are constantly trying to place the views we have now (with several hundred years to ‘evolve’) on the past - something that is always going to end in disappointment.

The thing is this (now bear with me with this) led me to think about the events that led to WW2 and, to be fair, several other massive wars that no-one really talks about and the rise of dictators in general and I do see similiarities to the events that led up to both world wars but in particular WW2.

Scapegoats? Check. A strong ‘nationalistic’ movement? Check. Disinfranchised and exhausted population who are sick of their current situation? Check. Low level of racism that has always been present but has stuck to the shadows because it was socially unacceptable (and rightly so) to display any kind of racist tendancies? Double and triple check.

Something else to think about. We all like to think that once we defeated Hitler that we defeated his horrendous regime. But, and here’s the big point, there were many MANY people who shared his view and actively committed atrocious crimes thinking they were right.

These people didn’t just decide that their viewpoint was wrong when Hitler was defeated and, like when you stomp on a mummy spider, they scattered all around the world much like the little baby spiders scatter when you squish their mummy. These people didn’t just change, they went into hiding, worked in the shadows, spreading their regime and finding each other - creating networks.

All we are seeing now is those people (well their kids and grandkids) finally coming out of hiding because their leaders are telling them that the viewpoint they have held all their lives is now right and it’s the time to act. They never went away, they just hid in the shadows.

At times of crisis, we look to our leaders for the right way to act and we like to think we are fairly evolved and socialised but we are only really one maybe two paychecks from complete anarchy and it’s happening right in front of our eyes.

We are also great at just ignoring what we don’t like to see because if I close my eyes and stick my fingers in my ears, it will go away...eventually. We are great at avoiding unpleasant or uncomfortable truths and if we can lie to ourselves, how easy is it to lie to others? The current leaders are openly telling their countries that racism is absolutely ok, that it’s ok to only care about yourself because that’s how they got there and they are SUPER successful. They are telling their nations hat narcissism is cool - it’s totally ok to love yourself. A lot. The uncomfortable truth is that it’s always been there, we just pretended like it wasn’t and simply swept all that shit under the world’s carpet hoping that if we ignored it for long enough, it would just go away.

It’s now highlighted a massive problem within our societies. We ARE broken but no one wants to admit this and even less so do we want to attempt to fix it because that would take hard work and admitting that we went in the wrong direction somewhere along the way to creating our mighty empires. We haven’t really evolved much past the 15th century when the kings and queens ruled with an iron fist and the odd bit of torture to keep things spicy.

Now, as a society, we aren’t very good at self regulating our behaviour. We generally need the fear of punishment if we do wrong. Whether that’s being thrown in jail, fined or ostracised from the group we call family, it doesn’t matter, we will tend to toe the line if we are scared of being punished for bad behaviour.

However, what we deem as bad behaviour is up to our leaders and the society we live in. We also need to believe that the people who are meant to uphold these laws are infallible. that they are capable of self regulating but I want you to look back on the first sentence of that paragraph. Humans really aren’t very good at it and here lies the problem. This is the lie we tell ourselves to help us sleep at night but the lie is simple; that our leaders are looking out for us and not themselves and their own little tribes.

Now I can already imagine several of you shifting in your chair uncomfortably and others dreaming of rebellions and bloody revolutions. Standing on a pile of bodies with your tits hanging out, the wind in your hair as you hold your tattered flag proudly but it doesn’t have to be this way at all.

and this brings us on to democracy. I can hear people screaming that democracy works. I mean, we get a say in who looks after us, who makes our laws, who ensures these laws are upheld. That works on paper but no one accounts for how complex society really is. We live in a fast world where everything is pretty much instant. Instant coffee, instagram, instant meals. We are now so incapable of concentrating for more than five seconds without being bored and we are absolutely BOMBARDED by continually impossible standards via TV, internet and radio. Buy this and you too can look fifty years younger.

We worship superficial beauty and treat people who are ‘naturally’ beautiful like Gods and Godesses and then wonder why they mutilate themselves in order to continue looking young when that worship starts to fade. It’s like a drug and we become hooked on that worship.

We are a throwaway society - we throw away everything, including the very same celebrities who we worshipped five minutes before and, unfortunately here is where the problem lies.

We want continualy entertainment. We can’t stand being bored - we want the next big meme, gif or fad to take us away from the misery that is the day to day living. We don’t want to believe that we are being duped by the very leaders that WE placed there. That we were wrong in our choices because they promised the impossible - a simple fix to an incredibly complex and difficult problem. There is no easy fix for this and there, unfortunately, may be an entire collapse before we finally admit there is a problem rather than continually doubling down on the choice we secretly know is wrong.

