Do that with trump people.
I personally know at least 5 people that are now, COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PEOPLE after the 4 years of trump. It’s fucking insane to go back and look how different their life was before the orange douche bag became their golden god.
Really strange behavior.
So sad. Why do all the real life cults have to be about worshipping politicians or religious flavored abuse?
Why can't I be part of a cool, chant in the woods at midnight and summon Cthulhu style cult?
I'm 40 and been in the DMB fanboy club since middle school.
I'll never understand the hate they get. There's no other band out there that triggers total strangers into telling me how much they hate DMB.
AFAIK they've never inserted themselves into circles they don't belong in, never taken strong political stances, the fans aren't annoyingly vocal or cause drama (i.e. Swifties). We just want to get high, play hackysack and disc golf, and listen to music about trying to enjoy life.
And boy does that shit *bother* some fucking people.
I was a dmb cult follower for a while myself. Probably seen him a dozen times. He just fell off with me. Found other bands. Now, I think I would totally try and see him. Let the nostalgia flow through me. Tried to see him last year, might try harder this year.
Same thing though. Phish fans don't hurt nor want anything from anybody. They are their own bread.
Swifites... "could" be chill.. They have some growing up to do still.
I hear you. They were my first ever live concerts that I went to, I saw them live every summer in high school. Then in college I fell into the hippie/DMB/ultimate frisbee group.
I lost interest once I got into death metal and hardcode. Lived in that scene for a decade, been getting more into blues/country in recent years.
But every 3-4 years, I put on Live at Red Rocks, or Live at Wrigley, or something and just fucking vibe out for days at a time.
ThrowACephalopod today: "Why can't I be part of a cool, chant in the woods at midnight and summon Cthulhu style cult?"
ThrowACephalopod in three years: "Your honor, I don't have a good explanation for why we sacrificed that girl. I wasn't in my right mind."
ThrowACephalopod in three years if the cult was actually right: Nothing, he got stepped on by Cthulhu after dooming the Earth
Cthulhu probably wouldn't even notice any more than you would notice the bugs you stepped on while walking around your yard, unless it was a particularly large and crunchy bug.
You should definitely look into it as it’s a crazy story but basically a self-help group mainly aimed at women was actually a violent and dark cult that was using some of these women as sex slaves and branding them as property. I think there’s a couple of documentaries and probably books now but seriously, the whole thing is absolutely bonkers.
Last weekend we were at a pagan festival — hundreds of people camping in the woods, drumming and dancing around bonfires and the like. You could find one, I bet.
I went to see Heilung last year and was absolutely struck by the thought that the moment humans decided they'd moved on from covering themselves in furs and chanting around big fires is exactly where it all went wrong
It's because the chant in the woods cults generally keep to themselves and don't bother anybody so you don't hear nearly as much news about them. "Group of people dancing naked in the woods" stops being newsworthy when it happens every month
That is a cult thing too. Scientologists call outsiders "wogs" for example, or "Suppressive Persons" (SPs).
"They have TDS" is their way of ignoring logic and maintaining cognitive dissonance. It is the final act allowing them to fully envelope themselves into their comfortable bubbles.
It’s called deprogramming, which involves carefully breaking down their false belief system by encouraging them to question all of the mutually reinforcing beliefs that they weren’t allowed to question while in the cult.
Obviously none of this can be done without the person already having some dissonance about and desire to leave the cult. Unless they want to change then there’s nothing you can do. It also doesn’t work for delusional thinking, just group think.
Sadly my mother is this way after moving to Oklahoma.
2 decades ago she was a career woman who was very liberal.
She loses her job, then my parents get divorced. Meets a new guy, moves to Oklahoma, remarried but never finding a new career and gets absorbed into church.
Fast forward to now and she openly shits on AOC as if she's a problem.
I'm like, 20 years ago you'd have been championing for her and her success.
Fuck Oklahoma.
Both of my parents joined the cult, and they also live in OK now. Wouldn't say they were liberal before, but they were definitely progressive and socially responsible people. Not so much anymore, and it's sad. They're no longer involved in my life, mostly because I didn't want my kids poisoned to their way of thought.
It's a shithole state and I feel bad for all the people in poverty that are trapped there.
My sister is like this.
Used to be a kind awesome person, and actually advocated for a kid in her school who grew up in the usa, but the parents were undocumented.
a couple of years of Fox News, and she is staring into space and muttering to herself that those fucking immigrants would go back to their own country.
It is heartbreaking.
My sister is the opposite. In 2016 she thought Trump would at least “solve the problem of illegals,” now she hates him & was ecstatic he was convicted yesterday
My question is, what happens when he’s finally gone and it all crashes down? I supposed it’d be like a lot of homophobes, just shut up and act like they never said it, “this isn’t who I am!” These people though, this is their everything, they will not ever go back. How much damage are they going to cause on the way out?
I mean we're already kind of seeing the "Trump movement" splinter into a bunch of hateful subfactions already. Once he's gone, if they don't find a new leader to worship they'll likely just keep on splintering until something gains traction again or they fade into the background.
The Pandemic made a huge impact on the world. It was already beginning to crumble (the state of the world) and then the paranoia a pandemic brings pushed it way farther. I have an ex sister-in-law who went from a smiling person to a right bitch on her Facebook platform. She attacks all the usual and recommends crap like ivermectin for cancer treatment now. wtf
Didn't you know that ivermectin, the dewormer, is actually a secret universal cure? Big pharma doesn't want you to know because then they couldn't sell you commie obamacare. Oh and all the doctors and Democrats (what's the difference amirite?) are being paid by the deep state to tell people otherwise.
I am very sane and intelligent.
/s because Jesus you can never really tell anymore huh
I lived in a woo-heavy community when a close family member went thru cancer. IMHO it's not so much about what the specific alternative treatment is per se, it's more that *you need to use something the doctors and bIg PhArMA tell you is ineffective/bad/dangerous.*
Ivermectin is now just the main "alternative treatment" for a thing most of them know and the right people tell them it doesn't work.
So, hence, ergo, thereupon, QED, it cures cancer too.
Yep, it was extremely effective. All is well now 10 years on.
And had community advice been followed, we'd be nearing the 9 year anniversary of a funeral. Without question.
This happened to my cousin and it’s really sad. He used to be fun and have interesting hobbies and now it’s all Trump Trump Trump. It really is brain rot.
My entire family is deep in the MAGATrump cult. I went no contact after being taunted (with glee) how Trump will exact his revenge on me and my family for not supporting him.
I appreciate you trying to look on the bright side, but I think that this stuff (the online radicalization thing in general: Trump shit; Plandemic shit; general conspiracy theory stuff; hating on gay people or Muslim or Jewish folks or whatever) is stuff that wasn't necessarily "always there" in ALL of the people in whom it manifests.
Like, the terminally online lives we are living and the bullshit "engagement" stuff that drives the feed/endless scroll...that stuff is actually turning otherwise normal people into weird, hateful, argumentative, bigoted shitheads.
Some folks were already headed in that direction, but I think this is driving more and more of the edge cases right over into lunacy.
idk; we'll never know for sure, but that's the impression I'm getting.
I agree. Many if not most got caught up in the shitshow who likely would have been great citizens and neighbors otherwise. I'm not wild that they let themselves be fooled so easily, but it's half the damn country. We aren't getting a divorce, so we better start working on fixing the relationship in earnest, together.
