I got bored of attack helicopter memes in mid 2014 and left /r/Tumblrinaction
I used to think TIA was funny, poking fun at the low-hanging fruit of spoiled suburbanite kids who have to dream up problems so they can feel edgy.
Then I realized it had become a right-wing echo chamber. Or maybe it was all along. I still can’t tell.
Yeah, I got sucked into that for a while, before gradually noticing that a lot of the stuff they were laughing at (“headmates”, “transethnic” people, etc.) seemed to be limited to a few extremely obscure Tumblr accounts instead of being widespread phenomena. A lot of communities that are based around dunking on people fall into the trap of focusing almost all of their attention on a tiny number of trolls and people with obscure personality disorders, but TIA fell for it really hard.
Also finally getting a little bit of exposure to sociology and philosophy made me a lot more open-minded about political and cultural movements. Even if there were a massive, influential community of Otherkin, it’s hard to argue that it’s any weirder or more threatening than, say, Christianity or car enthusiasts.
isn’t this community based almost entirely around dunking on Charlie Kirk & Ben Shapeeno?
I mean, it’s not limited to just them, but there’s definitely a bit of an echo chamber here in terms of making out all opposition to be harmless clowns.
Not even close, no. Nor are those people fringe trolls, they have audiences.
I avoided indoctrination by being a complete thick headed, bucket minded, starch pressed, ding dong of a child. When I was young and the internet was new, I got really into conspiracy theories. Complete child mentality. Enough brain power to see that something is wack but not enough to think critically about the “Illuminati” angle and process what capital is and how it manifests in society. Complete 1D level thinking.
“Ruby Ridge, that’s a yikes from me dawg. That’s why we should vote for less government.”
“Waco is why your mom should be a gun”
“Ted Kazinczy is why it takes 6-8 weeks to get anything from Lillian Vernon”
I would talk about conspiracy theories all the time and I remember there were people in my life that really wanted me to read “The Turner Diaries”. They would tell me “If you really want to know whats going on your should really read this book”. No lie, I thought that was the book that inspired the movie “Turner and Hooch” and would just smile and nod while thinking “Damn, Tom Hanks is cool and all but I don’t know what that has to do with what I’m talking about my dude.”
So when they asked if I read it I thought “yeah, I watched the movie that the same thing” and the radicalization process would always hit a dead end when they try to talk about the book and I kept thinking about scenes from a fucking buddy cop movie with a dog.
It also had the added side effect where for a while I associated white supremacist vibes with being a huge Tom Hanks fan.
How I avoided right wing indoctrination: the church told me as a child that gay marriage is immoral, so everything else they said immediately became suspect.
For me it started when the church told me people of other religions didn’t go to heaven. I asked them “what if they’re the ones who are right and we end up in hell for following a false god?”, and only got a “lol we’re right” as an answer. That day I stopped believing in anything the church and my catholic school said.
I was a libertarian for a short while, but then I realized I didn’t hate everyone else so I started reading about marxism
I was a libertarian for a short while, but then I realized I didn’t hate everyone else so I started reading about marxism
Yeah, my libertarianism was mostly fueled by the corruption in mexico’s government. It made believe business were a better solution to societal problems. Now I’m working on an article linking perception of government corruption with economic inequality. I truly believe that is big business’ new approach to weaken regulations
That was one of the first contradictions for me. The “we’re being persecuted!” narrative combined with the “They’re trying to legalize gay marriage!” narrative.
How are Christians being persecuted if non-Christians are the ones living under Christian theocratic laws?
Also the story about Stalin giving kids candy definitely had the opposite effect on me.
The teacher asked the class who believed in God. I am a Catholic Christian, so I raised my hand. Most of my other classmates did as well. She sort of had this smirk on her face when she asked everyone to pray to God for anything they wanted – so of course you could hear all of the children, including myself, praying. We prayed for mostly bikes, toys and other innocent things a five year old would pray for.
After we were done with our prayers, the teacher asked us all to open our eyes and see if all the things we prayed for God to give us were there. Of course there was nothing there, just us. So the teacher asked us to close our eyes again and pray to Fidel Castro for a piece of chocolate candy. We all closed our eyes and asked for the candy.
At that moment I could see from the corner of my eyes as my head was down, the teacher had a bag with her, and was dropping a piece of what looked like candy on each of our tables. When she was finished she asked us all to open our eyes and see if Fidel Castro was generous to give us the candy we had prayed for. Most of the students cheered in laughter and glee at how great Fidel Castro was.
first link on google -> https://news.unclesamsmisguidedchildren.com/communist-indoctrination-exchanging-a-piece-of-candy-for-truth/
I don’t remember this being about Cuba and Castro specifically, but when I was a kid this story was taught somewhere like it was a big deal.
Reading /pol/ degeneracy threads in early 2012 and realizing I was miserable and making it worse by immersing myself in that shit every day, so I started cutting back my 4chan use a good bit.
Then I got a student job a few months later with majority black coworkers and after six months or so quietly realized I was a racist with stupid brainworms that I couldn’t believe any more.