Democracy and (here’s a really naughty word) socialism can and does work if done properly, however, misinformation is the biggest problem right now and as the very people who are leading us got there through misinformation, why the hell are they going to tackle that problem? As a society we really need to do a bit of soul searching - admitting the faults and the crimes committed against various groups and accepting it happened. This isn’t going to go away and if we don’t at least attempt to try and make amends, it will eventually blow up.

I can only hope I’m wrong and that we start waking up before it’s too late...

#democracy #life

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scholarly-squid · 5 years ago

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Being involved in science right now is... weird.

First post on this blog! And this one sure is going to be a doozy. Long post ahead. I mean long.

In this time of COVID-19, being on social media has been what can only be described as an absolute nightmare. I’ve been studying a STEM field at my university and I’ve had involvement in laboratories for years now. Let me tell you something - this whole experience has been painful to watch. I’m used to people, on both left and right ends of the political spectrum, passing judgement on what scientists do and how they do it. Science is so wonderful because it is so cutting edge, but that does lead to controversial topics coming up fairly frequently. Ethical debates, be it about testing methods or AI or what have you, are always swirling around on the internet. Thankfully, there are teams dedicated to determining ethical guidelines for this sort of debate.

The problem with what I’ve seen on the internet lately is that there is very little scholarly debate about what actions to take, many experts are in agreement, and when scientists make an educated decision, people blatantly disregard it using a number of opinionated, jargon-heavy excuses. Examples abound:

I shouldn’t have to wear a mask because they said at one point that masks aren’t necessary and now they say they are. Scientists are untrustworthy.

Scientists only want to lie to you about COVID-19 so they can make more money off of you.

Well if scientists are so smart, what about this one time when a scientist did something bad?

Scientists are all elitists, trained by universities to use and abuse the common man.

There are plenty of ways I would absolutely love to poke holes in these arguments I’ve seen later, but that’s besides the point. The issue with these statements popping up everywhere is that there is no way for scientists to refute them logically. Not because the arguments are right, but because they are completely illogical and based in fallacious reasoning.

Fallacies are really easy to fall for, and a distrust of science only makes their roots dig deeper into our society. I understand though why they are so popular. It gives people a reason to think they are different, or somehow defying the status quo, in a society where individualism is held to the highest regard (for me the US). They also provide an easy solution where there isn’t one. In scary times like the ones we are in, it feels good to rely on something you know, something comforting, as opposed to something you don’t know. Science is by nature experimental, new, and groundbreaking, and that’s pretty scary. People in the general public tend to lack a strong basis in understanding fallacious reasoning, because its really, really tricky to grasp, and isn’t frequently taught in classrooms. I don’t want to sound like some preachy kid from the debate team or something, because believe me the last thing you should be doing to help people on the internet understand what they’re reading is yell “ThAt’S a FaLlAcY” because it will only make them feel bad, and in response, angry and defensive. But understanding when you hear a fallacy yourself is one of the most important things I’ve ever been taught in my life. If you are unfamiliar with fallacies and want a list to keep handy, here’s a good start. This can help you and perhaps others understand whether what they’re reading is a good source, or if the arguments are flawed.

But why this desire to distrust science in the first place? For one thing, science has been made into the one thing it shouldn’t be: Political. The call from the Right is typically that progress as a whole is bad unless it has been privatized, because academic scientists are untrustworthy, government agents who have been trained to look down on the rural middle and working classes of America. The call from the Left has honestly been somewhat similar, though perhaps less vocal: that major scientific progress is the work of private, rich medical companies, who don’t care about their impact on people or the earth, and that holistic methods (think essential oils, anti-vax movements, etc) should in part or entirely replace peer reviewed medicine. Both of these views may be extremes. But when your sweet Republican Great Aunt Mary, who has never been educated in collegiate level, or much high school level, STEM or logic courses, sees her friend Susan from the Community Republican Facebook page, post her piece about scientific elites trying to squash middle America, Mary has no way to refute it logically and it is associated with the group she is already involved in, and Mary sympathizes with Susan because she knows and trusts her. And when Mary sees a Democrat refute it, it causes her to dig her heels in even more and double down on her support, because of how partisan politics in America has become. If you’re not right, you must be wrong. The same goes for the Left, of course.

