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I submit to you, a subreddit I've found in the past week that is absolutely horrifying, and I think stands quite counter to the "variety of opinions" model you

by tmuir 9y ago

I submit to you, a subreddit I've found in the past week that is absolutely horrifying, and I think stands quite counter to the "variety of opinions" model you put forth. This isn't anything visually graphic, but the opinions expressed in this subreddit make me believe that these people are preparing for a violent insurrection, full stop. https://www.reddit.com/r/CBTS_Stream/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CBTS_Stream/ CBTS stands for the Calm Before The Storm. These people follow an anonymous online poster named "Q" who posts vague, short posts on some other site (not sure where), and then lots of other subscribers repost these and form general conspiracy theories that all revolve around the deep state, the NWO, and other nefarious groups colluding to remove Donald Trump from office. Its not your standard fare related to the ongoing investigations in congress or the special counsel, these people are the dangerous combination of paranoid, gullible, and angry. As an outsider just perusing, its obvious that this place is crawling with charlatans and con artists who understand that they are addressing a crowd of people who are more prone to believe an idea simply because of the tantalizing ramifications of if it turned out to be true. Anyone can spout out the most hairbrained idea, and three people will show up to give vague, outrageous stories that confirm the original idea. I don't have an answer, but surely there must be a level of fomenting anger and general mob action that deserves some sort of modulation/regulation.

