Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This weekly thread will focus on the word "Woke" and its meaning, use, and misuse.

Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):

• What does the word mean to you?
• Is it applied correctly or incorrectly?
• Is it even applicable any longer?
• Do you feel that Conservative media misapplies it, and is "everything I don't like is woke" an appropriate sentiment or simply uncharitable?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This weekly thread will focus on words, their import, and their use / misuse.

With respect to the late, great George Carlin.

Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):

• How do you feel about political (or forced) movement of language? For example, pro-life and pro-choice being two sides of the same issue because nobody wants to identify as "anti-"anything.
• What are some words that are nebulous, but everyone "knows" the meaning of?
• Are there any manipulated words that annoy you?
• Do you find any common patterns with how words are used by various groups?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This weekly thread will focus on getting other people to watch movies we love, but others may not have seen or even know about.

In order to make a recommendation or two, simply let others know an appropriate amount about a movie and why they should give it a chance.

If you want to deeply discuss one, please remember to use Spoiler tags where applicable!

Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):

• Great bad movies
• Hilarious garbage for a big group movie night
• Best genre movies
• Underrated films

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This weekly thread will focus on the phrase "The Cruelty Is The Point", which may take some explanation.

Frequently on Lemmy (and elsewhere), I see the phrase in comment threads. In my experience, it has been referencing any policy that is contrary to a Liberal or Leftist belief that the thread discusses. I have found the phrase when discussing trans issues, housing, taxes, healthcare, abortion, and many more.

This does not mean it doesn't exist elsewhere, it is simply where I see it since I spend much of my social media time on Lemmy. If your experience differs, please let us know!

Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):

• Do you believe this? If so, why?
• Is it true / false in some or all scenarios?
• Is it with certain groups or regarding certain things?
• Do you feel that speech like this is conducive to fixing societal issues?
• Is what is considered "kind" always the best course of action?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This weekly thread will focus on Protests, both effective and ineffective.

Over the past 15 years, we've seen more protesting since the 1960's in North America. Some feel they are needed, and some feel they are wasteful and silly.

Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):

• Have you ever taken part? What was it and why?
• What protests have you felt have been effective or ineffective?
• If you feel they are not effective in general, what would you rather people do?
• Have you ever had your opinion swayed by any form of protest? Please note that this could be either to the side of the protesters or away from their cause.
• How would you try to ensure a successful protest?
• Do you feel that violent protest is mostly uncalled for? If not, how do you know when you need to escalate things?
• Just for fun, what is the absolute worst protest you've ever heard of?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This weekly thread will focus on work and work culture.

This has been a back-burnered issue since COVID came and upended many workplace traditions worldwide, but I'd really like to hear about what you all think about it!

Some Starters (and don't feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don't care to):

• What is the ideal work / life balance? Right now, the worldwide average is 5 days per week, 8-5 PM. Is this too much / too little / just right?
• With productivity skyrocketing and wages falling, what would you like to see to fix things?
• Would you accept less money and shorter hours?
• What would you feel minimum wage should do to adjust?
• Do you feel that the current resurgence of Unions is positive or negative?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

No, it's not a joke. I'm frustrated and I'm probably not choosing my words carefully.

This community has had steadily falling engagement - our last 3 weekly threads have had a grand total of 1 (excellent and well-articulated) response, and the number of topics not generated by myself (or the other mod) since the inception of the community has also been 1.

Very few people want to actually talk. From what I've seen, the masses want the same things that they wanted on Reddit:

1. Memes
2. Articles they don't read (but will bitch about endlessly) that reinforce their opinion
3. Angry responses to someone (who may be trolling) that reinforce the current politics of the reader (that they couldn't have given a fuck about a few years ago until it became heavily politicized)
4. Shitty easy jokes
5. Personal politics circlejerking

I hate that I can see a hundredth point-free meme post and view 200 replies on it. I hate that it's just the same talking points being strawmanned over and over again in every thread. I hate that any point outside common groupthink is downvoted to oblivion and buried instead of discussed.