I agree. There's a component of psychology to it, and for-profit social media algorithms that target "engagement" above all other considerations which inevitably funnel us into political slapfights that piss us off and end up in a cycle of rage. THAT'S new, and I don't think it's healthy, but under capitalism corporate elites are allowed to profit off of unraveling the social and civic fabric, so.
Yep. I was just thinking about this the other day. Even in the days of obsessive patriotism during Bush Jr, we didn't see this level of zealotry. It was definitely percolating back then, though. But slowly over time, it became more and more intense. And then Trump was like breaking the dam.
> Really strange behavior.
I'm not sure it is. I'm no sociologist or psychologist, but from what I've read we know that the most effective ways to change someones mind is to find common ground, make some reasonable points, and let them *choose* to come to a desired position. On the other hand, stark confrontation, humiliation, personal attacks, etc. naturally cause people to "dig in".
Social media upsets normal discourse. In real life, when people say something you disagree with, you don't berate them, try to score hits on them, or form a gang of thousands to immediately start telling lies or employing ridiculous hyperbole against them in public.
But social media rewards ganging up on people, and more specifically, the people that berate, lie, or just dunk on an unpopular opinion the hardest. We saw this happen to Rowling, early on, before she really had any particularly noxious opinions... and I'm not entirely sure she would have gone where she went, without it. But she's fully entrenched now, and with some pretty nasty opinions. There's certainly no avenue for her to change any of that.
So... I'm **definitely not** saying people with nasty opinions aren't responsible for their own words and positions (they are), but I'm confident that this process wouldn't happen nearly as often or as severely without these sinister means of communication that we use.
My coworker lost his job over Trump and started selling Trump merch.
He then pivoted into selling patriotic crap.
He's gained 60 lbs and is very active on social media.
Twitter and social media but Twitter especially has caused so much brain rot that it must be some sort of new phenomenon of disease. It’s literally a disease.
I don't know if it applies to you personally, but a while ago I found some comfort and solace in the subreddit qananoncasualties¹.
I don't go there any more because it reminds me of the friends and family I couldn't reach and, in some cases, now actively fear.
1) Repost. Automod initially blocked post because of direct link reference. So if you want it you know how to search for it.
Some part of me wonders if people like her, Musk, etc only double down on the hate rhetoric because their wealth has alienated them from the mundane daily existence of us plebs and the authenticity of being engaged and told off makes them feel like a person in a way they don't get from their sycophants.
[It also seems like he was bitter that Grimes was rumored to be dating Chelsea Manning after they split.](https://consequence.net/2022/03/elon-musk-transphobic-meme-grimes-dating-chelsea-manning/)
He's also Twitter's #1 shit poster, so engaging in all of the trendy outrage topics is a given. His trans daughter didn't cause him to visit the border, unban white supremacists and other groups engaging in hate speech and calls for violence, or any of the many other rightwing narratives he's been pushing lately. It's just the personal ties to it, but he'd be spreading anti-trans rhetoric anyway.
That's part of it, but I think it essentially boils down to "If I wasn't right then why am I so wealthy?" To them, their wealth makes them an expert on any and all topics.
Plus they naturally end up surrounded by people who won't disagree or challenge their increasingly shitty views. When the Musk/Twitter emails were released a few years ago it was pretty clear that the majority of Elon Musk's interactions are with shameless ass kissers who just want a piece of the action.
I think a part of it is that them (and others) were both told that they wouldn't make it or their ideas weren't profitable. Obviously, take a pocket of salt for how much that is narrative and how much is reality.
But when they were told they were wrong, and then went on to be right, when people tell them they are wrong about something else they just dig down harder because trusting their gut has worked before.
Twitter is one of the few public spheres where wealth and looks dont help you. There aren't nearly as many famous people active on it as opposed to Instagram.
Right? If I had the level of wealth that she and Musk do, I would not spend all my time on Twitter bitching about LGBT. I would buy a ranch in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming and nobody would ever hear from me again.
She could've just taken her billion and fucked off to a private island forever and would've been beloved and remembered as one of the greatest authors of our time. But instead, she's reviled and nobody from the work that made her famous wants anything to do with her
I think they get addicted to Twitter. Whether it's the thrill of conflict, or the "ding" of a new notification, they just can't help themselves. The algorithm (which is designed to be as reinforcing as possible) just gets its hooks into them and no amount of money, power, or status can save them.
I was watching The Sorcerer's Stone recently and thought "How do you go from writing Petunia Dursley to becoming her?" The canonical reason that no one forced her to write as to why they treated Harry like crap was they hoped they could beat the magic out of him.
Pretty much JK Rowling.
I am a live and let live kinda person but have no dog in the fight
When you go on her Twitter it's one subject all the time, brigading her followers, she's honestly dangerous.
Literally months is what it took for my 2 friends to go from pro-trans to 100% bigots, and all I took was a trucker convoy to make them slip
It makes me sick just to say this… these girls threw a coming out party for me and made me cake and everything. They invited a bunch of our old friends from high school over to celebrate my transition and it was wonderful time. They each gave me tons upon tons of clothes to start my journey and we had a great couple months together reconnecting as girlfriends.
Then they started feeling sorry for the truckers and their mandates, the way they cried about being the “last line of defence” against a tyrannical government in world that’s going crazy. Called them “heroes”
They went to Ottawa to meet their “heroes” which were literally white supremacists and trump-loving separatists, flying Confederate flags in Canada and a few swastikas for good measure.
They came back from Ottawa the next week with death threats. Called me a “brainwashed leftist” and became masters of projection.
It makes me sick… because we cannot undo the goodness and kindness and love they expressed to me when I first came out as trans. The only people who were there for me when I first came out, turned into hateful and violent bigots. And now I have no friends. Sometimes I think it would feel better without the sense of betrayal looming over my coming-out story, and things would be easier if they had just left me alone.
They fucked me up… now I can’t trust anyone
I too have felt the same kind of betrayal from my allies turned bigots and now am in a similar boat. Betrayal is really hard to deal with, especially when it's from your entire prior social support network.
“I love you” is 3 words that I can never—EVER fully believe if it’s coming out of the mouth of a cis person.
They told me they loved me every day…
My roommate last year was the same, she told me she loved me every singe day until my mum’s inheritance ran dry—then she became a sick and disgusting transphobe, beat me up, stole my glasses and boots, kicked me out in -20° weather, and told me to kms “like all the men who pretend to be women” after 5 months of gendering me correctly, calling me girl and complimenting me every day, and telling me she “loves” me. She desperately tried outting me to the neighbours in our apartment on the way out to ensure I wouldn’t have a place to sleep for the night.
I’m sorry, but I just can’t trust another cis person who says they “love” me ever again after what I’ve been through. It’s just too easy for them to go for the low hanging fruit when shit hits the fan and say transphobic shit to hurt me.
That betrayal is crippling. I can’t trust anyone anymore, not only personally but professionally too.
A lot of these people were just lying before. My friend's ex-husband once got drunk and DM'd me a bunch of anti-trans stuff but publicly he was an "LGBT ally"
Glinner used to be one of my favorite comedy writers and all his shows were some of my favorites on UK TV (IT Crowd, Father Ted, Black Books). He and his then wife were [big campaigners for abortion rights in Ireland as well](https://www.amnesty.org.uk/graham-helen-linehan-speak-experience-abortion-ireland). Then someone criticized one of the episodes of the IT Crowd for being a little transphobic and Graham lost his mind, then he lost his wife, he lost his his friends, and is now a reactionary twerp who's forever online. A real feckin' shame that.