smsm42 9y ago
> the opinions expressed in this subreddit make me believe that these people are preparing for a violent insurrection, full stop. What makes you think so? I've looked at it (admittedly, didn't spend too much time) and it looks pretty standard fare for a subreddit - or any other forum like it. It's slogan is "BE LOUD. BE HEARD.". People that are preparing violent insurrection don't want to be loud and heard. They want to be silent and invisible until they have enough people and materiel overthrow the government. People that want to be participating in a democratic debate want to be heard. There's no point in being heard by the other guy if the next thing you're planning to do is shooting him (well, maybe if you demand surrender, but I see no such demands there and if would be weird to do it on Reddit). The only point I can see of being loud and heard if you try to convince somebody, or at least gather support - e.g. for winning al election, or pressuring an elected representative into doing something by showing them how many people demand it. All that is part of the normal democratic process. Even if people that are there hold some unacceptable views (I have no idea if they do, but even we for a minute assume they do) that doesn't mean they are planning violence. What is the evidence they do?
- tmuir 9y ago
  I mean preparing for violent insurrection that they believe is about to be started by someone else. I don't think they are planning to start it. So many of the posts are alluding to events that are imminent. My fear is not that the logical progression of this group is a pre planned and executed terror attack of some kind, but that they are being radicalized, and are not far off from a mob of Manchurian candidates. Perhaps thats a very loaded and hyperbolic phrase, but consider this: imagine a hypothetical situation where Donald Trump resigns, or is impeached, or for whatever reason leaves office on a day other than Jan 20, 2021 or Jan 20, 2025. The mass demonstrations that would inevitably ensue would be powder kegs. I don't think its hyperbole to say that those protests could quickly devolve into mob violence on a large scale. This subreddit is essentially prepping people for that day, and like a doomsday cult, insinuating that the day is coming very soon.
  - smsm42 9y ago
    That may or may not be true that they are expecting doomsday of sorts, but there are a lot of conspirologists which predict imminent doom literally for decades, and when it never comes they aren't bothered by it even a little. If that day will never come - and most likely that's exactly what would happen, if history teaches us something - there wouldn't be no other harm done than a bunch of folks wasting a lot of time on the internet talking about stuff. So far mob violence was a rather rare occurrence in political demonstrations, actually - and one that happened lately was mostly driven by antifa. That's pretty much the only movement right now that openly uses mob violence and achieves some political success by it - cancelling speeches, shutting down events, etc. Are there any other examples? I see a lot of explanations - especially on the left - how expressing certain views is akin to violence. If we had tons of actual violence happening - or clearly imminent to happen - we wouldn't need any speeches about how words are similar to violence. It would be clear to us that there's actual violence and there would be a lot of pointing to it instead. So, I take it as a sign that there's actually not much violence to be pointed at, if we are pointing at words instead.
    - tmuir 9y ago
nkurz 9y ago
I submit to you, a subreddit I've found in the past week that is absolutely horrifying, and I think stands quite counter to the "variety of opinions" model you put forth. I'm not familiar with that subreddit, but I think I'm familiar with the mindset you are describing. Nothing in your description seems to set it apart from the "variety of opinions" model the GP proposed. Other than your feeling that these ideas are "beyond the pale"[1] what exactly differentiates this subreddit from being a group of people whose ideas you disagree with? These people follow an anonymous online poster named "Q" who posts vague, short posts on some other site I thought the comments by Occams-shaving-cream in this thread was a good take on Q: https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/82qpk5/in_case_you_missed_it_when_qannons_identity_was/ https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/82qpk5/in_case_.... He suggests that Q is essentially a marketing team within Trump's campaign, casting out ideas and seeing what resonates with potential voters. He hypothesizes that it may not have started this way, but given the obvious utility of having such a mechanism, it likely has become such by now. I don't have an answer, but surely there must be a level of fomenting anger and general mob action that deserves some sort of modulation/regulation. Maybe, but it seems possible that attempts to censor discussion may paradoxically fan the flames. Given a group of paranoid conspiracy theorists who believe that the "powers that be" want to silence them, "modulation" seems equally likely to make them believe even more fervently that there are powers who do not want certain knowledge to be known. And they're right! The difference would seem to be only that they believe this knowledge is truth, and you believe it is a dangerous lie. Public discussion seems like the best way we have of resolving this dispute. Trying to stamp out an idea like this seems more likely to produce violence than to prevent it. [1] Did you know that this phrase originally meant "outside the reach of English law": https://englishhistoryauthors.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-origin-of-beyond-pale.html https://englishhistoryauthors.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-origi...
- tmuir 9y ago
  I don't disagree that just about any regulation of these groups will be interpreted as more conspiracy. I guess the crux of my argument is that these people are the victims of psychological warfare. I'm not throwing out the word brainwashing for emphasis, but I truly believe a lot of these people are actually brainwashed. To give context, I don't believe its controversial at all to say that boot camp in the American armed forces, and most assuredly other countries as well, is brainwashing, through and through. Put people in a prolonged state of stress. After sufficient time, tell these people you can end all of the stress if they just follow your directions. Run till you puke. Have trained soldiers screaming in your face. Be woken at all times of the night to both run till you puke and have trained soldiers scream in your face. Instead, many conservatives in America have been fed a constant diet of outrage/dopamine cycles about how evil Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and anyone associated, are. They're given 30,000 emails to peruse that are eventually framed to "unveil" a pedophile ring tied to all of the current players in the democratic establishment. Then most importantly, a billionaire with no political experience, no political capital to lose, whatsoever, comes along and trolls, and proves wrong, nearly the entire national media for over a year. Nearly every week, he makes some offensive remark that leads every veteran of any election anywhere to believe he has committed political suicide. Thus, a year and a half of reporting that Trump will soon quit the race, and has no chance to win. But since, unlike all of those previous politicians, Trump has no "betters" to please, no one in American politics had anything with which to pressure Trump to do anything he didn't want to do. So when Trump won the election, the brain washing was complete. Trump had lead them out of the "prolonged stress" of Barack Obama's 8 years, and the year and a half long prospect of Hillary Clinton being President for 4 years after that. Everything he said about the lying media turned out to be "correct". Witnessing Trump win under the unique circumstances in which he won has had the psychological effect of making him a nearly god like figure in the eyes of his base. He has cut through political correctness, sexual assault claims, ethics concerns, taken his red meat to the supreme court and won. In the eyes of someone already inclined to pull for they guy on their side, Donald Trump became nothing short of Luke Skywalker. If you think this is hyperbole, heres another example of how people can be brainwashed by witnessing uncanny success against all odds, especially when that success stands to improve the brainwashed's lives immediately. There is a known email scam where the scammer emails a sufficiently large enough pool of marks, the winning team for a single National Football League game every week, ahead of the game, so the marks can bet on the game. Every week (out of 16), the scammer simply takes the group of people who "won" the previous weeks game, and splits them in half, telling half that team A will win, and half that Team B will win. Obviously, no one will listen to someone who picks losers, so assume that every week, half of the marks leave the scam. If the pool is sufficiently large, (only 32768) after 15 weeks, there will still be marks who have been given the winning team ahead of time, for 15 consecutive weeks by some anonymous stranger. It's not controversial to see why those marks may have been brainwashed by the process, and would be willing to pay large sums of money for that 16th pick. Obviously, Donald Trump didn't run this scam, but it goes to show that people can be casual observers to information, and be presented with just the right information to be essentially brainwashed.
nkurz 9y ago
The subreddit you refer to has since been banned: "This subreddit was banned due to a violation of our content policy, specifically, the prohibition of content that encourages or incites violence and the posting of personal and confidential information." https://www.reddit.com/r/cbts_stream https://www.reddit.com/r/cbts_stream
- tmuir 9y ago
  wow. I wonder what falls out of that.

