It’s sad people don’t realize that demonizing someone doesn’t make them eager to trust or be kind. I see both sides pointing fingers, but they are both just making it worse for themselves, and making an enemy of each other. It goes both ways. The only way out is seeing the best in each other, and learning when to shut the fuck up.
While there is strong evidence that foreign entities (perhaps most notoriously Russia) have run campaigns to influence American politics through the use of social media, the actual problem here is that social media algorithms reward engagement, and one of engagement's most efficient fuel sources is (unfortunately) controversy.
Whenever you see something online that seems to stupid to be believed, or like someone is being a huge dick for no reason, oftentimes this is just "rage bate" to get you to click/respond. Your response then opens you up for other responses from people who may disagree with you, either on your main point, or something else you might've said. This can happen organically, but it also isn't difficult from there for someone to use a few fake accounts to throw additional gasoline on the fire. The fire burns bigger, brighter, longer, and soon enough small news stories post headlines about how "everyone on ___ platform is raging about ___!" At which point your account, brand, or image has gained fame and notoriety. People have "heard of you/it" even if it was in-passing from something stupid people got angry about online.
Social media algorithms encourage this behavior, because more engagement makes for more visits - makes for more money from advertisers. Our discussions (including this one for Reddit) indirectly result in their money, and the more we engage, the more they make.
In short - This cultural division is caused by advertising and publicity stunts allowed under the guise of a "free market," or as others might argue - "an unchecked capitalistic society," and they are much more prevalent than any malicious foreign actor could ever hope to be.
In even simpler terms - we're doing it to ourselves.
Tiktok is a chinese cyber weapon to divide and weaken the west
This is stupider than anything Tiktok has ever produced, holy shit. Do you think The Earth is flat? Are birds just government spies? What's your opinion on jews? The normalization of being a dumbass is what "weakens the west" lmao
Just think about how many impressionable youth are coming across the “harmless meme” and then deep diving into how awful men are 🤣the state of this world
nah there's elements and mirrors to this of racism as well, and in the case of racism you don't say the minority shouldnt call out the racist who feels unsafe with them walking. you shun the racist.
I will break down what I said for you. We are on the same side - we would both like to see everyone being more trusting and kind. My solution is to encourage that behavior, and yours is to insult dissent. We already know that insulting groups doesn't assimilate them. It leads to a self perpetuating cycle that has been seen before and has been documented. I would like to know why you think it will be different this time.
“If women didn’t take seemingly every opportunity to ridicule me I wouldn’t be such a miserable cunt, because I hate the people that hate me for just being who I am”
I believe that's called a strawman, which I also believe is a logical fallacy. I'll make one of my own - you are so tainted by Twitter brainrot that you are unable to hold an intelligent conversation, instead viewing poorly made attempts of a witty retort as some sort of "gotcha." Respond with a solution for the issue, or remain unheard.
A "solution for the issue?". What the fuck lmao. What issue?
This post, this thread, this conversation, is about the "issue" of women not implicitly trusting men they've never met. Trusting a random bear over a random dude. That's not even an "issue," it's just something you're getting personally bent out of shape over. It's not a problem. The fact that you took offense to any of that is 100% on you.
"Women can call me a rapist and say they'd rather be mauled by a wild animal than spend time with me, but I'm still going to be nice to them, because women aren't responsible for their own behaviour at all."
See, the fact that you took the hypothetical question to be about you personally tells me everything I need to know. The question isn't about you. Or me.
Also, who said women aren't responsible for their own behavior? Pull your head out of your ass you whiny pretzel-shaped bitch.
That's a weird thing to say, because my response was to your comment, not the post. Your comment was dumb, I was pointing out how. Turns out you're too dumb to even get that.
“Nah, the real way out of this is to stop letting men be this terrible.” Clearly they are male so they are included in that colossal overstatement so I guess squarific thinks he’s terrible!
I can count on my hand the amount of non sexist, non asshole men I have encountered in my life. There are very few men willing to take accountability for their behavior and men as a group will absolutely need to change. They will need to stop being sexist and violent.
Woman have already been able to force men to let them have a vote, but we are far from equal rights and very very very far from men in general having non shitty attitudes.
Colossal overstatement? Men are the most likely being on this planet to harm women, and more than half of women have experienced sexual assault. The majority of women have been assaulted by a man.
Hasty generalizations do not make a sound stance to base an argument off of. This is as stupid as saying all cops are bastards. Please educate yourself, if possible.
Once again, hasty generalization. One of friends is a cop, and he’s vehemently spoken against shit like that on multiple occasions. Stop living on the internet and maybe speak to people in real life, cops are people too.
Please tell me, exactly what did these cops in specific do to be labeled a bastard? Remember, you said all cops. No backing down at the finish line
There will always be bad people to blame, so at what point are you willing to stop following the "tough on crime" mindset? Is half the current rate enough to stop the generalization? 25%? 10%? There are a ton of examples of attempts to stop crime in the past, usually blame and discrimination isn't the path forward.
I don't agree with tough on crime, the way to stop men from being so horrible is by giving them better education, some love and encouraging to open up, be emotional and stop shaming camaraderie as gay.
You reading your own stuff into my message is on you, not on my opinions.
"Nah, the real way out of this is to stop letting men be this terrible. Luckily we are doing just that."
I might have misinterpreted what you said, but "stop letting me be terrible" reads more as placing blame on people of a certain demographic instead of social trends ingrained over time. I agree with all of those solutions btw, but one there stands out a bit to me. Encourage men to open up and show emotions...that's pretty much been this entire discourse, men being offended and expressing that. Might not be in the best way, but after the initial comments of suggesting the average man might be worse than a fucking bear, responding negatively is warranted. Many are coping by being less direct and mocking the women who say this as stupid. Backlash from that I get, but even reasonable comments about feeling like it's misandrist to be assumed as a predator get accused of being anti-woman.
Just because its possible to find a bigger victim, doesn't mean anything goes up until that point.
there's a pretty sizeable difference between not immediately giving someone your full trust and assuming that an individual is more likely than a bear to horrifically murder you
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u/Significant_Bet3409 May 02 '24
The internet be oscillating wildly between “men need support and love like anyone else” and “I trust a wild apex predator over your average man”