BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Of course they surf the net:
-4chan
-Brietbart
-Gamergate
-Milo Yiannopolous
-Facebook (and their Facebook feed looks different than yours or mine)
-
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A German exchange student's account of "Trump Country" - in defense of rural USA
- Thread starter Fritz
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-4chan
-Brietbart
-Gamergate
-Milo Yiannopolous
-Facebook (and their Facebook feed looks different than yours or mine)
I live in a small town in Louisiana. Yeah, that's about right. Our 6th grade science teacher laughed at evolution by talking about how scientists want people to believe monkeys turned into people. I had to learn evolution by the internet. Everyone watches Fox News and listens to Rush. Everyone here thinks Hillary is worse than the devil. They believe she's responsible for Americans getting killed with Benghazi, she's for killing babies by not being opposed to abortion laws, she would make America more dangerous by letting in refugees, etc..
Lord Thrappleper The 49th
Member
The invention and widespread use of the internet makes any excuses of 'being raised dumb' irrelevent. They can learn, they just dont want to because they're afraid their view wont be accepted by the world because they know, deep down, that they are wrong.
Darryl M R
Member
It's funny yesterday I decided to look at those websites to see how they are reacting and on /b/ you had a thread saying that Rural America owns all the guns so Liberals should be calm and not protest if they know what's good for them. But every anonymous user (which could have been 1 or 50) in this 50+ reply thread was insulting the Rust Belt and rural Americans. To paraphrase "I didn't really think we had rural idiots on chan, I just thought some of you guys were trolling." And another phrase "You really think cities with wealth, scientist, and successful businessmen are concerned about an uprising, you guys outvoted everyone else but that's about all you have."
Maybe it's just pol on chan since b wasn't have it last night. Who knows--anonymous users and all.
But don't go to chan for meaningful discussion like Off-Topic on GAF
Doesn't this affect you and your social circle? Sounds tiring.
Of course it's anecdotal, but I've heard similar things before. And I seriously have no idea how the system is set up. Can a biology teacher be creationist and teach in that regard - show them biology but at the same time disregard it as wrong? Would that be a possibility?
Goro Majima
Kitty Genovese Member
I wish this was the case because then many could be educated.
These are belief systems that are completely intertwined with how they were socialized from birth. For instance, we're going on 15+ years of Fox News being as popular as it is so there are teenagers that have been surrounded by it for their entire lives...they've only ever known the post 9/11 world.
kindling to keep the focus of the left on social justice and away from rural, because the right gains electoral college advantage from that.
This is such a poignant quote in regards to how people on the internet are and how it's impossible to tell anymore who's serious or not.
They don't go to the same websites that we do to learn. When they want to learn about our origins, since they have no doubt in their minds that the bible is completely real, they'll go to answersingenesis.com. This is probably half the people I know in real life.
Darryl M R
Member
Poe's Law I believe
States generally set most of their own policy, then cities and/or school districts. But what you have in small town rural America is people that have largely rejected the concept of "the city" and don't want to live around "others", hence the intolerance. Imagine being the one guy in a small town of 1,500 that constantly goes against everything they believe in. If you somehow managed to pull it off without being let go, you'd be a pariah in every respect.
There's really no easy way to pop that bubble for people. They've self segregated at every level. A lot of them are born into those towns and die there. It's nothing to look down on as a way of life, but it's also no mystery as to how certain worldviews take hold in these communities and are never challenged. People that live in the city can still fall into these bubbles by watching too much Fox News, reading too much Breitbart, shitty email chains, and gossiping at their church groups. I guess the silver lining is that those folks tend to skew older.
His Majesty
Banned
They likely have the same attitude as you. Why should I go out and challenge my own views when it is clearly the other party that is wrong?
People in echo chambers don't get their worldview challenged hence they see no need to expand their horizon. Which is the entire reason why the German student found it so worthwhile to share her experience.
They're taught to fear websites like CNN and institutions like colleges, because that's where liberals corrupt people! It seems like you have no idea how deeply indoctrinated these folks are. The internet has made the problem worse, not better.
Arizona I know has been agressively expanding charter schools and seems to be finding decent success.
As far as if Republicans have been successful in getting other states to copy them, I do not know on a statistical level whether that has been happening overall, but I do know that plenty of states have been looking at Texas in terms of economic policy, because they have had a consistent record of job creation there since it became a solid red state. Same with certain other red states for differing reasons.
The opposite can be said for a bunch of previously solid blue states in the midwest that have had really bad economic times the last couple decades, and now are looking at Texas and other southern states that have been growing and saying 'we want that here' and increasingly leaning republican.
I'm not saying that the republican strategies are why these states are growing and those states aren't(and those republican policies in Texas certainly aren't anywhere close to Trump's policies), but when a voter looks at another state and seems them doing better than their state is, they will want to follow along.
The Republicans have put an emphasis on building and testing their policies at every level of government. The Democrats have not.
Yeah, I'm familiar with Poe's Law, but I think the idea that it could be extremely widespread goes beyond that. Then there's the idea of people that only start out "just trolling" and eventually believe the shit they're typing.
Yeah, it made little sense to me. I'll see if I can find the passage.