Another reason for distrust: as scientists we don’t do well communicating our findings to the public in a non-biased, yet easy to digest way. Our knowledge comes from and is displayed in peer-reviewed, dense as hell articles that involve confusing acronyms, long Latin or Greek names and phrases that one would need a high-level physiology course to understand, and figures that screw with the head to look at without deep knowledge of statistics. I’ve read and written scientific articles, and let me tell you, they’re absolutely awful and intimidating to look at and I hate how they are written (and I’m writing this, which is also dense and awful and intimidating. I’m trying my best to consolidate I promise). Its no surprise that people who are unfamiliar with these topics would have a difficult time understanding them, and that could cause some to get bruised pride.

The issue then lies in people attempting to become more scientifically literate through sources that aren’t straight from scientists. News media, Facebook pages, Clickbait, all of that loves to make money off of clicks. Its amazing how quickly “a chemical found in small traces in blueberries found to reduce some plaques in xyz brain region in mouse study” becomes “Could the Cure for Alzheimer’s be BERRIES?!” That sounds a whole lot more final and wrapped up and spectacular than a small minor change. Then comes the issue of scientists in the media saying they know end all be all. Elon Musk yelling about needing to reopen the economy, or Neil DeGrasse Tyson giving a talk on areas of science in which he is not an expert (despite training in astrophysics), is a whole lot more interesting to people than Normal Nancy giving an hour long talk on a specific subset of a specific subset of a specific subset of virus with zero intonation or emotion. Sensationalized science is science that sells, even if it isn’t right, and people start to think of these individuals in the media of what a scientist is supposed to look like. As a community, I respect scientists with all my heart. Overall though, we do need to come up with a better way to reach people who aren’t open to us. Have scientist approved websites, pages, and magazines that are specifically for the lay public. We should avoid making sweeping statements or overextending our knowledge if we somehow do gain fame.By continuing the way we have, we further alienate ourselves. I of course don’t mean sacrificing research quality, or dumbing down scientific publication. Just finding ways to talk to people in a more relaxed way.

I suppose what I’m trying to say here is people don’t hate science without reason, even if the reasons are flawed. And distrust of science doesn’t mean people are inherently bad people. Perhaps they are just ignorant, ignorant and stubborn. But people who do profit off of not listening to scientists are truly putting people at risk for selfish gain. The problem lies in that not listening to scientists is extremely dangerous, not just right now, but all. the. time.

Why is it a danger that people don’t have the means listen to scientists? Obviously it currently is putting people’s lives at risk. Not wearing masks to public places, being so angry at policies one doesn’t understand that they spit and cough on people in retaliation, or march in massive groups to protest. People who do these things are a danger to themselves and others. But we have been building up to this point. I saw an interesting op-ed recently about the death of the expert that made a few interesting points. The advent of the internet has brought us so much access to wonderful information. But without education on finding scholarly sources early on and with full intent to promote gaining wisdom from those with experience, it becomes a breeding ground for dangerous mistaking of opinion (or simply wrong fact) for fact. Anyone online can say they are an expert. Once a person’s mind is filled with ideas that align with their own belief system, especially from someone who claims to be an expert, no researcher, academic, or other scholarly source can convince them otherwise. If “my PhD in biochemistry” isn’t enough to answer the question “Well what makes you qualified to speak on biochemistry?”, then we’ve run into a serious problem. People who have the true information individuals are seeking have been neglected for sources that fit with people’s personal values. Its a natural thing to have happen of course, but when everything is online, and there isn’t much one can do to stop misinformation through regulation, these beliefs spread like wildfire, and this creates demand for pseudoscientific and untrue actions medically, politically, or socially. These aren’t just ideas, they manifest into actions which can actively harm people.

Its a weird time to be a scientist because not thirty years ago, your word was taken as law by many in the public, and if it wasn’t, it wasn’t out there to see all over the internet. Now we are hit with a serious health crisis and everything is online, and the truth rears its ugly head: that no one who really, really needs to wants to listen to your life’s work. No one is respecting researchers who work tirelessly to come up with vaccinations and tests. While you spend day in and day out working late hours trying to come up with a means to save lives, people come back and spit in your face. Science, especially in academia, has always been a somewhat thankless job, (save for the pay if you get really lucky), and many times people won’t understand you. They know you’re smart, but they don’t really know what about, and it can be difficult to convey. But that simply comes with the territory. What pains me most is the severe retaliation during a time of crisis, instead of a renewed understanding of the need for science. I don’t consider myself a scientist yet, considering I’m still learning in college. But I can’t help but feel that if we don’t find a way to educate people, and quickly, my field will be useless. Because it’s not science that makes a difference, it’s people adopting science to inform their decisions.

