What website is that from, just so I never accidentally end up there?
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When you see something that looks like that it’s probably from 4chan. That’s what image boards look like. The green background is because it’s from one of the websites that automatically archive posts from 4chan that hit the bump limit. Orange is from a NSFW board, and blue is from a SFW board.
The crappy drawn image is a variation of several memes that the green text represents, originally starting as a myopic self-reflection and winding up as standard bullying.
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Ah, that’s why it’s so unfamiliar… I’ve never once been on 4Chan; the site already had a toxic rep when I first heard of it.
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Yes. 4Chan. And no, you don’t ever want to end up there. I am still haunted by the shit from 10 years ago!
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Well, that and the simple fact that the right tends to accuse the left of what the right is doing.
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I mean it’s the source of this QAnon crap (a retread of pizzagate), pizzagate (a retread of gamergate), and gamergate along with many of the other toxic trends in politics.
The problem is 4chan became this way because is didn’t moderate heavily, and had places where it really didn’t moderate at all. Twitter’s current state is basically the same as 4chan a long time ago, then it got worse, got slightly better, and then gamergate and the 2016 election happened. Now they have fairly heavy human moderation to keep the different boards on topic and the creator abandoned ship.
It’s still one of the best places to go for tabletop pdfs, but how far /pol/ reaches makes posting basically impossible.
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If I’ve avoided it all these years, I think I can easily continue to do so.
Even if it were not a digital cesspool, which it most certainly is, that user interface looks utterly atrocious.
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The Qanon thing has been going on for a long while now, and has only been growing. If anything, the spotlight seems to be making it wilt.
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You do know that you don’t need to post info twice here, yeah?
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There isn’t so much a rise in conspiracy theories, but a rise in the visibility of conspiracy theories. I’d recommend Jesse Walker’s The United States of Paranoia. (I disagree with his main thesis, a refutation of Hofstader’s claim that conspiracy and paranoia are limited to the fringes except in times crisis and increased stress, because his taxonomy of paranoia is organized exclusively in regards to its direction, not its severity). Whether it’s a red under every bed, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Anti-Masons, etc. etc., this goes back as long as civilization.
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Qanon told the world that “John Podesta is going to be arrested on Nov. 4th 2017 and riots will start in several major cities as the military takes control”, and it didn’t happen, BUT they still keep believing Qanon is real, so how can anyone stop Qanon? It’s like arguing the logistics of Noah’s Ark with a Creationist.
Even if the person/persons behind Qanon comes out and admits it was just trolling, there will still be dumb-ass Trumplidites saying “it’s all part of the plan.”
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Probably!
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Psssssst.
How would ya like to buy Q?
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I see. So by,
you figuratively mean that Anonymous isn’t effective and shouldn’t receive coverage (a proposition i don’t necessarily disagree with). Because, in as much as these ad-hoc conglomerations of people with only slightly convergent goals can be said to exist, they do.
From the Q clearance wikipedia entry:
1 In popular culture
- In the show Archer Season 6 Episode 7 “Nellis”, Sterling Archer uses Q Clearance to gain access to Area 51 after landing illegally on the air strip.
2 See also
- QAnon – an supposed anonymous conspiracy theorist who claims to have Q clearance, yet whose conspiracy does not appear to relate to nuclear information in any way.
I don’t know how I am going to feel if this whole thing is based on a throwaway line in Archer. That bit from the “see also” section is also pretty damning if the insanity of the conspiracy itself isn’t enough to put them off.
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Been thinking this a lot lately too. Critical thinking is a skill, and some people don’t practice it much. Combine that with all the media coming at us through new tech (not that that’s bad, I just think we’re new at filtering through it), as well as the switching of social groups from IRL to online, where bubbles are easier to form through confirmation bias, and I think we get stuff like this. These conspiracy theories are poorly filling a need for them that we’re wired for.
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True, and thanks to the assault on public education, that’s only going to get worse. People unable to think critically, tend to more easily accept authority figures’ statements as true, regardless of the facts. And the internet bubbles we find ourselves in tend to reinforce our own world views instead of pushing to have us question them.
Totally true again!
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So what do we do to help them? I have a few friends that are hard right conspiracy nuts. So far, I’m treating them like someone suffering under a drug addiction, or who have fallen into a cult. I try to discuss it with them without judging when they want to talk about it. I won’t put up with hate speech, but I keep that door open for dialogue because I want that 2AM call when they say everyone hates them and has turned away. I’m hoping that’s when they’re ready to change.
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A lot of conspiracy theories remind me of something like doing a Rorschach test, and instead of the subject saying “it looks like two bugs fighting” he/she said “it IS two bugs fighting! It’s not a two-dimensional image, it’s two actual living insects!” I can understand how someone could amass enough “clues” to make pizzagate look like a possibility, but the fact they jump to the level of “it’s 100% real” is confounding. “Qanon” is another step deeper down that rabbit hole-- so a Rorschach test that looks like a pizza not only IS a pizza, but the subject eats it and says “it’s a delicious pizza!” as they chew up a piece of paper.
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