America III: Going Deutsche

[saif]

I've always loved the way Americans talk about the unwavering constitution while referring to all the "amendments". Guys, you know what that word means, right?

[QualityChimp]

I heard someone ranting that it shouldn't be allowed to change the 2nd Amendment, like an amendment isn't a change already.

Also like this from Family Guy:

[QualityChimp]

Ha, jinx, no quitsies, [MENTION=23]saif[/MENTION]!

[fishbowlhead]

That's 2nd Amendment and it's really not very specific. Strictly speaking, it does not prohibit the right to thermonuclear warheads - the amendment states that "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed". Arms itself is not defined, it's only from supreme court subsequent rulings that certainly arms have been restricted, rather than the 2nd Amendment itself prohibiting them.

2nd Amendment purists would argue they should be able to own them.

Was also made (2nd amendment) when all they had were ball musket rifles at best, i mean the average farmer would of had his work tools more or less. Was definitely not made to include automatic assault rifles and modern weapons of war.

[Asura]

Social media is our streets now. And these gob****es have been shouting in our streets where we are.

Yeah; I freely admit, I was a "see both sides, let's encourage free discussion" sort of person back in 2004. I was very much one of those people who didn't like the idea of deplatforming, believing that it set a dangerous precedent, slippery slope, all the rest of it. And even at the time, I was exposed to a lot stuff from the late-90s "wild west" of the internet which is somewhat tempered today; nazism, instructions on how to make explosives, all that crap.

But the difference c.2001 was that the internet and real life were seen as two entirely disconnected things.

I mean back then, there was no Paypal, few online stores; you couldn't even buy cinema tickets. You can see this on contemporary TV shows like The West Wing, which refer prominently to the internet in some episodes, and carry off the prevailing opinion - that everyone who took time to pose on the internet was crazy or mal-adjusted, and their opinions were inconsequential.

And really, it was. There were so few people using the internet, and even among those who were, no-one was "themselves". Maybe it's wrong to say that behaviour was "harmless" but the effects were so intangible that it may as well have been.

As a result, it was easy back then for things like *chan culture to thrive, because those sites started as a kind of weird social experiment - to see what people would say/do in this consequence free, anonymous environment. Now, I was never the sort of person to casually throw about insults and slurs, but there was definitely shock-comedy value in just how far people on those boards and sites took those taboos. This was no difference to my naivete as a teenager in downloading the anarchist's cookbook; it was a sort of macabre fascination.

It leads to that modern meme of that person who arrives at a meetup of people from the internet, only to say "Wait, wait wait... You guys are ACTUALLY racists? I thought that was just a joke!"

I was never quite so naive as to have that example play out in real life, but I think like many, it was a gradual transition. I still remember renting a house in 2009, and one day, seeing that my landlord had a sewn patch on his bag with the logo for a well-known white supremacist site, and how that drew into focus about how everyone on a message board is, well, a person.

Over the years, I've watched as this "culture war" progressed, running alongside how the internet became more and more inter-woven into people's real lives, and how it reached the point where this kind of stuff was causing genuine, real damage. Everything from people comitting suicide due to bad advice on Reddit to a generation of kids for whom cyber-bullying is a real threat.

After all that, in 2020, I'm all in favour of deplatforming, and having more aggressive rules about what is and is not acceptable. Mainly because I still like internet anonymity, and would hate us to move to a situation where it no longer exists; but for that to coexist with those who have brought their real life onto the internet, there need to be rules, and people need to be protected. That behaviour is no longer confined to the "isolated island" of the internet, as the events of the last weeks have proven.

It's been nearly 30 years since the Eternal September.

The fact of the matter is, right-wing rhetoric is attractive to certain people, just as incel rhetoric is attractive to a certain group of men. Words have power and these things can be dangerous; they don't have to be a cookbook of explosives. Worse yet, we have platforms with algorithms that have proven that, in some way, humans are kinda ****; they've taken our natural love for conspiracy, controversy or tribal anger, and weaponised that via the "engagement" metric.

People are vulnerable to this. People who otherwise might be quite well-meaning, high-functioning people. It can't just be "tolerated". Tolerance is great in theory, but in practice it just allows extremists to entrench themselves. You've gotta nip that stuff in the bud.

If you run a bar and a nazi walks in, swastika tattoos and everything, you kick them out, because their espoused ideology suggests that they consider some of your other patrons sub-human. Social sites have the same responsibility.

[QualityChimp]

Reminds me of this speech by Obama when he was questioned about gun control.
I really miss having a grown-up in charge.

[MartyG]

The amendments are immutable, so subsequent amendments could not negate the 2nd amendment rights for example, so from that point of view the ratified constitution is unwavering.

Was also made (2nd amendment) when all they had were ball musket rifles at best, i mean the average farmer would have had his work tools more or less. Was definitely not made to include automatic assault rifles and modern weapons of war.

The intent of the founding fathers, or rather the first 10 amendments as laid out in the Bill of Rights, were drafted specifically to restrict the powers of federal government, so from that perspective it does include ARs as they would be required by a Militia for the people to defend itself against a rogue government and its forces.