The reason I'd like to back away from Lemmy seems to be the same reason I started this community: we need more people who can articulate points, and less downvoting, but it doesn't seem to be getting better.

Maybe one day, but today is not that day. Lemmy needs to mature in more ways than one.

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This weekly thread will focus on current political divisiveness occurring nearly worldwide. I'd post links, but I feel that everyone knows what I'm speaking about.

This issue has been especially prevalent in American politics as of late, but it is felt nearly everywhere.

Some Starters:

• What do you feel has caused it? Add proofs if possible.
• Once caused, what has added to it and why?
• What can be done to ameliorate the issue, if anything? On a personal scale or a national one.
• Can it be remedied or is civil war the only option?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This week’s Weekly discussion thread we will focus on Activism, both positive and negative.

Here is the definition we will be using, so please make sure your argument matches.

Some starters:

• What would you classify as effective forms of activism?
• What are ineffective forms of activism?
• How does a group know when their mission is achieved? What if the mission is ambiguous or changes over time?
• Do you feel they stop too early or too late?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This week’s Weekly discussion thread will be trying something new. We'll be focusing on the age old question "If you could change one thing positively in the world what would you change?"

Difficulty Level: (Pick your difficulty, let us know what you picked, and stick to it)

0. Go wild.
1. You can't harm others.
2. The change has to be somewhat realistic or believable.
3. If I could convince 1,000,000 people right now, it would work.
4. If I could convince 100,000 people right now, it would work.
5. Souls Mode: If I could just get motivated, I could do this myself.

(Also, let me know if these "fun" weeks are welcome here, or just stupid)

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This week’s Weekly discussion thread will be focused on Linux. I know that Lemmy is VERY biased towards Linux and FOSS, but I'm curious what non-technical people feel about it and what your thoughts are.

Some starters:

• Have you used Linux? If so, what was your experience like?
• Would you run it as your primary system? Why or why not?
• What would it take to get you to do so?
• Do you feel it's a solid option?
• Are there any changes that you'd think would benefit consumers and aid with adoption?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This week’s Weekly discussion thread will be focused on Capitalism / Economic Systems. Here is the definition we will be using so everyone can use the same terminology. If your argument does not use that definition, we ask that you reframe so that it does so that everyone can work within the same framework.

Here are some questions that should help kickstart things:

• Is capitalism effective? Is it good, or as evil as some Lemmy instances will have you believe?
• Are there better alternatives, and why are they better?
• How could we realistically move toward those alternatives?
• Is there anything you do not understand or would like to discuss about Capitalism / Economic Systems?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion). You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

I dislike this article. It's a little old now, but there are several things blisteringly wrong with this idea at its heart.

Purely for example, if you read a book on dragonflies and take offence because you see racial similarities between whatever race a person is and dragonflies, that's an issue with you, not the source. You are relying on your opinion on what the source says. Since opinion varies per person, you should not dictate policy based on opinion. It's an insurmountable hill to cater to whatever opinions are since opinion will always change - it's an unsound basis for any form of logic.

Let's do a thought experiment:

If a trailer-dwelling white person in the USA reads about the Vistani, and takes offence because they also live in a trailer, sees that as a negative, and assumes the Vistani are a potshot at him, is he right to be offended and call for a ban?

If a nimble Canadian POC (which is also a terrible term as it literally applies to everyone on the planet) reads about Elves and assumes they're talking about him because he also happens to know how to use a bow and is skinny with a lithe frame, is he correct in calling for a ban? What if he sees being nimble as a negative for some reason (because positive / negative characteristics are opinions and what people see as negative is not objective)? What if he sees it as being racist by saying the source is calling ALL Elves nimble and therefore good at sports? "But they stereotypically have a different skin colour!" I hear you saying. So do Orcs. That argument applies here and if you can't square that circle, then the logic falls apart utterly.

Personal identification with aspects of characters in a source material are not cause for alteration. You are an individual; you are not a group. Grouping people into camps based on visible traits or histories is a disgusting habit.