If you know a scientists right now, especially someone working in virology, epidemiology, specifically COVID-19, or really any other field of life science, please thank them. Hell, all STEM fields, for that matter. They are truly trying their best during a time when it feels like all rationality has flown out the window. And if they have any advice for you, listen to them. By listening to scientists, you set a precedent for those around you to listen as well, which could get us all out of this mess quicker and healthier.

If you have any questions or comments, pop by my ask box. Or reply too, doesn’t matter to me. My blog is all about conversations about science, science culture, and science literacy, and this may be my first post but it won’t be the last. Also this was super long, confusing, and ranty, so if you want clarification please ask! And if I don’t have answers I will try my best to direct you to someone who does.

All y’all stay safe, and be smart.

#science #covid_19 #first post #scientist #scientific literacy #scientific #academia #idk what else to tag this as whoops

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thweaty · 5 years ago

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Respectfully, you missed the point of my messages. I realize you are not "talking about me" when talking about Bernie Bros. I was stating that talking about Bernie supporters as if they are ALL defensive and unable to reason is detrimental to the goal of the 2020 election. If we REALLY want to beat trump we have to get Bernie's supporters on the blue side. And when I say that I mean the independents, libertarians,etc that could be turned off by the "Bernie bro" attacks even if they aren't one

i tried to re-read your last sentence a few times and admittedly i can’t figure out what you’re saying and i don’t want to put words in your mouth, so i’m just going to summarize what i’ve been trying to articulate.

1. the people who are firmly bernie or bust and refuse to hear anything else will not vote blue in the general election, hence i do not think it’s productive to dedicate time toward “earning” their vote when their priorities lie solely within their individual achievements. i cannot factually say that they represent a majority or minority of bernie supporters, but i’m going to wager that they are a minority-- however vocal they may be.

2. i think that there are some people who agree with the bigger talking points of bernie’s platform-- namely that everyone deserves healthcare, college should be free, we need climate change legislation stat. i agree as well and would have to question the morals of those who don’t (but that’s neither here nor there). however, i also think that there are also people naively coming to the conclusion that if bernie is running on these great ideas and people aren’t voting for him, it must mean they don’t care about these things. i think we can agree that generalization like that isn’t true. on top of that, i think that the current online “environment”? encourages these people to retain that mindset without realizing that reality isn’t so one-dimensional after all, and i find that to be harmful.

3. to say that all of bernie’s supporters are defensive and aren’t capable of reason is disingenuous, because a. to make such a broad accusation about a large group of people is setting yourself up for failure because math alone will tell you that’s impossible and b. it literally isn’t true. there is absoutely nothing wrong with supporting either bernie himself or the platform he’s running on. what is wrong are the subset of supporters who claim to want trump out of office, but unless bernie is the nom, they won’t make an effort to get him out of office. do you see why i have a problem with that?

4. a lot of sanders supporters do intend on voting blue in the general election, good on them. there are also sanders supporters who currently refuse to vote blue solely because they are misinformed about biden’s platform -- and i wish there was a better way to help them realize that some of the information they’ve been presented with is false, but it’s quite literally impossible to go door to door and be like “hey that thing you saw on the internet? not true”, so beyond encouraging people to stop spitting blind facts and actually research the points they’re asserting, i’m not entirely sure how to address them. there are sanders supporters who had no intention of voting blue at all -- and i don’t think time should be allocated to try to “sway” them because their mind is already made. but, again, there are also some sanders supporters (who may or may not be already blue) who say that they want trump out of office, but in the same breath refuse to vote against him if that vote isn’t for the candidate they desire. this is the group of people that i’m most frustrated with because you can’t claim to care about those who are less fortunate and then, in the same breath, refuse to vote against trump because “it’s my way or the high way”.

i hope that this cleared some things up. i have absolutely 0 issue if you support bernie, yang, warren, pete, or whoever tf else ran in this primary, but people who are spreading inaccurate information (either willingly or unwillingly) need to stop and realize that it’s only going to cause more harm than good if they truly want trump out of office.

#Anonymous

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gyrlversion · 6 years ago

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A Trump Attacked Kamala Harris — And Other Democrats Are Calling The Racism Out

Right-wing pundits and bots alike have been focusing their efforts on discrediting Senator Kamala Harris’s lived experience as a Black woman, after she made waves during the second Democratic primary debate night on June 27. “As the only Black person on stage, I would like to speak on the issue of race,” Harris said, following a moment when moderators asked Mayor Pete Buttigieg about the race relations problems in his police department in South Bend, Indiana. She then focused her message on former Vice President Joe Biden, confronting him about the ways the anti-discrimination policy he’d lobbied against had personally affected her.

