This is a rant.
It stems from the recent Joe Rogan comment about Biden which turned out to be Trump. I'm an indie-leaning "progressive" who found this to be an important moment to call out for everyone.
The video, summarized:
Joe Rogan is proved wrong when claiming Biden said "one of the problems about the Revolutionary War was that we didn't have enough airports". Rogan goes on, "If you had any other job, and you were talking like that, they'd go, 'you're done'". "It's just the media narrative..." Then the actual Biden video is pulled up for him showing that Biden is quoting Trump, "This is the same stable genius who said the biggest problem we had in the Revolutionary War was that we didn't have enough airports". "Is that fake?", Rogan says. Producer, "It's not fake, here's the video..." Trump, "our army manned the airports, it ran the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do." Rogan, "Oh, he fucked up.." His guest, "that's the thing about the media today, you gotta look into it."
My comment:
Is there a sub for instances like this where people say something about "the other side" only to be immediately shown that it was their "side" who said it?
This post is iconic should be pinned to the top of every social site.
Soon after, I received a message from r/JusticeServed (a sub I don't actively participate in) saying,
Hello, You have been permanently banned from participating in r/JusticeServed because you broke this community's rules. You won't be able to post or comment, but you can still view and subscribe to it.
Note from the moderators:
You have been banned for participating in a subreddit that has consistently shown to provide refuge for users to promote hate, violence and misinformation (joerogan).
This fully automated ban has been performed by a bot that cannot determine context. Appeals will be provided for good-faith users upon request. You can reply to this message and ask for an appeal. Any other messages will be ignored. More information on the appeal process here: https://www.reddit.com/r/JusticeServed/wiki/botbanned
My appeal did not include kind words. I called them out for being fascists and being part of the reason why Reddit has become a shithole. My appeal closed with asking not to be un-banned. Then I received this message,
We are willing to reverse the ban only if you plan to stop supporting the target subreddit. Regardless of context, contributions you provide to the target subreddit is a material form of support.
Posting, Commenting, and Voting in a subreddit or on an item is a signal to Reddit and their advertisers that the participant believes that the community or comment or post has a legitimate reason for existing and serves a purpose for them.
There is no place for hate, violence and purposeful disinformation on Reddit. Those sub's advertisers should not be rewarded for the traffic metrics you and your peers provide to them by showing up and inflating those numbers.
They don't care what you say. They are just happy to have you continue to show up and refresh the page.
If this is something you can accept, to stop participating in the target subreddit, then please reply. If the bot hits you again for the same subreddit, you will not be unbanned a second time.
If you don't want to stop helping the target sub and their advertisers, then you can just ignore this message.
I responded, in part, with a full throated 'you can go fuck yourself'. This lead to a harassment warning from Reddit. I also noted the sub's 'motto' - "Too many times justice fails to prevail. These are not those times." For fucking real. I had also pointed out that what they're doing is analogous to DeSantis banning me from entering Florida just because I live in Philadelphia.
Dear JusticeServed, this is called cutting off your nose to spite your face.
I mean, this is the kind of shit that makes people more sympathetic to Musk and Rogan. I am not in support of nationalism or racism or misinformation. What I am in support of is common fucking sense.
It's very likely that had I maintained my composure I would have had a successful appeal. I didn't want to appeal to be unbanned though, I wanted to bring attention to their hypocrisy.
https://www.reddit.com/r/JusticeServed/comments/10jxlfk/justiceserveds_2_million_subscriber_extravaganza/
With the overturning of Roe v Wade, we saw a couple of subreddits pinning mod endorsed celebration threads. Why anyone would want to celebrate people losing rights is beyond me.
Rights? What rights are you supporting, JusticeServed? Certainly not Freedom of Speech. Spying on people and censoring them for actions they take in other communities sounds a lot like fascism to me.
The take away here is that we shouldn't put so much emotional weight on stupid shit like this that ultimately doesn't matter in our real lives. And in our real lives, we should be more cautious with judging people. Your current mood and state of mind can easily cause you to misinterpret someone else's words and (re)actions. We should all be more mindful to take a breath before reacting to something emotionally triggering. And, of course, fuck Reddit.
Apparently I am the one who has been living in an alternative reality for the past eight years.
All the headlines today are about how the democrats screwed up. What I have not seen discussed is how in the everlivingingfuck any person could possibly vote for Trump. There was nothing good about his presidency. By all measures, he was one of the worst presidents in American history (while Biden was one of the best in modern times).
We all, myself included, need an education about what the president does and how they can impact kitchen table economics. I mean, I find it hard to grasp that people would vote for Trump just because the cost of bread is up while ignoring the pages of lies, indictments, convictions, rapes, bankruptcies, coup attempts, impeachments, not to mention hate speech. I hope people still don't have the belief that the US president has any substantial impact on gas prices. The economic efforts of the Biden administration have fixed everything that Trump screwed up.
I still don't think people know what inflation is. And while we all have the world's information in our pockets, no-one cares enough to look it up. Inflation goes up because the demand for goods is higher than the supply - meaning either we were buying too much crap and/or there were environmental variables decreasing supply. Inflation happened because of the government stimulus checks, supply chain issues, and disease spread across livestock - it's a feature, not a bug. I get that all they care about is their grocery store bill but a basic understanding of economic policy would go a really long way. The Democratic policies, past and proposed, put consumer (and livestock) protections in place to prevent or minimize price gouging and monopolies and supply chain disruptions. The Republicans fight these bills because it would cut profits for corporations. Voting for a Republican is a vote for less regulation - it's the regulations that keep prices down. Unfortunately, government moves slow AF so a lot of times these regulations don't have an impact until the next president's term.
By all accounts, Trump is going to drain our wallets. I am terrified. I haven't had a raise in over ten years. I don't really have a skill set that can transfer well to other companies. I'm a renter with an amazing landlord (relatively cheap rent) but I was hoping to buy a house sometime in my lifetime. What Trump has proposed is going to substantially raise the prices of good and services. The Republican agenda is to strip the country of public services and make them private enterprises - raising the cost of living for everyone. I really don't know what I'm going to do for the next four years.
It's not the faulty of Democrats. It's the fault of the media and capitalism. It's the fault of crumbling journalism as people choose hot take emotional rage bait over educating themselves to understand why we are where we are. It's the fault of the DNC and RNC being too powerful and their fight against reasonable elections such as RCV or STAR voting. It's the fault of corporations controlling congress. The conspiracy that no one wants to acknowledge is that we're moving towards a country that is privately owned by a handful of billionaires.