[JazzFunk]

Where are all these 'racists', though, these 'fascists'? All I've seen is BLM activism, anti-Trump rhetoric and Extinction Rebellion making a five minute bus trip to work a fifty minute one. For two or three weeks. And the place was a MESS afterwards.

The streets still exist as an actual thing, I was walking them today. Lots of frozen tramps and roadworks everywhere.

There seems to be a MAHOOSIVE disconnect betwixt the ever-increasing amount of folk with their heads constantly stuck in their phones and working from home and the people still out in the physical world doing their thang.

I am governed by love, by humanism, but it seems the so-called 'anti-fascists' are using fascism as their tool to ban and control everything, deplatform peeps, censor everything, whine and whine and whine. Break things down, mash it up, divide, then bring the Stasi mindset in.

And this is what you are all becoming. With relish it seems. Soon, there shall be no books, soon all history shall be rewritten in edited, bite-sized chunks on Facebook or whatever our tech gods give us. There will only be the one opinion. This isn't right.

I'm only bobbing in here to offer an alternative opinion, ya can label me a fascist, racist, whatnot, for I know how beautiful and full of love my soul is. It's just becoming a bit of a queasy echo chamber and it's starting to stink a tad.

I'm just warning ya. It's a slippery slope. I've been here fifteen years. I see it, dudes.

Gamers, not politicians. You're probs gonna try n' flame me but there's no point, I am love. You'll only make my rind even crispier. Sometimes one has to chiggedy check oneself. It's just getting...a bit strange on here, now. I called it.

[Neon Ignition]

I assume it mostly rests on intepretation too. As in by 'the people' it means other parties outside of government so as to stop the risk of a dictatorship. It doesn't necessarily mean literally every person as that implies zero gun control which they don't have.

Not that there's a way of truly believing in the constitution and also blindly following Trump, no matter what they think his drones aren't 'real Americans'

[JazzFunk]

It's all very strange, dude, and it's twistin' my melon seeing so many on both sides affected by it.

Gonna be a whole lot of minds breaking down, the more we go on in this dystopian state.

I'm gonna get back into doing counselling, methinks, will probs have to redo my course as it's been over a decade but I'd be raking it in!

[Cassius_Smoke]

I think gun control is impossible. They opened Pandoras box. There are so many guns in America now that you can't possibly stop people getting their hands on them.
Like Chris Rock said though 'it should cost $1000 a bullet'. That would stem the flow.

[Brad]

Dear Duracell,
After powering my remote for four years, I am now on principal refusing to use the two batteries that have just run out of charge and I am removing them from the remote and will be throwing them in the bin. I trust this will send strong message.

This is quite brilliant.

[Brad]

Where are all these 'racists', though, these 'fascists'? All I've seen is BLM activism, anti-Trump rhetoric and Extinction Rebellion making a five minute bus trip to work a fifty minute one. For two or three weeks. And the place was a MESS afterwards.

The streets still exist as an actual thing, I was walking them today. Lots of frozen tramps and roadworks everywhere.

There seems to be a MAHOOSIVE disconnect betwixt the ever-increasing amount of folk with their heads constantly stuck in their phones and working from home and the people still out in the physical world doing their thang.

I am governed by love, by humanism, but it seems the so-called 'anti-fascists' are using fascism as their tool to ban and control everything, deplatform peeps, censor everything, whine and whine and whine. Break things down, mash it up, divide, then bring the Stasi mindset in.

And this is what you are all becoming. With relish it seems. Soon, there shall be no books, soon all history shall be rewritten in edited, bite-sized chunks on Facebook or whatever our tech gods give us. There will only be the one opinion. This isn't right.

I'm only bobbing in here to offer an alternative opinion, ya can label me a fascist, racist, whatnot, for I know how beautiful and full of love my soul is. It's just becoming a bit of a queasy echo chamber and it's starting to stink a tad.

I'm just warning ya. It's a slippery slope. I've been here fifteen years. I see it, dudes.

Gamers, not politicians. You're probs gonna try n' flame me but there's no point, I am love. You'll only make my rind even crispier. Sometimes one has to chiggedy check oneself. It's just getting...a bit strange on here, now. I called it.

I hear you. But. Trump is an absolute **** and anyone who supports him is scum and I don’t really need to research or understand anything more than that. Yes we can look into why people don’t see him for what he is, or they do see him for what he is and are fine with it because they are the same but I’ve got stuff to do.

[JazzFunk]

I disagree. I think we're all adults and we can decide. Keep taking freedoms away, eventually you, yourself, will have none.

It is not right and it will only get worse. I never wanted 1984 to come true but even when I read it the first time in 1994, my gut just *knew* it would become a reality.

Nah, soz Brad. It will lead to more and more control and censorship. I know you're all great blokes but you can see it, I can see it, and now's the time we're in the middle of it.

It's here. It will swallow us all up if we let it. Be sane, be fair, be reasonable, spread love, debate and be good humans.

It is getting to the point where even entering a thread like this, I get trepidation. But I shouldn't.

[JazzFunk]

And have you SEEN the state of YouTube these days? The censorship of certain, harmless words, the threat of demonetisation should there be one, sensitive little word in there???

It's all here. It's right in front of you. Take the VR off.