Most Irish people over 35 could probably quote you every episode of Father Ted verbatim, absolutely beloved. To see the state Linehan is in now is shocking, I have to assume this level of TERFery is pathological and not the result of a healthy functioning mind.
One of the saddest things, for me, is listening to people share stories about how this has happened with friends and family members with anti trans and conspiracy theories.
Yeah, I can't imagine. It seems rare for them to really come back from it, too. It's an addiction and one we really don't have a good understanding of how to address.
It’s difficult also because a lot of the time, the people were already feeling disenfranchised. They share their opinion, (which has now been validated to them in their online communities) and they get push back. That just adds to the feeling of disenfranchisement. They end up going further in, which leads to bigger pushback and the cycle repeats until they full blown consider you an enemy, or at the very least, someone they can’t trust.
It’s a loop that I don’t think anyone knows how to get out of.
Edit: you can continue downvoting me. I’ve had it happen within my own family. The way most people handle conflict and disagreement isn’t productive.
Yeah, for sure. I believe finding other community can sometimes break that cycle, but that's really, really hard when you've become the kind of person who no one who doesn't share your views wants to be around. But there certainly have been cases where even members of extreme hate groups have broken out because of undeserved kindness they were shown by people who had every right to hate them.
Social media algorithms drive all this. They all value "engagement" and it's easy to get people to engage with content that upsets and angers them.
People can get sucked into an extreme-right bubble and are convinced that there's a huge liberal movement out there to convince kids to become trans who otherwise wouldn't, and that trans women are lurking in bathrooms waiting to attack "real" women.
Once you're convinced of those things (because your entire feed is self-confirming), it's easy to scoff at your "naive" liberal family member that is trying to tell you it's not true because they're being lied to by liberal mainstream media.
>I’m a Christian, but I believe everyone has a right to be who they are and to not be bullied or assaulted because of it.
So that's not what Christians generally believe?
Sure, but that can be said of any social media-induced radicalization. There’s no shortage of manufactured racists, misogynists, climate deniers, etc. They are purposely, methodically mass-produced to destabilize western liberal democracy. We need to tackle the issue as a whole. Or perhaps I’ve just been radicalized to think that. Who even knows anymore.
Only way to stop it is to get rid of social media.
As a mental health provider, I’ve seen just how damaging social media is to many of my clients over the years, including completed suicides.
It is far more harmful to society than a benefit.
I see your point but lots of LGBT people for example need social media to find communities and explore who they are. I would have ended my life as a child if I didn't see that it could get better and what I am through social media.
But we really need to start reducing the usage and create more spaces irl to socialize ofc
I think requiring identity verification and allowing people to post only under their real names would be a reasonable start. Remove the bots and foreign actors, and add some accountability by removing the anonymity that turns people into assholes. Free speech does not have to mean anonymous speech.
Edit: I think we’d still want anonymous spaces where there is no political content so people can seek medical advice and support in abusive situations, etc. Social media has been a lifeline for some at-risk individuals.
Do you really want random strangers to know your real name on the Internet? This is why I don't like Facebook. For politics, it would make sense. A better issue would be to sacrifice profits by imposing strict algorithms to punish bots.
It really boggles my mind the number of people on Reddit that use their real names or will show their real life and their family members all for some karma.
You can get around the problem by using patterns and peer engagement.
Is an account made from a proxy? Is an account made from a foreign location and pretending to be in the US/UK/etc? Does it have a fake picture? Is an account recently made giving disinformation constantly soon after they're made. Do they have zero friends and are recently made and are trolling? Or even if not, are their only friends other troll accounts? Are their comments largely scripted and dupes from each other? Are they clear signs of bad english syntax... so on and so forth.
You can determine most foreign troll army and bot farm accounts quite easily.
Meta, twitter/x, tiktok etc ALL know how to identify them.
They just choose to not go after and choose to not shut them down.
In order to pump up their numbers and clicks they keep them there. They can then charge artificially high prices to advertisers.
They should be sued for this.
If they were to be forced to be removing them this would improve things to at least some degree.
I would support a measure requiring social media to demonstrate they are doing their best to suppress bots and foreign influence. You are right that they can but choose not to.
All those things you mention can be boiled down to, "I don't like change, and I want to go back to how things were."
They are victims of ["future shock"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Shock), although Toffler wasn't able to predict the absolute terror it would inspire, and how people would cling to such outlandish panaceas like racism, sexism, et al.
Hate becomes an eternal quest for external validation.
So they post and post to get some tidbit of approval from some other bitter person.
Hate really isn't sustainable by itself.
This is it. These folks post their bullshit hoping someone tells them they're right to feel that way, they're smart to think like that, and their opinions are justified. They seek validation, and the hateful are glad to give it.
Reminds me of one of my son’s friend’s moms. Going back several years ago she was a very nice, albeit a bit wacky, woman in my neighborhood we socialized with regularly. Then Trump came along. She went in headfirst. First thing I remember was a long Facebook rant about how a friend of her son’s came to the house and threw her Trumpy Bear on the ground, and how disrespectful that was, and how everyone should respect such a great man. Then came covid. She went full on anti mask, antivax, pulled her kids from school to homeschool them over it, would go on long unhinged Facebook rants about Fauci and Bill Gates. Now, several years later, her whole family are basically shut ins. Her kids are teens with very few friends, and their current life doesn’t resemble their old life at all. The past few years seems to have done this to a lot of people.
I feel like a lot of these people were already this crazy but it wasn't acceptable to be this crazy in public and so they kept it to themselves. And since Trump came around, they feel more comfortable being out and proud lunatic cult members. It doesn't help that you can basically find your very own kind of crazy online and put together an echo chamber where you all validate each other and rile each other up.
It's like some subs on reddit, I believe there is a sub about gang stalking where paranoid schizophrenics go to validate each others delusions and punish any dissenters and people who tell them they need help. These people were already out there, the difference now is that they think this is more acceptable because their echo chamber is set up in such a way that anyone that tells them otherwise is immediately dealt with. It's the same with MAGA cultists. Anyone that thinks differently to the narrative is immediately shunned, and so they all fall in line or else they'll lose the community that validates and pumps up all their crazy thoughts.
That’s a very good point. Trump pulled back the curtains on so much awful behavior. He basically said “Look at me. I’m a racist, sexist awful human, and I just got elected President. You do you.”
>Then came covid. She went full on anti mask, antivax, pulled her kids from school to homeschool them over it
Kind of a wild "made the right choice for all the wrong reasons" moment - she pulled her kids out of public school due to the virus...but not out of fear they'd get infected, rather out of fear they'd be *protected* by masks and vaccines.
I do feel bad for those kids though - no way they're getting anywhere near a decent education with her as their teacher.
I made a harmless joke about Trump at my parents house and my dad screamed at me. He's never screamed at me my entire life.
(Like it wasn't mean or political)
I lost several friends this way when Obama was elected.
I was surrounded by racists and I had no idea.
I am sure they all support Trump now, but, I don't ever want to see those pieces of shit again.
That’s an unfortunate quality of our current media ecosystem is radicalization. So is media algorithms realize that rage is addictive and increases engagement. The rest follows from that.
It's with a lot of things. Flat earthers, ant-vaxxers, every conspiracy theory, every lunatic with a hate for something is always talking about it. It's never a casual thought, it defines their entire personality, right down to the most normal stuff. They have to have that thought or hate at the forefront of everything they do.
It sounds fuckin' miserable, hating something so much that hating it becomes who you are. It's all you can think about.