by tmuir 9y ago

smsm42 9y ago

> the opinions expressed in this subreddit make me believe that these people are preparing for a violent insurrection, full stop. What makes you think so? I've looked at it (admittedly, didn't spend too much time) and it looks pretty standard fare for a subreddit - or any other forum like it. It's slogan is "BE LOUD. BE HEARD.". People that are preparing violent insurrection don't want to be loud and heard. They want to be silent and invisible until they have enough people and materiel overthrow the government. People that want to be participating in a democratic debate want to be heard. There's no point in being heard by the other guy if the next thing you're planning to do is shooting him (well, maybe if you demand surrender, but I see no such demands there and if would be weird to do it on Reddit). The only point I can see of being loud and heard if you try to convince somebody, or at least gather support - e.g. for winning al election, or pressuring an elected representative into doing something by showing them how many people demand it. All that is part of the normal democratic process. Even if people that are there hold some unacceptable views (I have no idea if they do, but even we for a minute assume they do) that doesn't mean they are planning violence. What is the evidence they do?

tmuir 9y ago
I mean preparing for violent insurrection that they believe is about to be started by someone else. I don't think they are planning to start it. So many of the posts are alluding to events that are imminent. My fear is not that the logical progression of this group is a pre planned and executed terror attack of some kind, but that they are being radicalized, and are not far off from a mob of Manchurian candidates. Perhaps thats a very loaded and hyperbolic phrase, but consider this: imagine a hypothetical situation where Donald Trump resigns, or is impeached, or for whatever reason leaves office on a day other than Jan 20, 2021 or Jan 20, 2025. The mass demonstrations that would inevitably ensue would be powder kegs. I don't think its hyperbole to say that those protests could quickly devolve into mob violence on a large scale. This subreddit is essentially prepping people for that day, and like a doomsday cult, insinuating that the day is coming very soon.
- smsm42 9y ago
  That may or may not be true that they are expecting doomsday of sorts, but there are a lot of conspirologists which predict imminent doom literally for decades, and when it never comes they aren't bothered by it even a little. If that day will never come - and most likely that's exactly what would happen, if history teaches us something - there wouldn't be no other harm done than a bunch of folks wasting a lot of time on the internet talking about stuff. So far mob violence was a rather rare occurrence in political demonstrations, actually - and one that happened lately was mostly driven by antifa. That's pretty much the only movement right now that openly uses mob violence and achieves some political success by it - cancelling speeches, shutting down events, etc. Are there any other examples? I see a lot of explanations - especially on the left - how expressing certain views is akin to violence. If we had tons of actual violence happening - or clearly imminent to happen - we wouldn't need any speeches about how words are similar to violence. It would be clear to us that there's actual violence and there would be a lot of pointing to it instead. So, I take it as a sign that there's actually not much violence to be pointed at, if we are pointing at words instead.
  - tmuir 9y ago

