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On March 15 2022 03:07 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2022 02:46 Doc.Rivers wrote:On March 15 2022 00:56 lestye wrote:
Not sure if I'm living under a rock, but the weirdest part of this Russia-Ukraine thing is seeing how there's actually, legit tankies out there, and they're supporting Putin's Russia for some reason? A large portion of the public has disengaged from the MSM because the MSM is not trustworthy. The polls show the MSM's approval rating to be in the gutter. So people turn to alternate sources, some of which are unfortunately even worse than the MSM. That's the situation though and part of the blame lies squarely with the MSM for losing the public's trust. You have the causality backwards. They’re not leaving mainstream media because it’s unreliable but because it’s reliable but they don’t agree with what it is reliably reporting. It used to be that the news was the news, whether or not you liked it. Nixon was a crook, just how it is. I mention Nixon because after Watergate there was a deliberate effort by the right to create their own counter media in order to allow people to pick their own news. https://web.archive.org/web/20110703074050/http://gawker.com/5814150/People have been given the ability to pick news that agrees with their underlying biases. That doesn’t mean the news that they disagree with is unreliable, it means that the biases are unreliable. The mainstream news is as trustworthy as ever in the sense that it is worthy of trust. The lack of trust is user error.
I think there are enough examples by now of scandals that turned out to be nothingburgers that we can say the media is unreliable (whether because of bias or otherwise) and therefore not worthy of trust. From there we can infer that the reason people are turning to other sources of info is because the media is untrustworthy. And the media is partly to blame because they chose the path of trumped up scandals and hysteria over reliable information.
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I rarely agree with Kwark, but it is also my opinion. It's people choosing their own brand of "news" because they don't like what media is showing.
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As much as we can dislike the media for its biases and shortcomings, I don't think relying on crazy people's unvetted twitter or facebook feeds survives the same muster.
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On March 15 2022 04:05 Doc.Rivers wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2022 03:07 KwarK wrote:On March 15 2022 02:46 Doc.Rivers wrote:On March 15 2022 00:56 lestye wrote:
Not sure if I'm living under a rock, but the weirdest part of this Russia-Ukraine thing is seeing how there's actually, legit tankies out there, and they're supporting Putin's Russia for some reason? A large portion of the public has disengaged from the MSM because the MSM is not trustworthy. The polls show the MSM's approval rating to be in the gutter. So people turn to alternate sources, some of which are unfortunately even worse than the MSM. That's the situation though and part of the blame lies squarely with the MSM for losing the public's trust. You have the causality backwards. They’re not leaving mainstream media because it’s unreliable but because it’s reliable but they don’t agree with what it is reliably reporting. It used to be that the news was the news, whether or not you liked it. Nixon was a crook, just how it is. I mention Nixon because after Watergate there was a deliberate effort by the right to create their own counter media in order to allow people to pick their own news. https://web.archive.org/web/20110703074050/http://gawker.com/5814150/People have been given the ability to pick news that agrees with their underlying biases. That doesn’t mean the news that they disagree with is unreliable, it means that the biases are unreliable. The mainstream news is as trustworthy as ever in the sense that it is worthy of trust. The lack of trust is user error. I think there are enough examples by now of scandals that turned out to be nothingburgers that we can say the media is unreliable (whether because of bias or otherwise) and therefore not worthy of trust. From there we can infer that the reason people are turning to other sources of info is because the media is untrustworthy. And the media is partly to blame because they chose the path of trumped up scandals and hysteria over reliable information.
What's a nothingburger according to your understanding/dictionary?
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On March 15 2022 02:46 Doc.Rivers wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2022 00:56 lestye wrote:
Not sure if I'm living under a rock, but the weirdest part of this Russia-Ukraine thing is seeing how there's actually, legit tankies out there, and they're supporting Putin's Russia for some reason? A large portion of the public has disengaged from the MSM because the MSM is not trustworthy. The polls show the MSM's approval rating to be in the gutter. So people turn to alternate sources, some of which are unfortunately even worse than the MSM. That's the situation though and part of the blame lies squarely with the MSM for losing the public's trust.
Could you please give a few examples of conservative non-MSM news sources that are more reputable than MSM news*? I'm unfamiliar with many of those conservative non-MSM sources, but I'd like to be educated on this, because I'm hoping you're not saying that Alex Jones and OAN are more accurate than CNN.