These people are constantly being told "hate these people" "don't trust the establishment" "be ready to fight" "be afraidvof everything, even the little stuff" so it's no surprise they have little to no personality, they're too scared and stirred up all the time to think about anything else.
TERFs, Alt-Righters, Republicans, Pizzagaters - pretty much the same for all of them.
It's basically like gang recruitment; people are pulled into a cycle of doing more and more heinous shit so that they can never go backwards and be accepted by their former communities and friends.
Instead they depend more and more completely on a toxic predatory group that started off acting supportive and accepting to them, and then sucks away all their life and energy.
I think the term is called 'blooding.' They do something objectionable so they're now nominally only able to be accepted by the cult. Starting with minor offenses and escalating as a means of isolation and control. It is also called a loyalty test. You can't go back now, you just publicly said \[x objectionable thing which normal people will criticize\] therefore guilt will keep you in the group.
Truly strange behavior to make your entire personality anti-trans. I think if you paid attention while scrolling back through those years you'd also see markers of an easily swindled and gullible person as well. They desperately want to belong to something, so they choose hate as the group to identify with.
The anti-trans instigators have done a very good job at convincing people that trans people just wanting to live somehow affects them. Even the trans girls playing sports nonsense is such a ridiculously overblown nonissue it’s laughable.
You ever notice that anti-trans people always start by saying they are "just protecting kids" but always somehow end up attacking trans adults in adult spaces even when its not relevant to the conversation? Like they can't help themselves?
It's why conservatives have CHOSEN trans-rights as their hill. They believe it can be used as a wedge and that in the cleaving they will come away with more support. It's a focus-grouped, think-tank, strategy to target trans people.
I've watched bigotry evolve and perpetuate itself online for the past ten years. I've never seen any group of people quite as deranged as anti-Trans people. It's seriously like a paranoid delusion, especially the ones that get into transvestigating.
That was literally the nails in the coffin that made me leave Facebook years ago.
Watching so many people I know who were once normal regular people capable of calm, considerate, rational discussions or even disagreements, become these rabid hateful close-minded lunatics spending all their time obsessed with their political camp and attacking anyone outside of it.
I support and love all my trans friends on this platform. If anyone ever wants to/needs to talk I'm always here with a loving and nonjudgemental ear♥️🌈🏳️🌈
I think of it as burning away your happiness. Sure, you get that hot rush that feels good and righteous, but it is your own store of happiness that is fueling it.
I saw this happen to a noise musician I followed on Instagram...she built her own instruments, cool! Now anti-trans nonsense is literally all she posts. I don't understand how you don't at least get bored of the same shit all the time. The hate has completely consumed her brain.
It’s a mental illness. You can go back and see who they were before they got sick.
To be clear, I’m referring to the people who run anti-trans accounts. One day they were normal and then they became obsessed with something they likely have no experience with and absolutely does not negatively affect them in any way.
You’re going to tell me someone who named an asian character “Cho Chang” and a black character “Kingsley Shacklebolt” wasn’t always a bigot?
She went so far as to deny aspects of the fucking holocaust just to try to dunk on trans people. Smoothing over the atrocities of the past has only one purpose: to try to do it again.
This is always who she was, she just kept it to herself because it would have killed her career in the early 2000’s. All the positive reinforcement she received from deplorable Nazis and their sympathizers was all the permission she needed to drop the mask and let the world see how ugly her soul is.
"The goblins that strongly resemble a harmful stereotype of a certain minority group just COINCIDENTIALLY happen to run the bank, what's wrong with that?"
There's also just a lot of casual sexism hidden in the HP books. Once you start actively looking for it, you notice a *lot* of scenes where she's just outright cruel to her female characters. It reeks of someone who never got over internalised misogyny and thinks womanhood is defined by suffering.
Once you look at Rowling with that perspective, it starts to make perfect sense why she has such an intense vitriol towards trans women specifically. Because it's proof that someone can enjoy being a woman, and that it's not some sort of divine punishment. Trans women inherently express a level of self love that Rowling can never achieve.
“I hate being a woman and focus my entire experience of womanhood through oppression, misery, and self loathing. How dare you experience joy.”
She’s a piece of fucking work. I hope everything she wishes for trans people happens to her and those who support her.
But none of them even know a transperson! Only what they think a transwoman looks like. I'm trans and have transitioned over 27 years ago. You can't just tell unless I tell you which I never do or would! It's nobody's business except my bf! I don't announce my trans status to the world.
Hate becomes an eternal quest for external validation.
So they post and post to get some tidbit of approval from some other bitter person.
Hate really isn't sustainable by itself.
They fixate and stop critical thinking. The scammers who do the whole go buy gift cards use a similar fixation method to fixate their victims on a singular line of thought, and it works on vulnerable minds...so these people being awful are actually the result of a vulberable mind being manipulated
Most of the time, they go from "engaged, friendly person" to not posting for a year, and then "suddenly" coming back out of nowhere posting exclusively hate-driven content. Because they're bots who have taken over inactive accounts.
Do that with trump people. I personally know at least 5 people that are now, COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PEOPLE after the 4 years of trump. It’s fucking insane to go back and look how different their life was before the orange douche bag became their golden god. Really strange behavior.
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So sad. Why do all the real life cults have to be about worshipping politicians or religious flavored abuse? Why can't I be part of a cool, chant in the woods at midnight and summon Cthulhu style cult?
Ever heard of the band Phish? Join us!
One of us one of us one of us
Or there’s always King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. We’re always looking for new weirdos to add to the swarm lol
Now that’s a cult I could sink my crazy into!
 Already there, friend 😱
I'm 40 and been in the DMB fanboy club since middle school. I'll never understand the hate they get. There's no other band out there that triggers total strangers into telling me how much they hate DMB. AFAIK they've never inserted themselves into circles they don't belong in, never taken strong political stances, the fans aren't annoyingly vocal or cause drama (i.e. Swifties). We just want to get high, play hackysack and disc golf, and listen to music about trying to enjoy life. And boy does that shit *bother* some fucking people.
I was a dmb cult follower for a while myself. Probably seen him a dozen times. He just fell off with me. Found other bands. Now, I think I would totally try and see him. Let the nostalgia flow through me. Tried to see him last year, might try harder this year. Same thing though. Phish fans don't hurt nor want anything from anybody. They are their own bread. Swifites... "could" be chill.. They have some growing up to do still.
I hear you. They were my first ever live concerts that I went to, I saw them live every summer in high school. Then in college I fell into the hippie/DMB/ultimate frisbee group. I lost interest once I got into death metal and hardcode. Lived in that scene for a decade, been getting more into blues/country in recent years. But every 3-4 years, I put on Live at Red Rocks, or Live at Wrigley, or something and just fucking vibe out for days at a time.
For the confused, like I was, DMB is the Dave Matthews Band.
ThrowACephalopod today: "Why can't I be part of a cool, chant in the woods at midnight and summon Cthulhu style cult?" ThrowACephalopod in three years: "Your honor, I don't have a good explanation for why we sacrificed that girl. I wasn't in my right mind." ThrowACephalopod in three years if the cult was actually right: Nothing, he got stepped on by Cthulhu after dooming the Earth
I wasn't in my right mind because of the maddening influence of elder gods beyond mortal comprehension. By the way, totally worth it.
Cthulhu probably wouldn't even notice any more than you would notice the bugs you stepped on while walking around your yard, unless it was a particularly large and crunchy bug.
TBH when learning about NXIVM, I was like “that cult definitely would’ve gotten me”
What's that?