Treat people as individuals and racism dies. Treat people as groups and call out the differences constantly and you'll have people fencing themselves in while calling themselves inclusive.

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion). You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This week's Weekly discussion thread will be focused on Gender. Here is the definition we will be using so everyone can use the same terminology.

Here are some questions that should help kickstart things:

• Why do you feel it started entering public consciousness in regards to humans about 15 years ago?

• Was it needed?

• Did it do what it was intended to do?

• Are things better or worse now in that specific area?

• Is there anything you do not understand or would like to discuss about the idea of gender?

First and foremost, let me say that I appreciate you actually engaging in a real discussion on Lemmy!

WHY?

This Community was made in response to the rest of Lemmy and the way many otherwise interesting discussion threads fall apart into downvoting, groupthink, and burying of posts composed by people asking for clarification or looking to understand the reasoning behind things.

We don’t like people making baseless accusations; we defend people on all sides when people are wrong about their opposition. We don't appreciate it when people think they know what others think and project incorrect (and often evil) bullshit on each other. We dislike people being wilfully wrong because their group fetishizes a certain angle of the truth instead of the boring reality of the situation.

It is important to maintain solid reasoning and conclusions, not just one or the other.

Ideas and discussion are important. We don’t feel we can get out of the current slump we’re in with political discourse unless we are able to clearly articulate ourselves and discuss the world we're all living in.

DO:

• Be civil. This does not mean you shouldn’t challenge people, just don’t be a dick about it. Disagreeing with reasons is fine, mocking or insulting someone is not.
• Upvote interesting points and things that are well-articulated, even if you may not agree.
• Upvote when you see others correct themselves or change their mind.
• Be prepared to back up any claims you make with an unbiased source that you've actually read.
• Be willing to be wrong. Admit when you are incorrect or spoke poorly. If you are the OP of a thread, feel free to edit the main post, and add an edit to the end to show your opinion has changed.
• Be a “Devil’s Advocate” if there's no opposition and you can see some arguments for the other side you'd like to see addressed. You do not have to believe either side of an issue in order to generate solid points on a view.
• Discuss hot-button issues.
• Use bracket tags in the title to show the kind of post you're making (see below), and try to use the disclaimer if it's your style to help those coming in from outside the Community who may not understand it.
• Add humour, and be creative! Dry writing isn’t super fun to read or discuss.
• Post any rule, formatting, or changes here that you would like to see.

DO NOT:

• Call people names or label people. We fight ideas, not people here.
• Ask for sources, and then not respond to the person providing them. This means you're not here to better yourself or the discussion, and it's rude to waste someone's time by challenging them and then just walking away.
• Mindlessly downvote people you disagree with. We only downvote people that do not add to the discussion.
• Be a bot, spam, or engage in self-promotion unless explicitly allowed by the mods.
• Duplicate posts from within the last month unless new non-trivial information is surfaced on the topic.
• Strawman.
• Expect that personal experience or your personal morals are a substitute for proof.
• Exaggerate. Not everything is a genocide, and not everyone slightly to the right of you is a Nazi.
• Copy an entire article in your post body. It’s just messy. Link to it and maybe summarize if needed.

SUBMISSION RULES:

All main posts should append a bracket tag to the front to describe the topic type:

• (WEEKLY) Will be reserved for Mods as it will be used for the pinned featured weekly topic thread.
• (CMV) Change My View can read like a rant or some scattered thoughts on a topic that the creator is looking to challenge themselves on. You must start with some initial reasons along with some thoughts on how those reasons led you to feel the way you do. If you can articulate things that would or wouldn't change your mind, please add those as well. If your mind is changed, we ask that you place a link to the post that did so at the end of the main post as an edit.
• (OPEN-ENDED) for a general prompt to show that you're looking to see what people think. A good place to seek answers to questions that you haven't thought of yet.
• (ARTICLE) for a link to an article to be discussed. Please link the main source, not a news link already talking about the source and give a few initial thoughts.
• (STEELMAN) is discussion on hard mode and is the opposite of a strawman argument. This is someone making as close to an iron-clad argument as they can for a side or an opinion and challenging you to poke holes in it where you can. These should come with sources already.
• (OTHER) is, for now, what we call everything else. I think we covered most of it above, but just in case, there's OTHER.

