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Unpacking the Great Reset & 15 minute tin foil tropes

Conspiracies ain't going away, they seem to be rising and winning the argument. I'm starting to lose track of idiotic things people are trying to have conversations with me about (I usually say something sarcastic and walk away).

In the last 2 weeks I've had:

"The Muslims are taking over. We'll all be Muslim soon"

Some complete misogynistic bullshit about women's football that "proves they have more rights than men these days".

And then yesterday, "I'm not touching anything from Bill Gates. He's putting nanotech in Coke"
Me: "He's doing what?"
Them: "Control the food control the people"
Me: "You know Kissinger never said that, not even Kissinger. It's from a satirical website."
Them" Who's Kissinger? Gates is chipping us."
Me: "You better stop drinking coke then" (walks away)
Them: "Oh I have!" (every cloud and all that)

I stress these are otherwise sane, normal people. Run-of-the-mill people.

Everyone is OD'ing on algorithms and it's getting both depressing and dangerous. It is now normal conversation to say these things.
 
The inheritence tax on farms is now being linekd to WEF, you will own nothing and be happy, conspiracy tropes. I actually disagree with the IT on working farms as it goes but it's an area attracting the far right and other wackos.
 
I stress these are otherwise sane, normal people. Run-of-the-mill people.

Everyone is OD'ing on algorithms and it's getting both depressing and dangerous. It is now normal conversation to say these things.
Was saying to @ska invita only the other day, one of my neighbours who was an occasional drinking friend seems to have gone big with his Musk, Sharron Davies, and Together Dec support. He's an engineering consultant, same age as I (just under 50), PhD, otherwise usual guy. This can only have developed through the pandemic and spending a lot of time on his twitter and social media.

I've lost a few friends who ended up deep in the 'GCer' hole, way beyond having tangible concerns about any perceived impact and interplay of womens and trans rights, and that acted as a wedge into other areas too which I could forsee it doing. And from what I can see through nitter, one once friend is regurgitating this stuff many times each day which looks really unhealthy and I just don't recognise them. I've tried to talk in a few cases, but it got very difficult.

Some old rave mates seem to have ended up in some alt-right holes too, which got worse during lockdown inspired I think by the whole 'freedom' thing from the likes of Rampling. One of them has descended into full-on WEF/NWO stuff. I mean, I'm a libertarian communist, and have concerns about overreaching state power, civil liberties, etc. but kin'ell, some of the stuff I've seen just keeps expanding in ever mad territories.

You only have to look in on nitter to see what ought to be seemingly uncontroversial posts made by people or organisations (e.g. a charity making somewhere or something more accessible, having services and shops within reasonable distance) to be on the receiving end of some bewildering culture or conspiracy waring.
 
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I mean, I'm a libertarian communist, and have concerns about overreaching state power, civil liberties, etc. but kin'ell, some of the stuff I've seen just keeps expanding in ever mad territories.

One of the frustrating things about this is that you can end up arguing in support of things and people you really don't want to just because they're a bit less mad isn't it. I had this with my brother during the pandemic, I found myself there going 'look Boris Johnson really isn't conspiring to take away your freedom FFS'. It just moves any argument onto such ridiculous territory there's nowhere to go.
 
Was saying to @ska invita only the other day, one of my neighbours who was an occasional drinking friend seems to have gone big with his Musk, Sharron Davies, and Together Dec support. He's an engineering consultant, same age as I (just under 50), PhD, otherwise usual guy. This can only have developed through the pandemic and spending a lot of time on his twitter and social media.

I've lost a few friends who ended up deep in the 'GCer' hole, way beyond having tangible concerns about any perceived impact and interplay of womens and trans rights, and that acted as a wedge into other areas too which I could forsee it doing. And from what I can see through nitter, one once friend is regurgitating this stuff many times each day which looks really unhealthy and I just don't recognise them. I've tried to talk in a few cases, but it got very difficult.

Some old rave mates seem to have ended up in some alt-right holes too, which got worse during lockdown inspired I think by the whole 'freedom' thing from the likes of Rampling. One of them has descended into full-on WEF/NWO stuff. I mean, I'm a libertarian communist, and have concerns about overreaching state power, civil liberties, etc. but kin'ell, some of the stuff I've seen just keeps expanding in ever mad territories.

You only have to look in on nitter to see what ought to be seemingly uncontroversial posts made by people or organisations (e.g. a charity making somewhere or something more accessible, having services and shops within reasonable distance) to be on the receiving end of some bewildering culture or conspiracy waring.
A council scheme to make the pavement wider on a town centre road in the town where I live in (and thereby reducing the number of on street parking spaces) has been jumped on by some of these types as part of the 15 minute city agenda.
 
The thing about the 15 minute city stuff is that I have never lived anywhere urban that doesn't already meet all or most of the criteria: supermarket and other shops; GP and dentist; primary and secondary schools; shops and supermarkets.

Even in rural Derbyshire I was only 20 minutes uphill and 15 minutes downhill from Bolsover which has all the above plus a teutonic schloss where posh horse antics go on.

 
Conspiracies ain't going away, they seem to be rising and winning the argument. I'm starting to lose track of idiotic things people are trying to have conversations with me about (I usually say something sarcastic and walk away).

In the last 2 weeks I've had:

"The Muslims are taking over. We'll all be Muslim soon"

Some complete misogynistic bullshit about women's football that "proves they have more rights than men these days".

And then yesterday, "I'm not touching anything from Bill Gates. He's putting nanotech in Coke"
Me: "He's doing what?"
Them: "Control the food control the people"
Me: "You know Kissinger never said that, not even Kissinger. It's from a satirical website."
Them" Who's Kissinger? Gates is chipping us."
Me: "You better stop drinking coke then" (walks away)
Them: "Oh I have!" (every cloud and all that)

I stress these are otherwise sane, normal people. Run-of-the-mill people.

