Don't go
I'll give you two upvotes, see if you can find the surprise in the YouTube videos, I am waiting
Don't give up now
Which one was your favorite? Which time that Bernie Sanders voted to send weapons to Israel? I can't wait to hear! Don't leave me hanging! I really wanted to hear.
I mean you're right to call me out on that other thing. I definitely remember the time when someone at Eurovision got up and did this, it was right between Spain and Portugal. I do agree, it would be wonderful if someone would do something like that in the US Senate, not just at Eurovision. It's honestly shameful that Bernie Sanders never did anything like that when Eurovision has been running commercials like this. Honestly, you're right, and I feel bad for ever doubting your insight here.
Yeah, absolutely.
https://sh.itjust.works/comment/21079358
This fuckin' dingbat I can't even
Edit: So maybe I'm fooling myself, but I do feel like I've gotten a little bit capable with spotting which ones of them are the deliberate disruptors as opposed to people who got fooled by them and are echoing. The major tells of the totally fake accounts are:
- Low effort. They don't try very hard to convince you. It doesn't have to make sense, they don't really read what people are saying, they just blandly repeat the same kinds of stuff. Most people who sincerely believe that Bernie betrayed the Palestinian people and all our hopes that he would finally say something against Israel (for example) will at least seem like they believe it themselves, they'll get upset about something specific that happened, or they'll misunderstand various facts but sincerely talk about them, or similar. The people who are deliberately lying will just kind of fart out their little shtick and then move on to the next comment. Some of the sloppier ones, if you check the profile, don't really bother to engage with anything that isn't their designated political talking points. They'll just kind of spray one-liner "I sure do love Helldivers mm boy" comments in other communities but the only thing they ever put any effort into is particular repetitive political points.
- A lot of times their reactions don't really need to match what you're saying. They have a tendency for example to tell you what you believe ("I get you’re trying to run interference over criticism of Bernie"), instead of responding to what you said, and then start arguing with the strawman. Of course real people do that too, but most real people at least have some interest in reading and responding to what the message they're responding to actually says. A lot of the shill messages could literally apply to any message. Try mentally shuffling them around, so that what they said is a response to some totally different comment, and then if it still fits 100% equally as well, then that's a warning sign.
- A lot of times they have the same handful of arguments that go on repeat. It's like 5-10 little nuggets (AOC voted to send weapons to Israel! Bernie doesn't call it a genocide!) and they tend to fall back on them and totally ignore anything else. Also, crucially, they tend to introduce unrelated ones randomly even when the topic is some totally different thing. For example look at how many people in these comments are bringing up AOC.
- Often if you check in their profile you'll see a lot of overlap between multiple talking points. Some of the comments are just low-effort spray of random comments, but a lot of their political or meaningful engagement will be the exact same variety of various points. Historically, some of the sloppier ones would tend to overlap ones that really didn't fit (Ukraine is escalating the war and it's really dangerous, NATO needs to stop! I sure do wish Kamala Harris wasn't so pro-genocide, I'm definitely not voting for her!) all from the same account.
That is my short maybe-totally-wrong field guide to identifying the bad accounts on Lemmy. Not 100%, your mileage may vary, I have no real idea but this is what I've observed and guessed at.
I get you’re trying to run interference over criticism of Bernie, a sitting U.S. senator, but Eurovision hasn’t been voting to send weapons to Israel.
Yes! I can't tell you how many times he has voted to send weapons to Israel. Literally every single time. It is known!
Which one was your favorite? Which time did he vote for weapons to Israel that wasn't some wild mischaracterization like "his vigorous attempt to stop sending weapons to Israel doesn't count because actually it means he was in favor of all the other times we sent weapons to Israel (which he also vigorously opposed)"? Which bill and what did he vote for that was sending weapons to Israel? This definitely isn't a bunch of nonsense so I'd love to hear more.
(YouTube videos "people were hoping for him to make a stand" get the fuck out of here lol)
I am not saying that there is a lot of actual fighting.
Yes, glad we agree. There is not "fighting" between Israeli airstrikes, tanks, and coordinated infantry, and Palestinian families and occasional small arms by any Hamas people or irregulars still left alive. There is however quite a lot of dying. That was my point.
Yeah, maybe that's fair. On the other hand it was pretty clear two years ago that Israel was a genocidal monster, it just has become a lot more unanimous and urgent viewpoint since they started a new phase of the active genocide. But yeah, posting the thing about evacuating babies from Gaza isn't nearly as suspect two years ago as it would be now.
To me, the thing with PugJesus seems a lot more suspicious. That raised a ton of red flags for me, I don't really see any reason you would do that whole sequence of actions if there wasn't some kind of plot behind it. And then, looked at it that light, it starts to become a lot more weird for them to start this super public beef with dbzer0.
I didn't call them children because they disagreed with me. Plenty of people disagree with me, it comes with the territory of me being an opinionated loudmouth, and honestly it rarely bothers me.
I called them children because they were bullying and banning a trans person when she tried to disagree with their handling of trans issues, while crying about "abuse" if people dared to give their friends downvotes, among other similar behavior.
Citation to remind about specifics if you want it
It's a really good question. So democracy isn't a magic bullet. Putin gets elected every term, Hitler got elected (more or less). One element of democracy actually working the way it's supposed to is the freedom to vote, but also one element of it is subjecting the machinery that selects candidates to people's meaningful input, one element of it is a free enough media and educational system so that people will be able to put their votes in with some understanding and knowledge behind them.
Right now, we sort of have the first, kind of, but the second and third elements the US just doesn't have. It's barely functioning. I think it's not really surprising that the results we're getting are so objectively horrifying. I just want to describe the problem in terms of how it actually developed. This whole diagnosis where "Of course the Latinos had perfect knowledge of what Trump was going to do, but they voted for him anyway, so now it's their fault that it's coming true after they voted for him" is just very obviously not true to me. Obviously they were fooled in some sense about it, because he planning to directly endanger them and their families' safety, so we need to get to the bottom of how that happened and what can be done about it in the future. I do think there is some role played by, roughly speaking, "Latino culture is macho in some ways and Trump did macho messaging that appealed to them." But saying that's the whole way it happened (as some people are apparently) is 1,000% missing the point to me.
Let me ask you a question: The behavior of Sinclair before this happened, when they were just buying up local TV stations and corrupting them with propaganda ("this is extremely dangerous to our democracy"), was that fine? Because they're a private company, and free speech? The government wasn't involved in that.
Was Apple TV cancelling Jon Stewart's podcast because he criticized China fine? I don't think the government told them to do that, that was just a private business doing private business things.
I'm not asking if those things were legal, I'm asking if you think there was nothing of concern about them.
https://lemmy.world/post/35806638
I literally don't see even a single comment saying that the Netherlands is bad for not having done this previously. Let alone anything like this or this.
Does that way of explaining it make sense?