Bad ideology when person whose aesthetic I don’t like happily reads to kids. Good ideology when person whose aesthetic I do like waves to crowd. I am strongman, hear me roar, pound chest. Me like chest pound aesthetic, make brain feel good. Me tough guy, tougher than those weirdos who use bright colors in things. Me only like sepia tone or grayscale, must look aged and old like socrates. New things bad, old good, but only if old comes from right color scheme and quote vibes. This how product work, color and packing I like taste better, so must be same with ideology, right?

I don’t know how I got here as satire, exactly, but I am tired…

it eats at me when I have to see the results of the “unjust peace” (not that what’s going on in the world or even within the cores can be remotely described as “peace”) and live in it, particularly with the Sinophobic sword of Damocles hanging over my head (ethnic Chinese myself), or with literal industrial genocide going on and the west goosestepping towards WW3 and open fascism.

I can’t pretend to understand the part about being ethnically Chinese in the imperial core, as I definitely qualify as “white” myself, but the part about “unjust peace” resonates with me in some way. I don’t know if my mind is going to quite the same places, but there’s something about the normalcy of things in the US that def eats at me. One expression of this where I notice it is, of all places, dating apps. I don’t know what it is about it, but seeing profile after profile that has all this individualistic language about a personal lifestyle, while perhaps the most documented-in-real-time and widely publicized genocide in history is being funded and enabled by the US, is such a disorienting feeling. There’s the odd profile here and there that mentions it, maybe some of it’s my locale, but it’s like overall, this juxtaposition of liberal individualism against the realities of what is happening in the world. Like the implied assumption is that the current system works and will keep working and everybody will sort of get to do their own thing if they try hard enough for it, and it’s like, are many of these people putting on a face but don’t believe the system is going to last, or are they sleepwalking through it in a political education sense of things.

And I’ll be honest, I don’t think I’m doing the best I could be doing in my own case, with regards to these things. I might be doing the best I can manage right now, but I can probably work to do better going forward. And I think that’s part of the disorienting feeling for me too. Like having one feet in and one foot out. But I can never unsee everything I’ve seen and I can’t ever feel normal going back what it felt like before I was more aware of what’s going on in the world beyond the imperialist bubble of propaganda. And the fact that I can’t means it’s all the harder to relate to a lot of people. So I can put on a face and do the individualist lifestyle dance to a point, but sometimes it feels like putting on a brave face for a kid. I know that would probably sound demeaning to people and places it applies to, but it’s the best analogy I can think of at the moment. It’s like this thing of pretending things are normal when they aren’t because it’s too upsetting to others if you don’t at least try to, to a degree. That doesn’t mean I never bring up the issues I care about, but it’s like, trying to find the right balance of being able to meet people where they are at in order to have any chance of moving the needle and taking a principled stand. That is hard, when the default position for so many in the US is confident spew that contains various levels of barely-contained vile; and I’m not even talking about people who are openly fascist or whatever. More just the stomach-turning nature of liberalism.

You aren’t a liberal for being human. It is something to remember that some of us are not the best “people person” types and either need to work on that more, or need to find others who can better do those roles. Using myself as an example, I’m good at being diplomatic, but chatting up strangers has never been one of my strengths; it’s possible I could make it one with enough time and motivation, but right now, it’s not. Not having that strength will cut off capabilities for me that people who can do that, have. I also have an easier time getting into meta, deep concepts than some, but it does little if I can’t present it to others in a way that communicates its value effectively and contributes to the advancement of liberation and the advancement of more compassionate and stable conditions for people.

We have different strengths, in other words, and no matter what an individual works on, they will still lack in some areas. That’s one of the reasons organizing together and complementing each other, in both strengths and struggles, is so important.

I have definitely been plagued by the “hobby must be productive” mentality. For example, in the context of a video game, framing it around what I’m “accomplishing” within the game, since the game itself is not producing anything. Or in the context of language learning, viewing it as something that needs to show results for it to be worth doing.

