These internal questions are what led to me finally realizing how powerless I really am. I can't even convince my close personal friends to re-evaluate the batshit crazy things they learn online, let alone change the trajectory of a nation.

[–] SwampYankee@mander.xyz 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

What's frustrating is that anyone can find a piece of evidence for their argument, and there are propagandists everywhere offering up grand narratives full of such evidence. So when someone is extremely concerned about children getting sex changes, and you say something to the effect of "that's not really happening" they'll just come back at you with a few examples and you're like "yeah but a few examples isn't a statistical trend and you're blowing this way out of proportion" and then they call you a groomer. Like, I'm not okay with it, but also it's not something that we need to be specifically worried about and build an entire political movement around. Like children get attacked by sharks occasionally (probably more often than they get sex changes), but there's no mass political movement to shame parents who encourage their kids to swim in known shark habitats.

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

and then they call you a groomer

Unfortunately this is the state of discourse online these days. You can see it all over this and every site. Any time someone says something that someone else disagrees with, it's only one or two steps before the baseless accusations begin. Just this morning someone called me a Nazi. No discussion or anything, just accused me of being a Nazi because of a position I took on a complex and layered situation. I couldn't be further from a Nazi. But you know... Once they put you on the defensive, then you're not discussing the issue anymore, which is what they want.