Spot the Hilarity

[Doktor Howl]

It wasn't disagreement.

It was the fact that I restated my argument 3 times, for a total of 4 statements.  Each time, I was misunderstood, and more or less accused of blaming the victim.  Each time I restated it to accomodate that, because I feel that it is important that we try to identify the mechanism by which the public is convinced to basically swallow poisonous feces and smile about it.

And when I had done, it was ignored.  You can imagine my frustration.

It wasn't ignored. I have other obligations and can't respond as quickly as I'd like to.

I do appreciate your persistence in making yourself clear.

And it did appear that you and Junkenstein were blaming the victim. I still don't know where he's coming from on this, but I'm glad you took the time to put it in a way that I can understand.

I'm not blaming society, so much as pointing out that society has been completely co-opted.   To deny that society has become complicit in their own downfall is impossible, it is to ignore the world the way it really is.  Instead, as I say, we should be trying to figure out HOW this complicity is being inculcated, and then to figure out a means to counteract it.

Occupy didn't work.  There are reasons for that.  If we don't drag those reasons out into the light of day, then we'll just keep attempting a failed effort.

The problem is, by even SAYING that, hackles go up because it is taken as "they didn't try" or "their hearts weren't in it", neither of which is true of the vast majority of the people involved.  But the problem I have is that when I try to discuss this with anyone involved is that it is taken as WRONG because nobody wants to admit that a promising idea collapsed, because they feel - incorrectly - that it is a criticism of the members of Occupy, or that Occupy itself was meaningless.


ETA:  There comes a time when you have to admit that failure, and analyze it.  And then put a great big fucking rock in your fist for the next go-round.

[Doktor Howl]

You know what?  Fuck this noise.  I'm out.

I don't think anyone's fundamentally disagreeing with you, Dok.

...Something I've noticed: 
Assigning blame isn't fixing the problem. In fact, it's  counterproductive a lot of the time.
They sold it.  We collectively bought it.
That's not fixing it.

Assigning blame works for making sure it doesn't happen again...sometimes.

Actually, failing to assign blame where it is due is not constructive at all.

[McGrupp]

So if you want to fix things, you have to interfere at the point where communications pass from the people desseminating the memes to the American public.  Occupy tried this, but failed for various reasons.

Because until you do that, there can be no reform of any lasting nature.

Can you elaborate on this? I'm not sure I understand and it seems important.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

In Democracy American, You vote to fuck Self in ass!

Yeah, the American public was just asking for it over the course of 30 years and the wealthy elite quietly and steadily complied. There was nothing predatory, systematic, or conspiratorial about it, and if there was, it was mostly the fault of the people harmed by it. Hmmm...

Who screamed to be protected - made "safe" - at all costs?

Who screamed for the government to "get tough on crime"?

Who supported the bizarre invasion of Iraq with an 81-87% majority?

Who calls bank reform "communism"?

(fun fact:  http://www.gallup.com/poll/127448/Banking-Reform-Sells-Better-Wall-Street-Mentioned.aspx 43% of Americans oppose bank reform)

You have to remember that every single one of those examples was backed by massively funded PR campaigns to influence public opinion, and advertising works. Even on smart people. Especially when they don't know it's advertising, but even when they do.

Yes, this is 169% true.  See my above post.  The people doing this are in fact guilty as sin.

But I know people who DON'T buy it.  You.  Net.  Me.  LMNO.  Cain.  Many, many others.  I can't explain why some people buy it and some people don't, except for maybe the Nenslo Principle.

I used to think it was because the people that buy it are too exhausted from the treadmill to think, but that doesn't explain you, for example.  You haven't stopped moving since I met you, and you are more often capable of thinking this shit through than I am.

The fnords lose their power once you can see them. I'm exhausted, but I'm very, very pissed off, and that's why I put so much energy into trying to learn to understand what's really going on, and how people work.

I think it's probably really important that I didn't go to school, after third grade, as a child, and when I did go to school I went to a hippie school that encouraged talking back. That means I completely avoided twelve years of conditioning that would have made it a lot harder to see bullshit when it's fed to me by an "authority".

In my experience, people who are very smart have an easier time with critical thinking and sorting through bullshit. That's a real blessing. But people who are tired, and conditioned, and within one or two standard deviations of average intelligence, are going to have a much, much harder time avoiding buying into the ad campaigns.

It wasn't the people who came up with Weapons of Mass Destruction, or the War on Drugs, or being Tough on Crime. Those were very, very engineered. We the People trust in our democracy, we trust our elected officials to represent and lead us, and our policy-makers to be acting in our best interests, so when we hear rhetoric on TV we look to see whether our officials support or reject the rhetoric. When they support it, we agree with it on opinion polls. When they reject it, we reject it on opinion polls.