Shortly after, Donald Trump, Jr. retweeted a racist message that attempted to discredit Harris, and her identity as a Black American. Ali Alexander, a member of the alt-right, claimed that “Kamala Harris is implying she is descended from American Black Slaves.” He also claimed that because her parents are Jamaican and Indian, she can’t represent the African American experience. “She’s not. She comes from Jamaican Slave Owners. That’s fine. She’s not an American Black. Period.”

The Senator was born in Oakland, California, in 1964; she has always been a Black American woman. As the Washington Post pointed out in February of this year, Harris’s autobiography The Truths We Hold details the ways in which her mother, Shyamala Gopalin, “understood very well that she was raising two black daughters. She knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as black girls, and she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud black women.”

Trump later deleted the tweet and his spokesperson, Andy Surabian, told the New York Times he did so because Twitter users didn’t understand Trump’s message.

“Don’s tweet was simply him asking if it was true that Kamala Harris was half-Indian because it’s not something he had ever heard before,” Surabian said, “and once he saw that folks were misconstruing the intent of his tweet, he quickly deleted it.”

Caroline Orr, a behavioral scientist who studies the spread of misinformation, noted that a number of Twitter accounts questioning Harris’s identity — including the one Don Jr. retweeted — could have been sent from bots.

“What a weird coincidence that a group of accounts, starting with Ali, decided to tweet the exact same thing (verbatim) about Kamala Harris within minutes of each other tonight,” she tweeted. According to Newsweek, Alexander later claimed the analysis “makes no sense.”

But nothing on the Internet dies quickly. Before Trump deleted his message, plenty of folks had grabbed screenshots and Harris’s Democratic rivals came to her defense saying that this is the same racist rhetoric of birtherism now-President Donald Trump and other conservatives used against President Barack Obama. The conspiracy theory — that Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. (he was), which would have disqualified him from legally becoming president — is overtly racist and xenophobic. No one has accused white candidates of being born outside of the country, and even after Obama released his birth certificate, Trump continued peddling the lie. Eventually, he falsely claimed Hillary Clinton was behind the conspiracy.

While Harris hasn’t yet commented on Don, Jr.’s tweet, she did tell the Breakfast Club in February that attacks against her identity and her parents are “the same thing they did to Barack.”

“This is not new to us — we know what they’re trying to do,” Harris said. “They’re trying to do what has been happening the last two years, which is powerful voices trying to sow hate and division among us. We need to recognize when we’re being played.”

Unlike Harris, most of her Democratic rivals have tweeted about the racist attacks made against the candidate. Here’s how they responded.

Former Vice President Joe Biden

“The same forces of hatred rooted in ‘birtherism’ that questioned Barack Obama’s American citizenship, and even his racial identity, are now being used against Senator Kamala Harris,” Biden tweeted. “It’s disgusting and we have to call it out when we see it. Racism has no place in America.”

New Jersey Senator Cory Booker

Booker might have had the most to the point response.

“.@KamalaHarris doesn’t have shit to prove,” he tweeted, quoting a tweet from the New York Times linking to the story about Don Jr.’s retweet.

Washington Governor Jay Inslee

“The coordinated smear campaign on Senator @KamalaHarris is racist and vile,” Inslee tweeted. “The Trump family is peddling birtherism again and it’s incumbent on all of us to speak out against it.

New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand

“This is racism,” Gillibrand tweeted, quoting a tweet by Rachel Maddow that linked to a Daily Beast story about Don Jr.’s tweet. “It was wrong before, and it’s wrong now. We won’t allow it again.”

Ohio Representative Tim Ryan

“The attack on @KamalaHarris is racist and we can’t allow it to go unchecked,” Ryan tweeted. “We have a responsibility to call out this birtherism and the continued spread of misinformation.”

South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg

“The presidential competitive field is stronger because Kamala Harris has been powerfully voicing her Black American experience,” Buttigieg tweeted, quoting a tweet from the New York Times linking to the story about Don Jr.’s retweet. “Her first-generation story embodies the American dream. It’s long past time to end these racist, birther-style attacks.”

Former Texas Representative Beto O’Rourke

“There’s a long history of black Americans being told they don’t belong — and millions are kept down and shut out to this day,” O’Rourke tweeted, quoting a tweet by BuzzFeed News Communications Director Matt Mittenthal linking to the story about Don Jr.’s retweet. “@KamalaHarris is an American. Period. And all of us must call out attempts to question her identity for what they are: racist.”

Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar

“These troll-fueled racist attacks on Senator @KamalaHarris are unacceptable,” Klobuchar tweeted. “We are better than this (Russia is not) and stand united against this type of vile behavior.”

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren

“The attacks against @KamalaHarris are racist and ugly,” Warren tweeted. “We all have an obligation to speak out and say so. And it’s within the power and obligation of tech companies to stop these vile lies dead in their tracks.”

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders

“Donald Trump Jr. is a racist too,” Sanders tweeted, quoting a tweet from the New York Times linking to the story about Don Jr.’s retweet. “Shocker.”

The post A Trump Attacked Kamala Harris — And Other Democrats Are Calling The Racism Out appeared first on Gyrlversion.

from WordPress http://www.gyrlversion.net/a-trump-attacked-kamala-harris-and-other-democrats-are-calling-the-racism-out/

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dorothydelgadillo · 6 years ago

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What Pinterest's Regulation of Vaccine Content Hints About the Future of Social Sharing

As a new mother, I rely heavily on two resources for guidance on parenting.

One - trusted mothers in my inner circle. The other, while a bit dodgy, the internet.

I’ve never been a “search for an ailment, trust WebMD” kind of gal, but when it came time to pick a pediatrician last year, I did do research weighing the pros and cons of vaccinations via the web.

I don’t recall my exact search criteria, but I do remember being bombarded by a slew of sites that were conservatively against vaccinations. While the validity and author of the articles may have been questionable, because of the volume of results, I did second guess whether or not to vaccinate my son.

With that in mind, upon hearing about Pinterest’s new approach to stop false information from being searched on their site, I was stunned and initially, impressed.

This week, Pinterest told the Wall Street Journal that they began to quietly block anti-vaccination search terms in late 2018 from their users in an effort to limit the spread of misleading content.

Meaning, users can still pin content, but the company is actively preventing users from finding it.

Now, it’s important to state here that this doesn’t appear to be a political or social move, but rather one done in an effort to combat the spreading of false information. Considering how much hot water this has gotten other social platforms into (i.e. Facebook), this is a move worth talking about.

Should online platforms take responsibility for the content being posted on their networks?

Facebook and Google claim that they are making strides to reduce anti-vaccination fodder (and other false information), but Pinterest is aggressively taking a stance to abolish it from their platform.

Pinterest’s dramatic stance brings to light a growing trend in big-name platforms that have vowed to eradicate false content searches.

Take YouTube for instance.

The video platform giant has pledged to recommend fewer pieces of content on their platform that may direct users to conspiracy theory or harmful results.

While the company doesn’t clearly define subjects that could be tied to harmful misinformation, some examples where they are taking extra precaution are false claims around 9/11 and serious medical illness cures.

But is this monitoring, blocking, and screening done by social media platforms really necessary?

I do not envy social platforms trying to solve the political and ethical challenges associated with content regulation, but it is the responsibility of these platforms to create an environment conducive to both businesses and users.

The financial viability of online platforms depends on it and a great deal more. But is it really their place?

Living in the United States, I’d like to believe that freedom of expression as a human rights law, enables me the right to peruse and produce whatever content I seek fit.

Shouldn’t the responsibility for content consumption lie in the consumer?

On the other hand, as a mother, with a one-year-old who already navigates an iPad better than myself, I hope online platforms will eventually err with a more cautionary content eye.

Some have argued that regulating online platforms is as important as regulating tobacco or alcohol.

Important conversations take place on social platforms every day. People share their lives and gain so much knowledge from what they read and watch there.

It’s almost like a newspaper. We hold them responsible for monitoring the content that gets published and in many ways social media is taking over in this space.

That said, enforcing regulation isn’t easy. It’s so much more than one social platform like Pinterest blocking searches.

It is about a triad of parties that being private sector companies, multiple government agencies and end users coming together harmoniously to remove harmful or false content.

While Pinterest has taken action against one case of misinformation, it will be interesting to see if/how this expands to others.

What does this mean for YOU?

If regulation of content across social platforms is inevitable, the trickle-down impact onto users and companies is inherently unavoidable.

As online platforms dedicate people, resources, and time to regulating content, the way users and marketers interact on the platforms may change dramatically.

Users and marketers alike will need to be even more dedicated to producing factual, reliable content that isn’t misleading or misinformed.

Platforms will soon likely begin to penalize that content if it falls outside regulation.

Until jurisdiction is determined, we must be cautiously aware and responsible of “fake news” that permeates online platforms and take our own actions not to contribute to it.