*MSM news technically includes Fox News, which is far and away the least accurate MSM news source, so I'd like to temporarily remove Fox from comparison, as that would set the bar much lower for overall MSM reliability.
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On March 15 2022 04:35 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2022 02:46 Doc.Rivers wrote:On March 15 2022 00:56 lestye wrote:
Not sure if I'm living under a rock, but the weirdest part of this Russia-Ukraine thing is seeing how there's actually, legit tankies out there, and they're supporting Putin's Russia for some reason? A large portion of the public has disengaged from the MSM because the MSM is not trustworthy. The polls show the MSM's approval rating to be in the gutter. So people turn to alternate sources, some of which are unfortunately even worse than the MSM. That's the situation though and part of the blame lies squarely with the MSM for losing the public's trust. Could you please give a few examples of conservative non-MSM news sources that are more reputable than MSM news*? I'm unfamiliar with many of those conservative non-MSM sources, but I'd like to be educated on this, because I'm hoping you're not saying that Alex Jones and OAN are more accurate than CNN. *MSM news technically includes Fox News, which is far and away the least accurate MSM news source, so I'd like to temporarily remove Fox from comparison, as that would set the bar much lower for overall MSM reliability.
You don't understand Darkplasmaball, the media prefers to report on actual wars instead of the war on christmas so we gotta listen to randoms on Telegram
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On March 15 2022 04:40 lestye wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2022 04:35 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 15 2022 02:46 Doc.Rivers wrote:On March 15 2022 00:56 lestye wrote:
Not sure if I'm living under a rock, but the weirdest part of this Russia-Ukraine thing is seeing how there's actually, legit tankies out there, and they're supporting Putin's Russia for some reason? A large portion of the public has disengaged from the MSM because the MSM is not trustworthy. The polls show the MSM's approval rating to be in the gutter. So people turn to alternate sources, some of which are unfortunately even worse than the MSM. That's the situation though and part of the blame lies squarely with the MSM for losing the public's trust. Could you please give a few examples of conservative non-MSM news sources that are more reputable than MSM news*? I'm unfamiliar with many of those conservative non-MSM sources, but I'd like to be educated on this, because I'm hoping you're not saying that Alex Jones and OAN are more accurate than CNN. *MSM news technically includes Fox News, which is far and away the least accurate MSM news source, so I'd like to temporarily remove Fox from comparison, as that would set the bar much lower for overall MSM reliability. You don't understand Darkplasmaball, the media prefers to report on actual wars instead of the war on christmas so we gotta listen to randoms on Telegram
This always makes me think of Jesus trying to invade the North Pole, to try to overthrow Santa as the number one winter magic man.
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IMO the troll farms / shills aren't a main ingredient in this concoction. There's:
- low trust in government / institutions
- fuzzy associative logic / general lack of discernment
- fear of not being in-the-know in volatile times
- gaining a sense of self-worth from contrarianism
To give you an example, here's something I see blamed on Russian disinfo in my country but I don't think they have anything to do with it at all.
Recently people in Romania and Bulgaria have been taking hypermarkets by storm hoarding absurd amounts of cooking oil, their logic is:
Ukraine = sunflowers, sunflowers = cooking oil, war in Ukraine = no more cooking oil.
Of course sunflowers aren't some kind of proprietary magical plants that only grow in Ukraine but this kind of "sounds right" logic spreads like wildfire in WhatsApp groups and word of mouth until a small but not insignificant amount of people heard it from their barber's girlfriend's uncle's dog and a few end up buying large amounts of cooking oil.
Then a few people sitting in line behind those guys checking out 30 liters of cooking oil take pictures and send them to the news. The news briefly mentions "some people are hoarding cooking oil out of fear it will run out due to the war" cause they have 24 hours to fill and not enough interesting things happen even during these times.
This creates a feedback loop between hoarders and news and all hell breaks loose. The government comes in and says "calm down, we produce enough cooking oil locally and there's enough right now for years", but people don't believe them because there's 0 trust in government. If anything, it has the opposite effect.
There's stores increasing the price to take more money from the fools and speculators buying it to re-sell it for more. This creates another feedback loop between the speculative prices and people's perception that their barber's girlfriend's uncle's dog was right and the government is lying.
