The American Asylum

[minime]

Mac spake thus...
"If it is in fact a she. Who the hell knows, on the internet. Certainly the alleged "feminism" of the self-described Heavenly Swan is every bit as generic, vacuous, secondhand, ersatz, opportunistic and Americocentric as American Dream's alleged "leftism". Sometimes even the prettiest gift-box is quite empty, or else it contains only a horse's head."

[MacCruiskeen]

What's your point, caller?

[minime]

What's your point, caller?

I infer you're responding to my post. Your civil request will not go unanswered...

[Wombaticus Rex]

Wow, thanks for the recap.

Do you really think that laying out your explanations / justifications for your behavior is going to....what, change my mind? Make me see it your way? No, your ambition arcs far further: you were intending to correct me. I love it.

At the end of the day, no matter who the most fragile ego in the room is, you're always the one who types the most. I'm asking you to be less fragile and more adult.

[Sounder]

Dr. Evil

I agree, it's not just the US going to hell. I'm seeing more and more of what you could call "compulsive narrative syndrome" (which is an entirely made up scifi term from Joel Shepherd's novels, but it's a great term so I'm shamelessly stealing it), where people live in their little algorithmically driven, self-reinforcing narrative bubbles, feeding you more info to support your established biases and weeding out contrarian views, eventually turning people into fanatics of whatever variety their self-selected bubble determines.
And you can't argue with fanatics. Showing them the counter-point only reinforces their already held beliefs, ironically enough making them even more fanatical.

And it's all because of fucking advertising revenue.

Spot on and well said Dr. There are answers to these riddles, but that seems to spoil everyone's fun. (Advertising revenue is a driver but still only a symptom of more fundamental errors in our modeling of reality, that serves to influence people in the way you describe.)

[DrEvil]

^^Thanks. And I agree that advertising is only one part of the puzzle (I suspect future shock is another big piece), I just wanted to finish off with a snazzy soundbyte. If I were to throw in every caveat it would be more than 140 characters, and we can't have that.

[DrEvil]

No. You're not just having differences of opinions with people: you are at pains to make it clear they are simpering morons for disagreeing with you.

Your style is what transports it from "we're just discussing the issues" into people feeling bullied.

Perhaps being more vocal about allowing for the fact people might be simply disagreeing with you -- rather than, say, suckling from the teat of the Spectacle like a brain damaged slave who lacks the mental capacity to even understand your points, let alone engage with them to your satisfaction -- might yield different results. Different approaches often do.

I don't expect anything, just trying to be constructive.

You've transformed this thread into a referendum on you. That's not self-defense, just self-involvement. It's also a compelling case for the "American Asylum" being a much broader problem.

In fact no. The author of the OP, one "Blue", did that:

Just wanted to put this out there to our RI friends outside the US.

It's a very difficult place to live here in the USA since Trump became the "leader." I would guesstimate that about 80% of the population went batshit nuts when it was announced Trump became President. Both nuts for and nuts against. The other 20% are just fucking trying to survive.

Fake News PizzaGate which has morphed into Fake News VegasGate is another example of the sick, twisted hoaxes being perpetrated upon the beat down American citizenry.

It's sad to see the amount of bullshit that is posted here and the continued support of members who post the bs who make egregious attacks on other members.

It's 25 degrees above normal in parts of the US so maybe Summer Madness will never end....


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_1etTOVO1E

Easy for you to say, as a mere spectator of that thread. Precisely what is bullshit there? State why it you think is bullshit, and provide evidence in support of your arguments.

PS "PizzaGate" has precisely nothing to do with the massacre in Las Vegas. To claim that it does is bullshit.

Of course no reply was forthcoming, because there is no there there. It is pure bluff. Pointing this out presumably counts as an "egregious attack", in "Blue's" book.

In any case. it was demonstrably not I who made this a referendum about me. It was she. And it was she who went on the attack.

And of course her sidekick had to double down on it:

Just wanted to put this out there to our RI friends outside the US.

It's a very difficult place to live here in the USA since Trump became the "leader." I would guesstimate that about 80% of the population went batshit nuts when it was announced Trump became President. Both nuts for and nuts against. The other 20% are just fucking trying to survive.

Fake News PizzaGate which has morphed into Fake News VegasGate is another example of the sick, twisted hoaxes being perpetrated upon the beat down American citizenry.