And as a mother - there isn’t a better user example - than a new mom who needs to take onus for digesting information with a keen eye for truth.

from Web Developers World https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/why-pinterests-regulation-of-vaccine-content-matters

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theconservativebrief · 7 years ago

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Within the past 24 hours, Apple, Facebook, and YouTube have all joined in summarily banning far-right broadcaster and known conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his Infowars network from their platforms.

The bans have been swift and startling, coming after mounting public backlash against Infowars’s pernicious rhetoric, which is most notoriously responsible for helping popularize the false belief that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary shooting never happened. Jones is currently the defendant in a precedent-setting lawsuit brought against him by the parents of a Sandy Hook victim.

But the ongoing conversation around the real-life damage Jones and his network have inflicted has also been accompanied by weeks of hedging from major internet companies, including Facebook and Spotify, about how to deal with Jones on their platforms while still protecting free speech.

Initially, Facebook, YouTube, and Spotify all took selective action, banning some episodes of Jones’s podcasts and shows, or removing selected social media posts they found to be in violation of various policies while allowing Infowars channels to remain active. Last Thursday, the popular audio streaming app Stitcher became the first platform to pull all of Jones’s content, without a lot of fuss.

But on Sunday night, Apple followed suit, summarily banning all of Jones’s content from iTunes — and in the process, sending a definitive message about what is and isn’t permissible free speech. Almost immediately, the dominoes began to fall: In the hours since Apple took action, multiple sites have started scrambling to reverse positions they were defending just a week ago.

The most notable of these is Facebook, which abruptly about-faced on its own free speech policy just hours after Apple did, essentially in the middle of the night. After that came YouTube, which appeared to ban Alex Jones’s channel (which had more than 2.5 million subscribers as of Monday) from its platform late Monday morning.

Spotify, which spent last week under fire after it decided to remove only selected episodes of Jones’s shows from its streaming platform, has also followed Apple’s lead, removing its entire library of Infowars-related media.

The swiftness of these removals highlights a truth that many tech companies don��t want to fully acknowledge in an age of increased ideological polarization among their users: The idea of “protecting free speech” isn’t actually a hard-and-fast policy on their sites, but rather an increasingly handy excuse they can use to avoid taking controversial action.

That’s almost certainly why, as soon as Apple took the step of entirely banning Jones and his content, the cudgel fell: All of a sudden the more controversial action would have been to allow Jones and Infowars to remain. And so, sites that just a week ago were tentatively committed to protecting Jones’s “free speech” couldn’t about-face fast enough.

Facebook follows Apple in banning Infowars, giving up the game after weeks of sanctimonious lectures about free speech. This was always about being too scared to go first. https://t.co/dbAB2nPqZQ

— Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) August 6, 2018

In July, while attending a controversial journalist consortium hosted by Facebook whose participants included multiple far-right publications like the Daily Caller, CNN reporter Oliver Darcy asked Facebook News Feed director John Hegeman “how the company could claim it was serious about tackling the problem of misinformation online while simultaneously allowing Infowars to maintain a page with nearly one million followers on its website.”

Hegeman’s answer was less than clarifying: “I guess just for being false that doesn’t violate the community standards,” he said, adding that Infowars had “not violated something that would result in them being taken down.”

But the question of Infowars’s policy violations is not theoretical; it is a fringe broadcast network that has on multiple occasions propagated conspiracies with appalling real-world effects, from Pizzagate to the false belief that the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting was a lie.

The latter has resulted in multiple parents of Sandy Hook victims being extensively targeted online. Those parents include Lenny Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, whose 6-year-old Noah was killed in the attack and who have since had to move seven times in the past five years to escape harassment from Sandy Hook “truthers” egged on by the unsupportable fringe rhetoric of Infowars.

Pozner and De La Rosa are behind the aforementioned lawsuit against Jones and Infowars, and its outcome stands to redefine the question of what “free speech” is, legally. But in the meantime, the lawsuit has galvanized the public conversation around the damage that Infowars has done — and merged with the ongoing conversation about Facebook’s responsibility for combatting the spread of fake news.

Facebook invited me to an event today where the company aimed to tout its commitment to fighting fake news and misinformation.

I asked them why InfoWars is still allowed on the platform.

