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SE POSTED:
I blocked someone the other day. I rarely block people, but this person was so awful, I felt I had no choice. It was on my post about right-wingers accusing Kamala Harris, AOC, and other intelligent, articulate women of speaking in "word salad." This person posted a laugh-react on my post, then commented, "This must be satire!" and when one of my friends replied to that comment with a question mark, he said something like, "Aww, did I hurt its feelings?" I don't remember exactly what he said, and I didn't take a screen shot, but I do remember his use of "it" to demean my friend. Fortunately I was online at the time, so his comment was only there for a minute or so before I blocked him. How someone like that ended up on my friend list in the first place is a mystery, because I'm usually pretty careful to only add people when we have friends in common. But he had his friend list hidden, so I have no idea who he is or where he came from. He's never commented on one of my posts before.
He's blocked now, but I find myself thinking about his comments and how typical they are of someone on the right. Clearly he disagrees that Kamala and AOC are intelligent, articulate women who never speak in "word salad." But instead of having a rational discussion about it, he was insulting and condescending. When my friend commented with a question mark, he could have replied politely, with actual examples of "word salad" spoken by Kamala or AOC. And of course I realize that there ARE no examples of them speaking in word salad, but still, he obviously feels the way he feels for a reason, and I'm always trying to understand why people on the right are so hateful to those of us on the left who just want good things for everyone, including them. So this would have been a great opportunity to learn why so many people on the right have such a negative opinion of these 2 intelligent women. I've said it many times before, and I'll say it again: I WANT to understand. I WELCOME right-wingers to explain their thinking on my posts, but my only request is that they do it POLITELY. I feel like if both sides could talk to each other without the person on the right acting childish and throwing out insults for no reason, maybe we could actually find common ground. It just makes me feel bad that they are so unwilling to just COMMUNICATE. If you truly feel that every word out of Kamala or AOC's mouth is senseless "word salad," you should be able to provide examples. If you can provide even ONE example of senseless word salad coming from either of these women, I would genuinely love to know what it is. But all they ever do is turn to insults and childish behavior like refusing to answer a question and referring to the person who asked the question as "it." This is why we are so divided.
RC:
I wish I’d have seen his response, I would love to have responded!
I remember seeing his first comment and I looked at his posts - seems he’s some low-budget gear head type…. The cognitive dissonance with them is so bizarre, in that all they can think about is cars and “going fast” and doing tacky modifications. They don’t tend to pay attention to things outside their own world… which almost always consists of other guys like themselves.SE REPLIED:
I have had something similar happen in the past, and I intentionally keep a small FB circle - it’s not easy to squeeze through because I DO screen people before adding someone. I wonder if occasionally people sort of hijack an account of a “libtard,” then change the name on the account, and then go about harassing the friends of that person? Because so many people have their accounts locked and don’t make public posts, so it’s hard to impossible to go on their pages and make shitty remarks and such. I mean we all have FB friends who we only know ON FB and not in person, some are very quiet… so whenever I do get a comment from them, I’m like “WHO IS THIS?
I have had something similar happen in the past, and I intentionally keep a small FB circle - it’s not easy to squeeze through because I DO screen people before adding someone. I wonder if occasionally people sort of hijack an account of a “libtard,” then change the name on the account, and then go about harassing the friends of that person? Because so many people have their accounts locked and don’t make public posts, so it’s hard to impossible to go on their pages and make shitty remarks and such. I mean we all have FB friends who we only know ON FB and not in person, some are very quiet… so whenever I do get a comment from them, I’m like “WHO IS THIS?
RC:
I just couldn't stand his childish behavior, which is so typical of MAGA. I actually wanted you to be able to respond to him, but it was pretty clear that he wasn't going to have a rational discussion, he just wanted to spew a bunch of bile. It's an aspect of MAGA and the right which I find SO WEIRD. Why do they want to come across as petulant children? If they want to be taken seriously, how can they possibly think this is the way to communicate with people who have done nothing to provoke them? If I were going to express a differing opinion on a right-winger's post, the last thing I'd do is post laugh-reacts and then throw around insults without backing up my point. I'd be extra careful to be polite and articulate...but I guess they don't LIKE polite and articulate, because that's exactly what they consider "word salad."