It is important to not mistake the opinion polls for being the cause, rather than the outcome, of PR campaigns that shape public policy.

When the PR campaigns fail and we reject the policies our elected officials support, there becomes this disconnect between what the policy makers are doing and what the people are demanding. That's when you get low approval ratings, protests, and poll responses that seem internally contradictory. There are a lot of people who don't really know how to form a cogent argument for what they DO want, and they are waiting for someone else to articulate it so they can agree. 

That part right there is where you and I come along with our loudmouth ideas. It's a dangerous fact of human nature, that most people would rather agree with someone else's ideas than come up with their own. That doesn't make them bad, but it does make them exploitable.

[Doktor Howl]

So if you want to fix things, you have to interfere at the point where communications pass from the people desseminating the memes to the American public.  Occupy tried this, but failed for various reasons.

Because until you do that, there can be no reform of any lasting nature.

Can you elaborate on this? I'm not sure I understand and it seems important.

In any communication network, there is the point at which the idea moves.  Usually this is television, but the internet has also sped up the process, both by bombarding people with truisms, and by allowing private boards and pages where people huddle under blankets and sniff their own farts.

To disrupt communication is to disrupt the opposition, no matter what type of confict you are in.  You can't attack the means of communication, because then you're just another domestic terrorist for the machine to dangle in front of the general population.

Instead, you have to figure out which point in the system is best for derailing, co-opting, or culture-jamming the message of your opponent.

And if Discordians can't do THAT, then we may as well hang it up.  Being a walking glitch is more than just boasting about shit.

[Doktor Howl]

In Democracy American, You vote to fuck Self in ass!

Yeah, the American public was just asking for it over the course of 30 years and the wealthy elite quietly and steadily complied. There was nothing predatory, systematic, or conspiratorial about it, and if there was, it was mostly the fault of the people harmed by it. Hmmm...

Who screamed to be protected - made "safe" - at all costs?

Who screamed for the government to "get tough on crime"?

Who supported the bizarre invasion of Iraq with an 81-87% majority?

Who calls bank reform "communism"?

(fun fact:  http://www.gallup.com/poll/127448/Banking-Reform-Sells-Better-Wall-Street-Mentioned.aspx 43% of Americans oppose bank reform)

You have to remember that every single one of those examples was backed by massively funded PR campaigns to influence public opinion, and advertising works. Even on smart people. Especially when they don't know it's advertising, but even when they do.

Yes, this is 169% true.  See my above post.  The people doing this are in fact guilty as sin.

But I know people who DON'T buy it.  You.  Net.  Me.  LMNO.  Cain.  Many, many others.  I can't explain why some people buy it and some people don't, except for maybe the Nenslo Principle.

I used to think it was because the people that buy it are too exhausted from the treadmill to think, but that doesn't explain you, for example.  You haven't stopped moving since I met you, and you are more often capable of thinking this shit through than I am.

The fnords lose their power once you can see them. I'm exhausted, but I'm very, very pissed off, and that's why I put so much energy into trying to learn to understand what's really going on, and how people work.

I think it's probably really important that I didn't go to school, after third grade, as a child, and when I did go to school I went to a hippie school that encouraged talking back. That means I completely avoided twelve years of conditioning that would have made it a lot harder to see bullshit when it's fed to me by an "authority".

In my experience, people who are very smart have an easier time with critical thinking and sorting through bullshit. That's a real blessing. But people who are tired, and conditioned, and within one or two standard deviations of average intelligence, are going to have a much, much harder time avoiding buying into the ad campaigns.

It wasn't the people who came up with Weapons of Mass Destruction, or the War on Drugs, or being Tough on Crime. Those were very, very engineered. We the People trust in our democracy, we trust our elected officials to represent and lead us, and our policy-makers to be acting in our best interests, so when we hear rhetoric on TV we look to see whether our officials support or reject the rhetoric. When they support it, we agree with it on opinion polls. When they reject it, we reject it on opinion polls.

It is important to not mistake the opinion polls for being the cause, rather than the outcome, of PR campaigns that shape public policy.

When the PR campaigns fail and we reject the policies our elected officials support, there becomes this disconnect between what the policy makers are doing and what the people are demanding. That's when you get low approval ratings, protests, and poll responses that seem internally contradictory. There are a lot of people who don't really know how to form a cogent argument for what they DO want, and they are waiting for someone else to articulate it so they can agree. 

That part right there is where you and I come along with our loudmouth ideas. It's a dangerous fact of human nature, that most people would rather agree with someone else's ideas than come up with their own. That doesn't make them bad, but it does make them exploitable.