It's sad to see the amount of bullshit that is posted here and the continued support of members who post the bs who make egregious attacks on other members.

It's 25 degrees above normal in parts of the US so maybe Summer Madness will never end....


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_1etTOVO1E

I agree Blue. The Las Vegas you tube stuff and even our thread on it are a disgrace, MRAs and far-right wingers, and walking combinations of the two have seized onto the conspiracy narrative and are flooding the internet with half-baked BS. There used to be more careful analysis here at RI...or maybe I was greener and more easily hoodwinked.

I know that secret societies, Gladio type operations and MK Ultra are real but if I hadn't done the time-consuming research I have, and had just read the stuff on Las Vegas I might dismiss conspiracy, (or 'deep state') theories as a bunch of ranting by lunatics.

I was in Europe for a month and a half and being away from the US madness for a while saved my sanity. I could maybe move to Europe but I'm not only interested in an individual solution (and besides, Europe is highly influenced by the US so there's no real escape).

I'd love to discuss this stuff calmly, rationally and intelligently, along with brainstorming of ideas about what to do about the deep state conspiracies, but I agree that in the political insane asylum atmosphere both in and outside of RI that level of discourse seems unattainable.

That's not to say that I'm not grateful for SLAD, Project Willow and quite a few others who post valuable information that might be hard for me to find on my own.

This was of course before I had addressed her even once. For the record.

She* then proceeded to call me an "abusive bully" (sic) and one post later "a male abuser" (sic), and this in the middle of Harvey Weinstein Week. Only then, halfway down page 2, did I finally turn a bit testy in response, and no bloody wonder. I am under no obligation to let myself be shat on repeatedly and I reserve the right to defend myself. Not least since no Moderator was around to defend me from it, only to demand that I be endlessly magnanimous in the face of it. (Which, NB, is at least an acknowledgement that I was in fact suffering abuse.) Your interventions have only served to open the floodgates.

By the way, I showed this thread to an American woman whose feminist & socialist credentials are unquestionable, and if you think my response to HS's abuse was rude, you should have seen her response to it. The kindest words in it were "Clintonite", "navel-gazing", and "dripping with entitlement". (Also: "sly".)

______________________________________

* If it is in fact a she. Who the hell knows, on the internet. Certainly the alleged "feminism" of the self-described Heavenly Swan is every bit as generic, vacuous, secondhand, ersatz, opportunistic and Americocentric as American Dream's alleged "leftism". Sometimes even the prettiest gift-box is quite empty, or else it contains only a horse's head.

Your new trick of insulting people by proxy is cute, but pretty transparent. I noticed you completely ignored my list of insults hurled by you, after repeatedly calling me a liar for claiming you do in fact hurl insults, and then in your very next post you do exactly that. You're the liar here. QED.

[MacCruiskeen]

Some people just can't help themselves:

I noticed you completely ignored my list of insults hurled by you, after repeatedly calling me a liar for claiming you do in fact hurl insults, and then in your very next post you do exactly that. You're the liar here. QED.

You are incapable of reading your own posts.

You go out of your way to demean and insult anyone who dares disagree with you.

Which is a lie, and you know it. Off the top of my head, and from that thread alone: JackRiddler disagreed with me, Elvis disagreed with me, LolaB said something I disagreed with. Not once did I come close to "demeaning and insulting" any of those posters. This has something -- everything -- to do with the fact that none of those people are liars or timewasters or needling disingenuous trolls who are desperate to provoke a reaction they will then whinge endlessly about. Of course I was perfectly civil to all of them. I am in fact always civil to anyone who is civil to me and posting in good faith. So you're the liar. QED.

Your dishonesty goes further. That "list of insults" (LOL at you searching through my posts for them - everyone should have a hobby, I suppose) did not take place in a vacuum. Of course it didn't. But not only did you not quote the shitposts I was responding to, you omitted the dates and links that would have allowed any honest person to see the context for themselves.

So stop clutching those pearls, Doctor. You are kind of person who would accuse someone of intolerable and unprovoked cruelty for swatting at a mosquito that was biting him repeatedly. Quod erat bleeding demonstrandum.

As Simone Weil pointed out long ago: Evil is boring. Over and out.