RC:
RC:
And yeah, I thought I was pretty careful about who I add as a friend, because I had an incident years ago with a former friend who stalked me on Facebook by creating a fake profile. After she revealed herself and I blocked the fake profile, I decided to only add friends if we have other friends in common, or maybe if we are in a group together. Again, I have no memory of adding this psycho from my post the other day, but there had to have been some connection or else I wouldn't have added him. We must have had at least a few friends in common, or maybe we were in a group together. But I guess I'm going to have to be even MORE careful from now on. I don't mind if someone is on the right politically as long as they aren't one of these MAGA psychopaths who love to just spew hate and insults rather than having regular conversations. I'm not on Facebook for hate and insults, I'm here to share thoughts and ideas and hopefully have thought-provoking discussions. If he's incapable of doing that, he could have kept his mouth shut and I never even would have known he was there. I suppose it's good that he couldn't control himself because I certainly don't need that kind of rudeness in my life. But I just keep thinking, why are so many right-wingers incapable of explaining why they believe the things they do and having a normal conversation about it? Why do so many of them act so childish?
MK:
This person was a troll. Blocking him (or it) was the best thing you could do.
SP:
I block people all the time. I think there must be about 2000 people on my "blocked" list.
VKK:
Yeah, I rarely unfriend people, but both Pat and I unfriended a long time family friend after he basically said everyone needed to die in Iran after I posted about my professor losing family over there. It was absolutely sick. I also feel pretty bad that I had to look up AOC after some other friends mentioned her earlier this week.
that's how out of touch I've been with the news.
JA:
MAGA clearly doesn't stand for "Making a Great Argument."
When all is said and done, and the history books start writing about this era, one of the things that will come clearly into focus is that one of the defining characteristics of this period is the Decline of Discourse.
Remember the Monty Python "Argument Clinic" sketch, where the man goes in looking to have an intelligent argument, but all his "professional arguer" can offer is, "No, it isn't!" This feels awfully similar.
When you try to have a constructive discussion with MAGA, 99.9% of the time, you will get one of these four responses:
-- A widely circulated, worn-out Fox News talking point
-- "Prove it." (Even though you've just made an articulate point and cited sources... just not sources they choose to believe.)
-- A meme. ("Hey, look! Somebody else made this, and it makes sense to me, even with the spelling and grammatical errors, so it should make sense to you, too!")
-- An insult. Because when they've got no argument, when they've got no facts, when they don't even have an opinion they can call their own, they go for the insult. It's their only tried-and-true defense: becoming offensive.
They never even say, "I think you're wrong," because that would mean having to articulate a reason why they think you're wrong, and most of them are incapable of that.
And now, unfortunately, we're starting to see that happening among the far left, too. If you don't agree with everything they want, you're "Blue MAGA." If you think Hamas deserves any of the blame for what's happening in Gaza, you're "a supporter of genocide."
MK:
This person was a troll. Blocking him (or it) was the best thing you could do.
SP:
I block people all the time. I think there must be about 2000 people on my "blocked" list.
VKK:
Yeah, I rarely unfriend people, but both Pat and I unfriended a long time family friend after he basically said everyone needed to die in Iran after I posted about my professor losing family over there. It was absolutely sick. I also feel pretty bad that I had to look up AOC after some other friends mentioned her earlier this week.
that's how out of touch I've been with the news.JA:
MAGA clearly doesn't stand for "Making a Great Argument."
When all is said and done, and the history books start writing about this era, one of the things that will come clearly into focus is that one of the defining characteristics of this period is the Decline of Discourse.
Remember the Monty Python "Argument Clinic" sketch, where the man goes in looking to have an intelligent argument, but all his "professional arguer" can offer is, "No, it isn't!" This feels awfully similar.
When you try to have a constructive discussion with MAGA, 99.9% of the time, you will get one of these four responses:
-- A widely circulated, worn-out Fox News talking point
-- "Prove it." (Even though you've just made an articulate point and cited sources... just not sources they choose to believe.)
-- A meme. ("Hey, look! Somebody else made this, and it makes sense to me, even with the spelling and grammatical errors, so it should make sense to you, too!")
-- An insult. Because when they've got no argument, when they've got no facts, when they don't even have an opinion they can call their own, they go for the insult. It's their only tried-and-true defense: becoming offensive.
They never even say, "I think you're wrong," because that would mean having to articulate a reason why they think you're wrong, and most of them are incapable of that.
And now, unfortunately, we're starting to see that happening among the far left, too. If you don't agree with everything they want, you're "Blue MAGA." If you think Hamas deserves any of the blame for what's happening in Gaza, you're "a supporter of genocide."
With MAGA, it's generally a lack of education and strong reasoning skills. On the far left, it's the Twitter effect. They've grown up with everything being explained in short, simple sentences. TikTok amplified that by giving them short, slickly produced "explanations" accompanied by video meant to provoke and incite, rather than provide insight.
Anything with any kind of nuance is TL;DR.
And AI is just going to make things worse, because dodgy people creating dodgy algorithms will be creating the "quick summaries" that will be influencing people's opinions.
In this rush toward AI, people are forgetting how to use the surrounding BR and N. I hope the pendulum starts to swing back soon, because if the world is to survive, we need intelligent discourse to make a strong comeback.
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