We would encourage you to also have our Disclaimer bolded at the front to help show how we're different to those coming in from browsing New or All posts which should hopefully help curtailing the drive-by downvoting that was so common in our early days:

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

And finally, none of these are so set in stone that we can't change them. If you want to see adjustments or changes, let us know here or in Private Message!

So now that we've been around for a week or so and have tried to populate things with some controversial topics, how would you like to see this Community grow and change?

Should I add post guidelines? Maybe adjust the pinned thead?

Should I change the rules at all?

Our disclaimer is currently:

Remember: Up / Downvoting in this community is not an agree / disagree button. We upvote good or constructive conversation and downvote off-topic posts or badly-voiced opinions. If you disagree, you respond like a human in good faith and prove out your position.

Should the disclaimer be changed? It's primarily for people wandering in from viewing All threads (instead of just their subscribed ones), or for people on phones who never read the sidebar. It is there to show, in point form, how we operate to people who don't come to us purposefully.

Are there any topic you'd really like to see covered?

Are there any other Communities we should do a link swap with that have a similar ethos with?

Are there types of threads you want to see less or more of? More descriptors?

I'm open to any and all good ideas!

Remember: Up / Downvoting in this community is not an agree / disagree button. We upvote good or constructive conversation and downvote off-topic posts or badly-voiced opinions. If you disagree, you respond like a human in good faith and prove out your position.

The amount of "left-right" entrenchment seems to be at an all-time high and increasing.

No matter what side of the political spectrum you fall on, what would it take to get you to vote for a new party?

Would implementing a better electoral system that would eliminate the two-party see-saw and allowing for more granularity in candidates help (See Single Transferable Vote or STAR depending on the type of election)?

Do you have other solutions to this issue?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

I have found that many people "doing their own research" are only searching for confirmation to their beliefs, and also seem to have a misunderstanding about what "research" actually entails.

If you're a rational thinker and you believe you have a source that makes a good point, you'll simply link that source directly, and maybe even explain how it supports the thing you believe. However, if you're a conspiracy theorist who only has bad sources that can be easily disproven, you'll become wary about linking to those sources directly or trying to explain what they mean to you, lest someone in the discussion completely blow your argument apart and laugh at you.

That's why the imperative appeal to "do your own research" has developed - whether intentional or not, it's a tailor-made strategy to protect bad sources (and bad thinking) from criticism. By telling people to do their own research rather than being up front about your sources and arguments, you try to push people into learning about the topic you want them to internalize while there are no dissenting voices present. It's a tactic that separates discussion zones from "research" zones, so that "research" can't be interrupted by reality.

People who actually have good points with good sources don't need to do this. It's only the people who are clinging onto bad, debunkable sources (or simple feelings) that need to vaguely tell people to "do their own research". The actual scientific method is "help me disprove this theory. Only when we all fail can we consider this theory good enough for now, but we will continue looking for other theories that explain things better, and then try and disprove those too".

No researcher tells another researcher on a level playing field to do their own research. They say, "What have you found? Let's discuss it." This is the way progress is made. There's a reason we're calling all this the culture wars and not the new renaissance.

Hell, even culture war is generous branding. It's people living in reality against a loose coalition of people who just generally don't like them because they've been trained to by the moneyed interests who have spent the last 30 years building a propaganda machine to weaponize them for political and financial gain.

The truly strange part is that the research you do as a civilian does not matter. If you somehow got a degree and ran an absolutely bulletproof years-long study in CURRENT THING, the people telling you to "do your own research" would be exactly the people who would not believe you because it would go against their preconceptions. They don't care about research, they care about belief.

Looking things up online that conform to your viewpoint is not research, it is a means to entrench yourself.

Let's Do An Experiment!

