But what I got was dogpiled by a gang of self-righteous bullies. Parroting a bunch of thought-terminating clichés, and hurling bullshit accusations that had nothing to do with anything I actually said, or anything I've ever said, here or anywhere.

Life is too short to deal with that kind of networked idiocy. So I'm going to say this once, to anyone who thinks this is an acceptable way to carry on.

(2/?)

What if it was someone you care about, who you knew as a perfectly lovely person before they started hanging out on that dodgy gaming forum, or wherever they picked up the bigotry brainworms? What if it was your best friend since school, your sibling, your parent, your *child*?

Maybe then you'd think twice about whether it's good advice to tar and feather other human beings as bigots, and deny them all social contact with anyone not also pegged as a bigot?

(3/?)

If not maybe you're a fucking sociopath? Maybe you need to take a long, hard look in the mirror, and think deeply about Nietzsche's famous quote about fighting monsters.

https://mastodon.nzoss.nz/@strypey/112782360387794556

Maybe you need to seriously consider the possibility that you're in a cult? Telling people to cut off longstanding relationships with people who don't share the group ideology is what cults do. Because maintaining old relationships is how you keep perspective, and avoid getting sucked into cults.

(4/?)

Frances Lee wrote about being excommunicated from the "church of social justice" (see the link here https://mastodon.nzoss.nz/@strypey/110789459980665321). Lee was being polite, but let's call a spade a spade; what she's describing in her pieces on this topic is a cult. A 21st century networked cult, not mindslaves in a compound, but a cult all the same.

A cult that I refuse to conform to, or make any excuses for, just became it's ideology is a twisted parody of leftist and pro-diversity ideas I deeply believe in.

(5/?)

The identi-moonie cult has nothing to do with real world anti-bigotry or social justice work. It's the opposite; a crucial part of the conservative-to-fascist pipeline. So I say this to the cult members and their apologists and appeasers;

Stay out of my mentions with this bullshit. Or by all that is holy, I will verbally tear you several new arseholes. I will unleash all my fury with the Useful Idiots of the world on you, and I will enjoy every minute of it.

You have been warned.

(6/?)

@strypey Well that escalated quickly. It usually does with those people.

You are right. One of the ways MAGA grew its base was to play friendly and accepting to people they disagree with. They may mock them behind their backs but they will engage, and gradually chip away at the other person's worldview.

The sort of people you were arguing with there are easy to mock, easy to hate, and easy to trigger and watch the show. That's how they fell from top of the world in 2020 to where they are now.

@mike805
> Well that escalated quickly. It usually does with those people

I know, right? From 'how to strategically reduce bigotry' to 'way to out yourself as a bigot' in a single ludicrous step. Fucking pod people.

> That's how they fell from top of the world in 2020 to where they are now

From your lips to my ears, my friend. Bang on.

@strypey Those "pod people" remind me way too much of either the Red Guards during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, or the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. If they had deadly force at their disposal, I think some of them would attempt the "Year Zero" thing here.

They often look absurd and hysterical. Underestimating them is a mistake. They are very dangerous, and people mock them at their peril. The pod people must never acquire state power.