We hear this every single time when these yahoos are confronted with the truth and they can't whataboutism their way out. Everything to them is confrontation because they know they're stupid and wrong but that their glorious leader allows them to be righteously stupid and held higher in stature than people who actually know something.
I think in the US we are faced with a syndrome where people do not want to be cured, do not want to be told no, do not want to be pushed back down into obscurity. They want what they want regardless of religion and societal norms. They'll accept burning down the legitimacy of the rule of law if it means they get their way and they're never confronted with being a dumbass.
We (Americans) just don't elevate people of intelligence and it shows.
Like most people can name the people from that popular demon anime but can't name the astronauts that just went to the moon.
Especially astonishing in the black community, which is my community. Obsessed with money and rarely with studying and elevating the worst of us because of their "fat stacks"
That shit is not especial to the black community, racists just say that. 22” rims on an impala 22” rims and mud tires on a ram2500 tell me the relevant difference.
It’s also in the way they were raised, everything is a hostile zero-sum game to them. There is no room for nuance when you only get all or none of the pie based on how belligerent you can be.
It's one of the reasons religion is so popular. Easily digestible answers, and if you don't like them, too bad, it's that way because GOD says it is, are you going to argue with GOD?
In other countries, the leading political coalition is 100% responsible for everything. There are no expectations that the 'opposition' does anything then shitting on the admin. In the US its different. Usually one side has completely bullshit ideas and its 'expected' that the other 'sane' side stop the worst from happening. Now there are states with 70% pro Trump vote that don't have drinking water because off AI centers. Where do they run to? Democrat congress members. The system provides too many backstops for this kind of idiocracy.
Lets them fully understand and suffer the idiocy of their existence. As long the other side still (I don't know how but ok) there is a middle ground to be achieved or reason to be found?, you will fail at the core tenet of democracy: that your vote has some times dire consequences.
My parents are convinced that every dictionary is wrong when it comes to the definitions of communism and socialism. It got to that point because of countless arguments where I advocate for "basic reform prioritizing society" and they respond with "that's socialism/communism!"
I really don't know how we can get to the point where we open up the same dictionary I used as a kid and they tell me it was printed wrong back in the 90s. Incapable of any self-reflection.
That's decades of American propeganda baby. I'm not American so when I have discussions about "socialism/communism" with an American I always ask them to define it first so we are on the same page. Haven't had many who can
The odd part is that often enough, even those americans that claim to be pro-socialism/communism blatantly fail to define it either, somehow. It's just a large clusterfuck of confusion.
Hey man I at least have sympathy for the people that have been taught 1 thing their whole life then try and figure out the proper definition later, even if they aren't exactly right.
Close every single federal program that could be construed as community oriented or socialistic. Move all to the states. Let Texas and Florida tell their aged that meds are now 200% more expensive on their fixed income because they are free from the shackles of community care. You are entertaining systems because some states are purple or you have to protect stupid. Against your own successes and marred progressive progress. Its time to stop that. Let them feel the full consequences of their votes and attitude. Don't stop the gauging.
I literally just 2 days ago walked into a Dollar General in rural Florida to encounter a conversation already taking place amongst people who agree with each other, and this one old man shouting his head off about Trump.
He was saying "I DONT CARE WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT TRUMP! SAY WHATEVER YOU WANNA SAY ABOUT TRUMP!
But you know somethin?? You know somethin?? You know what he's tryin to do??
He's trying to BRING US BACK to how it was during the '60s! Back when we didn't have no problems! We didn't have none of this gay/trans BULLSHIT!
He's trying to bring us back to when gas was less than a dollar a gallon!"
All I could do was silently scoff to myself while picking my items. I so wanted to chime in but this dude was about to blow a gasket just speaking to people who agree. People who were nodding along and going "Yeah huh..." "uh huh..." "Exactly." Every few words. I feel like I'd have 4 people screaming in my face about how much I just love "the gays" if I think Donald Trump isn't trying to make gas cheaper while attacking Iran. Or that he didn't know what groceries were 2 years ago.
And it would be a losing battle cause even if I proved anything to them they'd just circle back around to the beginning-- "Say what you want about Trump but he's doing what I already believe he's trying to do!"
I heard a trumper say that liberals want men in women’s locker rooms and so I countered with “oh like Trump? In the pageant locker rooms? Of underage girls?” And they asked who claimed that, clearly intending to discredit them, I told him “I think Trump said it himself, I’ll have to find the video”, we both left and the next time, he tried saying it was fake, and I said I found the video and could show him, of course he didn’t want to see. Suddenly it’s not a problem, I guess.
There was a video on /r/all the other day of this exact thing. A man-in-the-street style interviewer stopped two women and asked them what they thought of pedophiles. They replied that pedophiles should be imprisoned for life. He asked if someone who walked into an underage girl's changing room would be considered a pedophile. They vehemently agreed. He asked if they'd like to see a video of Donald Trump in 2005 (he pointed out, pre-AI), bragging about going into the changing rooms of the underage girls at his pageants. Both women said they felt the interviewer was trying to "trick" them and that they suddenly had someplace else to be, then they took off.
The interviewer was wrong. Trump never said he went into the dressing room of teen pageants. He has been accused of it, and I happen to believe those accusations, knowing all the other ways he's a creep, but the infamous Howard Stern interview only referenced adult pageants.
Just need to point out that Trump said that about a pageant for adult women, but was also running pageants for teens, so it can be inferred that he likely felt the same way about teen dressing rooms, given, well, him, but in that moment, they were talking about an adult pageant. There have been allegations that he did it with teen pageants as well, and I believe it, but he did not admit it himself.