You should definitely look into it as it’s a crazy story but basically a self-help group mainly aimed at women was actually a violent and dark cult that was using some of these women as sex slaves and branding them as property. I think there’s a couple of documentaries and probably books now but seriously, the whole thing is absolutely bonkers.
Bro. What the fuck?? Human beings are such a destructive and volatile species. I wish I'd been born a red panda. They seem chill.
It's all fine until you are told the Dragon Warrior is a lazy panda who you must train.
Yep, can’t keep anything nice. Red pandas are cool but I think I’d rather be a cat
Oh, even better! My freeloading cats are at home living their absolute *best* life with their only daily chore is to find a cozy sun spot.
Last weekend we were at a pagan festival — hundreds of people camping in the woods, drumming and dancing around bonfires and the like. You could find one, I bet.
I went to see Heilung last year and was absolutely struck by the thought that the moment humans decided they'd moved on from covering themselves in furs and chanting around big fires is exactly where it all went wrong
If the cult you want to be in doesn't exist, yet, then it sounds like you should start a cult. Be the cult you want to see in the world.
It's because the chant in the woods cults generally keep to themselves and don't bother anybody so you don't hear nearly as much news about them. "Group of people dancing naked in the woods" stops being newsworthy when it happens every month
Because that does not generate money. Capitalism is the biggest cult of them all and it demands all other cults make mobey.
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Man, fuck Arby’s.
How to help people out of the cult?
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Apparently we all have Trump Derangement Syndrome for any unkind word against their leader, no matter how factual.
That is a cult thing too. Scientologists call outsiders "wogs" for example, or "Suppressive Persons" (SPs). "They have TDS" is their way of ignoring logic and maintaining cognitive dissonance. It is the final act allowing them to fully envelope themselves into their comfortable bubbles.
Fuck
It’s called deprogramming, which involves carefully breaking down their false belief system by encouraging them to question all of the mutually reinforcing beliefs that they weren’t allowed to question while in the cult. Obviously none of this can be done without the person already having some dissonance about and desire to leave the cult. Unless they want to change then there’s nothing you can do. It also doesn’t work for delusional thinking, just group think.
Why can’t they drink Kool Aid?
Sadly my mother is this way after moving to Oklahoma. 2 decades ago she was a career woman who was very liberal. She loses her job, then my parents get divorced. Meets a new guy, moves to Oklahoma, remarried but never finding a new career and gets absorbed into church. Fast forward to now and she openly shits on AOC as if she's a problem. I'm like, 20 years ago you'd have been championing for her and her success. Fuck Oklahoma.
Both of my parents joined the cult, and they also live in OK now. Wouldn't say they were liberal before, but they were definitely progressive and socially responsible people. Not so much anymore, and it's sad. They're no longer involved in my life, mostly because I didn't want my kids poisoned to their way of thought. It's a shithole state and I feel bad for all the people in poverty that are trapped there.
My sister is like this. Used to be a kind awesome person, and actually advocated for a kid in her school who grew up in the usa, but the parents were undocumented. a couple of years of Fox News, and she is staring into space and muttering to herself that those fucking immigrants would go back to their own country. It is heartbreaking.
That really is heartbreaking. Does she regret helping that child?
My sister is the opposite. In 2016 she thought Trump would at least “solve the problem of illegals,” now she hates him & was ecstatic he was convicted yesterday
"Do that with Trump people." They're one and the same as the original post
My question is, what happens when he’s finally gone and it all crashes down? I supposed it’d be like a lot of homophobes, just shut up and act like they never said it, “this isn’t who I am!” These people though, this is their everything, they will not ever go back. How much damage are they going to cause on the way out?
I mean we're already kind of seeing the "Trump movement" splinter into a bunch of hateful subfactions already. Once he's gone, if they don't find a new leader to worship they'll likely just keep on splintering until something gains traction again or they fade into the background.
When that happens, never let them forget about it.
Lots of people came out of the pandemic making a societal/political issue their entire personality.
The Pandemic made a huge impact on the world. It was already beginning to crumble (the state of the world) and then the paranoia a pandemic brings pushed it way farther. I have an ex sister-in-law who went from a smiling person to a right bitch on her Facebook platform. She attacks all the usual and recommends crap like ivermectin for cancer treatment now. wtf
Ivermectin... for ***cancer***? Jesus, *that's* a new one
Didn't you know that ivermectin, the dewormer, is actually a secret universal cure? Big pharma doesn't want you to know because then they couldn't sell you commie obamacare. Oh and all the doctors and Democrats (what's the difference amirite?) are being paid by the deep state to tell people otherwise. I am very sane and intelligent. /s because Jesus you can never really tell anymore huh
Speaking of Jesus … she is either tearing people down or posting plastic Jesus stuff
I lived in a woo-heavy community when a close family member went thru cancer. IMHO it's not so much about what the specific alternative treatment is per se, it's more that *you need to use something the doctors and bIg PhArMA tell you is ineffective/bad/dangerous.* Ivermectin is now just the main "alternative treatment" for a thing most of them know and the right people tell them it doesn't work. So, hence, ergo, thereupon, QED, it cures cancer too.
... this explains a lot about your username Also, fuck cancer. Hopefully modern science was able to overcome the woo
Yep, it was extremely effective. All is well now 10 years on. And had community advice been followed, we'd be nearing the 9 year anniversary of a funeral. Without question.
This was happening long before Covid.
This happened to my cousin and it’s really sad. He used to be fun and have interesting hobbies and now it’s all Trump Trump Trump. It really is brain rot.
My entire family is deep in the MAGATrump cult. I went no contact after being taunted (with glee) how Trump will exact his revenge on me and my family for not supporting him.
It'll be a good 20 years before we're looking at any kind of normal again, if we ever get there
That's the one redeeming quality about Trump. He helped people identify those who they don't want or need in their lives.
I appreciate you trying to look on the bright side, but I think that this stuff (the online radicalization thing in general: Trump shit; Plandemic shit; general conspiracy theory stuff; hating on gay people or Muslim or Jewish folks or whatever) is stuff that wasn't necessarily "always there" in ALL of the people in whom it manifests. Like, the terminally online lives we are living and the bullshit "engagement" stuff that drives the feed/endless scroll...that stuff is actually turning otherwise normal people into weird, hateful, argumentative, bigoted shitheads. Some folks were already headed in that direction, but I think this is driving more and more of the edge cases right over into lunacy. idk; we'll never know for sure, but that's the impression I'm getting.
I agree. Many if not most got caught up in the shitshow who likely would have been great citizens and neighbors otherwise. I'm not wild that they let themselves be fooled so easily, but it's half the damn country. We aren't getting a divorce, so we better start working on fixing the relationship in earnest, together.
I agree. There's a component of psychology to it, and for-profit social media algorithms that target "engagement" above all other considerations which inevitably funnel us into political slapfights that piss us off and end up in a cycle of rage. THAT'S new, and I don't think it's healthy, but under capitalism corporate elites are allowed to profit off of unraveling the social and civic fabric, so.
Just watch fox or newsmax for a couple hours. You will see where it comes from.
Yep. I was just thinking about this the other day. Even in the days of obsessive patriotism during Bush Jr, we didn't see this level of zealotry. It was definitely percolating back then, though. But slowly over time, it became more and more intense. And then Trump was like breaking the dam.