Ok, I found it. He wrote that global warming was not man made, but was instead coming from the center of the Earth. His reference:
Bible Gateway passage: Isaiah 5:14 - New International Version. (n.d.). Retrieved August 03, 2016, from https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah
:-/
It's actually illegal to teach creationism and the various other forms of it - see Kitzmiller vs. Dover, but small towns are probably not going to ever be held accountable.
Spyder_Monkey
Banned
Nuke most of the mid-west and south east off the map and have the east and west coasts be two very different but progressive utopias.
orthodoxy1095
Banned
What a stupendous solution.
"possible nuke area?"
It is very interesting, and very good, except for the conclusion she draws and her takeaways above.
1) She's making the same mistake as many in the media are making in talking about abstract or vague concepts (liking somebody, and differing values) as if those things can exist outside of objective reality, facts, logic and reason. Having different values has nothing to do with people being brainwashed to believe that Obama is the "most similar" to Adolf Hitler. That is on some level either completely ignorant or idiotic. Take your pick. This is the same as what some pundits and bloggers have been doing this week in blaming the "media" for coming to a "professional consensus" that Trump was a horrible candidate for president, instead of validating the "feelings" of disaffected people in the midwest. As if you can do only one or the other.
2) It's easy to say that they treat others respectfully (even though they clearly do not in some of the other anecdotes) when there's almost literally nobody else around with a different opinion to treat respectfully. I've seen it and been through it, let alone also seeing how people act in videos online and in the news. Also, if they wanted to treat people with different opinions respectfully, they wouldn't be okay with Trump, and many other politicians and the laws they propose/enact and the way they treat people. You can't "respectfully" disagree with somebody's decision to get gay married, and simultaneously want them to undergo conversion therapy or want their marriage outlawed.
Byakuya769
Member
But I already knew these people were ignorant...
Yeah, kill em all. Great strategy.
You sound like a reasonable guy.
I grew up in the rural south and I see a lot of echoes here that match my own experience. I knew a lot of people who saw the world this way.
I was never caught in this sort of bubble, mostly because of my family.
My grandmother (on my mother's side) was an incredible person. She was a voracious reader with all sorts of unconventional views. She taught all her children, including my mom, that racism was wrong, that you should learn to think for yourself and never follow anyone blindly. That you should read everything you can get your hands on and learn about the world. She was religious to an extent but didn't believe in church. She also didn't believe you should take the bible literally. She was totally opposed to any sort of conformist mindset, and she was a hardcore feminist.
Her views were pretty remarkable, especially considering she was born to a poor family in the rural south in the 1920s, and lived there her whole life.
I spent a lot of time around her growing up, and I was also exposed second-hand to her views through my mom. On top of that, my dad was a professional musician and fairly liberal too. I was lucky.
I will also add that my views were so far out of alignment with most of my classmates in school that it caused me endless problems. I didn't fit in at all, became a loner, got in fights, and eventually got expelled because my social situation in school was so unbearable that I ended up acting out in all sorts of extreme ways. So I totally understand why most people can't get out of the bubble. Being in the bubble is a lot easier if everyone you know is in there.
I should also add that I'm a Gen-Xer, so I didn't have access to the Internet until I was in my early 20s. Things are certainly different now. This town is much more diverse than it used to be, and a bit more liberal. The Internet is helping overall, and over time it will have a strong moderating effect in places like this.
I was never caught in this sort of bubble, mostly because of my family.
My grandmother (on my mother's side) was an incredible person. She was a voracious reader with all sorts of unconventional views. She taught all her children, including my mom, that racism was wrong, that you should learn to think for yourself and never follow anyone blindly. That you should read everything you can get your hands on and learn about the world. She was religious to an extent but didn't believe in church. She also didn't believe you should take the bible literally. She was totally opposed to any sort of conformist mindset, and she was a hardcore feminist.
Her views were pretty remarkable, especially considering she was born to a poor family in the rural south in the 1920s, and lived there her whole life.
I spent a lot of time around her growing up, and I was also exposed second-hand to her views through my mom. On top of that, my dad was a professional musician and fairly liberal too. I was lucky.
I will also add that my views were so far out of alignment with most of my classmates in school that it caused me endless problems. I didn't fit in at all, became a loner, got in fights, and eventually got expelled because my social situation in school was so unbearable that I ended up acting out in all sorts of extreme ways. So I totally understand why most people can't get out of the bubble. Being in the bubble is a lot easier if everyone you know is in there.
I should also add that I'm a Gen-Xer, so I didn't have access to the Internet until I was in my early 20s. Things are certainly different now. This town is much more diverse than it used to be, and a bit more liberal. The Internet is helping overall, and over time it will have a strong moderating effect in places like this.
This is madness. Idiots.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
That's interesting. Food for thought.
kinda sounds like those people living in their own save space if confronting them unpopular opinions leads to social exclusion...
but yeah, pretty much the reason why I should never ever visit certain parts of the US. I'd probably constantly get into arguments - or may even get shot
but yeah, pretty much the reason why I should never ever visit certain parts of the US. I'd probably constantly get into arguments - or may even get shot
BreezyLimbo
Banned
That's the whole point of the article
These people live isolated in bubbles themselves. They create their own truth.