Now even some reasonable people end up begrudgingly buying oil earlier than they otherwise would have, because the shelves might be empty for a while by the time their current bottle finishes.
Then the government fines some stores, prices go back to normal, and the supply chain eventually recovers.
And by that point people are already on to doing the exact same thing with another item, somehow having completely forgotten the last 10 times they hoarded something in the past 2 years at above-market cost and that none of it was necessary.
I believe a lot of the dumb shit we've seen during COVID and we see now during the war is just grassroots folk "wisdom" going viral, with mainstream news amplifying it without ill intent. Even Trump was embraced quite late by the conservative status quo, he wasn't so much pushed by them as he was pushed unintentionally by mainstream news due to his quotability compared to the other Republican candidates, precisely because of his childlike "solutions" to complex issues. We're in an age where pointing out how silly something is makes it grow.
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Your remarks about "- gaining a sense of self-worth from contrarianism" is extremely poignant. Dan from Folding Ideas did this great piece about the flat earther movement and how they moved onto QAnon. Before I thought they were just being crazy in a bubble.
And one thing that always bothered me is, these conspiracy theorists tend to be very tunnel visioned in what they believe. Ya, they'll believe in crazy conspiracy theories, but they seem to be very absent minded when it comes to actual conspiracy.
Like Trump's phone call with GA's AG. How are you gonna go on this rabbit trail with Hugo Chavez's ties with necromancy and Dominon and ignore actual conspiracies? There's an actual political agenda to their shenanigans.
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Now just by having Russian officials throw shit at the wall about migratory bird bioattacks, drug addicted gay nazi Ukranian politicians, etc, and having mainstream news quoting them you end up in a year with a significant minority of the population believing it just because it's suddenly "the other option". I'm not blaming the news for it or suggesting they shouldn't report on it, I don't know if there's any fix for this. You don't even need troll farms when having your minister of foreign affairs say something insane and all the news channels on the planet quoting it does all the work for you.
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On March 15 2022 03:23 lestye wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2022 02:06 Gorsameth wrote:On March 15 2022 00:56 lestye wrote:
Not sure if I'm living under a rock, but the weirdest part of this Russia-Ukraine thing is seeing how there's actually, legit tankies out there, and they're supporting Putin's Russia for some reason? The Republican base had to do a weird 180 when Trump required them to be supportive of Russia because Russia supported Trump. It shows that their opinions are not supported by their personal beliefs but by what their authoritive figurehead says. I know about Republicans, I'm talking about tankies. Like they seem to be advocating Russian imperialism because they distrust NATO/United States imperialism so much?
I'm probably the closest to being the resident "tankie" and I don't advocate Russian imperialism. I do think it's only rational (particularly for oppressed peoples) to distrust NATO (and/or it's constituent nations and the IMF) and opposition to US imperialism is necessary to any reasonable worldview.
I'm curious for an example of what you think is "tankies advocating Russian imperialism"?
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On March 15 2022 06:44 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2022 03:23 lestye wrote:On March 15 2022 02:06 Gorsameth wrote:On March 15 2022 00:56 lestye wrote:
Not sure if I'm living under a rock, but the weirdest part of this Russia-Ukraine thing is seeing how there's actually, legit tankies out there, and they're supporting Putin's Russia for some reason? The Republican base had to do a weird 180 when Trump required them to be supportive of Russia because Russia supported Trump. It shows that their opinions are not supported by their personal beliefs but by what their authoritive figurehead says. I know about Republicans, I'm talking about tankies. Like they seem to be advocating Russian imperialism because they distrust NATO/United States imperialism so much? I'm probably the closest to being the resident "tankie" and I don't advocate Russian imperialism. I do think it's only rational (particularly for oppressed peoples) to distrust NATO (and/or it's constituent nations and the IMF) and opposition to US imperialism is necessary to any reasonable worldview. I'm curious for an example of what you think is "tankies advocating Russian imperialism"?
Very left/communist people I follow on Twitter that buy into Russian going after neonazis and/or justified invasion because NATO is evil.