I think it ties into a sort of perfectionism for me. But anyway, I agree with you that a hobby does not need to “qualify” as a hobby, for lack of a better word. It can just be a thing that you do. Now as for applying that to my own mind in practice, that’s a whole other question. 😅

Fair point to make.

I started noticing it more via twitter after the October 7th thing happened and all the zionists coming out of the woodwork there, who would use the same general talking points, be accounts who were inorganic in their origins, posting history, username, etc.

And I agree, it seems heavily a part of reddit as well; it’s just harder to spot at a glance on reddit because the accounts are more anonymized, as is the voting. But the tonality of it (for lack of a better word) is distinctly there. Although it’s certainly believable, like you say, that there are fanatics out there, the numbers don’t make sense. Many regular people are plain busy and do not have the time to be posting foaming at the mouth imperialism on the internet, even if they wanted to; and if they did, they would articulate it in varied ways based on their levels of ignorance regarding imperialism and conflict and so on, not this stuff where suddenly everybody has more or less the same talking point.

My thoughts are so

free.

Where do they come

from?

Do they come from

me?

I cannot understand where their origins

be.

So I wrote a poem about how they make me

feel.

Their originality makes me feel

unique.

I never check the comments because

I

Might find one of the other fifty million

people,

Who have writ the

same.

Understandable, thanks for the explanation.

I’d just like to say, being the OP of that thread - I didn’t know it was on the level of hardline position that asking a question would provoke such. If I’d known the stance was “masking should be done” and advocating to the contrary can get your post removed, I wouldn’t have asked it in the open-ended way I did, as it’s just baiting at that point; to be clear, I don’t know if that is “the stance”, but if it is, it would be odd for me to pose the question in the way I did.

If there is an “official” stance on masking, I’d be happy to know what it is. Main reason I was asking in the first place was to better understand where others with similar ideology are at on the issue, this far in, (and especially what their reasons are that I could consider for my own reasoning on it) as I hadn’t heard much on it in a while.

His criticisms sound like heavy projection about his own lifestyle and mindset. Like it’s such a specific thing to invent, he’s probably the one buying 5 pound jugs of cheese puffs, ya know. And like, he calls people lazy, but made a living off of reacting to stuff other people do lol. I don’t hate on people inherently for doing that, I understand people going for whatever they can find to make a living under capitalism, but if we’re ranking things in terms of effort and hardship, it’s not exactly near the top.

I’m sorry you got long covid. :( I can relate on the getting infected most likely due to others. The family members I was living with was good about it for a while and we’d avoided infection afaik and then another came in who wasn’t so good about it and it was late in, post-vaccine too, so all the harder to argue the importance of it and we all got infected at one point. Don’t think any of us got long covid, but it’s that thing where all it takes sometimes is one person to be selfish about it. It’s very frustrating.

and as a visible minority (Asian) that adds to it.

Can def understand the risk more so in drawing attention under those circumstances.

Will take a look at it in more depth at some point, good to have on hand.

There’s essentially no reason not to in my opinion. It would obviously be much safer if everyone was still masking, but at least in my experience, diligent masking has been very effective at preventing illness in my household despite the lack of precaution from the public.

This makes sense to me and I think is generally the sort of reasoning I’ve gone by in the past. Like a percentages thing. Even if you’re living in a household where not everybody is doing it, as I am, reducing the odds of bringing something home is still better than nothing.

Fair point on it. I don’t know that I can budge the immediate people in my life on it, but I will probably continue to do it myself. I think the part that makes it difficult is the normalization of it. This thing of people viewing it like “well it’s just sort of part of the makeup of infections that can happen now, like the flu and I got a vaccine, so now the pandemic is over.” And I don’t know how to counter that to people because what am I supposed to say, ya know, “just keep wearing a mask for the rest of your life”? People want to believe there’s a cutoff point, I’m sure, myself included. But it’s been handled so poorly in some places, it seems almost like the poor handling of it itself is part of what’s making it difficult to have a cut off point for precaution.