All very good points, especially your opening statement.

There's something important smacking me right in the face.  Printing this off to look at it when people aren't hollering at me.  There is, right now, a totally different set of monkey business going on in my immediate vicinity, which has more to do with tearing the bottom out of the lifeboat to make clubs to beat on people for disagreeing which direction the lifeboat should be pointed.

Specifically, Princess Lilly's temporary monarchy ends on Monday, and she has started trying to flex, at the expense of my crew.  She wanted to suspend half of my crew today for coming off of break 5 minutes late, while at the same time asking why I can't do 3 extra projects.

We don't have time for this bullshit.  We're stretched to the breaking point, and some vast and mighty forces in the company are watching our progress very closely at the moment, due to the compression of 5 years of expansions being compressed into 9 months.

So the obvious thing to do is start a fucking witch hunt to show how big the family jewels are.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

So if you want to fix things, you have to interfere at the point where communications pass from the people desseminating the memes to the American public.  Occupy tried this, but failed for various reasons.

Because until you do that, there can be no reform of any lasting nature.

Can you elaborate on this? I'm not sure I understand and it seems important.

In any communication network, there is the point at which the idea moves.  Usually this is television, but the internet has also sped up the process, both by bombarding people with truisms, and by allowing private boards and pages where people huddle under blankets and sniff their own farts.

To disrupt communication is to disrupt the opposition, no matter what type of confict you are in.  You can't attack the means of communication, because then you're just another domestic terrorist for the machine to dangle in front of the general population.

Instead, you have to figure out which point in the system is best for derailing, co-opting, or culture-jamming the message of your opponent.

And if Discordians can't do THAT, then we may as well hang it up.  Being a walking glitch is more than just boasting about shit.

I think that we already have, right here, a tremendously promising propaganda machine, and a huge part of disrupting communication is issuing ideas that will cause conflict with the ideas coming out of the establishment.

Because people like truisms so much, I like to make my own, but have them be true. Like, "kids these days are so much better than when I was a kid", for instance. People love this, they eat it up; people love to think of themselves as badasses, as punk kids, and those who were not punk kids remember those punk kids with resentment. So, most people agree almost reflexively, and then... you're in their brains as someone they agree with.

[McGrupp]

So if you want to fix things, you have to interfere at the point where communications pass from the people desseminating the memes to the American public.  Occupy tried this, but failed for various reasons.

Because until you do that, there can be no reform of any lasting nature.

Can you elaborate on this? I'm not sure I understand and it seems important.

In any communication network, there is the point at which the idea moves.  Usually this is television, but the internet has also sped up the process, both by bombarding people with truisms, and by allowing private boards and pages where people huddle under blankets and sniff their own farts.

To disrupt communication is to disrupt the opposition, no matter what type of confict you are in.  You can't attack the means of communication, because then you're just another domestic terrorist for the machine to dangle in front of the general population.

Instead, you have to figure out which point in the system is best for derailing, co-opting, or culture-jamming the message of your opponent.

And if Discordians can't do THAT, then we may as well hang it up.  Being a walking glitch is more than just boasting about shit.

Ah, I see. Placing the monkey wrench in the right place. Thank you.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

It wasn't disagreement.

It was the fact that I restated my argument 3 times, for a total of 4 statements.  Each time, I was misunderstood, and more or less accused of blaming the victim.  Each time I restated it to accomodate that, because I feel that it is important that we try to identify the mechanism by which the public is convinced to basically swallow poisonous feces and smile about it.

And when I had done, it was ignored.  You can imagine my frustration.

It wasn't ignored. I have other obligations and can't respond as quickly as I'd like to.

I do appreciate your persistence in making yourself clear.

And it did appear that you and Junkenstein were blaming the victim. I still don't know where he's coming from on this, but I'm glad you took the time to put it in a way that I can understand.

I'm not blaming society, so much as pointing out that society has been completely co-opted.   To deny that society has become complicit in their own downfall is impossible, it is to ignore the world the way it really is.  Instead, as I say, we should be trying to figure out HOW this complicity is being inculcated, and then to figure out a means to counteract it.

Occupy didn't work.  There are reasons for that.  If we don't drag those reasons out into the light of day, then we'll just keep attempting a failed effort.

The problem is, by even SAYING that, hackles go up because it is taken as "they didn't try" or "their hearts weren't in it", neither of which is true of the vast majority of the people involved.  But the problem I have is that when I try to discuss this with anyone involved is that it is taken as WRONG because nobody wants to admit that a promising idea collapsed, because they feel - incorrectly - that it is a criticism of the members of Occupy, or that Occupy itself was meaningless.