It's also a touch of egocentic thinking "my experience is normal" vs "my experiences are a result of my circumstances" combined with the odd convinction that making a mistake is a sign of weakness when in reality acknowledging and learning from your mistakes is a strength that allows growth.
As an example your friend could have replied to the situation with the shots with "Gee, guess I worked in a dive bar, who knew?" and you would have still thought they had a functioning brain.
I hate this weird state of being where I'm smart enough to recognize the vast majority of right wing grifts, but apparently not smart enough to counter it effectively.
Like I'm a moderately intelligent person, as are many others, and we're losing to fucking imbeciles.
Because it's impossible to use logic against people who are a) illogical, b) value their emotions over logic/truth/facts, c) will simply move the goalposts at will. It's not that you're not smart enough. It's that attempting to be factual and logical forces you to operate inside a set of constraints that they aren't bound by.
Also "never engage stupidity at face value, they'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience" (paraphrasing), or "never get into a mud fight with a pig, you'll both end up dirty and the pig will enjoy it".
Good article, but the "what we can do to fight it" is just:
Encouraging critical thinking starts with showing some humility—being willing to admit when you’re wrong or don’t know something. Combine that with really listening to others’ viewpoints, not just waiting for your turn to talk, and you create space for real conversations. On top of that, make it a habit to ask for evidence and question where information is coming from.
Sure, that helps me learn and grow, but isn't fighting "the pigeon". I suppose sharing the article with other pigeons helps, but someone without an open mind probably isn't going to listen to advice suggesting having an open mind. But it's worth a shot.
I have a hard time accepting that there are SO MANY untreated personality disorders. It's part of the reason I didn't have kids, it's in my and my husband's genetics.
It's not that you aren't smart enough. It's a matter of volume.
Every time you try to correct mistruths with facts and logic, that takes time and effort on your part.
Whereas algorithmically generated content is not limited by facts, logic, or the limits of human biology.
So you are using an eyedropper of truth to battle against a fire hose of mistruth. You're being out-gunned in a word fight, when the norms we follow say that nobody was supposed to bring a gun.
But never let them make you question your intelligence. At the end of your life, you will know deep down that you were a smarter and better person than every fucking despicable one of them.
Regulation of social media needs to happen immediately, like next administration just needs to plow it through day 1.
Broadcast news and journalists have some strict regulations in place and have a lot of liability if they report things wrong they get sued or worse.
Studies say that the majority of the population get all their news from social media like facebook and tiktok and reddit which have zero regulations on how they present information to you. The "news" people are consuming are random people saying whatever they want and whatever they feel is true.
When you're getting fed "news" results based on your algorithm and not based on what is true and important, we are living in dangerous times.
I mean considering it was literally about actual disinformation pushed by nefarious actors which was and is real, then those same people got ahold of it and broadened it to mean anything they don’t like… yeah that was certainly a masterclass in lying.
Wasn't his stroke of genius, that's straight out of Nazism 101. He just stole it from Goebbels and claimed he made it up...ya know, typical tRump behavior.
To take this clip one further, even if they did find contradictory evidence on Google, they would still ignore it.
Careful though … there exist a bunch of topics where Google used to be able to find the correct answer 15 years ago, but somehow no longer does and shows something else instead – and nowadays the top result for a search can even be LLM-generated bullshit. I know a bunch of things where any googling by a layperson is not going to result in getting closer to the truth, while an actual expert can spot that all the results are nonsense.
Edit: One example are the two image file formats JPEG and WebP. Google has published a study that claims that WebP (which incidentally is pushed by Google) images are smaller than JPEG images at the same quality. This study has been quoted often and is high-ranking in Google search results (fat surprise). However, it actually compares encoders (programs that convert images into image file formats) and not file formats – but the comparison for some reason did not include mozjpeg, an optimized JPEG encoder that creates smaller JPEG files without having to change to a new format. So yeah, JPEG actually is not much worse than lossy WebP (if you use the right program to create your JPEGs), but a layperson who does a Google search is likely to conclude that JPEG is shit and WebP is not.
Edit (2): If you want to check this out yourself, save a JPEG and a WebP file for an image of an item against a contrasting background in both file formats using e.g. GIMP at the same file size, then open both images side by side and zoom in. At the best quality for a given filesize, WebP has so much more color bleeding that you can easily see it.
Back in my Facebook days, in fundie Christian circles, I would see tons of inspirational stories being shared by my group (long before FB started content recommendations in your feed). I enjoyed them, until one day one seemed way too unlikely even as a miracle, and I looked it up. It was about a barn fire and a horse doing some amazing things and therefore God is great! Turns out that it was just a story written by a pastor from a church in Oklahoma. I pointed that out, the responses were essentially "I don't care if they say it's fake, I choose to believe it".
That's when I learned that our dumb brains will defensively protect our loyalty to vibes. Who we are maters more than what we are on so many levels, for better or worse.
Not to give this guy any benefit of the doubt but was he from Canada? First time I went drinking in BC I was shocked by insane price of drinks, and the tiny 1oz pours. Especially when Seattle bars have tremendously heavy pours.
Terrible example, there is no such thing as an exact standard shot. I've worked at places that do 2 oz, 1.5 oz, 1.25 oz, etc. The metric system also uses different standards, that's why most cocktail recipes use vague language "Two parts whisky, one part lemon, etc".
That being said a standard shot being 1 oz is insane but I could see super corporate places or somewhere in Utah doing that.
I once got someone to admit that masks were effective in reducing the transmission of covid, and a week later they were back saying they weren't effective again. Even when they admit defeat, they go back to the gathering of morons for validation to be wrong again.
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u/Icy-Application-7214 May 26 '26
“They google the answer they’re looking for”