It’s sort of a “nobody says anything but almost nobody else is doing it” thing here. I don’t seem to be in an area where people will actively pushback about it, but there’s few still doing it. If you’re actually getting tirades about it, I can understand not wanting to risk drawing the attention.

I understand and empathize with this for sure. I’m one of the few who I still see wearing one in my area, so it can def feel like “what’s the point” and “I’m just calling attention to myself.” Luckily, I don’t get anything more than the occasional odd look for it, which could just be odd looks for other reasons, or I’m reading into them too much. So I can keep doing it without concern for people giving me trouble about it, but it does feel weird being so alone in it.

Bookmarking that to read more on later, thanks. And yeah, I’ve wondered about the difference there - like would people in those places in Asia where it’s normal even face any reaction at all for wearing a mask long past public mandates or would they just be viewed as socially responsible people. Part of why I’m curious about that, is because if I only go by what the US is doing as a general thing, it could lead to some very irresponsible decision-making. There’s a lot of science ignorance and the like here. And of course the individualism in the US that goes something like: “if the odds are low that it will inconvenience me, then why should I care if it might kill someone else?” Not that I think people are reasoning it out that consciously, but that’s sort of the implication of the lackadaisical attitude toward it.

I think the best “point” to make to them here is no point at all. That is to say, you don’t approach it as ignorance to answer with knowledge, you use the socratic method on them, or to put it another way: you revert to being a small child and keep asking “why?”

I’m being a bit tongue in cheek on that last bit, but I am serious about the general idea. At this level of ignorance, you can waste a lot of time trying to “teach” before even knowing what it is exactly that the person believes. So it can be much more productive to ask, i.e. stuff like, “why do you think he’s a communist?” or “what does communism mean to you?”

fictional example to illustrate: “what does communism mean to you?” “it’s when the deep state controls everyone” “what is the deep state?” “the deep state is those people in the shadows who control everyone” “who are the people in the shadows?” “well I don’t know, they’re in the shadows” “so how do you know they’re connected to Trump?” “because he says communistic, deep state stuff” “like what?”

and so on. Of course, it’s possible the person loses patience with you or whatnot, but I think people are usually more open to explaining themselves than being explained to, unless they’re in it to learn. And someone who believes such an absurdly disjointed political thing about Trump is probably not going in headfirst with an open mind. In general, the idea is not only to better understanding what it is the person believes, it’s to effectively confront the person with their own beliefs and any contradictions within them. It’s something I recommend to be used sparingly cause you can definitely be a very annoying person if you use this approach as a way to avoid ever presenting and defending your own positions, but it has its uses.

I would say yeah, art is about human connection, though also heavily about politics and culture. I’d venture to say that notions of separating art from those heavy hitters, politics and culture (which are arguably not even separate things in the first place, but I digress…), is largely a liberal capitalism thing and as unrealistic as most things about capitalism. Which, incidentally, is part of why it’s so weird when people are like, “Stop making art political!!” Like it never wasn’t political. It’s just a question of how obvious it is to any given person or group.

In my experience around image generation tech, it appears like it’s the sharing of cool generations among other people and the resulting human connection that is more attractive in the long-term than the “generate whatever” in private, which can be fun, similar as eating candy can be fun, but can get old fast if you overdo it. There’s a lot within that subject to unpack, but I’ve seen others point out something that appears to be true to an extent, which is that people don’t tend to be all that interested in others “AI art” and are more so interested in their own, which makes a kind of sense to me because the end result is usually shlocky flashy fast food “art” that might feel more meaningful to the person who spent hours experimenting with prompts to get to it. This might seem like a contradiction to the idea of sharing in “cool generations,” but it seems to me that such sharing is in part about the sharing itself, not entirely about the perceived quality of the art. Similar to how people can go to a movie together and maybe they’re critics about it or maybe they aren’t, but either way, they have that knowing that they shared the experience of seeing it simultaneously and can talk about what that experience was like.

This can’t be a real post by him, right? This image is like… self parody. “He won’t be shot on my watch,” but the actual guy he’s “defending” is more prepared in this fictional image than he is.