nkurz 9y ago

I submit to you, a subreddit I've found in the past week that is absolutely horrifying, and I think stands quite counter to the "variety of opinions" model you put forth. I'm not familiar with that subreddit, but I think I'm familiar with the mindset you are describing. Nothing in your description seems to set it apart from the "variety of opinions" model the GP proposed. Other than your feeling that these ideas are "beyond the pale"[1] what exactly differentiates this subreddit from being a group of people whose ideas you disagree with? These people follow an anonymous online poster named "Q" who posts vague, short posts on some other site I thought the comments by Occams-shaving-cream in this thread was a good take on Q: https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/82qpk5/in_case_you_missed_it_when_qannons_identity_was/ https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/82qpk5/in_case_.... He suggests that Q is essentially a marketing team within Trump's campaign, casting out ideas and seeing what resonates with potential voters. He hypothesizes that it may not have started this way, but given the obvious utility of having such a mechanism, it likely has become such by now. I don't have an answer, but surely there must be a level of fomenting anger and general mob action that deserves some sort of modulation/regulation. Maybe, but it seems possible that attempts to censor discussion may paradoxically fan the flames. Given a group of paranoid conspiracy theorists who believe that the "powers that be" want to silence them, "modulation" seems equally likely to make them believe even more fervently that there are powers who do not want certain knowledge to be known. And they're right! The difference would seem to be only that they believe this knowledge is truth, and you believe it is a dangerous lie. Public discussion seems like the best way we have of resolving this dispute. Trying to stamp out an idea like this seems more likely to produce violence than to prevent it. [1] Did you know that this phrase originally meant "outside the reach of English law": https://englishhistoryauthors.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-origin-of-beyond-pale.html https://englishhistoryauthors.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-origi...

tmuir 9y ago
I don't disagree that just about any regulation of these groups will be interpreted as more conspiracy. I guess the crux of my argument is that these people are the victims of psychological warfare. I'm not throwing out the word brainwashing for emphasis, but I truly believe a lot of these people are actually brainwashed. To give context, I don't believe its controversial at all to say that boot camp in the American armed forces, and most assuredly other countries as well, is brainwashing, through and through. Put people in a prolonged state of stress. After sufficient time, tell these people you can end all of the stress if they just follow your directions. Run till you puke. Have trained soldiers screaming in your face. Be woken at all times of the night to both run till you puke and have trained soldiers scream in your face. Instead, many conservatives in America have been fed a constant diet of outrage/dopamine cycles about how evil Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and anyone associated, are. They're given 30,000 emails to peruse that are eventually framed to "unveil" a pedophile ring tied to all of the current players in the democratic establishment. Then most importantly, a billionaire with no political experience, no political capital to lose, whatsoever, comes along and trolls, and proves wrong, nearly the entire national media for over a year. Nearly every week, he makes some offensive remark that leads every veteran of any election anywhere to believe he has committed political suicide. Thus, a year and a half of reporting that Trump will soon quit the race, and has no chance to win. But since, unlike all of those previous politicians, Trump has no "betters" to please, no one in American politics had anything with which to pressure Trump to do anything he didn't want to do. So when Trump won the election, the brain washing was complete. Trump had lead them out of the "prolonged stress" of Barack Obama's 8 years, and the year and a half long prospect of Hillary Clinton being President for 4 years after that. Everything he said about the lying media turned out to be "correct". Witnessing Trump win under the unique circumstances in which he won has had the psychological effect of making him a nearly god like figure in the eyes of his base. He has cut through political correctness, sexual assault claims, ethics concerns, taken his red meat to the supreme court and won. In the eyes of someone already inclined to pull for they guy on their side, Donald Trump became nothing short of Luke Skywalker. If you think this is hyperbole, heres another example of how people can be brainwashed by witnessing uncanny success against all odds, especially when that success stands to improve the brainwashed's lives immediately. There is a known email scam where the scammer emails a sufficiently large enough pool of marks, the winning team for a single National Football League game every week, ahead of the game, so the marks can bet on the game. Every week (out of 16), the scammer simply takes the group of people who "won" the previous weeks game, and splits them in half, telling half that team A will win, and half that Team B will win. Obviously, no one will listen to someone who picks losers, so assume that every week, half of the marks leave the scam. If the pool is sufficiently large, (only 32768) after 15 weeks, there will still be marks who have been given the winning team ahead of time, for 15 consecutive weeks by some anonymous stranger. It's not controversial to see why those marks may have been brainwashed by the process, and would be willing to pay large sums of money for that 16th pick. Obviously, Donald Trump didn't run this scam, but it goes to show that people can be casual observers to information, and be presented with just the right information to be essentially brainwashed.

nkurz 9y ago

The subreddit you refer to has since been banned: "This subreddit was banned due to a violation of our content policy, specifically, the prohibition of content that encourages or incites violence and the posting of personal and confidential information." https://www.reddit.com/r/cbts_stream https://www.reddit.com/r/cbts_stream

tmuir 9y ago
wow. I wonder what falls out of that.