Ewqua

ewqua


— Ewqua Report User
He could save others.... 134 comments
ewqua · 3 years ago
This is a phenomenon called 'Securitization'. A politician/media figure will, through talking about it, make something be perceived as a threat by the populace. For instance, the flow of refugees is a threat to national security because they will come and do crimes etc. The thing in question wasn't originally perceived as a threat to the security of the country, but someone made it so through talking about it. Hence, if we label a specific person evil, bad, selfish, there is a lesser sense of "let's do something about it" because it's not a security threat. But if you claim that a movement or refugees or whatever are a threat to the security or even existence of the nation, people become scared, and when they're scared they're more likely to vote for legislation and people that will make the threat go away, even if the person they're voting for is an authoritarian asshole. This is why I see the labelling of something or someone a threat as worse than labelling someone a bad person.
· Edited 3 years ago
He could save others.... 134 comments
ewqua · 3 years ago
Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, if you feel a certain "vibe" from someone it's alright to mention it, but I am saying now in good faith that I don't think I'm doing that and I'd like to see concrete proof of me giving any merit to left wing conspiracy theories, because I think any that exist are equally dumb as right wing ones.
So, let me explain the whole "evil person" vs "demon wanting to destroy civilization" thing. Labelling something or someone a threat to our civilization, culture, values etc. has a much bigger chance that people will retaliate against it/them. Saying "Jeff Bezos is an asshole who treats his employees like shit" is calling him evil but even if you sympathize with that you don't really feel the need to stop him personally, maybe just tweak the system that allows him to do that, by improving employee protection laws for instance. But saying "BLM is a threat to the democratic process of this country" will make people retaliatiate, as they feel threatened.
· Edited 3 years ago
He could save others.... 134 comments
ewqua · 3 years ago
They're after all just liberals, not actually lefties. Personally, I see the personality cult of Donald Trump and the calls to rescind elections that didn't go in his favor as a threat to democratic values, more so than woke idiots.
Pizzagate – this one is basically QAnon before QAnon. That Hillary Clinton is running a child sex ring in some pizza place. This theory was so believed in conservative circles that some guy went to that pizza shop with the intention to kill people inside. If I remember correctly, they were able to stop him.
Illuminati – you've seen more people on the left, I've seen more people on the right talk about it. Both our experiences are valid.
As for me dismissing conspiracy theories on the right but not left – I really don't think I am. I say all conspiracy theories are bullshit including the ones pushed by Democrats like Russiagate. You'll have to prove to me that that's what I'm doing, because so far you're just going off your feelings.
He could save others.... 134 comments
ewqua · 3 years ago
Obama citizenship – I'm pretty sure mostly Republicans were pushing it back then. I haven't seen Democrat voters questioning his citizenship anywhere, but if you have, alright, noted.
Russia collusion – Yup, that's why I mentioned Russiagate as well. That's really the only conspiracy theory I've seen Democrats pushing, and yeah, it's absolutely stupid.
Election tampering – I ain't even gonna get into that.
Sandy Hook – the conspiracy theory goes that the shooting was faked to make people support gun control, and it was mostly pushed by Alex Jones, a prominent conservative media figure, which in turn influenced his mostly right wing audience into believing it.
Cultural Marxism – okay, that's how you see it, you perceive wokeness as a threat to democratic values. I see it as a bunch of idiot liberals saying "Yas qween trans women are women black lives matter yas", none of them has ever even read Marx or knows what Marxist theory is.
· Edited 3 years ago
He could save others.... 134 comments
ewqua · 3 years ago
A talking point isn't necessarily an opinion. One can inadvertently share a talking point without necessarily sharing the opinion, or belonging to the group. That's why I wrote what I wrote, I was making darn sure I wasn't labelling you personally anything, yet you still got offended. Also, are you really gonna bring this up every time I happen to disagree with you, when you said worse shit to me? "I now see into your worldview and I see that you're a vile and hypocritical person", "your hypocrisy knows no ends", you verbatim called me "fucking disgusting" and a "terrible person" literally just for disagreeing with you. Are you really gonna bring this one thing up every time, when you said worse shit both to me and about me behind my back? Give me a break.