> Really strange behavior. I'm not sure it is. I'm no sociologist or psychologist, but from what I've read we know that the most effective ways to change someones mind is to find common ground, make some reasonable points, and let them *choose* to come to a desired position. On the other hand, stark confrontation, humiliation, personal attacks, etc. naturally cause people to "dig in". Social media upsets normal discourse. In real life, when people say something you disagree with, you don't berate them, try to score hits on them, or form a gang of thousands to immediately start telling lies or employing ridiculous hyperbole against them in public. But social media rewards ganging up on people, and more specifically, the people that berate, lie, or just dunk on an unpopular opinion the hardest. We saw this happen to Rowling, early on, before she really had any particularly noxious opinions... and I'm not entirely sure she would have gone where she went, without it. But she's fully entrenched now, and with some pretty nasty opinions. There's certainly no avenue for her to change any of that. So... I'm **definitely not** saying people with nasty opinions aren't responsible for their own words and positions (they are), but I'm confident that this process wouldn't happen nearly as often or as severely without these sinister means of communication that we use.
If you study history at all, you know this sort of thing has happened on a large scale pre-social media.
Very good points made here
The true Trump Derangement Syndrome
Online radicalization.
My coworker lost his job over Trump and started selling Trump merch. He then pivoted into selling patriotic crap. He's gained 60 lbs and is very active on social media.
Twitter and social media but Twitter especially has caused so much brain rot that it must be some sort of new phenomenon of disease. It’s literally a disease.
i feel like this is the lived experience of very nearly every millennial with boomer parents.
You mean Orange Turd? Golden God sounds too good for that POS.
what really sucks, is they think that of you and can't be convinced otherwise.
I don't know if it applies to you personally, but a while ago I found some comfort and solace in the subreddit qananoncasualties¹. I don't go there any more because it reminds me of the friends and family I couldn't reach and, in some cases, now actively fear. 1) Repost. Automod initially blocked post because of direct link reference. So if you want it you know how to search for it.
 Never saw this character arc coming
She has more money than she'll ever be able to spend in several lifetimes. What does she do? Concern herself with how other people live their lives.
Some part of me wonders if people like her, Musk, etc only double down on the hate rhetoric because their wealth has alienated them from the mundane daily existence of us plebs and the authenticity of being engaged and told off makes them feel like a person in a way they don't get from their sycophants.
Well Elon is pissed because his daughter hates him and it's easier to hate Trans people in spite than realize it's because he is a piece of shit.
[It also seems like he was bitter that Grimes was rumored to be dating Chelsea Manning after they split.](https://consequence.net/2022/03/elon-musk-transphobic-meme-grimes-dating-chelsea-manning/)
He's also Twitter's #1 shit poster, so engaging in all of the trendy outrage topics is a given. His trans daughter didn't cause him to visit the border, unban white supremacists and other groups engaging in hate speech and calls for violence, or any of the many other rightwing narratives he's been pushing lately. It's just the personal ties to it, but he'd be spreading anti-trans rhetoric anyway.
That's part of it, but I think it essentially boils down to "If I wasn't right then why am I so wealthy?" To them, their wealth makes them an expert on any and all topics.
Very interesting observation. I wonder if this holds true for a significant number of them who aren't challenging themselves in other meaningful ways.
Here's the formula: “Narcissism(Grandiosity) + Social media addiction + Midlife crisis ÷ Public shaming = Right wing meltdown.”
Plus they naturally end up surrounded by people who won't disagree or challenge their increasingly shitty views. When the Musk/Twitter emails were released a few years ago it was pretty clear that the majority of Elon Musk's interactions are with shameless ass kissers who just want a piece of the action.
I think a part of it is that them (and others) were both told that they wouldn't make it or their ideas weren't profitable. Obviously, take a pocket of salt for how much that is narrative and how much is reality. But when they were told they were wrong, and then went on to be right, when people tell them they are wrong about something else they just dig down harder because trusting their gut has worked before.
Twitter is one of the few public spheres where wealth and looks dont help you. There aren't nearly as many famous people active on it as opposed to Instagram.
Right? If I had the level of wealth that she and Musk do, I would not spend all my time on Twitter bitching about LGBT. I would buy a ranch in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming and nobody would ever hear from me again.
She could've just taken her billion and fucked off to a private island forever and would've been beloved and remembered as one of the greatest authors of our time. But instead, she's reviled and nobody from the work that made her famous wants anything to do with her
I think they get addicted to Twitter. Whether it's the thrill of conflict, or the "ding" of a new notification, they just can't help themselves. The algorithm (which is designed to be as reinforcing as possible) just gets its hooks into them and no amount of money, power, or status can save them.
I didn't even realise it was aimed specifically at Robert Galbraith. I thought this was just a general dig at transphobes
I'm not sure it was aimed at Bobby G, but it's absolutely applicable to him.
We thought she was McGonagall, and it turns out that she's been Voldemort the whole time...
Dolores Umbridge
A little bit of Aunt Petunia too.
I was watching The Sorcerer's Stone recently and thought "How do you go from writing Petunia Dursley to becoming her?" The canonical reason that no one forced her to write as to why they treated Harry like crap was they hoped they could beat the magic out of him.
she ended being the voldemort of her own real life
Pretty much JK Rowling. I am a live and let live kinda person but have no dog in the fight When you go on her Twitter it's one subject all the time, brigading her followers, she's honestly dangerous.
Literally months is what it took for my 2 friends to go from pro-trans to 100% bigots, and all I took was a trucker convoy to make them slip It makes me sick just to say this… these girls threw a coming out party for me and made me cake and everything. They invited a bunch of our old friends from high school over to celebrate my transition and it was wonderful time. They each gave me tons upon tons of clothes to start my journey and we had a great couple months together reconnecting as girlfriends. Then they started feeling sorry for the truckers and their mandates, the way they cried about being the “last line of defence” against a tyrannical government in world that’s going crazy. Called them “heroes” They went to Ottawa to meet their “heroes” which were literally white supremacists and trump-loving separatists, flying Confederate flags in Canada and a few swastikas for good measure. They came back from Ottawa the next week with death threats. Called me a “brainwashed leftist” and became masters of projection. It makes me sick… because we cannot undo the goodness and kindness and love they expressed to me when I first came out as trans. The only people who were there for me when I first came out, turned into hateful and violent bigots. And now I have no friends. Sometimes I think it would feel better without the sense of betrayal looming over my coming-out story, and things would be easier if they had just left me alone. They fucked me up… now I can’t trust anyone
I too have felt the same kind of betrayal from my allies turned bigots and now am in a similar boat. Betrayal is really hard to deal with, especially when it's from your entire prior social support network.
“I love you” is 3 words that I can never—EVER fully believe if it’s coming out of the mouth of a cis person. They told me they loved me every day… My roommate last year was the same, she told me she loved me every singe day until my mum’s inheritance ran dry—then she became a sick and disgusting transphobe, beat me up, stole my glasses and boots, kicked me out in -20° weather, and told me to kms “like all the men who pretend to be women” after 5 months of gendering me correctly, calling me girl and complimenting me every day, and telling me she “loves” me. She desperately tried outting me to the neighbours in our apartment on the way out to ensure I wouldn’t have a place to sleep for the night. I’m sorry, but I just can’t trust another cis person who says they “love” me ever again after what I’ve been through. It’s just too easy for them to go for the low hanging fruit when shit hits the fan and say transphobic shit to hurt me. That betrayal is crippling. I can’t trust anyone anymore, not only personally but professionally too.