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On March 15 2022 06:46 lestye wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2022 06:44 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 15 2022 03:23 lestye wrote:On March 15 2022 02:06 Gorsameth wrote:On March 15 2022 00:56 lestye wrote:
Not sure if I'm living under a rock, but the weirdest part of this Russia-Ukraine thing is seeing how there's actually, legit tankies out there, and they're supporting Putin's Russia for some reason? The Republican base had to do a weird 180 when Trump required them to be supportive of Russia because Russia supported Trump. It shows that their opinions are not supported by their personal beliefs but by what their authoritive figurehead says. I know about Republicans, I'm talking about tankies. Like they seem to be advocating Russian imperialism because they distrust NATO/United States imperialism so much? I'm probably the closest to being the resident "tankie" and I don't advocate Russian imperialism. I do think it's only rational (particularly for oppressed peoples) to distrust NATO (and/or it's constituent nations and the IMF) and opposition to US imperialism is necessary to any reasonable worldview. I'm curious for an example of what you think is "tankies advocating Russian imperialism"? Very left/communist people I follow on Twitter that buy into Russian going after neonazis and/or justified invasion because NATO is evil.
Can you present an example rather than your interpretation/paraphrase of what they said? The revolutionaries (or "tankies") in the US I'm familiar with have a dialectical analysis that is unfavorable to the US and NATO and which understands (to the degree it can with the available information) the rationale for Putin's actions. It doesn't advocate or even justify the invasion, but it does understand it better than the internet psychoanalysis we've seen a lot of from Westerners.
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One thing that has been fascinating about Russia getting hammered by this ordeal is seeing them call in their compromised folks like Gabbard. The bat signal couldn't be any more obvious. Calling in the favors in a time of need is as clear as day. Weird to see, but also encouraging to know they are sweating.
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Northern Ireland25302 Posts
On March 15 2022 03:23 lestye wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2022 02:06 Gorsameth wrote:On March 15 2022 00:56 lestye wrote:
Not sure if I'm living under a rock, but the weirdest part of this Russia-Ukraine thing is seeing how there's actually, legit tankies out there, and they're supporting Putin's Russia for some reason? The Republican base had to do a weird 180 when Trump required them to be supportive of Russia because Russia supported Trump. It shows that their opinions are not supported by their personal beliefs but by what their authoritive figurehead says. I know about Republicans, I'm talking about tankies. Like they seem to be advocating Russian imperialism because they distrust NATO/United States imperialism so much?
See my previous post/theory. Dan and Jimmy provided stuff that I think ties in/augments it, although I’d diverge a wee bit personally too.
I’m in a fair amount of real hard left tacking pages and insofar as my anecdotes prove anything there’s a ridiculous amount of tankie support.
I use the word support quite deliberately. As a quite distinct phenomenon from ‘its complicated’ thru to ‘but what about the West equivocation’, full on ‘this is a good thing’ nonsense.
There is choice in the matter, sometimes, or to varying degrees. A Chinese person may be functionally restricted in accessing certain information, a Russian person may have pathways still open, but is more immediately surrounded by misinformation, or particular angles in the surrounding culture and mainstream media. Someone in the West is reasonably free to pick and choose.
What guides those choices? Certainly an ability to personally curate your sources of information, a wider distrust of the mainstream feed into it.
Even when I was a teen politics nerd. Which isn’t THAT long ago, mainstream narratives were considered largely ballpark accurate, or at least a springboard for subsequent ideological divergence. My left wing interpretation of x event may be different from whoever I’m talking to, we tended not to disagree on the event vaguely happening as reported. Conspiracies/theories were a fun, almost detached thing from the issues of the day. Yeah we’ll share what pet theory as to who shot JFK we subscribe to, and then we’d talk about the ‘real politics stuff’, they were more discrete whereas nowadays they seem rather blurred boundary wise.
It’s frustrating as I’ve alluded to it a few times here, have yet to find it again a rare non paywalled paper! In this instance shared traits/rough psychological profile of people who tended to be attracted to conspiracy theories.
It’s a bit old, so I think the blurring I referenced kind of comes into play, but the vague ideas remain, IMO solid. Swap out the reasonably small subset of people into the ‘classic’ conspiracy theories about a Flat Earth or the Moon landings being faked into a wider group of people who seek ‘alternative narratives’
From memory, and adding of my own takes
1. Not everyone’s that bright, interconnected geopolitics is complicated. Rather than accept its complexities and ‘I don’t know’, some folks seem to prefer to have the surety of being a confirmed idiot rather than admit to knowledge gaps.