But alright, let's drop this and get into the conspiracy theory stuff.
Vaccine passports – I agree, shit's authoritarian as hell. But vaccine chips ain't a thing and the theory is cuckoo.
He could save others.... 134 comments
ewqua · 3 years ago
Nice
He could save others.... 134 comments
ewqua · 3 years ago
So yeah TL;DR, since it's so requested, in my experience leftie conspiracy theories are usually just sort of like "this group is abusing their power for their own gain" or like "these businesses are working together to create an oligopoly to control the market" whereas right wing conspiracy theories tend to be more cataclysmic and civilization-ending, like "gay rights are going to be the downfall of the West" or whatever. As for citations, I am going off my own experiences, but that's what we were talking about this whole time, our experiences with being treated a certain way, so I don't think I'm in the wrong for talking about that.
· Edited 3 years ago
He could save others.... 134 comments
ewqua · 3 years ago
Now, that is not to say lefties don't engage in conspiratorial thinking at all. Just that in my experience, they happen to be more along the lines of "this person/group has a lot of power and they're abusing it" rather than "this person is a demon who's gonna destroy civilization as we know it".
As for 'If you think saying "this is an attack on our culture" is the same as "that person is a radical, racist, extremist, who would commit genocide if given the chance" I'm not sure what to tell you other than that sounds about right' ... The point of labeling someone as an attacker on "our culture" or "our values" is to dehumanize and eliminate them. It's to create a sense of threat that we must retaliate against. So I don't think it's too different at all, in the effect it has on people at least. Saying someone's a bad person, or abusing power or whatever, usually just means they're selfish. Saying they're actively trying to destroy you and everything you stand for is a level above that.
He could save others.... 134 comments
ewqua · 3 years ago
Point doesn't remain when it's not true, hahaha. You can't make a point out of a misrepresentation of events.
As for conspiracy theories, we could look at some big recent conspiracy theories and where they come from. From the right we have QAnon, vaccine chips, Obama birth certificate/whether he's a Muslim, pizzagate/Clintons, Sandy Hook, cultural Marxism, stolen election, Illuminati, Democrats are demons from hell... and that's all I can name off the top of my head. From the left, we have Russiagate, and maybe some lefties also engage in 9/11 Trutherism? And that's about it from what I can remember.
Do feel free to add to the list, of course. I'm willing to change my mind if you can come up with some leftie conspiracy theories, but I sure don't know of any in recent history.
Polar Bear got some snow 4 comments
ewqua · 3 years ago
Should be getting that every day, it's a polar bear for fuck's sake
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How I wake up every morning 11 comments
ewqua · 3 years ago
I wear a sports bra to bed these days because DD cups ain't easy to sleep in, especially since I'm a belly sleeper haha.
Daily dose of history, part 76 6 comments
ewqua · 3 years ago
My dad's a huge Queen fan and he was kinda mad at the movie for its factual inaccuracies and the ending. But it's not a bad movie. Rami Malek really shines as Freddie.
He could save others.... 134 comments
ewqua · 3 years ago
Ahaha no I was saying you were using terf talking points and even further specified you might not be realizing they are terf talking points, but whatever, it's all water under the bridge and there's no point in bringing it up.
Anyway I don't think it's necessarily true that right wingers call people lacking and not evil. Remember, the overwhelming majority of conspiracy theories comes from the right. Right wingers are very eager to jump on the bandwagon of "X is a ploy to destroy the West", whether X stands for gay rights, reproductive rights or hell, just the "right" for men to wear dresses. The Harry Styles debacle still makes me laugh.
I think @roanoke put it perfectly, in a way we're both correct because we have different experiences that don't cancel each other out.
He could save others.... 134 comments
ewqua · 3 years ago
I don't really have a specific point here, just that it's context dependent and you'll probably have different experiences on different platforms. However people scurrying off to their different echo chambers is imo wrong too, and possibly responsible for the phenomenon, because people aren't used to their opinions being challenged if they close themselves in their echo chamber. But I don't really know what the solution would be.