Right. So by your downvotes, I see that you don't understand why the scientific method necessitates disregarding personal experience. Let's show you an extremely simplified but basic example:

Let's say that a person believes that cats simply do not exist.

Oh, they've seen cats before, but they think they're just really small people covered in carpet and refuse to believe any evidence to the contrary.

Everyone else knows that cats exist; we know there is something wrong with this person.

Regardless, the person decides to do an "experiment" to prove it. They walk into their living room, glue carpet to their spouse, and then claim victory. They then document it stating that in their personal experience, they proved the one cat they found in the area was just a person with carpet glued to them. They gather support online, and publish it in a for-pay journal. The article is never peer-reviewed because the person refused to tell of their methodology, but people repost the "study".

If science operated in a fashion that the "do your own research" people felt, then we should all believe this person.

Just because a single person has never seen a cat, or chooses not to acknowledge cats, doesn't mean that factually cats do not exist. Even organizing a poor experiment and claiming they have done "research" does not make them correct. The burden of proof is still present, and a poor experiment is often blown apart in the scientific community or unrepeatable. This is why peer-review without an agenda is incredibly important.

If everything someone "saw with their own eyes" were true, then ghosts, aliens, demons, every God that has ever been worshipped (even though they preclude each other), mythical creatures, and countless other things are all true. All of them. That, or there is a flaw in the logic you are using.

Also, to most of the people here who will no doubt not read this as it may challenge your world view - plugging your ears and screaming as loud as you can to drown out the world does not make truth vanish.

Being insulting, blocking, or downvoting doesn't mean that you're correct.

I like to believe that people can be reached and the only outcome isn't just shit-throwing matches and all-out war. However, if you're not willing to debate in good faith, then there is no debate.

You have lost at the outset by not being willing to be incorrect.

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

I've said that many current political movement and party leaders aren't liars, what do I mean?

Well, they don't lie, per se.

They bullshit. Which, frankly, is worse.

A successful liar must construct a lie carefully, and must first know the truth. Because the lie must be different from the truth, meant to conceal it. To lie successfully is to distinguish reality from fiction and attempt to convince the other person that one is the other, but always knowing yourself which is actually correct. The facts matter to the liar.

But these people do not do that. They bullshit. In order to further their goals, any actions and any words are permissible, because they see themselves as inherently good (and that goes for narrative and reality). In order to gain an advantage in the immediate "now", anything can be said. To them, it doesn't matter if it's truth or lie, as long as it serves their purpose right now. They craft a situation, a story, narrative, a reality, in which they convince The Other (and even their own) that they are right and good. You see, they must always be right because they are good. The narrative itself need not be consistent or even coherent.

Think of the hundreds of bizarre conspiracy theories in which they are the secret heroes opposing evil. Pizzagate, Satanists, autism vaccines, Qanon, baby-eating liberals, flat Earthers, you name it. Those aren't lies in the traditional sense of the word. Those are a constant, desperate struggle to be the Good side at all times in spite of evidence to the contrary, and without concerns about what is real and what isn't. Unlike with lying, the facts, truth, and objective reality don't matter here. They can be substituted and changed on a whim - the infamous "alternative facts." That is what bullshitting is.

Debating real-life issues with them becomes futile because their reality is completely fluid and can change in an instant. One day an "engineered bio-weapon Chinese death virus funded by the Clinton Foundation" is going to kill us all, and the next day it's just a harmless flu. Not because if anything they learned, but because of how it makes them feel, and as I've said again and again since age 14, feelings are the enemy of logic.

But if it suits their immediate needs, then something like COVID is a Chinese-Clinton-Gates bioweapon again. And if they don't feel like wearing a mask in the store, it's just a flu again. Or it could be a hoax and Fauci made it up. Doesn't matter as long as the bullshit helps them in the immediate situation. Maybe they believe it, maybe they don't. They can even apply a form of doublethink to believe two or more contradicting realities simultaneously.

Disregard objective reality, absorb only the reality you choose to take in. One moment Democrats / Liberals / "The Elite" (but only the ones they don't like) run a global vampiric cabal that rules the world from the shadows in humanity's single greatest feat of secrecy, and the next moment they're bumbling idiots who can't tie their shoelaces, unfit to govern anything.