Everyone is OD'ing on algorithms and it's getting both depressing and dangerous. It is now normal conversation to say these things.

It's getting worse, and sometimes wonder if we're ever coming back from this. So much information out there and so much bullshit to navigate. It's like knowledge becomes political, if that makes any sense?

How do you explain to someone who's down the conspiracy route and maybe doesn't have critical thinking, that what they believe to be fake news isn't?
 
We're still in the early days of the internet and it's having lots of weird effects, including this one. We've no idea what any of this looks like in 20 years time, let alone 50 years, but we do know that people will continue to be flooded with information, much of it bad quality. If we had forward-thinking politicians (lol) they would start adjusting school education to help people interpret the information they're accessing online. But since school education wasn't even adjusted sufficiently to address widespread reading and newspapers, I'm not optimistic it will be changed now to help people deal with the internet.
 
We're still in the early days of the internet and it's having lots of weird effects, including this one. We've no idea what any of this looks like in 20 years time, let alone 50 years, but we do know that people will continue to be flooded with information, much of it bad quality. If we had forward-thinking politicians (lol) they would start adjusting school education to help people interpret the information they're accessing online. But since school education wasn't even adjusted sufficiently to address widespread reading and newspapers, I'm not optimistic it will be changed now to help people deal with the internet.

Also, some politicians and parents may object to kids being taught to develop critical faculties, to be able to sift through the mire of disinformation.
 
It's getting worse, and sometimes wonder if we're ever coming back from this. So much information out there and so much bullshit to navigate. It's like knowledge becomes political, if that makes any sense?

How do you explain to someone who's down the conspiracy route and maybe doesn't have critical thinking, that what they believe to be fake news isn't?
I was having a quick drink with these two blokes from the Wirral on Friday . One doesn’t read any news , just what his mate tells him and the other doesn’t read or listen to the MSN. One of them announced that his son had told him that his mate had told him that ‘ immigrants are fiddling the tests to get into the local secure mental Heath unit in order to get a place to live which pushes local people to the back of the queue ‘
 
Also, some politicians and parents may object to kids being taught to develop critical faculties, to be able to sift through the mire of disinformation.
Yes, there's a history of media studies, for example, being treated as a kind of joke subject all through the period when people were getting their information from newspaper, radio and television. Is that idiots being idiots, or did the commentators who turned it into a joke fear that people might critically analyse their commentary? Bit of both probably.

In my view media studies should have been a core subject, and now it should be something like media/information studies, where students look at things like 5G causes cancer memes that circulate on whatsapp.
 
Basic science and technology understanding is lamentably poor and religion normalises magical thinking....

EDIT :-

As a distraction I've been spending far too much time learning about key players in the 5G / ULEZ arena.
Mark Steele apart from fantasising his "expertise", literally shot a girl in the head when he was a bouncer and no one seems to care.
Barrie Trower confuses microwaves with SONAR and 5G with 5GHz WiFi ...
And the trouble is conspiracists won't believe reliable fact-checking sources ...
 
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We're still in the early days of the internet and it's having lots of weird effects, including this one. We've no idea what any of this looks like in 20 years time, let alone 50 years, but we do know that people will continue to be flooded with information, much of it bad quality. If we had forward-thinking politicians (lol) they would start adjusting school education to help people interpret the information they're accessing online. But since school education wasn't even adjusted sufficiently to address widespread reading and newspapers, I'm not optimistic it will be changed now to help people deal with the internet.
yeah ive been hoping this is just a generational shift and the kids coming through would know how to navigate all this instinctually and self regulate as a community of peers....take the piss out of each other for falling for dumb crap......but then you see how particularly polluted this young generation is with all this and that hope goes out the window

might still sort itself i guess
 
I have a TikTok account though barely touch it. The algorithm therefore still doesn't quite know what to show me because I'm barely on there longer than a few minutes every other week, it's just something I signed up for and occasionally remember I have

Scrolling through the feed, when I remember I have it, is a strange experience because the algorithm is trying to fathom me out. Worryingly it throws up conspiracy and wacko nonsense, all unchecked and unverified, amongst clips of celebs I've never heard of and toilet roll bulk buy offers. All the traits are there from usual far out tinfoil rubbish: the gloomy drone soundtrack, the slow zoom into an obscure detail on a photograph, the suggestion that the "full story" is there if you subscribe to watch other videos. It's a subscription service to hell. I been spot bullshit pretty well. Others struggle and that's how we end up with friends and relatives slipping from our grasp.
 
We're still in the early days of the internet and it's having lots of weird effects, including this one. We've no idea what any of this looks like in 20 years time, let alone 50 years, but we do know that people will continue to be flooded with information, much of it bad quality. If we had forward-thinking politicians (lol) they would start adjusting school education to help people interpret the information they're accessing online. But since school education wasn't even adjusted sufficiently to address widespread reading and newspapers, I'm not optimistic it will be changed now to help people deal with the internet.
I've got teenage kids and this is coming in at school.
 
My brother, who back in the 70s was wading into the NF and physically defending the Anti Nazi League from the fash, is now heavily into tick tock and xitter.

I had rows over some of the bigoted right wing shite he was sending me (fortunately I couldn't see the ticktock shit but I got the gist). I saw him a couple of days ago and he was talking about "the Rothchilds". I mean, what the actual fuck?!?!

It's really upset me. He's always been a kind and gentle person (I was always the stroppy cunt) so I don't understand this shift. His wife has been spotted gobbing off about being a proud Reform supporter so maybe there's some household echo chamber reinforcing this shit. I don't know.
 
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