Also I'd like to point out it's in my experience not quite correct to label this a generational or recent issue. Sure, as I said social media probably exacerbates it, but a lot of people who I've met that are my grandmother's age (including my grandmother haha) are exactly like that. They take disagreement as a personal attack and will start attacking your person very early in the discussion, instead of your points. But idk maybe this is just a central European thing.
TL;DR let's just all have discourse and not be dicks to each other eh?
He could save others.... 134 comments
ewqua · 3 years ago
However it's clear that other people have different experiences and I guess it's dependent on the platform you're using. For instance Twitter is full of liberals who claim they're lefties even though they barely know what a union is but will bash you if you say stuff like "trans people should have their own category in sports" or something. Which is in my opinion a very interesting phenomenon, they're technically not extremists but they act like extremists. Good thing I don't use Twitter anymore. And for that matter, I don't use Minds either. I left when the main page became flooded with posts like "Jews make up X% of the population but more in leadership, we should do something about it". That's when I decided the majority of the users couldn't actually be reasoned with and I'd only give myself an aneurysm if I tried. I wonder if it's still like that now, maybe I should revisit it haha.
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He could save others.... 134 comments
ewqua · 3 years ago
I think it depends on the environment.
Years ago, I've joined the platform Minds. It was a sort of big thing back then in internet circles, advertised as THE true free speech platform, and that's legitimately what its creators stood for (I've communicated with one of them, great dude). The problem is, it very soon became flooded with very far right authoritarian people who were either banned or "mobbed" off other platforms. And they made Minds their echo chamber. When I made a post that basically only said "there's a lot of very far right people, I hope there will be nice open discourse and it won't become an echo chamber", I've been called so many things I can't even list them all in like five comments. Commie, government spy, bot, plus a ton of misogynistic and homophobic (I'm not even gay but apparently it's an insult in these circles) shit that's too vile to repeat. Never have I been called anything even close to that level of vileness by a leftie that I disagreed with.
3 · Edited 3 years ago
We never said it was NSFW 1 comments
ewqua · 3 years ago
Dude, it's insane. The amount of times I've seen porn in YouTube ads... I have targeted ads turned off too, so this is their default.
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Where is Scooby? 5 comments
ewqua · 3 years ago
And he's got a great voice! That's why BioWare hire him to voice big badass characters in their games haha.
· Edited 3 years ago
Where is Scooby? 5 comments
ewqua · 3 years ago
And Daphne and Fred are in the most cute and wholesome marriage
3
There's No Otter Alternative 3 comments
ewqua · 3 years ago
A couple weeks ago I had a chat with a family friend who's into fishing and apparently otters are huge assholes and destroy whole underwater ecosystems. They hunt for fun and are picky eaters so they'll kill a fish, eat its head (idk why that's the tastiest part to them) and discard the rest, each otter killing off a lot more fish than would be necessary to sustain itself. Reminds me of humans tbh.
1
I wish Jesus gave me a cool nickname 4 comments
ewqua · 3 years ago
This was literally posted by @cakelover 3 days ago. Bad bot!
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St Thomas of the Doubt 11 comments
ewqua · 3 years ago
I have no clue on the Dustin being descended from Torsten part (though it sounds really cool, even if it wasn't true it's a good story to tell to people) but yeah Biblical names have of course been adapted to most Western languages. Of course Simon wasn't originally read like in English, in Hebrew it's closer to Shi-mon, and Jesus is Yeshua and so on and so forth.
Do correct me if I'm wrong on the correct pronunciation of the names, I don't actually speak Hebrew, but the point stands, just about every Christian country adapted the names into its language.
4 · Edited 3 years ago
Keeping it in the family 13 comments
ewqua · 3 years ago
*Sweet Home Alabama starts playing in the background*
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Keeping it in the family 13 comments
ewqua · 3 years ago
The Habsburgs ruled in a lot more countries than just Spain, and yes the other branches were equally incestuous. So no worries Spaniards, we share your shame.
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Showing restaurant staff my new recipe for buns #2 4 comments
ewqua · 3 years ago
They look so fluffy and nice!