Climate scientists are making billions by convincing people that climate change is real, and at the same time are a bunch of poor hippie losers stuck in a dead end university job. And those stats that you can measure yourself? Uhhh... SHUT UP! WHY'S THERE STILL SNOW THEN, SMART GUY?! Biden is a weak coward bending over for anything Putin says, and simultaneously a warmonger who's destroying good relationships with Russia and starting WWIII.

Jan. 6 protesters in jail are good, innocent people who are victims of a witch hunt, because Jan. 6 were just peaceful tourists. And they were also violent BLM actors performing a false flag operation. The fact that those rioters filmed and so outed themselves is not in their advantage to say because it goes against the narrative, and so it doesn't enter that reality.

A liar wouldn't get away with such internal inconsistencies in their crafted alternate reality. They would immediately be found out, and they would be a terrible liar because a lie needs that internal consistency to be believable. But with bullshitting, the concept of truth never even played a part in it from the very beginning. Bullshitters don't care if you believe them or not. Their reality is whatever they want it to be at any given time. They are no longer part of "consensus reality", that which everyone can show, see, and test to be objectively true. And being detached from consensus reality is an extremely dangerous position to be in for further radicalization. They become unable to distinguish fact from fiction anymore, and can eventually turn their imaginary beliefs into real actions. Like shooting up the Pizzagate place. Bombing abortion clinics. Breaking into Pelosi's home and assaulting her husband with a hammer. Trying to kidnap a governor.

Those people you saw in the news had already left consensus reality long ago, and they were without a doubt True Believers in whatever new reality they found themselves in.

Whether they created that new reality themselves or whether it was pre-made and spoon-fed to them is another matter.

Remember: Up / Downvoting in this community is not an agree / disagree button. We upvote good or constructive conversation and downvote off-topic posts or badly-voiced opinions. If you disagree, you respond like a human in good faith and prove out your position.

I'm going to keep this apolitical and not talk about any side in specific, but how does a government tell the truth when people don't want to hear it? I want some actual discussion from this ESPECIALLY from those who think the Government correcting anyone on anything is censorship because the logic doesn't seem to be cohesive.

Let's say somebody fucked up badly and now you (yes you) are a leader of whatever federal government side you'd like and your side happens to be in power.

Someone posts a blog article on a social media site that says "(YOUR NAME HERE) Is Going To Kill Us All And Does Horrible Things To Animal Butts". It's filled with all kinds of scathing insults and made up crap that you didn't do. It focuses on the fact that you went on a vacation last year for a week. But the blog post says that it wasn't a vacation, it was a trip to plan how to kill everyone and put things into animal butts. So many things. Gross things. You've not done anything they're talking about, but people DO know that you had a vacation.

It continues to get shared enough that opinion-based media sites start covering it. Not saying it's true, simply covering the initial post and saying that someone else says it's true. That way they can't be sued, y'see. Someone posts a badly photoshopped picture of you with one hand holding a stack of paperwork with the title "Secret Government Plan #127 - How to Murder Everyone I don't Like and Continue Molesting Animals." It's badly edited, but dumb people continue to share it because they don't like you and some people are calling it real.

You release an official statement stating your innocence, but the people who are on the opposite political side from you are saying you're lying. They want to have you stand trial. You've done nothing, but some are already saying you're using your power to NOT have to stand trial otherwise the police would have stopped you. Some are saying the police are in on it! So... how do you solve this?

How, as a government in power, do you combat disinformation spread by people who genuinely don't know or care what the truth is?

And I mean something long term, true, and without pissing off half the population because you're "telling them how to think" (even if "how they think" is just made up bullshit designed to piss them off and emotionally manipulate them).

> How, as a government in power, do you combat disinformation spread by people who genuinely don’t know or care what the truth is?

In short, how, as a government in power, do you combat disinformation spread by people who genuinely don’t know or care what the truth is without outright censorship?