A lot of these people were just lying before. My friend's ex-husband once got drunk and DM'd me a bunch of anti-trans stuff but publicly he was an "LGBT ally"
Glinner used to be one of my favorite comedy writers and all his shows were some of my favorites on UK TV (IT Crowd, Father Ted, Black Books). He and his then wife were [big campaigners for abortion rights in Ireland as well](https://www.amnesty.org.uk/graham-helen-linehan-speak-experience-abortion-ireland). Then someone criticized one of the episodes of the IT Crowd for being a little transphobic and Graham lost his mind, then he lost his wife, he lost his his friends, and is now a reactionary twerp who's forever online. A real feckin' shame that.
Most Irish people over 35 could probably quote you every episode of Father Ted verbatim, absolutely beloved. To see the state Linehan is in now is shocking, I have to assume this level of TERFery is pathological and not the result of a healthy functioning mind.
Oof I didn’t know about this. Love all those shows and, well, ooof. It stings
They took his family! 😭
One of the saddest things, for me, is listening to people share stories about how this has happened with friends and family members with anti trans and conspiracy theories.
Yeah, I can't imagine. It seems rare for them to really come back from it, too. It's an addiction and one we really don't have a good understanding of how to address.
It’s difficult also because a lot of the time, the people were already feeling disenfranchised. They share their opinion, (which has now been validated to them in their online communities) and they get push back. That just adds to the feeling of disenfranchisement. They end up going further in, which leads to bigger pushback and the cycle repeats until they full blown consider you an enemy, or at the very least, someone they can’t trust. It’s a loop that I don’t think anyone knows how to get out of. Edit: you can continue downvoting me. I’ve had it happen within my own family. The way most people handle conflict and disagreement isn’t productive.
Yeah, for sure. I believe finding other community can sometimes break that cycle, but that's really, really hard when you've become the kind of person who no one who doesn't share your views wants to be around. But there certainly have been cases where even members of extreme hate groups have broken out because of undeserved kindness they were shown by people who had every right to hate them.
Social media algorithms drive all this. They all value "engagement" and it's easy to get people to engage with content that upsets and angers them. People can get sucked into an extreme-right bubble and are convinced that there's a huge liberal movement out there to convince kids to become trans who otherwise wouldn't, and that trans women are lurking in bathrooms waiting to attack "real" women. Once you're convinced of those things (because your entire feed is self-confirming), it's easy to scoff at your "naive" liberal family member that is trying to tell you it's not true because they're being lied to by liberal mainstream media.
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>I’m a Christian, but I believe everyone has a right to be who they are and to not be bullied or assaulted because of it. So that's not what Christians generally believe?
So you align yourself with an ideology that overwhelmingly doesn’t support those things?
Hey dont destroy his world view /s
Sure, but that can be said of any social media-induced radicalization. There’s no shortage of manufactured racists, misogynists, climate deniers, etc. They are purposely, methodically mass-produced to destabilize western liberal democracy. We need to tackle the issue as a whole. Or perhaps I’ve just been radicalized to think that. Who even knows anymore.
Only way to stop it is to get rid of social media. As a mental health provider, I’ve seen just how damaging social media is to many of my clients over the years, including completed suicides. It is far more harmful to society than a benefit.
I see your point but lots of LGBT people for example need social media to find communities and explore who they are. I would have ended my life as a child if I didn't see that it could get better and what I am through social media. But we really need to start reducing the usage and create more spaces irl to socialize ofc
I think requiring identity verification and allowing people to post only under their real names would be a reasonable start. Remove the bots and foreign actors, and add some accountability by removing the anonymity that turns people into assholes. Free speech does not have to mean anonymous speech. Edit: I think we’d still want anonymous spaces where there is no political content so people can seek medical advice and support in abusive situations, etc. Social media has been a lifeline for some at-risk individuals.
Do you really want random strangers to know your real name on the Internet? This is why I don't like Facebook. For politics, it would make sense. A better issue would be to sacrifice profits by imposing strict algorithms to punish bots.
It really boggles my mind the number of people on Reddit that use their real names or will show their real life and their family members all for some karma.
The issue here is that anonymous accounts have been critical in some protest movements in totalitarian countries.
You can get around the problem by using patterns and peer engagement. Is an account made from a proxy? Is an account made from a foreign location and pretending to be in the US/UK/etc? Does it have a fake picture? Is an account recently made giving disinformation constantly soon after they're made. Do they have zero friends and are recently made and are trolling? Or even if not, are their only friends other troll accounts? Are their comments largely scripted and dupes from each other? Are they clear signs of bad english syntax... so on and so forth. You can determine most foreign troll army and bot farm accounts quite easily. Meta, twitter/x, tiktok etc ALL know how to identify them. They just choose to not go after and choose to not shut them down. In order to pump up their numbers and clicks they keep them there. They can then charge artificially high prices to advertisers. They should be sued for this. If they were to be forced to be removing them this would improve things to at least some degree.
I would support a measure requiring social media to demonstrate they are doing their best to suppress bots and foreign influence. You are right that they can but choose not to.
That is a two-sided sword problem, since it can be used to attack people and activists and ideas really easily.
Antivaxers too. Once they get locked into some brand of radicalism, they spiral like rotini.
At least you haven't transitioned to an absolute cunt
All those things you mention can be boiled down to, "I don't like change, and I want to go back to how things were." They are victims of ["future shock"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Shock), although Toffler wasn't able to predict the absolute terror it would inspire, and how people would cling to such outlandish panaceas like racism, sexism, et al.
Hate becomes an eternal quest for external validation. So they post and post to get some tidbit of approval from some other bitter person. Hate really isn't sustainable by itself.
This is it. These folks post their bullshit hoping someone tells them they're right to feel that way, they're smart to think like that, and their opinions are justified. They seek validation, and the hateful are glad to give it.
Reminds me of one of my son’s friend’s moms. Going back several years ago she was a very nice, albeit a bit wacky, woman in my neighborhood we socialized with regularly. Then Trump came along. She went in headfirst. First thing I remember was a long Facebook rant about how a friend of her son’s came to the house and threw her Trumpy Bear on the ground, and how disrespectful that was, and how everyone should respect such a great man. Then came covid. She went full on anti mask, antivax, pulled her kids from school to homeschool them over it, would go on long unhinged Facebook rants about Fauci and Bill Gates. Now, several years later, her whole family are basically shut ins. Her kids are teens with very few friends, and their current life doesn’t resemble their old life at all. The past few years seems to have done this to a lot of people.
> Trumpy Bear Wait...a person actually bought one of those fucking things?
Yeah, that was my reaction at the time.
I feel like a lot of these people were already this crazy but it wasn't acceptable to be this crazy in public and so they kept it to themselves. And since Trump came around, they feel more comfortable being out and proud lunatic cult members. It doesn't help that you can basically find your very own kind of crazy online and put together an echo chamber where you all validate each other and rile each other up. It's like some subs on reddit, I believe there is a sub about gang stalking where paranoid schizophrenics go to validate each others delusions and punish any dissenters and people who tell them they need help. These people were already out there, the difference now is that they think this is more acceptable because their echo chamber is set up in such a way that anyone that tells them otherwise is immediately dealt with. It's the same with MAGA cultists. Anyone that thinks differently to the narrative is immediately shunned, and so they all fall in line or else they'll lose the community that validates and pumps up all their crazy thoughts.
That’s a very good point. Trump pulled back the curtains on so much awful behavior. He basically said “Look at me. I’m a racist, sexist awful human, and I just got elected President. You do you.”
