slag

The naval equivalent of a useless fatass is also pretty on brand.

If anything, evil at scale tends to come from an absence of feeling for others instead of an impulse. A desire to validate that we’re better than others married to a missing regard for others.

• If you have a choice between bettering something you care for (yourself) and something you’re apathetic toward, what wins?
• Ethnic cleansing is everyday people being coached to apply this mindset selectively to a neighbor.
• Sociopaths don’t need the coaching and everyone else is a candidate for the cleansing. The people who they keep around are there to enrich their wallet or their ego.

True “evil” tends to occur when such people gather together and seek attention and distinction amongst themselves. The irrational pursuit of decadence leads to the decadence itself becoming enshrined as a system of measurement. Even serial killers aren’t likely to kill for killing’s sake. It’s not the moment of the kill that keeps them coming back; it’s the sense of superiority that comes from repeating the deed and not being caught.

Outliers exist, naturally. Sadism is a thing, much like masochism. Crimes of passion are self-describing, and some are more prone to volatile emotions than others. But when I view the problem at scale, I see people who 1) consider themselves the main character, 2) break things around them to ensure the main character wins, and 3) don’t feel anything particularly strong in the process unless they’re losing or “failing”.

And here I thought f-strings were something that happen when others are forced to read my code.

The boring nuclear option is unfortunately the correct one then.

For many people it’s the notification that is the biggest problem. That sound immediately sends the mind back to the anticipated argument and the physiological responses to conflict are already kicking in before you’ve even tilted the screen to read the notification.

If that describes you, here’s my advice:

• Type your comment, put your best rebuttal forward, click send. That’s your mic drop moment. Now never come back to it.
• Turn off notifications. If the thread has a link for turning them off, click that. If it doesn’t, turn off notifications for the entire app.
• That entire comment thread is now off limits, and it’s easier to police yourself now that the mind controlling powers of the notification have been dealt with.

While you’re at it, turn off notifications for a few more apps. Pretty much everyone needs to turn off a few more than they have and that shit disrupts your best thinking throughout the day. And if you still can’t exercise the discipline to say your piece and move on? That means you’re running out of excuses for telling yourself it isn’t an addiction, and you really should delete the account and the app.

This is why you should always say “and then he defended it publicly” in the same breath.

Will you win the argument? No. Will you increase the amount of mental gymnastics they perform for your own personal entertainment? Yes.

Hijacking comment to point out that both posters of negative scored comments are 12-13 days old and one of them has a gibberish username. Downvote and move on.

Edit: Cry more, payroll shills.

IMO: A lot of this is groundwork for a parallel construction narrative. “Of course our numbers are better than theirs, we would have won every election ever if it weren’t for rigged votes.”

The primary goal isn’t to win by driving the actual vote count down, though it certainly helps. The actual goal is to create the widest smoke screen possible, so that any time the numbers look strangely in their favor it’s because there are fewer illegal immigrants “voting”. Deportations! Better ID verification! Blue vote numbers are down, and it’s because the Trump administration fixed the system. Just ignore all the fact based studies that showed how few votes were tallied in error.

Their demographic doesn’t need proof for what they want to believe, just a plausible narrative that they are already groomed to accept.

Department of War Crimes

Laws like this only work if they are uniformly enforced.

The shell game is when the enforcement agency or parent company takes initiative during an election cycle versus when they choose not to. (top down enforcement) You can certainly complain from the bottom up and take it to court, but by the time it gets litigated the election is already over.

You did not address the core issue, which is that you engage with many comment threads negatively and on an individual basis, providing a cyclical viewpoint. This is creating engagement for each “toxic” thread individually instead of confidently asserting a PoV and letting it rest. I understand that from your perspective that it’s fair to lower yourself to their perceived level, but it’s still bloating the toxic side of the discourse instead of helping it move on.

Drop a wall of well reasoned text and let it stand on its own. Or provide the type of comment that you want to see at the top level and be the change you want.

Case in point, I’ve said what I wanted to say, have found myself restating it once, and this comment is my peace out. A good day to you!