I didn’t get a good answer.https://t.co/WwLgqa6vQ4

— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) July 12, 2018

In a July interview, Kara Swisher of Recode — which, like Vox, is owned by Vox Media — asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the mentality behind the company’s policy of refusing to ban the presence of properties like Infowars, given its stated commitment to dealing with fake news. In response, Zuckerberg seemed to use the idea of protecting free speech to dance around the ethically blurry line of leaving his platform open to people who could spread harmful fake news and potentially dangerous views:

“The approach that we’ve taken to false news is not to say: You can’t say something wrong on the internet,” Zuckerberg said. “I think that that would be too extreme. Everyone gets things wrong, and if we were taking down people’s accounts when they got a few things wrong, then that would be a hard world for giving people a voice and saying that you care about that.”

Following this interview, however, backlash mounted over Zuckerberg’s comments, which included an attempt to explain why Facebook probably wouldn’t ban Holocaust denialism despite its repugnance. In response to criticism of what seemed to be Zuckerberg’s nebulous stance, Facebook temporarily suspended Jones himself — that is, his personal Facebook page — as well as four selected videos that the company deemed had violated its community standards.

Facebook’s selectiveness seemed to guide the other sites that subsequently took steps toward placing restrictions on Infowars. Both Spotify and YouTube chose to allow Jones’s channels to remain active while removing only the specific episodes of his shows and podcasts that they said violated their content guidelines.

Stitcher and Apple, however, took a less wishy-washy approach. On Thursday night, Stitcher responded to an angry tweet about Jones’s presence on the platform with a note that it had removed his podcasts.

Thanks for your note. We have reviewed Alex Jones’ podcasts and found he has, on multiple occasions, harassed or allowed harassment of private individuals and organizations, (1/2)

— Stitcher (@Stitcher) August 3, 2018

and that harassment has led listeners of the show to engage in similar harassment and other damaging activity. Therefore, we have decided to remove his podcasts from the Stitcher platform. (2/2)

— Stitcher (@Stitcher) August 3, 2018

And Stitcher didn’t have to wait long before another podcast platform joined with its position. Apple has never hosted Infowars on Apple Podcasts or iTunes, but its search engine included off-site listings for the podcast. Not anymore. As first reported by BuzzFeed, five Infowars podcasts were removed from Apple’s search index as of Sunday evening.

“Apple does not tolerate hate speech, and we have clear guidelines that creators and developers must follow to ensure we provide a safe environment for all of our users,” an Apple spokesperson told BuzzFeed Sunday evening. “Podcasts that violate these guidelines are removed from our directory making them no longer searchable or available for download or streaming.”

Despite Zuckerberg’s previous fence-sitting on the subject, Facebook was the first to move into action after news broke that Apple had entirely removed Jones’s library. Early Monday morning, the platform unpublished four of Infowars’ pages. “The timing of Facebook’s announcement was unusual, with the company confirming the ban at 3am local time,” the Guardian noted about Facebook’s early morning purge.

Facebook’s official statement on the removal noted that since its initial ban of four Infowars videos in July, “more content from the same Pages has been reported to us,” which the company found “violates our graphic violence policy, and using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies.”

YouTube was next to fall in line, banning Jones late Monday morning by removing all of his channels. In a statement, a YouTube spokesperson told Vox, “All users agree to comply with our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines when they sign up to use YouTube. When users violate these policies repeatedly, like our policies against hate speech and harassment or our terms prohibiting circumvention of our enforcement measures, we terminate their accounts.”

YouTube had previously warned Jones by applying a “strike” to his account for content violation, as well as suspending Jones’s live-streaming privileges; however, Jones apparently continued to live-stream from his other channels despite the suspension — so YouTube ultimately saw fit to give him the boot.

Now that the pressure is on, many people are calling for Twitter and other social platforms to take action against Jones next. Pinterest, for example, has since pulled Infowars’s page, which apparently existed.

While I’m very glad that @Facebook, @Apple, & @Spotify have finally taken the step to remove Alex Jones & Infowars from their platforms, it’s past time that @Twitter & @YouTube step up.

They are spreading hate, lies, and violence.

— Shaun King (@shaunking) August 6, 2018

So far, Jones is still a verified Twitter user, and multiple accounts related to various Infowars productions remain active. (Vox has reached out to Twitter for comment, with no response).

And Infowars’s reach is still mighty. Some media outlets have noted that despite Apple’s removal of Jones’s shows from its Podcasts platform, the Infowars app is still available on Apple’s mobile app store, where it currently has a 5-star rating. Similarly, Infowar’s 4.9-rated Android app is still available in the Google Play store (though its download count of 10,000 feels refreshingly small).

However, the online public seems to be celebrating the move, especially from Facebook and YouTube, as a definitive and crucial step forward in the fight against fake news and fringe extremism.

Original Source -> Apple banned Alex Jones’s Infowars. Then the dominoes started to fall.

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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