TomSadil
Cass M 🇨🇦 
I don't think I've read as brutal an indictment against a culture as this one by @pluralistic
Robin Barton@cass_m @pluralistic What an excellent point that has been made
Rob Ricci@cass_m @pluralistic goddamn
Olivia Vespera@cass_m @pluralistic What's the source article?
Silver exSurferThis one about AI
ETA - I didn't include a link because I'm not commenting on the core theme of the post.
Medea Vanamonde 🏳️‍⚧️@cass_m @pluralistic @Elodie_lyra
Now I have ye olde song “Imaginary Lovers” stuck in my head but it’s “Imaginary Children” and I am profoundly tempted to rework every line of the song.
Kevin RussellGosh, such good writing about insights so powerful.
PeachMcD@cass_m @pluralistic
💯🎯
@ThomHartmann & Revd Dr. Wm. Barber of the #PoorPeoplesCampaign have made this excellent point in the past. It bears repeating... over & over.
But the @dnc is busy funding #genocide & #IranWar bc #AIPAC told them to
Mike Fraser@cass_m @pluralistic People of industrialized countries have been raised on media. Most of their life lessons are learned through fictional drama presented to them on a screen. As such people long to be the hero of a drama with all of the rules fiction provides. Unfortunately real life is dynamic and messy. One day a villain does a heroic thing and the next an upstanding figure is caught in a scandal. People love online narrative garbage because it gives them a good/bad binary that they crave
@mike I'm not saying this is a new thing. I think due to the nature of a lot of work now - somewhat isolated and online it's a lot easier to not be slapped in the face by reality and this is the path many have chosen. To them perhaps the children being killed in Gaza are as imaginary as the pizza restaurant basement🤷‍♀️
Misuse Case@cass_m @mike Or the kids being killed in Gaza are real but convenient in a certain way because they’re at a distance and can’t tell some white Internet warrior what they actually want, so someone can claim to speak for them and their needs.
But for these same people their black, brown, and poor neighbors and neighbors’ kids don’t warrant a thought, let alone a mention.
Toni Aittoniemi@cass_m @pluralistic This is accurate. Loyalist/authoritarians essentially always structure themselves against an imaginary world, one which seamlessly morphs to suit any desired outcome.
For, and this is important, to them all words and rhetoric is SECONDARY. Action desired for the in-group is primary.
For, and this is important, to them all words and rhetoric is SECONDARY. Action desired for the in-group is primary.
grrl_aexYes, the objects of imaginary harm are called "strawmen" and the right has been mass-producing these scary scarecrows for ...mmm...over 50 years now.
thanks for noticing!
Now back to your regularly scheduled ...programming. So you can continue to rediscover this, over and over, for another 50 years.
Brings up a thought....crows may be smarter than humans. That scarecrows are fake is already genetic memory for them!
Go crows! Maybe they should get the vote....
Intaglio Whitegraven@cass_m @pluralistic The wording here reminds me of Dave Barnhart's post about "the unborn" that went viral on Facebook (quote re-posted to Goodreads here: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10357009-the-unborn-are-a-convenient-group-of-people-to-advocate )
Cory Doctorow@Intaglio_Dragon @cass_m A very good quote and I'm sure I encountered it at the time, doubtless it helped inspire me.
@Intaglio_Dragon @pluralistic similar vibes for sure.
Annelies Kamran, Ph.D.
A-Dub 🥝@cass_m alt text for your image:-
"There's a different advantage to confining your concerns to imaginary things: imaginary things don't exist, so they don't contest your public statements about them, nor do they make demands on you. Think of how the right concerns itself with imaginary children (unborn babies, children in Wayfair furniture; children in nonexistent pizza parlor basements, children undergoing gender confirmation surgery). These are very convenient children to advocate for, since, unlike real children (hungry children, children killed in the Gaza genocide, children whose parents have been kidnapped by ICE, children whom Matt Goetz and Donald Trump trafficked for sex, children in cages at the US border, trans kids driven to self-harm and suicide after being denied care), nonexistent children don't want anything from you and they never make public pronouncements about whether you have their best interests at heart."
@[email protected] there is alt text included. Maybe check your client.