2. The kind of pathological contrarian streak some people, as I mentioned before.
3. Kind of ties into 1. You see this with anti-Semitic conspiracies, to take one example, a conversion of a complex world of competing poles of power, ethics and conflicting vested interests into quite simplistic top-down narratives. Easier to mentally process despite being well, wrong.
4. The capacity to find holes on the internet where almost anything has enough other adherents to reinforce whatever it is you believe.
5. Ties more into conventionally intelligent/bright people, who would seem to be outliers in these wider trends. In terms of peer interactions though they’re used to being the smartest person in their primary/secondary school environment, or up to that. But eventually you’ll end up in an environment where you’re no longer at the top of the relative pile. So depending on how one is wired, you either accept this state of affairs or go into the world of ‘alternative facts’ where you can be an expert.
I mean it’s crude and I’m generalising hugely but I hope my bollocks sparks some convo
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On March 15 2022 07:16 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2022 06:46 lestye wrote:On March 15 2022 06:44 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 15 2022 03:23 lestye wrote:On March 15 2022 02:06 Gorsameth wrote:On March 15 2022 00:56 lestye wrote:
Not sure if I'm living under a rock, but the weirdest part of this Russia-Ukraine thing is seeing how there's actually, legit tankies out there, and they're supporting Putin's Russia for some reason? The Republican base had to do a weird 180 when Trump required them to be supportive of Russia because Russia supported Trump. It shows that their opinions are not supported by their personal beliefs but by what their authoritive figurehead says. I know about Republicans, I'm talking about tankies. Like they seem to be advocating Russian imperialism because they distrust NATO/United States imperialism so much? I'm probably the closest to being the resident "tankie" and I don't advocate Russian imperialism. I do think it's only rational (particularly for oppressed peoples) to distrust NATO (and/or it's constituent nations and the IMF) and opposition to US imperialism is necessary to any reasonable worldview. I'm curious for an example of what you think is "tankies advocating Russian imperialism"? Very left/communist people I follow on Twitter that buy into Russian going after neonazis and/or justified invasion because NATO is evil. Can you present an example rather than your interpretation/paraphrase of what they said? The revolutionaries (or "tankies") in the US I'm familiar with have a dialectical analysis that is unfavorable to the US and NATO and which understands (to the degree it can with the available information) the rationale for Putin's actions. It doesn't advocate or even justify the invasion, but it does understand it better than the internet psychoanalysis we've seen a lot of from Westerners.
Around my neck of the woods a tankie is less interested in leftism and moreso interested in authoritarianism, and Stalin's USSR in particular. Tankies would very much be pro annexation of Ukraine since it 1. involves revival of their favorite authoritarian regime, and 2. they're big on "militant communism," aka invading other countries and imposing communism.
If Im not mistaken the term tankie comes from people who cheered the USSR crushing a different communist regime in an eastern european country with their military.
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On March 15 2022 07:16 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2022 06:46 lestye wrote:On March 15 2022 06:44 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 15 2022 03:23 lestye wrote:On March 15 2022 02:06 Gorsameth wrote:On March 15 2022 00:56 lestye wrote:
Not sure if I'm living under a rock, but the weirdest part of this Russia-Ukraine thing is seeing how there's actually, legit tankies out there, and they're supporting Putin's Russia for some reason? The Republican base had to do a weird 180 when Trump required them to be supportive of Russia because Russia supported Trump. It shows that their opinions are not supported by their personal beliefs but by what their authoritive figurehead says. I know about Republicans, I'm talking about tankies. Like they seem to be advocating Russian imperialism because they distrust NATO/United States imperialism so much? I'm probably the closest to being the resident "tankie" and I don't advocate Russian imperialism. I do think it's only rational (particularly for oppressed peoples) to distrust NATO (and/or it's constituent nations and the IMF) and opposition to US imperialism is necessary to any reasonable worldview. I'm curious for an example of what you think is "tankies advocating Russian imperialism"? Very left/communist people I follow on Twitter that buy into Russian going after neonazis and/or justified invasion because NATO is evil. Can you present an example rather than your interpretation/paraphrase of what they said? The revolutionaries (or "tankies") in the US I'm familiar with have a dialectical analysis that is unfavorable to the US and NATO and which understands (to the degree it can with the available information) the rationale for Putin's actions. It doesn't advocate or even justify the invasion, but it does understand it better than the internet psychoanalysis we've seen a lot of from Westerners.
stuff like this
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EPT