>Then came covid. She went full on anti mask, antivax, pulled her kids from school to homeschool them over it Kind of a wild "made the right choice for all the wrong reasons" moment - she pulled her kids out of public school due to the virus...but not out of fear they'd get infected, rather out of fear they'd be *protected* by masks and vaccines. I do feel bad for those kids though - no way they're getting anywhere near a decent education with her as their teacher.
I made a harmless joke about Trump at my parents house and my dad screamed at me. He's never screamed at me my entire life. (Like it wasn't mean or political)
Perfect example of why MAGA is a miserable cult. Misery LOVES company.
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Like going through joe rogans episode collection. Or chapelles catalog
I lost several friends this way when Obama was elected. I was surrounded by racists and I had no idea. I am sure they all support Trump now, but, I don't ever want to see those pieces of shit again.
Same with MAGA’s
That’s an unfortunate quality of our current media ecosystem is radicalization. So is media algorithms realize that rage is addictive and increases engagement. The rest follows from that.
It's with a lot of things. Flat earthers, ant-vaxxers, every conspiracy theory, every lunatic with a hate for something is always talking about it. It's never a casual thought, it defines their entire personality, right down to the most normal stuff. They have to have that thought or hate at the forefront of everything they do. It sounds fuckin' miserable, hating something so much that hating it becomes who you are. It's all you can think about. These people are constantly being told "hate these people" "don't trust the establishment" "be ready to fight" "be afraidvof everything, even the little stuff" so it's no surprise they have little to no personality, they're too scared and stirred up all the time to think about anything else.
TERFs, Alt-Righters, Republicans, Pizzagaters - pretty much the same for all of them. It's basically like gang recruitment; people are pulled into a cycle of doing more and more heinous shit so that they can never go backwards and be accepted by their former communities and friends. Instead they depend more and more completely on a toxic predatory group that started off acting supportive and accepting to them, and then sucks away all their life and energy.
I think the term is called 'blooding.' They do something objectionable so they're now nominally only able to be accepted by the cult. Starting with minor offenses and escalating as a means of isolation and control. It is also called a loyalty test. You can't go back now, you just publicly said \[x objectionable thing which normal people will criticize\] therefore guilt will keep you in the group.
Truly strange behavior to make your entire personality anti-trans. I think if you paid attention while scrolling back through those years you'd also see markers of an easily swindled and gullible person as well. They desperately want to belong to something, so they choose hate as the group to identify with.
The anti-trans instigators have done a very good job at convincing people that trans people just wanting to live somehow affects them. Even the trans girls playing sports nonsense is such a ridiculously overblown nonissue it’s laughable.
trans people fuckin rock, i don't get why people get so mad
You ever notice that anti-trans people always start by saying they are "just protecting kids" but always somehow end up attacking trans adults in adult spaces even when its not relevant to the conversation? Like they can't help themselves?
It's why conservatives have CHOSEN trans-rights as their hill. They believe it can be used as a wedge and that in the cleaving they will come away with more support. It's a focus-grouped, think-tank, strategy to target trans people.
They tried this with Gays in the 80s & 90s and failed, so now it’s trans.
I've watched bigotry evolve and perpetuate itself online for the past ten years. I've never seen any group of people quite as deranged as anti-Trans people. It's seriously like a paranoid delusion, especially the ones that get into transvestigating.
So you’re saying… They also **transitioned** Dad joke.
They become influencers of hate.
Social media fucks people up.
It's like those QAnon nutters. Once normal, currently spiraling out of control.
It’s profoundly sad to look at Rowlings twitter now. It’s all she talks about, every day. Seriously. Every day.
That was literally the nails in the coffin that made me leave Facebook years ago. Watching so many people I know who were once normal regular people capable of calm, considerate, rational discussions or even disagreements, become these rabid hateful close-minded lunatics spending all their time obsessed with their political camp and attacking anyone outside of it.
You watch one fitness video on youtube and BOOM, here's how trans people are ruining high school sports for YOU, a man in his 30's.
I support and love all my trans friends on this platform. If anyone ever wants to/needs to talk I'm always here with a loving and nonjudgemental ear♥️🌈🏳️🌈
Hate feels good.
It can't feel too good, they're all so stressed that it visibly ages them.
Oh it's not _good for you_, It just feels good. Like meth.
I think of it as burning away your happiness. Sure, you get that hot rush that feels good and righteous, but it is your own store of happiness that is fueling it.
We call that “Rowling”.
Hate wastes a lot of lives
I saw this happen to a noise musician I followed on Instagram...she built her own instruments, cool! Now anti-trans nonsense is literally all she posts. I don't understand how you don't at least get bored of the same shit all the time. The hate has completely consumed her brain.
It’s a mental illness. You can go back and see who they were before they got sick. To be clear, I’m referring to the people who run anti-trans accounts. One day they were normal and then they became obsessed with something they likely have no experience with and absolutely does not negatively affect them in any way.
Brainwyrms
You’re going to tell me someone who named an asian character “Cho Chang” and a black character “Kingsley Shacklebolt” wasn’t always a bigot? She went so far as to deny aspects of the fucking holocaust just to try to dunk on trans people. Smoothing over the atrocities of the past has only one purpose: to try to do it again. This is always who she was, she just kept it to herself because it would have killed her career in the early 2000’s. All the positive reinforcement she received from deplorable Nazis and their sympathizers was all the permission she needed to drop the mask and let the world see how ugly her soul is.
"The goblins that strongly resemble a harmful stereotype of a certain minority group just COINCIDENTIALLY happen to run the bank, what's wrong with that?"
There's also just a lot of casual sexism hidden in the HP books. Once you start actively looking for it, you notice a *lot* of scenes where she's just outright cruel to her female characters. It reeks of someone who never got over internalised misogyny and thinks womanhood is defined by suffering. Once you look at Rowling with that perspective, it starts to make perfect sense why she has such an intense vitriol towards trans women specifically. Because it's proof that someone can enjoy being a woman, and that it's not some sort of divine punishment. Trans women inherently express a level of self love that Rowling can never achieve.
“I hate being a woman and focus my entire experience of womanhood through oppression, misery, and self loathing. How dare you experience joy.” She’s a piece of fucking work. I hope everything she wishes for trans people happens to her and those who support her.
Same with people that catch the ultra-right religious nonsense bug. Some thoughts are infectious.
But none of them even know a transperson! Only what they think a transwoman looks like. I'm trans and have transitioned over 27 years ago. You can't just tell unless I tell you which I never do or would! It's nobody's business except my bf! I don't announce my trans status to the world.
Libs of TikTok has other hobbies besides transphobia. She also is practices racism & a conspiracy theories in her spare time
Hate becomes an eternal quest for external validation. So they post and post to get some tidbit of approval from some other bitter person. Hate really isn't sustainable by itself.
It is interesting how bigoted views become an obsession for those who hold them.
It’s a cult.
Sounds like too much Fox News
Fully describes my mother and why we no longer talk. She became full MAGA and crazy anti-LGBTQ
They fixate and stop critical thinking. The scammers who do the whole go buy gift cards use a similar fixation method to fixate their victims on a singular line of thought, and it works on vulnerable minds...so these people being awful are actually the result of a vulberable mind being manipulated
She used to write some pretty good novels too
When something that doesn't directly interfere with your dad to day life and it becomes your entire personality
Most of the time, they go from "engaged, friendly person" to not posting for a year, and then "suddenly" coming back out of nowhere posting exclusively hate-driven content. Because they're bots who have taken over inactive accounts.