ETA:  There comes a time when you have to admit that failure, and analyze it.  And then put a great big fucking rock in your fist for the next go-round.

Society has definitely been complicit in it's own downfall and I do think it's absolutely vital to suss out precisely how that happens.

Occupy didn't have much direct effect on the problems it originally focused on, I agree. By that measure I'd admit it's a failure, but I don't view protests as a method in and of themselves to bring about change. They're a rallying point. A catalyst. A credible threat. Not the mechanism for the change itself.

Occupy did succeed in bringing disparate groups of people together and I'm still inspired by the diversity and number of voices I heard. If people don't feel that progress is viable they won't look for ways to make it happen and a self-fulfilling cycle of failure spins people into bitter apathy. There was that spark and initial momentum, you have to give Occupy that. CEO's were scrambling for concealed carry permits and personal body guards.

We all choked on the next steps though—what are the root causes and what are the most practical ways to address them? And then, perhaps even without much help from agent provocateurs or a hostile media narrative, the whole thing splintered into identity politics and pet topics.

My hypothesis about the dissolution of Occupy is that people did not have the time, intellectual perseverence, or humility to learn about the incredibly byzantine horrorshow we were protesting in the first place. Instead, many people who wanted protester "cred" more than actual change dropped the 99% slogans and reverted to the topics they felt knowledgable about.

[Doktor Howl]

Actually, based on a conversation with Kalera, I am for the moment backing off on the word "failed".  More on this after I bounce it around in my head a bit.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Actually, based on a conversation with Kalera, I am for the moment backing off on the word "failed".  More on this after I bounce it around in my head a bit.

I am eager to see how you end up refining it. I think you have something good here, it just needs to be tweaked.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Net, what I aw was that Occupy got a lot of people involved, who then moved forward post-Occupy to work on specific points of reform, like healthcare, foreclosure assistance, ending prisons-for-profit, re-examining mandatory minimum sentencing, and affordable education. Some of those things we have seen movement on, and some of them I think will take several years to see movement on, but I am optimistic because people are working on them. The protests helped trigger rapid growth for the Working Families Party in Oregon and elsewhere, and I find that very encouraging.

[Left]

...Something I've noticed: 
Assigning blame isn't fixing the problem. In fact, it's  counterproductive a lot of the time.
They sold it.  We collectively bought it.
That's not fixing it.

Assigning blame works for making sure it doesn't happen again...sometimes.

They stole our houses, our schools, and our privacy, but I'm sure we can fix it as long as we don't hold them accountable.

Nah, we SHOULD hold them accountable.
It's just that if we're too busy figuring out who's to blame, we're not fixing the problem...
(At this point my car is still fucking up and I don't know why, so I am taking a temporary vacation in a few VERY stiff drinks...and I DON'T DRINK...I have had this bottle of whiskey since LAST YEAR... )

Personally, my inner caveperson would love to go rampaging with a baseball bat and a 12-gauge right now, because my life is so fucking frustrating, and the reason it's fucking frustrating is I'm not fucking making a fucking living wage while working 40 fucking hours a week.
I'm not a greedy bastard, I don't want much for myself.
I just want to not constantly be running on duct tape and fucking adrenaline because I am just barely scraping by.
I want to be able to afford to call off work when I am really sick...right now my motto is "If I fall over, I can go home."
I want to actually be able to put my car in a shop and get it repaired by someone who knows what the hell they are doing. 
I want to be able to do this, and pay rent...right now I live out in bumfuck Egypt because I get a free place this way.

That's right, I don't pay rent and I STILL CAN'T AFFORD TO HAVE MY FUCKING CAR FIXED...and I make 3$ an hour over minimum wage.
So while I know I have it way better than some, this is STILL fucked up.

What I meant was (shit, need more whiskey) what I meant was...holding people accountable is part of the overall action of stopping it and making sure it doesn't happen again.
It's subordinate to stopping it.

I thought Dok was blaming the victim, he wasn't.
He was looking for the mechanism of victimization.

Part of that's advertising, of course.  Part of that's the old Horatio Alger bullshit, people think they TOO can be rich, and yanno what?
Nope.  The creation of one ultra-rich person means that lots of other people have to be poor.
...Finite resources.
Capitalism presupposes infinite resources, but we know that is a crock of shit.

[Left]

In addendum, I would like to add, I love you all.
More than the Canadian Mist whiskey I am getting merrily sauced on.

I adore every fucking one of you.
You are all beautiful fuckers; never forget it.

Especially Nigel, who specializes in busting asses...because sometimes that's important.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Aw good goddamn, you people are out to pump me up tonight! Thank you.