"Everyone withdraws into their own small gated community, afraid of a larger forum. They stay inside their little ponds leaking whatever 'truth' suits them into the growing cesspool of society at large. The different cardinal truths neither clash nor mesh. No one is invalidated, but nobody is right."
I mean...many have said the internet was supposed to make it easier for people to stop being ignorant. For people to learn of diversity, to look outside their bubble. But that's all it is, a window that you can safely stare through from your home. You take what you want from it-even if there's 500 different stories telling you one thing, you just need that 1 that corresponds with your own beliefs, and that's the one you take away and use to solidify your beliefs. Not only that, but you don't have to interact with all communities-again, you just find one that suits you and make that into your bubble. Liberals do it, conservatives do it. It's not exclusive to either side.
And when somebody comes in, says you're wrong for believing the things you do, that you're an idiot for believing in those things, that you're a bigot, you don't engage with that person. You just retreat into your pool. That is what many people do when confronted with talk of diversity, of bigotry, of hate that they will never experience. They don't understand it, they choose to not engage with it, and the only take away they get is 'They're trying to push their beliefs onto me'.
It's like the Allegory of the Cave. These people, these homogeneous communities, these Rural Americans, they all stare at shadows day in and day out. To them, the shadows are real. Every once in a while you'll get one who stops staring at the shadows, looks outside, and realizes there is more to life then their shadows. Even if this person comes back and says, " Lo and behold, brothers and sisters, the shadows are simply casted from reality. They are not our world, they are simply an image of it", you'll get replies of "But brother, this cave is where I have lived. We will continue living here. You speak lies, and you speak of things that I have not seen. You are the one who is wrong, Brother.". And there has to be an understanding of that. No, I'm not saying you should accept racism or bigotry, I am saying that you have to deal with these people differently than you would others, just like you deal with minorities differently. You have to cater to their reality, if you want them their support.
It's sad because both sides are basically being told by 'influencers' that life sucks and the 'other' side is wrong/the devil. The echo chamber goes both ways and when everybody is spreading doom and gloom everyone is going to feel fucking doom and gloom. Then action by a few speaks to these words and tears people even further apart.
Anyone with a voice making an attempt to mend it gets shot down and loses credibility or is simply ignored, especially when things are super divisive and lines are drawn, like during an election.
Anyone with a voice making an attempt to mend it gets shot down and loses credibility or is simply ignored, especially when things are super divisive and lines are drawn, like during an election.
PastorOfMuppets
Banned
I don't understand how people with such a fundamental lack of understanding of science become science teachers. Don't you need degrees from a university or something to become a teacher in America?
Byakuya769
Member
"These people loving one another in a way you don't approve are the devil!!!" versus "these people objecting to you loving another in a way they don't approve are the devil!!!"
Not even close to some sad failure to connect. One groups wants to impede others and then has a persecution complex about being called out on it.
You Are Viewtiful
Member
That doesn't read like a defence to me, lol.
Black people are being murdered without punishment by the very people that are supposed to protect them. Shit, they even pay the taxes and fines to cover the wages of the murderers. The entire history is founded on the diaspora, enslavement, redlining, housing discrimination, Jim Crow, voting restrictions, segregation, prison industrial complex (aka the new Jim Crow), police brutality, broken windows policies, and on and on. This year you had a white supremacist mass-murdering Black people in a church. Police officers can choke a guy on a streetcorner or murder a 12-year old kid in broad daylight with a million cameras recording and still get off.
Muslims are attacked in the streets and violated by security and surveillance. If not that, they are bombed without due process by robots in the sky.
LGBTQ people are shunned and stripped of their rights as citizens, if not attacked in public. Suicide rates of transpeople is incredibly high that we are all complicit in.
Latinos & Latinas are imprisoned, denied jobs, thrown out of the country, deprived of rights, denied housing, and on and on.
Poor people, whether they are white, black, Hispanic, Asian, or whatever, can hardly survive and have to work 3 fulltime jobs to make ends meet. No healthcare, no education, no food, and on and on.
Climate change is humanity's biggest challenge if not threat in this century. We are already behind our efforts despite having knowledge about it for 40+ years. The country is one of the biggest contributors to climate change.
In contrast to all of the above, the "other side" is angry and upset because of what? Black people exist? Muslims are in the country? Hispanic people work alongside the white people? LGBTQ people are able to marry? That the shitty right-winged Democratic party doesn't take care of them (which I agree with, but that's not what the GOP is going to fix)?
So sorry, but I'm going to side with the ones who want to rectify and lessen the above injustices and oppression and not the ones who are just angry and willing to vote for fascists.
Spieler Eins
Member
Yeah, if you haven't noticed, literally the entire western world is falling to the same exact kind of cookie cutter populism because globalisation and digitalisation left behind rural communities which have no idea how to cope with it. Unlike the 20th century, there also is no blatant counterweight like the Cold War, which inherently educated people about not supporting certain concepts (i.e. what populists offer nowadays).
El-Pistolero
Member
New map:
LOL!
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