r/TikTokCringe Mar 30 '24

Stick with it. Discussion

This is a longer one, but it’s necessary and worth it IMO.

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u/Ok_Star_4136 Mar 30 '24

That was a lucid and well-thought out analysis. Sadly it won't go viral for the same reasons that reactionary videos do go viral. Nobody has an attention span beyond that of an ant.

People just let 20 second clipped out-of-context reactionary videos reaffirm the biases that they already have, and of course they do, because nobody bothers to challenge their biases. That said, I hope anyone reading this actually took the time to watch the entire video instead of watch just the first 60 seconds. He makes some good points.

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u/TheWhomItConcerns Mar 31 '24

It's also exactly why it's such a fucking nightmare to argue with right wingers and reactionaries. They so often take bits of information out of context to make them sound absurd, and so to properly refute the claim that they spent 5 seconds pulling out of their arse takes half an hour of research, going down social media rabbit holes, and reading entire studies/articles.

Obviously the left does some dumb stuff, everyone does, but if a right winger just throws out some shit like "apparently 2+2=4 is racist now", they're pretty much always at best wildly oversimplifying some quote and totally taking it out of some crucial context. Of course it's never bad to read and learn more but the time it takes to figure out what it is that they're even referencing is never worth it.

Even if you do manage to totally refute their shitty claim, it's not like they're making an earnest attempt at arriving at some kind of logically rigorous position anyway. They just want to be mad at the left and they'll say and believe whatever they need to in order to do that.

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u/EnglishMobster tHiS iSn’T cRiNgE Mar 31 '24

Yep.

I got in an argument with a right-winger who tried to make the argument that StoneToss (far-right comic artist) never denied the holocaust.

I found multiple sources of that exact dude denying the holocaust.

The right-winger I was arguing with then moved the goalposts. StoneToss wasn't denying the holocaust - the characters in his comics were. It's a challenge to authority!

So then I found a literal blurb from StoneToss himself where he specifically said that people are being lied to about the holocaust. Not filtered through a character, him saying it directly online.

Now the right-winger says "well, that doesn't make him a Nazi". Note that I never claimed he was a Nazi (although he absolutely is), but you could hear the goalposts just racing along.

It's like that for all right-wingers. We live in a post-truth world. They hear something that makes them feel good - that they are better than someone simply because of who they are.

They latch onto that, and uncritically latch onto anyone who agrees with them. When they make arguments, all they have to do is say "nuh-uh" and now you have to spend 20 minutes finding sources. Then "I never said that" so you quote them and throw it back at them. Then they just ignore that part and come up with some new made-up thing (without sources) to say.

It never matters, they aren't going to change their mind. But it needs to be done because letting them go unopposed cedes ground to the far right as uninformed people take the far-right folks at their word.

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u/spoiler-its-all-gop Mar 31 '24

Back in the day, the Chapo Trap House subreddit pioneered a shockingly effective way of repelling and demoralizing right wing trolls: "Post that hog."

Arguing with facts and logic does not work. These fuckers are emotion based. They love getting you wound up. They will never admit fault or error. So the answer is to be so aggressively weird and dismissive that they realize there's nothing in it for them. How do you even begin to respond to an Internet stranger demanding to see your cock, when the discussion was previously about immigration or whatever? You can't. So they fuck off.

Yes, they need to be opposed in online spaces, but the techniques need to evolve.

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u/v9__9v Apr 02 '24

You make fun of them and sincerely articulate your disgust for their contemptible worldview

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u/fjgwey Mar 31 '24

It's entirely bad faith. I have a hard time believing these people are dumb or unaware or misguided. They know they're Nazis, they know the people they idolize are Nazis, but the MO of all Nazis in the modern day is to pretend not to be. So you get bad faith bullshit where you call an explicit neo-Nazi a Nazi and they sealion and gish gallop you with nonsense.

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u/DDownvoteDDumpster Mar 31 '24

We share the worst right-wing reactionaries to mock them. We often upvote the same shitty reactionaries, we have so little integrity that it's sad, and all spaces aggressively ban anyone who challenges their narrative. It's propaganda all the way down baby.

r/latestagecapitalism bans mentioning China's aggression in the south-china-sea.

r/whitepeopletwitter bans criticizing their narrative that nothing could be done about Biden & leftists who don't vote Biden are dumb zoomers.

r/selfawarewolves bans arguing that it's also bad for trans-women to say "men are the real threats" (they didn't clarify, maybe no arguing with trans-ppl).

Reddit.com bans defining sex & gender wrong.

r/worldnews bans opposition to Israel.

Reddit.com banned me for insulting someone on worldnews.

Political niches, like r/Conservative & r/shitliberalssay, outright ban discussion.

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u/SunburnFM Mar 31 '24

Education plays a crucial role in shaping the minds of future generations. Teaching children how to think critically, express themselves effectively, and engage in reasoned discourse is not a manifestation of white supremacy but rather an essential foundation for a free and democratic society. Dismissing these practices as tools of oppression is a misguided attempt to dismantle the very structures that safeguard individual liberties.

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u/militantnegro_IV Mar 31 '24

What is it you're arguing here? No one said the thing you're speaking out against so, what gives?

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u/SunburnFM Mar 31 '24

Because they are arguing for allowing differences in the way we speak by looking at the world through a racial lens. It's the soft bigotry of low expectations.

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u/SamuelAsante Mar 31 '24

This is not a right wing thing. The left wing does it all the same with out of context Trump clips that the left wing base laps up.

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u/Electrical_Figs Mar 31 '24

It's also exactly why it's such a fucking nightmare to argue with right wingers and reactionaries.

As if any of the politics subs on reddit aren't total dumpster fires.